Trans Woman with Female Abusers - processing it necessary to healing my womanhood
Jennifer2
Registrant
Dear Forum,
So… I had an old, insufficiently anonymised account before, and I am using this one so I can be more open. I’m ready to be anonymized, but open and real about my stuff and how it affects me.
I’m a trans woman recently separated from an abusive female spouse (yes, sexual abuse included). I have a history of abuse mostly from girls and women throughout my childhood and adult life – both sexual, emotional and physical – in relationships and even some in the workplace. The range of these incidents was rather broad, including the more extreme forms that women can do to ‘males’. In childhood, I did not get the necessary presence and care from my mother when I needed her most, to help me deal with it. Parental absence and denial meant I simply did not get the support I needed, to get through things, and when I turned to religion to orient myself in the world and explain away my shame, this just kept me from living a dignified life on my own terms for so many years…
But I am done with shame, and am working on my cPTSD. I have spent a lot of time in therapy reckoning with the patterns that have gotten me here, and know there is a lot of work left to come. I try not to ‘live in victimhood’ anymore, but I also feel I have to list through these things in a certain way to trace a backdrop of the lasting impact on my current path to freedom.
Also, some of it (that which happened in the marriage) is still so fresh that I am really just not doing great, yet. The last year of the marriage, in particular, has stirred up so much of the old stuff that I am quite vulnerable again.
I know you have trans voices here, (both transfeminine and transmasculine) so I am just trying to articulate the outcome of my experiences in a way that both trans and cis members will be able to find something relatable. I’m not going to trauma dump about the past in this post, but focus on my biggest remaining obstacles to my healing – and this concerns trans stuff.
My history of abuse from cis women has come to really hinder my ability to integrate with them, and made it really hard to define, and freely live in, my own sense of self as a trans woman. When it is really bad, it feels like I don’t yet know who I am in this skin, let alone how to actualize myself spiritually as a woman, now, after everything. I don’t expect guys, or strangers online who have some experience of being male or masc, to be able to help me with that aspect of it… but I also can’t seem to articulate this properly around anyone else except therapists, so I feel pretty alone with it.
I have left my spouse long enough ago that it is easier to respect myself, look in the mirror and really just decide what I want to look like, for me, in my body … because I get to make the rules now.
But appearances were always the least meaningful things about womanhood for me. Aside from the surgeries and other medical treatments I have needed to treat the dysphoria, I do not feel my physical appearance is what matters most to me about my womanhood, but how I love, and care – how I choose to move through the world. This deeper stuff is tainted, now, especially as the marriage collapsed.
I used to think I could keep the past in the past, that I was healing it enough… but then when my latest partner started abusing me, I realized I am just not so healed after all, yet… that I still make myself vulnerable in many of the same ways.
So, lately, there is a part of me that feels like an angry little boy again, who is still learning to choose to let go be my fullest, best self, without warring against my own womanhood and femininity. Like I am robbing myself of my own femininity.
I don’t want to be like this. I am tired of feeling on the defensive from the same people I am supposed to be trusting and modelling myself after, even if only for the sake of social mobility. And I don’t want to be defining myself in a negative mode, resisting others’ influence instead of freely becoming on my own terms.
I know, deep down, that these experiences should bring me into greater compassion with cis women, because of what they experience, and when I am healthy that compassion is there, alive, and strong. I contribute to a lot of women’s fellowship groups, for this reason… But my own womanhood sometimes just feels empty, used-up, and then the angry little boy starts to speak up, and I have to hide myself away so nobody sees my more inconvenient emotions.
My best friends are women, but still, there is this part of me, and I just… I have spent so much of my life caring for and appeasing women, and seeing a lack of care or understanding for my own boundaries, that I can find myself going to a place where I put them all in the same box, even though I know better, and have compassion and care for a variety of friends. I know in my heart it is similar to what some female survivors of male violence tend to do with ‘men’ in general, when they are activated. It is very alienating, even hypocritical.
Really, what I want is just for everyone to be safe, but I have been hurt in ways that are so hard to give a proper voice to. I often feel a duty to be silent about my abuse experiences because it will be perceived of as silencing or speaking over cis women in their fight against violence. And that feeling of being silenced is very activating for me, when I let it take a hold of me. It is just salt in the wounds I carry from walking on tip toes to avoid the scapegoating and self-protective gestures that cis women direct at me as a trans woman. If there was a way to tell them how I hurt, and why, I know they would leave me alone, and how I am so prone to intimidation and overwhelm – socially, physically, emotionally, sexually –but that is such a futile gesture.
On top of this, I am also worried about my own judgements about safety, at times. I feel disproportionately safe with men, as a result of all of this, and I have to check myself sometimes, as a result, regarding some of the situations I can get into.
I guess what I am saying is, I know I have lots of work to do to move forward, and that there is a lot of healing and joy in store for me if I do so… but I am overwhelmed at how many areas of my life are tainted by this.
If anyone can relate to some of this, or none of it, but has something nice to say, that would be great.
Yours,
"Jennifer2"
So… I had an old, insufficiently anonymised account before, and I am using this one so I can be more open. I’m ready to be anonymized, but open and real about my stuff and how it affects me.
I’m a trans woman recently separated from an abusive female spouse (yes, sexual abuse included). I have a history of abuse mostly from girls and women throughout my childhood and adult life – both sexual, emotional and physical – in relationships and even some in the workplace. The range of these incidents was rather broad, including the more extreme forms that women can do to ‘males’. In childhood, I did not get the necessary presence and care from my mother when I needed her most, to help me deal with it. Parental absence and denial meant I simply did not get the support I needed, to get through things, and when I turned to religion to orient myself in the world and explain away my shame, this just kept me from living a dignified life on my own terms for so many years…
But I am done with shame, and am working on my cPTSD. I have spent a lot of time in therapy reckoning with the patterns that have gotten me here, and know there is a lot of work left to come. I try not to ‘live in victimhood’ anymore, but I also feel I have to list through these things in a certain way to trace a backdrop of the lasting impact on my current path to freedom.
Also, some of it (that which happened in the marriage) is still so fresh that I am really just not doing great, yet. The last year of the marriage, in particular, has stirred up so much of the old stuff that I am quite vulnerable again.
I know you have trans voices here, (both transfeminine and transmasculine) so I am just trying to articulate the outcome of my experiences in a way that both trans and cis members will be able to find something relatable. I’m not going to trauma dump about the past in this post, but focus on my biggest remaining obstacles to my healing – and this concerns trans stuff.
My history of abuse from cis women has come to really hinder my ability to integrate with them, and made it really hard to define, and freely live in, my own sense of self as a trans woman. When it is really bad, it feels like I don’t yet know who I am in this skin, let alone how to actualize myself spiritually as a woman, now, after everything. I don’t expect guys, or strangers online who have some experience of being male or masc, to be able to help me with that aspect of it… but I also can’t seem to articulate this properly around anyone else except therapists, so I feel pretty alone with it.
I have left my spouse long enough ago that it is easier to respect myself, look in the mirror and really just decide what I want to look like, for me, in my body … because I get to make the rules now.
But appearances were always the least meaningful things about womanhood for me. Aside from the surgeries and other medical treatments I have needed to treat the dysphoria, I do not feel my physical appearance is what matters most to me about my womanhood, but how I love, and care – how I choose to move through the world. This deeper stuff is tainted, now, especially as the marriage collapsed.
I used to think I could keep the past in the past, that I was healing it enough… but then when my latest partner started abusing me, I realized I am just not so healed after all, yet… that I still make myself vulnerable in many of the same ways.
So, lately, there is a part of me that feels like an angry little boy again, who is still learning to choose to let go be my fullest, best self, without warring against my own womanhood and femininity. Like I am robbing myself of my own femininity.
I don’t want to be like this. I am tired of feeling on the defensive from the same people I am supposed to be trusting and modelling myself after, even if only for the sake of social mobility. And I don’t want to be defining myself in a negative mode, resisting others’ influence instead of freely becoming on my own terms.
I know, deep down, that these experiences should bring me into greater compassion with cis women, because of what they experience, and when I am healthy that compassion is there, alive, and strong. I contribute to a lot of women’s fellowship groups, for this reason… But my own womanhood sometimes just feels empty, used-up, and then the angry little boy starts to speak up, and I have to hide myself away so nobody sees my more inconvenient emotions.
My best friends are women, but still, there is this part of me, and I just… I have spent so much of my life caring for and appeasing women, and seeing a lack of care or understanding for my own boundaries, that I can find myself going to a place where I put them all in the same box, even though I know better, and have compassion and care for a variety of friends. I know in my heart it is similar to what some female survivors of male violence tend to do with ‘men’ in general, when they are activated. It is very alienating, even hypocritical.
Really, what I want is just for everyone to be safe, but I have been hurt in ways that are so hard to give a proper voice to. I often feel a duty to be silent about my abuse experiences because it will be perceived of as silencing or speaking over cis women in their fight against violence. And that feeling of being silenced is very activating for me, when I let it take a hold of me. It is just salt in the wounds I carry from walking on tip toes to avoid the scapegoating and self-protective gestures that cis women direct at me as a trans woman. If there was a way to tell them how I hurt, and why, I know they would leave me alone, and how I am so prone to intimidation and overwhelm – socially, physically, emotionally, sexually –but that is such a futile gesture.
On top of this, I am also worried about my own judgements about safety, at times. I feel disproportionately safe with men, as a result of all of this, and I have to check myself sometimes, as a result, regarding some of the situations I can get into.
I guess what I am saying is, I know I have lots of work to do to move forward, and that there is a lot of healing and joy in store for me if I do so… but I am overwhelmed at how many areas of my life are tainted by this.
If anyone can relate to some of this, or none of it, but has something nice to say, that would be great.
Yours,
"Jennifer2"
