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I’m working on an essay on how I was groomed by an older transwoman as a lesbian teenager but it’s slow going. I want to explain so much - how lesbians have unique vulnerabilities to the techniques in the “politics of desire” but we aren’t alone in being in danger.
When I say the politics of desire, that’s one of the official in-community labels used as an umbrella term to refer to the cotton ceiling and associated ideas. I prefer to call it a term I coined recently - queer rape culture.
Rape culture is defined as “a society or environment whose prevailing social attitudes have the effect of normalizing or trivializing sexual assault and abuse.” Replace society/environment with subculture, and you have queer rape culture (QRC).
QRC’s centerpiece is the cotton ceiling (of which I can and will go on about basically endlessly), but by no means the only expression. Identity politics used as a deflection of being outed as a rapist, a blasè approach to rape by deception, a shiny exterior of “sex positivity”
where underneath are many young female people’s lives forever altered by sexual harm & constant trauma/retraumatization. Porn addiction, violent sex (BDSM), compulsive casual sex, involvement with the sex industry, all of these things I saw in my friend group and myself.
Queer rape culture is not unique to “queerness”. It does not exist because of LGBTQ people. It’s a new liberal expression of the dominant cultural values. We’re just doing the same shit and calling it queer and/or feminist. And that’s really, really scary.
So that’s my new term! And I’ve already had complaints about it, saying that “conservatives will use it against us”. I was also told this about talking about male violence from transwomen in the queer community. Anti-LBGTQ activists are going to say what they’re going to say.
Conservatives are also keen on using the stories of detransitioned people for their own purposes. I can’t control what people do with my stories & words but I’m unwilling to censor myself to avoid giving the right ammunition. They already have it.
Queer rape culture is going to exist whether or not I name it and talk about it and whether or not other people do too. Audre Lorde said our silence will not protect us and I believe she’s right.
