I thought I'd share a little story about a trans support organisation I worked for. When I joined, the volunteer team was Alice (trans woman), Bob (trans man), Charlie (transmasc non-binary person), Dave (transmasc non-binary person) and me. Not their real names, obviously. Bob was the founder of the group.
At the first volunteer meeting I went to, Bob announced that Alice had been removed from the team because she was rude and aggressive. Apparently she had told Bob to "stop talking" and Bob didn't like that. I mentally marked this down as "potentially concerning" and went on with volunteering.
Over a few months, some obvious problems started cropping up with how the support sessions were being run. They were way too formal, people were afraid to go to the bathroom while Bob was talking, and he talked a lot. People had to stick to the "meeting theme" otherwise he'd interrupt to make them get back on track. Imagine going to a support session the day after you were the victim of a transphobic attack, and you're not allowed to bring it up because "we're talking about Pride today". It was laughable. Tbf Bob was very young and had no experience and he said he wanted feedback from people older and wiser so I did that.
I wrote a pretty long message to the team about what I thought the group did well and what could be improved. One issue was that Bob had floated the idea of "keeping track of everyone's hours worked", and Dave and I strongly objected to this since it is totally counter to a happy volunteer team to treat it like a workplace. But half the message was devoted to praising the good things Bob had done, because there were actually good things about it too.
Bob was receptive, some months passed, and then Dave sent a similar message, but much more confrontationally written, about various issues with the group. Dave quit at the end of his message, then Bob quit saying he'd "had enough of all this criticism", so then it was just me and Charlie.
At this point I decided to contact Alice to find out what had happened with her. It turned out the "stop talking" thing was when Bob had been having a meltdown and she was trying to calm him. She didn't know she had been kicked out of the group until I contacted her months later, no one had told her anything. So now I have a particularly low opinion of Bob.
Anyway, Charlie and I kept running the group for several months, though Charlie lives far away so I am doing all the irl work. Then one day I find I can't access the group email address or Instagram. Then Charlie messages me saying they don't want to be involved any more, and they also think it's unfair for me to have access to resources of the group when I criticised it. Even though it was Dave who criticised the things in question, I am being held responsible.
I press further, and it turns out that Bob has changed all the passwords behind the scenes because he doesn't want me "profiting" off his work (what profit? We're all volunteers!). Charlie says it's unfair for me to stay since this whole thing was Bob's creation and I shouldn't get to keep it, so Charlie is leaving and if I want to keep running support sessions I'll have to have a chat with Bob and see if he's willing to work with me again. So I end up essentially being asked to interview for a position I already have by someone who doesn't even work here any more, because he took the group's passwords hostage, and Charlie is taking his side because they're friends. I honestly think about it, despite all the indignity, because I don't want the support to dry up for the people who rely on it, but in the end I can't face Bob again.
And that's how I learned how many "support" organisations are really vanity projects by their organisers rather than genuinely coming from a place of wanting to provide support to the community. And also how I inched a little bit closer to transfem separatism as a general policy.
snowghoul
discoholicmusic
tangentwithtanner
gamechangershow
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
yousharknotpass
