Problematic Pussysexual

Imagine a group therapy session for young adults with personality disorders, severe unresolved trauma, bipolar disorder etc. but that has no facilitator, no trained psychiatric professional guiding the session. These sessions meet regularly but there is never anyone there who is knowledgeable about these problems and is capable of providing internal and external resources to the participants, or guiding them onto a path towards real healing.

What you'd end up with is a group of people who are attached to each other, who may care for each other, but who do not have much to offer each other in the way of meaningful support. Always in crisis themselves, they have nothing left to give to someone else. Deep in their own warped, traumatized perspectives of their world they're unable to offer any kind of reframing. They don't know how to provide support to others because they've never received that support. They don't know what it is, or what it looks like. All the group can really do is commiserate with each other, over and over and over again. Over time as their symptoms worsen they become increasingly self-absorbed, so preoccupied with and trapped within their own catastrophic internal lives that they can no longer see outside of them. You can feel their inability to empathize with you. After all, they can't even empathize with themselves.

When you reach out you'll be met with a series of "I'm sorry's," perhaps suggestions for a distraction, but eventually you'll hear nothing at all as you've all run out of comforting things to say to each other. I think this is generally true but also especially true for me, as I am so mentally ill I don't fit in well with other people who aren't also severely mentally ill, so I would actively seek out spaces which both bought into the ideology and were explicitly for those of us with the most extreme forms of these illnesses. Eventually I would stop seeking out these spaces altogether as I'd come to feel like they were actively making me worse.

What tipped us off

The negative use of “boyfriend” in this context matched a common pattern among radical feminists to posit attraction to men, as well as men in general, as deeply inferior.

The presentation of attraction to women, including queer attraction to women, as being something experienced only by lesbians, and not by, for example, bisexual women was also a red flag.

What proved the concern was valid

+ Delegitimizes the identities of a variety of genders and sexualities.

+ Delegitimizes the identities of other lesbians who don’t meet arbitrary standards. 

+ Mocks people for using self degrading humour, on the grounds that their sexuality is unacceptable.

+ Believes that people should not create new language to describe phenomena they experience.

+ Engages with other radical feminist dogwhistling posts*.

+ Believes that women in relationships with other women who do not identify as lesbians do not and cannot describe the harassment and oppression they face as lesbophobia.

+ Denies the possibility that people for whom performing a high standard of femininity is necessary or preferable may experience specific forms of backlash for doing so, a belief which disproportionately targets sex workers and transfeminine people.

+ Claims that- solely on the basis of sexual identity- some people tend to be unusually homophobic, and that creating their own language to describe their experiences is an act of homophobia when done by these people. 

+ Mocks people who attempt to establish boundaries and protect themselves by others, as well as blames violence faced by people on victims rather than the violators.

+ Rejects and mocks people who have relationships they personally are not comfortable with, as well as rejecting the centuries long history of association between those people and queer society.

+ Claims that queer organizations should not be allowed or encouraged to focus on the subjects chosen by the members of that organization, but should instead center on other topics.

+ Alleges child molestation against fictional characters; these characters are legally and sexually adults, in addition to not actually being real.

In what ways are these actions concerning

The policing of other people’s language stops people from having discussions about their experiences or begin to address community problems directly. This prohibits building strong communities and enables exploitative and abusive people to exert control over queer spaces. It exacerbates existing divisions and makes queer spaces unsafe for a large number of people.

Accusing queer people, especially queer men, of child molestation when they are engaging in consensual, noncriminal relationships directly contributes to the death, legal limitation, and physical abuse of queer people. In modern times, it is especially popular a tactic among extreme right wing authoritarians who seek the extinction of queer people as a whole. 

Denying people the ability to make fun of themselves and their own experiences is an abusive tactic that prevents people from understanding trauma and combatting oppression in their own lives.

Policing the gender expression of others is self-evidently transphobic, as well as sexist.

Additional notes:

*Although engaging with a dogwhistle is not necessarily evidence of radical feminist thoughts and beliefs, in the context of other posts and statements, it is an additional concern.

As always, the OP may not be a true and complete radical feminist, with all the political beliefs that entails. However, this post is presented in such a way as to make trans people, sex workers, and others often targetted by radical feminist and it’s descendant movements feel unsafe. Followup research revealed that that discomfort was warranted.

Sally Ride is remembered for her pioneering journey into space, but a new documentary reveals another dimension of the astronaut’s story. 

Man: I identify as being attractive to you