Ky Schevers

I feel like a lot of people don't realize that detrans/rad fems are well-read in cult literature and they read that stuff and it solidifies their belief that the trans community is a cult. Like lots of people in my old scene read Hassan's "Combatting Cult Mind Control".

I read so many cult books when I was detrans rad fem and it "proved" to me that the queer/trans community I left was a cult. Do people not know about all the rad fem propaganda using cult research to prove that the trans/queer community is a cult?

They've read all the cult experts. They read them to figure out how to "deprogram" people still in the "trans/queer cult". Why do these people see the queer/trans scene as a cult? Because when they were in it they encountered abuse, controlling or authoritarian behavior.

I never met a ex-queer rad fem who didn't encouter some kind of bad behavior in the radical queer community that motivated them to leave. That was true in my own case. They're responding to real problems in their former communities.

If you want to understand why some people "terf out" you need to see the problems in the communities they're leaving behind. The queer/trans community isn't a cult but it can be toxic and dysfunctional, it has its share of abusers and controlling people, like all groups do.

Rad fems/detrans people aren't that different from you. Don't think of them as cultists if you want to understand them and don't try to "save" them from themselves. I'm not out to "deprogram" anyone anymore.

I agree that calling them cultists is in unhelpful, but so is the idea that people become terfs due to bad experiences with queer communities. The vast majority of people with such experiences do not enter hate movements and center their lives around harming marginalised groups.