A Meditation on the Community Responsibility to Navigate Conflict, and the Consequences of its Abdication
Introduction
The ostracization and social murder of trans women is a topic oft discussed in our spaces. We are often talked about as being disposable, and only worth keeping around so long as we are sufficiently obsequious. What is less commonly talked about is the exact process by which this violence actually happens. We like to imagine the perpetrators of this violence as being heartless sociopaths, mustache twirling villains who inflict harm for its own sake. While these people certainly exist, the truth is nearly always more complicated.
The truth is that the vast majority of social violence is inflicted by completely normal people, who feel entirely justified in doing so. The decision to ostracize is made without intent to harm, and is justified on the basis of doing what is right for the community. The person being ostracized is usually someone who is themselves a perpetrator of social violence, or at least is perceived as being so. Once someone is perceived as being a perpetrator of harm, there is an implicit belief that any violence inflicted upon them is acceptable, if not itself a form of justice. This is made more complicated by the fact that our spaces often fail at dealing at conflict between two parties, often leading to situations where parties in conflict are treated as inflicting violence upon one another, simply by virtue of being in conflict. But conflict is not in and of itself a form of abuse.
In this essay I intend to break down the process of how this happens, and perhaps provide some insight into how this process can be prevented, and ideally, how some of the damage can be reversed once it has taken place.
Part 1: Conflict as Abuse
There is an unfortunate consequence in how human beings form close emotional relationships, and then allow those emotional ties to create biases in their cognition. When a close friend or partner is in conflict with another member in their community, it is natural to take their side, and in doing so, view the actions of the other aggrieved party as abusive and violent. This is compounded when it comes into contact with social hierarchies within a community, either formal or informal. Often when someone who is at the heart of a community is in conflict with someone at its fringe, the conflict will result in the community rallying around the core member and pushing out the person at its fringe.
This behavior is deeply human, ingrained in us from birth. We are hard-coded to protect those we care about, shielding them from harm. But in the case of conflict, it leads us to perceive it as one-sided attack, rather than a conflict of emotional or material needs where both sides must be listened to in order for the conflict to be mediated and resolved. As a community full of marginalized people, we as trans women have a responsibility to overcome this impulsive favoritism, and view all members of our respective communities as being equally deserving of having their concerns taken seriously when we come into conflict with one another, no matter who else is involved.
My experience with this comes from a time where I once made this very mistake, with terrible consequences. When a girl was in crisis, I let my biases prevent me from recognizing that she needed support until it was too late. Because her actions were causing emotional distress to someone close to me, I put the needs of my friend before hers, and with the help of a few others, worked to push her out of the community. When she took her own life after being socially ostracized I realized my mistake, but by then it was too late to take it back.
I should have considered her needs equally rather than putting the needs of my friend above hers. But when I saw the emotional distress her actions caused my friend, I lost my ability to empathize with her. I started to view her as my friend’s abuser, and I began to see her cries for help as attempts at manipulation. None of this motivated by conscious choice, it was a natural response to seeing the distress of a close friend, and prioritizing it above the distress of another member of the community. But the fact that I did not consciously choose to inflict this violence upon her out of malice does not make my actions any less violent, nor does it absolve me of my culpability of her social, and literal murder. Our community failed her, but a community is not an entity with agency, but rather a body made up of individuals who each hold responsibility for each other's well-being within that community. In that respect I failed her in the worst possible way.
Part 2: Community Responsibility In Conflict
When conflict arises, it is the responsibility of the rest of the community to do what they can to mediate that conflict. They must do what they can to understand the position of each party, what their emotional needs are, and to do what they can to help those needs be met. Ideally they should facilitate a dialogue between the aggrieved parties, either face to face if possible, or by proxy if necessary.
It is important to be mindful of the possibility of biases when mediating conflict, and to take both parties' needs in good faith, to understand their feelings without assumption of malicious intent, so long as both parties are willing to commit to finding a resolution. In cases where one or both parties do not intend on finding a solution, and believe that the other party is either acting maliciously, or simply do not want to resolve the conflict because it is too difficult or because they are conflict avoidant, it is necessary for community members to insist that both parties sit down for the sake of the community as a whole.
Sometimes one or both parties will need some space before they are ready to sit down and talk. This is entirely okay, as long as this need for space is communicated to the other community members who are mediating, as well as the other party, and they are given a time-frame for when the party who needs space will be ready to talk. If no time-frame is given however, this can be highly problematic, as it can lead to situations where one party uses their intention to talk at some point as a means to ostracize the other party, especially when one party has social capital to leverage over the other.
Part 3: Needing Space, and The Implicit Violence in Silence
When one party needs space but refuses to set a time-frame for when they will be ready to sit down and talk, it enables them to in essence push the other aggrieved party out of the community, provided enough other members of the community hold biases in their favour. This can be a way to leverage social capital against someone else they are in conflict with, either consciously or subconsciously, in order to push them out of the community rather than doing the difficult work of resolving the conflict.
The way this works is that by communicating that they need space and time away from the other party before a conversation can take place, in the intermediate time-frame between the present and when this conversation eventually occurs, the other members of the community will be forced to make a decision: To be emotionally close with one aggrieved party over the other. Of course it is entirely possible for other community members to be neutral, but if enough community members decide to distance themselves from one party for the sake of the other, it can result in that person being ostracized from certain parts of their community. Such as feeling there are certain people they are unable to talk to, or certain community events and spaces that they are unwelcome in.
Of course, if you ask any of these people if they are intending to push that person out of their community, they will deny it, saying that it is only temporary, until the two parties are able to hash things out, and that they are just respecting the boundaries of their friend who does not wish to be close to another person who is causing them distress. In a vacuum this is completely reasonable, as long as the conversation ultimately happens and everything is resolved, there is no lasting harm.
But what happens if the conversation never occurs? What happens if one person is acting in bad faith, claiming that they intend on getting around to sitting down and talking to the other person, without ever intending on actually doing so? What happens is that the other party is essentially left in limbo, being given the cold shoulder by other people in their community for an indefinite amount of time.
What makes this tactic so particularly heinous, is that not only is the party who is left on hold stripped of their agency, but any attempts at conflict resolution are actively weaponized against them. Any attempts to reach out or push for a resolution are viewed as a boundary violation, and they are viewed as impatient and unreasonable. If and when they ultimately have an emotional outburst due to the emotional pain of being left in limbo, it is weaponized against them, used as proof that the need for space was necessary.
Ultimately they are left with two choices: Suffer indefinitely in limbo as a social pariah, or leave the community willingly of their own choice. Meanwhile the surrounding community is completely blind to what has actually transpired: That someone has been pushed out of the community intentionally by another party in order to socially ostracize them. In essence the victim is seen as doing it to themselves.
So What Can Be Done?
The best way to deal with a breakdown of communication is to prevent it from happening in the first place. To be aware of the possible consequences of two parties refusing to sit down and hash things out and to act accordingly to convince both of them to sit down at the table together.
Once the breakdown of communication has occurred however, it starts to quickly become more and more difficult to undo. Over time inertia begins to take hold, and revisiting an old conflict becomes less and less appealing. The community slowly begins to heal, as does the conflict-avoidant party, and the idea of re-opening those wounds eventually no longer seems worth it. Meanwhile the party being socially ostracized becomes more and more desperate, as the pain of social isolation only becomes more acute and harder to bear.
Once this point has been reached, perhaps there is nothing that can be done. The excluded party is forced to live in exile and rebuild their social lives from scratch, constantly in fear of the looming threat of social violence via whisper network, while the community goes on to repeat the same cycle, excising more and more people who cause discomfort to their members due to the accumulation of unresolved conflict.
Perhaps the only solace we can take is that we aren't alone. Us trash girls who have been discarded by our broader community can find one another, embrace our mistakes, and forge a new community founded on principals that seek not to discard those who cause discomfort, but instead treat that discomfort for what it is, a chance to grow as a community and strengthen the bonds between us, and eventually we will become unstoppable.
