tw: violent transphobia, CSA, attempted murder
I was in the same position as your friends. I came out at the tail end of highschool. I was maybe only a few months out, and only partially, and to just a few friends- one of whom was a cis woman. She was a very men-hating feminist, though neither of us knew the term “radfem” at the time. Turns out she also hated trans people, despite me being the first one she ever encountered. She tried constantly to get me to detransition, trying to manipulate me into thinking I was just a lesbian. She would give me books about conversion therapy and tried to take me to church with her. She tried to break me off from my support system- any friends who supported my transition, including my partner, she would purposely start fights and lie about them to get me to leave them. She insisted on giving me rides to and from school everyday- I couldn’t drive at the time, so she literally controlled my transport. When none of that seemed to be working, she escalated her tactics.
This included sexually assaulting me while I slept over at her house. I think her logic was that if she raped me, my body would respond, thereby “proving” that I was attracted to women, and was therefore a lesbian. Yes, there are a lot of holes in that logic. She’s a rapist- I don’t expect her to be smart. She thought I was asleep during, but I was playing possum because I had no idea what else to do.
After the assault, I began pretty obviously pulling away from her- refusing to hang out, refusing to stay over, refusing to do anything with her, ghosting her texts. I began relying on my other friends. We were almost out of highschool- if I could just make it another few weeks, I would never have to see her again.
On the day of our highschool graduation, she was driving several of us home from the rehearsal. She had a long car with three rows of seats and a trunk behind the third row. I had been sitting in the way way back, but once she dropped off most of the others, I was going to flop over the top of the seat and move up a row. She waited for me to move, and then gunned the car in reverse, sending me through the back windshield.
She tried to kill me. Because this was her very last chance to detransition me. And when abuse and lies and manipulation and rape all had failed, her last option was to fucking murder me.
She literally completed the perfect terf escalation. First she tried to “softly” detransition me with emotional abuse and manipulation and conversion therapy. Then when that failed, she tried to detransition me with brute force, by assaulting me. And when even that failed, she turned where all terfs will turn: if she couldn’t control me, she was going to kill me.
It always leads to death.