Making Victims of Victims

August 30, 2013, Lillith, Personal Experiences,

(Content - discusses child abuse and uses gendered insults)
Being a transsexual woman I've been called a rapist repeatedly by some feminists. Some days I can cope with it and some days it triggers what I can only describe as a kind of PTSD. I don't know how to describe this.

I experienced sexual abuse by an adult friend of the family regularly from the age of four. This may have a different slant because I have changed gender and my abuser was a woman, at the time I was ostensibly male. I have never known who to talk to about this, I've tried therapy but have each time ended up lying to the therapist because I could't bring myself to talk about it.

Before transition I was terrified it would lead to a denial of much needed medical care, afterward having now made a good life as a woman I assume other women won't want to know and I have no intention of talking to any cis-man about it. I feel scared it will always be used to judge or erase my status as a woman. Viewed as he poor mad-tranny or just an abused kid made delusional. That is not how things are. There are issues of gender identity I had to seperate from the abuse related problems and I think I did but that's a whole other discussion.

I still feel an immense sense of shame when I think about the mechanics of the act and I don't feel ready or able to describe it, or if it's even necessary. The abuse also came with threats to keep quiet or everyone in my family would die. It lasted off and on for a couple of years. I coped by trying not to think about it. Instead I had panic attacks, sometimes nearly constantly and used prescription tranquilisers and alcohol to self medicate at times.

As I got older, after I completed transition and treatments I reached a point where it was important to me to be open about my transsexual history. This brought me into contact with radical feminists on line. I had always known the radical position on transsexual people and had even had encounters with radical feminists who read me as a cis woman in real life. But the online experience has been devastating. I know female abusers are a rarity, but they do exist and I had to grow up, come out and be rejected at 17 for being transsexual by my family all while this woman was still welcomed by them.

Being called a rapist unleashes a fury of emotion that ends with suicidal feelings. I'm not willing to back down, because that is giving in to the bullies, it is hard at times to keep it together.

 

We do NOT give permission for posts published as personal experiences to be reproduced, translated or otherwise published elsewhere. We will not contact people who submit their personal experiences on behalf of journalists, bloggers or other third sector organisations. These testimonies remain the intellectual copyright of their authors and must be treated with the ethical guidelines used by academics for research involving human subjects. Our full guidelines can be read here.

‹ “Miley Cyrus: The Reason Why I Never Want To Have A Daughter” My Experience as a Child (Content Note) ›