Sexual Coercion by Females (Trans Woman Survivor)
Jennifer2
Registrant
Dear Forum,
Trans girl here, with a story I could present in a few different ways, but I just want to emphasize the theme of coercion and coercive dynamics in sexual abuse as it played out in my last relationship.
If we just talk about very explicit sexual assault, I think you could say that I was only ‘assaulted’ by females before and during my transition, and not after my sex/gender-change surgery (at least not in the textbook, easy to define ways). The abuse while I was in my old anatomy took the usual forms of female-on-male abuse… with an emphasis on coercion rather than physical force. The kind that leaves you feeling like it was your fault for eventually going along with it and giving in. That is in some ways for me the worst part of it. Like I was my own abuser. The thought is not one I can stay with long without starting to dissociate or dysregulate. The social dynamics surrounding abuse were often different, however, as I was no ‘ordinary boy’ socially, and I was really just so desperate for female fellowship and attention even of a non-sexual nature for well into my life. They were the ones I felt I connected with best, and yet they seemed capable of the worst of violations.
However, there is an additional layer that is hard for me. My sex/gender change surgery happened while I was in a toxic and abusive relationship, covering the physical, emotional and sexual dimensions in various ways and at various points. The sexual abuse was sexual coercion. She would yell and scream about how I was neglecting her because of my dysphoria, and being selfish… etc. I had to do a lot of soul searching about that to really accept the severity of what this was doing to me, so I will leave that for another post.
One of the worst things about this relationship and its toxicity was that it was profoundly messy, with very little of it happening in ways I could expect my family or friends to understand, as they used to love my partner, once. I have told most of my immediate family about the gist of it, as we are close in some ways. But they don’t really understand what it is like to be in such messy life situations, either. So it is hard to explain how it could have gotten so bad, and there are things from the deep past that we all just avoid talking about and I don’t want to stir those things, either. I am partly here at this forum because I know plenty of people here understand how messy these things can be when they happen in relationships. If we start acting to defend ourselves, suddenly we are not victims anymore, and it is like the abuse is not real – so we are not able to stand up for ourselves.
The way things unfolded after my surgery, I do feel I was also abused in my new body, and that this abuse is having immense sexual implications for me, whether or not it is easy to categorize what happened in one of the things listed on those information sheets about sexual violence. Basically, my ex partner was just incredibly bad with boundaries, and wouldn’t listen to my experiences when I was most vulnerable, so I could not count on her to keep my needs in mind properly, even when she was not being abusive. It was hit or miss, really.
I often felt like, even though I did still love her somewhere in my heart, I couldn’t possibly love her enough to endure these conditions if I did not think staying with her was the safest path to my transition. If not for the transition, I would have left. Leaving her was going to knock all I had fought for off-course. The problem is, I did not grasp just how unsafe a place this was for me, at all. I just kept believing that our patterns, even the ones that harmed me gravely and left her relatively untouched, were ‘my fault’.
Gender dysphoria and trauma are two different things, and one does not just ‘cause’ the other. But, as a trans woman and male survivor, I was hoping that my surgery would have the bonus of freeing me from an anatomy charged with memories… but instead, new things happened. The memories and distress from them just stirred up my old pains in my new body, even while it was still healing. These events, that here I will simply call “bodily betrayals”, they remind me so much of the dynamics of coercion. That sometimes you can’t win, so you give in. Either path is heartbreaking, so you choose the one that at least ends the yelling and screaming for awhile.
I have so much healing to do, but I will do it. I am committed to being okay, to choosing a life beyond sexual coercion, and the patterns that feed it.
Trans girl here, with a story I could present in a few different ways, but I just want to emphasize the theme of coercion and coercive dynamics in sexual abuse as it played out in my last relationship.
If we just talk about very explicit sexual assault, I think you could say that I was only ‘assaulted’ by females before and during my transition, and not after my sex/gender-change surgery (at least not in the textbook, easy to define ways). The abuse while I was in my old anatomy took the usual forms of female-on-male abuse… with an emphasis on coercion rather than physical force. The kind that leaves you feeling like it was your fault for eventually going along with it and giving in. That is in some ways for me the worst part of it. Like I was my own abuser. The thought is not one I can stay with long without starting to dissociate or dysregulate. The social dynamics surrounding abuse were often different, however, as I was no ‘ordinary boy’ socially, and I was really just so desperate for female fellowship and attention even of a non-sexual nature for well into my life. They were the ones I felt I connected with best, and yet they seemed capable of the worst of violations.
However, there is an additional layer that is hard for me. My sex/gender change surgery happened while I was in a toxic and abusive relationship, covering the physical, emotional and sexual dimensions in various ways and at various points. The sexual abuse was sexual coercion. She would yell and scream about how I was neglecting her because of my dysphoria, and being selfish… etc. I had to do a lot of soul searching about that to really accept the severity of what this was doing to me, so I will leave that for another post.
One of the worst things about this relationship and its toxicity was that it was profoundly messy, with very little of it happening in ways I could expect my family or friends to understand, as they used to love my partner, once. I have told most of my immediate family about the gist of it, as we are close in some ways. But they don’t really understand what it is like to be in such messy life situations, either. So it is hard to explain how it could have gotten so bad, and there are things from the deep past that we all just avoid talking about and I don’t want to stir those things, either. I am partly here at this forum because I know plenty of people here understand how messy these things can be when they happen in relationships. If we start acting to defend ourselves, suddenly we are not victims anymore, and it is like the abuse is not real – so we are not able to stand up for ourselves.
The way things unfolded after my surgery, I do feel I was also abused in my new body, and that this abuse is having immense sexual implications for me, whether or not it is easy to categorize what happened in one of the things listed on those information sheets about sexual violence. Basically, my ex partner was just incredibly bad with boundaries, and wouldn’t listen to my experiences when I was most vulnerable, so I could not count on her to keep my needs in mind properly, even when she was not being abusive. It was hit or miss, really.
I often felt like, even though I did still love her somewhere in my heart, I couldn’t possibly love her enough to endure these conditions if I did not think staying with her was the safest path to my transition. If not for the transition, I would have left. Leaving her was going to knock all I had fought for off-course. The problem is, I did not grasp just how unsafe a place this was for me, at all. I just kept believing that our patterns, even the ones that harmed me gravely and left her relatively untouched, were ‘my fault’.
Gender dysphoria and trauma are two different things, and one does not just ‘cause’ the other. But, as a trans woman and male survivor, I was hoping that my surgery would have the bonus of freeing me from an anatomy charged with memories… but instead, new things happened. The memories and distress from them just stirred up my old pains in my new body, even while it was still healing. These events, that here I will simply call “bodily betrayals”, they remind me so much of the dynamics of coercion. That sometimes you can’t win, so you give in. Either path is heartbreaking, so you choose the one that at least ends the yelling and screaming for awhile.
I have so much healing to do, but I will do it. I am committed to being okay, to choosing a life beyond sexual coercion, and the patterns that feed it.
