I've been in this relationship. Your own values are weaponized against you. Even if you know the flags, even if you know the patterns. Any attempt at a boundary is labeled as being a “bad communist” or ableist. The world is fucked up and people deserve care. But one person or even a polycule cannot replace an entire support system. I'm in a relationship now with someone who is disabled and struggling in many similar ways, but the relationship is not the same. There is accountability and partnership, and moments of connection that are genuine. People calling this ableist are missing the text stating that the others in the relationship have their own diagnoses and struggle. This is parallel violence that takes advantage of empathy. I'm sorry.
your values are totally weaponized against you. it’s so so so hard to square but you must choose yourself. you are not a support system, you are one who can help but cannot be the only one..
FWIW I didn't read the husband/boyfriend analogies as being about the puppygirl… they were about the lesbian who would never put up with that behavior from a man, but can't see it because it's coming from a woman. I can see why some would twinge at the comparison initially, but I don't think it was written as transmisogynist.
Great piece, immediately sending it to at least one friend who needs to find her way out of a similar (though monogamous) situation.
It literally says "they have a sister", it's an analogy for how the dynamic is reproduced by a woman, even though it's the same type of behavior pattern, weaponized incompetence and learned helplessness and neglectfulness, that get often seen in men, and that it can exist in lesbian relationships even if there is no man.
I don't understand how so many people can make such a bad faith stretch of an interpretation to try to leverage the concept of transmisogyny against the author.
I read the original to my wife last night and she resonated deeply with what was written. For context, she’s a trans woman with an ex very similar to the puppy girl character depicted, though that dynamic was a bit different because her ex is a cis woman. The parts that really resonated was the lifting of that pressure you couldn’t have afforded to notice, and the coercive sex which I’m just going to declare as sexual abuse because what else are you going to call sex that you’re manipulated into having.
In the context of some of the backlash you received for the original, while I agree that the original had elements of ableism/transmisogyny that should be criticized, I still find the overall situation ironic. The dynamics of the polycule that enabled the puppygirl’s behavior got reproduced within the online space. And now you’re made to once again (in my opinion) over-apologize for your shortcomings while the puppygirl and her enablers thwart accountability. Art imitates life.
this is a relationship dynamic that replicates across numerous gendered dynamics. this is not unique to relationships between trans women. the ability to violently degender a party involved, however, should not be dismissed as inconsequential to discussion the account, especially in matters of material transfeminism. i am glad this article could help in some way, but please reconsider some of what you're cosigning here. it happened between your trans woman partner and a cis woman. why are we glossing over that aspect as immaterial?
the puppygirl is solely a rhetorical construct, in the context of this article. it is extremely misguided to attribute and criticism thereof to her. i do not agree in the slightest that these are the dynamics being reproduced. principled transfeminism CANNOT compromise on the matter of trans womanhood. that means we cannot ever accept a model of a trans woman that is "actually" behaving functionally as a man. there is absolutely no condition in which that is acceptable, even when discussing abuse.
"elements" of ableism and transmisogyny are in fact ableism and transmisogyny. i sincerely do not believe that should be swept aside as immaterial to the discussion at hand.
That is all well and good. However, real life is messy and praxis is also messy and lived experiences and reactions and feelings towards those experiences, even of the most principled people, are messy and imperfect.
The reality is that this specific relationship dynamic - where one partner is required to shoulder a disproportionate amount of emotional and physical household labour is historically a heterosexual one.
I believe what the commenter and the author is suggesting is that it is often difficult for marginalized people in relationships with other marginalized people (disabled, women, trans women) to see where these patterns and dynamics exist in their own relationships because of their status as marginalized there is a tendency to assume they as individuals are not capable of causing harm because they are not in a position of power because they as a group are not.
I’m saying we cannot conflate trans-women as a category and the structural power they do or do not possess within society with trans-women as individuals in relationships with other individuals because they can and do possess disproportionate power in their relationships and are therefore capable (as individuals) of replicating harmful relationship dynamics and imposing/replicating dynamics that would traditionally exist in a heterosexual relationship in which the disproportionate amount of visible and invisible household labour falls to the woman.
All this to say is nobody is suggesting that this is a trans-woman who is behaving functionally as a man but rather this is a trans-woman who is behaving in a way that is problematic and harmful to her partner(s) in a way that replicates traditionally male behaviour in a heterosexual relationship but is more difficult to see and criticize because of the social (rather than individual) relational, power and gender dynamics at play. People of all genders are capable of harmful behaviour and it tends to be understood based on the heterosexual gender and relational frameworks because we have not actually moved past those, because the gendered division of labour remains one of the pillars upon which our social lives are build and upon which the structures of politics, society, etc, are built and because that behaviour is traditionally understood as being that of the male partner in the social sense not necessarily in the individual sense.
It is a perfectly reasonable way to understand where harmful dynamic are replicated in individual relationships (by parties of all genders) but remains critical that we understand that social and familial relationships are built and function as a result of the invisible and discounted labour of women (who on the individual level are representative of anybody who performs the lion’s share of emotional and physical domestic labour)
I think that lots of people fall into this trap where they think their individual gender/political/social dynamics are perfect representations of societal gender/political/social dynamics and if we are seeking a truly well considered and principled feminism and trans-feminism we need to be able to understand that and distinguish the structural from the personal.
Again, nobody is suggesting that this trans woman is functionally behaving as a man only that they are occupying the position in harmful relationship dynamic that would in a heterosexual relationship and is therefore understood by society more broadly as the male one.
I also think it’s kind of gender-essentialist to suggest that there is something inherently male about certain socialized behaviours and therefore suggesting that it is bad praxis to « accept a model of a trans-woman that is actually behaving functionally as a man » there is no functionally behaving as a man only replicating behaviour that men are socialized to exhibit.
The fact that such blatant transmisogyny and ableism is able to poison an otherwise feminist discussion (trans and cis) on relationship dynamics, needs to be seriously addressed within the trans community
I discovered this essay through the backlash against it, and in reading it I was shocked by how vitriolic the response was. For transparency, I only read the updated version, not the original. I've been heavily reflecting on both the piece and the reaction for the past 12+ hours and decided I had to put my thoughts down, however unsolicited they may be.
Sincerely, thank you for writing this. I have been in this relationship (albeit not between transfems, rather nonbinary/agender people) several times in my life, and I've never seen anyone so efficiently and articulately dissect this particular dynamic of mother-partnering that is foisted onto people by weaponizing their own values against them. When I read the section about the pressure to deliver intimacy, something clicked into place in my mind about my own experiences that I had refused to process up until that point. The truth is that people's trauma, their low self-esteem, their fear of abandonment, can be real, and they can also still be the tool through which they continually (deliberately or otherwise) extract time and energy from others without reciprocity or gratitude (which is the real sin).
Seeing people describe your actions as a failure to "set boundaries" is shocking to me, in light of the pressure to perform sex and the paragraph in which a request to do the dishes becomes an hours-long comfort session about your girlfriend's mother. How do you set boundaries with someone who relies on you for their survival? Someone who has offloaded all of the work of living onto your shoulders? I have had to ask myself this question many times, and I have never found a satisfactory answer. This is clearly not an issue of disability, but rather an issue of someone who is, to some extent, voluntarily refusing the work of self-improvement while insisting to be validated that she is not, in fact, refusing the work of self-improvement. I have loved these people many, many, times, as friends, as partners, as a sibling or a child, I am so genuinely grateful to see this addressed in such a level and diplomatic way. You've put words to my experience in a way I haven't been able to.
Succinctly, reading comprehension is so important, and unfortunately the people that probably need this article the most are the ones who stopped in the second paragraph. But I will be thinking about this piece, in a positive sense, for a long time.
I don't understand what all the drama is about. Talking about emotional abuse in poly relationships is important. Talking about emotional abuse in t4t relationships is important. Thank you for writing this
Exactly. Sadly, any abuse in the poly lifestyle gets met with "this isn't true poly!" or called bigotry in some form. The truth is, the poly lifestyle is full of abusers hiding behind weaponized therapy speech and political framing. Every day this is attempted to be swept under the rug, more disabled, trans and ace people get traumatized.
Damn, tumblr outrage made me think this was the most horrible thing ever written. It’s a pretty earnest piece about caregiver burnout and resentment towards someone who you care about. I love reading about earnest contempt. Girls who are at fear of being dumped are reeling over this, but nobody’s obligated to take care of anyone to this extent. It’s not violence to put yourself first.
This is about far more than just caregiver burnout. It's about a specific type of abusive dynamic with someone who weaponizes aspects of themselves to create a dynamic of control.
Tara is not being inconsiderate of puppy girl’s disabilities. If anything, she cared too much about it and ended up confused about what was really happening in this dynamic. This piece is about the lack of responsibility that puppy girl refused to take and made Tara feel bad for having needs too. Responsibility in relationships includes compromising (in any way or shape) to communicate to your partner that their thoughts and wants matter. That you are on equal ground, even if you might not be able to split things 50/50. Puppy girl caused a lot of confusion and chaos in this dynamic, but dumped the responsibility on someone else.
You can care for someone who is dealing with a lot and has trouble getting things done, but there needs to also be a balance of respect and understanding.
Also one more thing: I believe that the assumption that disabled people need to be coddled and don’t have the ability to take responsibility is ableist.
This was a great read, especially as someone who works in DV/SV services. I may share it with my coworkers so we can educate ourselves about victims in polycules. I read the original post, so I’m not sure if this is included still, but I think it makes sense that an abusive trans woman may not recognize the history of women and unpaid labor and still re-enact those toxic dynamics. I think that part was important, especially since the post clearly acknowledges that that is not *all* trans women. I see myself in parts of this woman as well and at first I wondered if maybe actually doing the dishes and taking care of herself would help her, like it helped me. I would feel so much guilt when my boyfriend did the dishes that it would paralyze me. I would apologize so much it made me sick. But actually doing the things I needed to do ended up feeling so good. I’m still working on taking care of myself and eating better, and obviously this woman is dealing with more than I ever had to deal with. But that doesn’t make what she is doing okay. There is a lot of enabling here, and as I read the whole thing I saw why. It wasn’t safe not to enable. I am glad you are out of this situation now. This was, at the very least, an extremely toxic situation. It might not be my place, but I would even venture to say that this could be considered emotional, financial, and sexual abuse. Sending you love!
thank you for writing this, it left me speechless, i have not yet been able to describe the bars that composed the cage in which i lived for four years with my partner, and here you have come along and done it. you are not crazy, i am not crazy. thank you for your clear sight
I was in this relationship. I was told not to read this because of how "awful" it was, but I wasn't expected to see a version of the exact relationship I spent years being trampled in reflected back at me. I'm sorry to say that instead of leaving being my choice, mine froze me out and refused to speak to me until I did the work of being the bad guy. As far as I know, they're still together. I'm much happier now.
I'm sorry you've been here. I'm glad you're also out. I'm sorry so many have chosen the reading of you as the abuser, the ableist, the evil for venting about a situation where you learned to breathe again. My dishes aren't done, but I'm not in too much pain today. I think I'll get up and do them now.
Situations like these are hard. The puppygirl's suffering is real, as is her incapacity to make her situation better on her own. Like you said, she's not a bad person, she's not doing it on purpose. Her needs and diagnoses and scars are real.
But so is the structural extraction of labour. So is the emotional exhaustion. So is the sexual exploitation. So is the rent. So are the dishes.
If you'll forgive me a trite metaphor, the puppygirl is drowning. And like anyone who is drowning, she'll grab anyone who comes close to pull herself up, to get a breath. She'll try to climb them, she'll pull them underwater. Eventually, both will drown. It's not that she wants to hurt anyone. But swimming up to her, giving her yourself as a support, doesn't actually solve her problem and puts you in danger too.
Why do some people’s mental health matter & other’s don’t? That’s all I’m thinking reading the comments attacking the piece. The mental health struggles of some just materially matter more than others in our society & the ability to be a fragile woman means that your mental health just matters more. People dont come out & say that directly because it makes them feel bad but it’s true in our society.
We need to be able to call these situations abusive & why in order for them to stop happening & I just have to assume that the people who are criticizing are doing so partly because they have an interest in continuing the status quo.
This is excellent writing and I found it incredibly panic inducing to read. I can only imagine the hate coming for it is from people who have never experienced how suffocating it is to have to be the life support system for a person who very obviously weaponises vulnerability for their own benefit. I’m glad you’re happy now, and I hope you don’t take too much of the backlash to heart.
Mixed feelings. As you've said, it's a vent, this is your experience. This is the core of a reasonable idea presented in a way that overwhelms it.
Doing the calculations regarding surplus value in your own relationship is genuinely bizarre. I understand where it comes from - the life you lived sounds deeply and unsustainably exhausting, and it is good that you're in a better place now - but your girlfriend did not own a textile factory. Part of a relationship is the assumption that you will not do these calculations, that you will both do things for each other without material incentive. That she wasn't doing anything for you, that she was callous and expected you to need nothing, is one thing, but she was not your employer. You did, in fact, leave - you had that ability, and you financially benefitted from doing so. You were not forced to perform this labor in these conditions to survive. The 'structure' here was incredibly local and not coerced by the need to make a living. It is one thing to say that the care was one-sided, that you felt as though you were treated like a domestic servant and expected to never complain, and it's another to frame this in purely economic terms. If you feel like your partner is essentially your /boss/ that is not an economic issue; you are being abused.
This is hard for me to read as a disabled person largely reliant on others. Diagnoses are not the end of a conversation, but at the same time the way it's discussed here feels dismissive, the implication often seeming to be that she /could/ work but simply doesn't want to, because she's lazy, and her forgetfulness is a moral failing on her part. I have severe memory issues that require outside assistance for me to function and disabilities that have rendered me functionally unhireable. My illness reduces me to the status of dependant. I don't enjoy this either. I feel deeply guilty about my reliance on others. I feel /ashamed/ of my reliance on others. In our culture there is nothing more shameful than someone who cannot care for themself. I need other people to remember my appointments and I can't afford my own rent and my ability to do chores is limited and there is a real part of me that feels as if I deserve to be left to die for this, and reading this reminds me why. The implication is that she could care for herself, she chooses not to, this is malicious, and this is the problem, and that's already the dominant narrative regarding disabled people, and it's a harmful and wrong one. (The comments reflect this - that disabled people simply need to make an 'effort' and are only reliant on others by choice, the idea that you were paying 'too much' attention to her disability.)
That said, this is a vent. So I think that ultimately this is set-dressing - the point isn't really that she's disabled and requires care, nor that she's apparently occupying the class position of a man within your household. The issue is that this person is manipulative, emotionally abusive, and pressures you into sex. You are overwhelmed, burnt out, and unable to find time to exist and breathe, and that isn't actually inevitable when caring for a disabled person. It's actually something constantly on my mind, that my caregivers are struggling, and that whenever I can pick up the slack and let them rest that's something I need to do because they're people. That's something she wasn't doing and should have been. Her behavior was abusive - her manipulation, her inability to be told 'no', her callousness towards your wellbeing, and her propensity towards guilt-tripping as a means of control. This would be abuse even if /she/ were the one covering rent for /you/.
I have no interest in victim-blaming you or defending your ex, who if this recollection is accurate absolutely did exploit you (in the general sense, beyond just finances). You weren't an enabler, and your lack of setting boundaries was a result of her making it impossible for you to do so. This is a pattern of behavior from this person, which has impacted the lives of multiple people, and vulnerability does not erase one's responsibility to recognize the humanity of others. She manipulated and abused you. She pressured you into sex you didn't want, she created an environment where your feelings and needs were ignored in favor of a constant and exhausting demand for fawning validation. What you experienced is horrible and I have a lot of sympathy for it. I despise people who treat others the way you were treated.
The issue is that you posted this venting publicly, and cocooned it in paragraphs and paragraphs of descriptions of her as a sink of surplus value, a functional man, and a burden. If you make something like this public people will see it and they will notice these parts as well. The bulk of the word count was devoted to her disability, and her manipulation was subsumed into this, treated as something which stemmed from it instead of the thing she was doing to hurt you, while happening to be disabled. People are plenty capable of financially exploiting their partners even when they're able to work themselves, and they are plenty capable of wearing their partners out the way you were, to the point they forget that they enjoy something as simple as writing, without disability factoring in. And when you present these ideas the way you have people will respond to them. That's why venting is generally private, not edited and posted on substack as a serious piece of social/class analysis.
I wish you would take seriously the idea that this piece, in presenting your abuser as a siphon of surplus value to an equal or greater extent than it presents her as an emotional manipulator, has earned the criticism it's getting. You published it, people read it, and people understandably took issue with it. A complaint is one thing and a thesis statement is another. That's where this crosses a line, for me.
Can you explain where it describes her as a functional man? I see this criticism from multiple people but don't see it explained. Is there some subtext I'm missing?
It refers to the fact that I said that she pushes her feminized labour on to her partners and “wears the clothing of femininity” so because they are less than intelligent they used that to say I called her a man
You know how someone would come to that conclusion based on what you wrote down though, right? You know how “wearing the clothes of femininity” would come across to other transfeminised people who don’t know what you meant, right?
Part of literacy is thinking about what someone means in context, and critically, with discernment so you can understand what's being said and why. To form a correct or appropriate understanding of what someone means.
Not jump to the first reaction you have based on what you feel must be getting implied so that it validates that first reaction.
Trans disabled people, including some people on here will take it as a derogatory statement against trans people in general, because that’s the way they’ve always heard it. The badly worded statement isn’t excused because “she didn’t mean it like that”
And part of writing on such controversial topics is knowing how what you say sounds to other people, especially marginalised groups who have heard similar things in a similarly derogatory context that you mean it, BEFORE you say/write it!
I cackled when I saw that part. 99.9% of “puppygirls” (I see she still stands by the misuse of kink terminology for this, so I’ll use it here too), by her own rubric, don’t own the means of production…they’re not even petite bourgeois! The comparison is worthless and is an insult to the people who died in textile mills and down coal mines
I loved this & also have really loved watching you work through your thought process about puppygirl dynamics in response to criticism.
FWIW I think your read on gendered labor is more or less accurate. It's not that the recipient of all the labor and care is always male (you could add to the list the unreasonable great-aunt who can't log into her Google, the spoiled favorite youngest daughter babied into her thirties, the mother-in-law who thinks she's done her time); it's that the position of Caretaker is feminized and attacked with societal attitudes of misogyny. If the default position is that the Caretaker does labor because she is loving, any instance of her not doing labor is taken as withholding, as evidence of her lack of love. And with queer people from fractured family situations this opens up a whole can of abandonment issues.
Thank you for writing this and the multiple follow-ups. I feel like many of the commenters are eliding the emotional abuse (sleep deprivation, sexual coercion, triangulating) present in your original piece, but I just wanted to say that you've identified a dynamic endemic in the community & one that we genuinely need to talk about more.
Also!! This piece is obviously the strongest because it had more time to cook, but I just wanted to say that the experience of reading it was incredibly compelling. I really like how your use of repetition replicates the exhaustion that your narrator feels, with every single task and mental concern delineated to the point of overwhelm.
I've been in this relationship. Your own values are weaponized against you. Even if you know the flags, even if you know the patterns. Any attempt at a boundary is labeled as being a “bad communist” or ableist. The world is fucked up and people deserve care. But one person or even a polycule cannot replace an entire support system. I'm in a relationship now with someone who is disabled and struggling in many similar ways, but the relationship is not the same. There is accountability and partnership, and moments of connection that are genuine. People calling this ableist are missing the text stating that the others in the relationship have their own diagnoses and struggle. This is parallel violence that takes advantage of empathy. I'm sorry.
your values are totally weaponized against you. it’s so so so hard to square but you must choose yourself. you are not a support system, you are one who can help but cannot be the only one..
FWIW I didn't read the husband/boyfriend analogies as being about the puppygirl… they were about the lesbian who would never put up with that behavior from a man, but can't see it because it's coming from a woman. I can see why some would twinge at the comparison initially, but I don't think it was written as transmisogynist.
Great piece, immediately sending it to at least one friend who needs to find her way out of a similar (though monogamous) situation.
It literally says "they have a sister", it's an analogy for how the dynamic is reproduced by a woman, even though it's the same type of behavior pattern, weaponized incompetence and learned helplessness and neglectfulness, that get often seen in men, and that it can exist in lesbian relationships even if there is no man.
I don't understand how so many people can make such a bad faith stretch of an interpretation to try to leverage the concept of transmisogyny against the author.
Often the case
I read the original to my wife last night and she resonated deeply with what was written. For context, she’s a trans woman with an ex very similar to the puppy girl character depicted, though that dynamic was a bit different because her ex is a cis woman. The parts that really resonated was the lifting of that pressure you couldn’t have afforded to notice, and the coercive sex which I’m just going to declare as sexual abuse because what else are you going to call sex that you’re manipulated into having.
In the context of some of the backlash you received for the original, while I agree that the original had elements of ableism/transmisogyny that should be criticized, I still find the overall situation ironic. The dynamics of the polycule that enabled the puppygirl’s behavior got reproduced within the online space. And now you’re made to once again (in my opinion) over-apologize for your shortcomings while the puppygirl and her enablers thwart accountability. Art imitates life.
this is a relationship dynamic that replicates across numerous gendered dynamics. this is not unique to relationships between trans women. the ability to violently degender a party involved, however, should not be dismissed as inconsequential to discussion the account, especially in matters of material transfeminism. i am glad this article could help in some way, but please reconsider some of what you're cosigning here. it happened between your trans woman partner and a cis woman. why are we glossing over that aspect as immaterial?
the puppygirl is solely a rhetorical construct, in the context of this article. it is extremely misguided to attribute and criticism thereof to her. i do not agree in the slightest that these are the dynamics being reproduced. principled transfeminism CANNOT compromise on the matter of trans womanhood. that means we cannot ever accept a model of a trans woman that is "actually" behaving functionally as a man. there is absolutely no condition in which that is acceptable, even when discussing abuse.
"elements" of ableism and transmisogyny are in fact ableism and transmisogyny. i sincerely do not believe that should be swept aside as immaterial to the discussion at hand.
That is all well and good. However, real life is messy and praxis is also messy and lived experiences and reactions and feelings towards those experiences, even of the most principled people, are messy and imperfect.
The reality is that this specific relationship dynamic - where one partner is required to shoulder a disproportionate amount of emotional and physical household labour is historically a heterosexual one.
I believe what the commenter and the author is suggesting is that it is often difficult for marginalized people in relationships with other marginalized people (disabled, women, trans women) to see where these patterns and dynamics exist in their own relationships because of their status as marginalized there is a tendency to assume they as individuals are not capable of causing harm because they are not in a position of power because they as a group are not.
I’m saying we cannot conflate trans-women as a category and the structural power they do or do not possess within society with trans-women as individuals in relationships with other individuals because they can and do possess disproportionate power in their relationships and are therefore capable (as individuals) of replicating harmful relationship dynamics and imposing/replicating dynamics that would traditionally exist in a heterosexual relationship in which the disproportionate amount of visible and invisible household labour falls to the woman.
All this to say is nobody is suggesting that this is a trans-woman who is behaving functionally as a man but rather this is a trans-woman who is behaving in a way that is problematic and harmful to her partner(s) in a way that replicates traditionally male behaviour in a heterosexual relationship but is more difficult to see and criticize because of the social (rather than individual) relational, power and gender dynamics at play. People of all genders are capable of harmful behaviour and it tends to be understood based on the heterosexual gender and relational frameworks because we have not actually moved past those, because the gendered division of labour remains one of the pillars upon which our social lives are build and upon which the structures of politics, society, etc, are built and because that behaviour is traditionally understood as being that of the male partner in the social sense not necessarily in the individual sense.
It is a perfectly reasonable way to understand where harmful dynamic are replicated in individual relationships (by parties of all genders) but remains critical that we understand that social and familial relationships are built and function as a result of the invisible and discounted labour of women (who on the individual level are representative of anybody who performs the lion’s share of emotional and physical domestic labour)
I think that lots of people fall into this trap where they think their individual gender/political/social dynamics are perfect representations of societal gender/political/social dynamics and if we are seeking a truly well considered and principled feminism and trans-feminism we need to be able to understand that and distinguish the structural from the personal.
Again, nobody is suggesting that this trans woman is functionally behaving as a man only that they are occupying the position in harmful relationship dynamic that would in a heterosexual relationship and is therefore understood by society more broadly as the male one.
I also think it’s kind of gender-essentialist to suggest that there is something inherently male about certain socialized behaviours and therefore suggesting that it is bad praxis to « accept a model of a trans-woman that is actually behaving functionally as a man » there is no functionally behaving as a man only replicating behaviour that men are socialized to exhibit.
being white is awesome because you can have people wipe your ass for you and if a trans woman of color doesn't like doing that then she's the villain.
The fact that such blatant transmisogyny and ableism is able to poison an otherwise feminist discussion (trans and cis) on relationship dynamics, needs to be seriously addressed within the trans community
I discovered this essay through the backlash against it, and in reading it I was shocked by how vitriolic the response was. For transparency, I only read the updated version, not the original. I've been heavily reflecting on both the piece and the reaction for the past 12+ hours and decided I had to put my thoughts down, however unsolicited they may be.
Sincerely, thank you for writing this. I have been in this relationship (albeit not between transfems, rather nonbinary/agender people) several times in my life, and I've never seen anyone so efficiently and articulately dissect this particular dynamic of mother-partnering that is foisted onto people by weaponizing their own values against them. When I read the section about the pressure to deliver intimacy, something clicked into place in my mind about my own experiences that I had refused to process up until that point. The truth is that people's trauma, their low self-esteem, their fear of abandonment, can be real, and they can also still be the tool through which they continually (deliberately or otherwise) extract time and energy from others without reciprocity or gratitude (which is the real sin).
Seeing people describe your actions as a failure to "set boundaries" is shocking to me, in light of the pressure to perform sex and the paragraph in which a request to do the dishes becomes an hours-long comfort session about your girlfriend's mother. How do you set boundaries with someone who relies on you for their survival? Someone who has offloaded all of the work of living onto your shoulders? I have had to ask myself this question many times, and I have never found a satisfactory answer. This is clearly not an issue of disability, but rather an issue of someone who is, to some extent, voluntarily refusing the work of self-improvement while insisting to be validated that she is not, in fact, refusing the work of self-improvement. I have loved these people many, many, times, as friends, as partners, as a sibling or a child, I am so genuinely grateful to see this addressed in such a level and diplomatic way. You've put words to my experience in a way I haven't been able to.
Succinctly, reading comprehension is so important, and unfortunately the people that probably need this article the most are the ones who stopped in the second paragraph. But I will be thinking about this piece, in a positive sense, for a long time.
I don't understand what all the drama is about. Talking about emotional abuse in poly relationships is important. Talking about emotional abuse in t4t relationships is important. Thank you for writing this
Exactly. Sadly, any abuse in the poly lifestyle gets met with "this isn't true poly!" or called bigotry in some form. The truth is, the poly lifestyle is full of abusers hiding behind weaponized therapy speech and political framing. Every day this is attempted to be swept under the rug, more disabled, trans and ace people get traumatized.
Likewise "they aren't really trans"! conveniently disavows any trans person being a dick.
Damn, tumblr outrage made me think this was the most horrible thing ever written. It’s a pretty earnest piece about caregiver burnout and resentment towards someone who you care about. I love reading about earnest contempt. Girls who are at fear of being dumped are reeling over this, but nobody’s obligated to take care of anyone to this extent. It’s not violence to put yourself first.
This is about far more than just caregiver burnout. It's about a specific type of abusive dynamic with someone who weaponizes aspects of themselves to create a dynamic of control.
Some of y’all are so annoying I swear.
Tara is not being inconsiderate of puppy girl’s disabilities. If anything, she cared too much about it and ended up confused about what was really happening in this dynamic. This piece is about the lack of responsibility that puppy girl refused to take and made Tara feel bad for having needs too. Responsibility in relationships includes compromising (in any way or shape) to communicate to your partner that their thoughts and wants matter. That you are on equal ground, even if you might not be able to split things 50/50. Puppy girl caused a lot of confusion and chaos in this dynamic, but dumped the responsibility on someone else.
You can care for someone who is dealing with a lot and has trouble getting things done, but there needs to also be a balance of respect and understanding.
Also one more thing: I believe that the assumption that disabled people need to be coddled and don’t have the ability to take responsibility is ableist.
Let me just say too this was before I read the second piece and realized Tara had said some of the same things lol.
This was a great read, especially as someone who works in DV/SV services. I may share it with my coworkers so we can educate ourselves about victims in polycules. I read the original post, so I’m not sure if this is included still, but I think it makes sense that an abusive trans woman may not recognize the history of women and unpaid labor and still re-enact those toxic dynamics. I think that part was important, especially since the post clearly acknowledges that that is not *all* trans women. I see myself in parts of this woman as well and at first I wondered if maybe actually doing the dishes and taking care of herself would help her, like it helped me. I would feel so much guilt when my boyfriend did the dishes that it would paralyze me. I would apologize so much it made me sick. But actually doing the things I needed to do ended up feeling so good. I’m still working on taking care of myself and eating better, and obviously this woman is dealing with more than I ever had to deal with. But that doesn’t make what she is doing okay. There is a lot of enabling here, and as I read the whole thing I saw why. It wasn’t safe not to enable. I am glad you are out of this situation now. This was, at the very least, an extremely toxic situation. It might not be my place, but I would even venture to say that this could be considered emotional, financial, and sexual abuse. Sending you love!
thank you for writing this, it left me speechless, i have not yet been able to describe the bars that composed the cage in which i lived for four years with my partner, and here you have come along and done it. you are not crazy, i am not crazy. thank you for your clear sight
You’re welcome !
I was in this relationship. I was told not to read this because of how "awful" it was, but I wasn't expected to see a version of the exact relationship I spent years being trampled in reflected back at me. I'm sorry to say that instead of leaving being my choice, mine froze me out and refused to speak to me until I did the work of being the bad guy. As far as I know, they're still together. I'm much happier now.
I'm sorry you've been here. I'm glad you're also out. I'm sorry so many have chosen the reading of you as the abuser, the ableist, the evil for venting about a situation where you learned to breathe again. My dishes aren't done, but I'm not in too much pain today. I think I'll get up and do them now.
Situations like these are hard. The puppygirl's suffering is real, as is her incapacity to make her situation better on her own. Like you said, she's not a bad person, she's not doing it on purpose. Her needs and diagnoses and scars are real.
But so is the structural extraction of labour. So is the emotional exhaustion. So is the sexual exploitation. So is the rent. So are the dishes.
If you'll forgive me a trite metaphor, the puppygirl is drowning. And like anyone who is drowning, she'll grab anyone who comes close to pull herself up, to get a breath. She'll try to climb them, she'll pull them underwater. Eventually, both will drown. It's not that she wants to hurt anyone. But swimming up to her, giving her yourself as a support, doesn't actually solve her problem and puts you in danger too.
People like puppygirl are 100% doing it on purpose. It's laziness, selfishness, and manipulation. There is no excuse for it.
this is so incredibly hair-splitting of me but having seen this shit, it's more like 75% on purpose. That's still too much lol
Why do some people’s mental health matter & other’s don’t? That’s all I’m thinking reading the comments attacking the piece. The mental health struggles of some just materially matter more than others in our society & the ability to be a fragile woman means that your mental health just matters more. People dont come out & say that directly because it makes them feel bad but it’s true in our society.
We need to be able to call these situations abusive & why in order for them to stop happening & I just have to assume that the people who are criticizing are doing so partly because they have an interest in continuing the status quo.
This is excellent writing and I found it incredibly panic inducing to read. I can only imagine the hate coming for it is from people who have never experienced how suffocating it is to have to be the life support system for a person who very obviously weaponises vulnerability for their own benefit. I’m glad you’re happy now, and I hope you don’t take too much of the backlash to heart.
yes, this is making my heart beat fast. you really don’t get it unless you’ve been there…
Mixed feelings. As you've said, it's a vent, this is your experience. This is the core of a reasonable idea presented in a way that overwhelms it.
Doing the calculations regarding surplus value in your own relationship is genuinely bizarre. I understand where it comes from - the life you lived sounds deeply and unsustainably exhausting, and it is good that you're in a better place now - but your girlfriend did not own a textile factory. Part of a relationship is the assumption that you will not do these calculations, that you will both do things for each other without material incentive. That she wasn't doing anything for you, that she was callous and expected you to need nothing, is one thing, but she was not your employer. You did, in fact, leave - you had that ability, and you financially benefitted from doing so. You were not forced to perform this labor in these conditions to survive. The 'structure' here was incredibly local and not coerced by the need to make a living. It is one thing to say that the care was one-sided, that you felt as though you were treated like a domestic servant and expected to never complain, and it's another to frame this in purely economic terms. If you feel like your partner is essentially your /boss/ that is not an economic issue; you are being abused.
This is hard for me to read as a disabled person largely reliant on others. Diagnoses are not the end of a conversation, but at the same time the way it's discussed here feels dismissive, the implication often seeming to be that she /could/ work but simply doesn't want to, because she's lazy, and her forgetfulness is a moral failing on her part. I have severe memory issues that require outside assistance for me to function and disabilities that have rendered me functionally unhireable. My illness reduces me to the status of dependant. I don't enjoy this either. I feel deeply guilty about my reliance on others. I feel /ashamed/ of my reliance on others. In our culture there is nothing more shameful than someone who cannot care for themself. I need other people to remember my appointments and I can't afford my own rent and my ability to do chores is limited and there is a real part of me that feels as if I deserve to be left to die for this, and reading this reminds me why. The implication is that she could care for herself, she chooses not to, this is malicious, and this is the problem, and that's already the dominant narrative regarding disabled people, and it's a harmful and wrong one. (The comments reflect this - that disabled people simply need to make an 'effort' and are only reliant on others by choice, the idea that you were paying 'too much' attention to her disability.)
That said, this is a vent. So I think that ultimately this is set-dressing - the point isn't really that she's disabled and requires care, nor that she's apparently occupying the class position of a man within your household. The issue is that this person is manipulative, emotionally abusive, and pressures you into sex. You are overwhelmed, burnt out, and unable to find time to exist and breathe, and that isn't actually inevitable when caring for a disabled person. It's actually something constantly on my mind, that my caregivers are struggling, and that whenever I can pick up the slack and let them rest that's something I need to do because they're people. That's something she wasn't doing and should have been. Her behavior was abusive - her manipulation, her inability to be told 'no', her callousness towards your wellbeing, and her propensity towards guilt-tripping as a means of control. This would be abuse even if /she/ were the one covering rent for /you/.
I have no interest in victim-blaming you or defending your ex, who if this recollection is accurate absolutely did exploit you (in the general sense, beyond just finances). You weren't an enabler, and your lack of setting boundaries was a result of her making it impossible for you to do so. This is a pattern of behavior from this person, which has impacted the lives of multiple people, and vulnerability does not erase one's responsibility to recognize the humanity of others. She manipulated and abused you. She pressured you into sex you didn't want, she created an environment where your feelings and needs were ignored in favor of a constant and exhausting demand for fawning validation. What you experienced is horrible and I have a lot of sympathy for it. I despise people who treat others the way you were treated.
The issue is that you posted this venting publicly, and cocooned it in paragraphs and paragraphs of descriptions of her as a sink of surplus value, a functional man, and a burden. If you make something like this public people will see it and they will notice these parts as well. The bulk of the word count was devoted to her disability, and her manipulation was subsumed into this, treated as something which stemmed from it instead of the thing she was doing to hurt you, while happening to be disabled. People are plenty capable of financially exploiting their partners even when they're able to work themselves, and they are plenty capable of wearing their partners out the way you were, to the point they forget that they enjoy something as simple as writing, without disability factoring in. And when you present these ideas the way you have people will respond to them. That's why venting is generally private, not edited and posted on substack as a serious piece of social/class analysis.
I wish you would take seriously the idea that this piece, in presenting your abuser as a siphon of surplus value to an equal or greater extent than it presents her as an emotional manipulator, has earned the criticism it's getting. You published it, people read it, and people understandably took issue with it. A complaint is one thing and a thesis statement is another. That's where this crosses a line, for me.
Can you explain where it describes her as a functional man? I see this criticism from multiple people but don't see it explained. Is there some subtext I'm missing?
It refers to the fact that I said that she pushes her feminized labour on to her partners and “wears the clothing of femininity” so because they are less than intelligent they used that to say I called her a man
You know how someone would come to that conclusion based on what you wrote down though, right? You know how “wearing the clothes of femininity” would come across to other transfeminised people who don’t know what you meant, right?
I included the book where the phrases came from in the article
They should read it good book
Who’s the author?, I cannot find it
Part of literacy is thinking about what someone means in context, and critically, with discernment so you can understand what's being said and why. To form a correct or appropriate understanding of what someone means.
Not jump to the first reaction you have based on what you feel must be getting implied so that it validates that first reaction.
She meant it derogatorily towards the puppygirl
Trans disabled people, including some people on here will take it as a derogatory statement against trans people in general, because that’s the way they’ve always heard it. The badly worded statement isn’t excused because “she didn’t mean it like that”
Really lame insult if that was true it was neutral to describe the protagonist of the stories feelings from her perspective
And part of writing on such controversial topics is knowing how what you say sounds to other people, especially marginalised groups who have heard similar things in a similarly derogatory context that you mean it, BEFORE you say/write it!
I cackled when I saw that part. 99.9% of “puppygirls” (I see she still stands by the misuse of kink terminology for this, so I’ll use it here too), by her own rubric, don’t own the means of production…they’re not even petite bourgeois! The comparison is worthless and is an insult to the people who died in textile mills and down coal mines
Ah damn, it’s actually a worthwhile piece, fuck, sorry
I loved this & also have really loved watching you work through your thought process about puppygirl dynamics in response to criticism.
FWIW I think your read on gendered labor is more or less accurate. It's not that the recipient of all the labor and care is always male (you could add to the list the unreasonable great-aunt who can't log into her Google, the spoiled favorite youngest daughter babied into her thirties, the mother-in-law who thinks she's done her time); it's that the position of Caretaker is feminized and attacked with societal attitudes of misogyny. If the default position is that the Caretaker does labor because she is loving, any instance of her not doing labor is taken as withholding, as evidence of her lack of love. And with queer people from fractured family situations this opens up a whole can of abandonment issues.
Thank you for writing this and the multiple follow-ups. I feel like many of the commenters are eliding the emotional abuse (sleep deprivation, sexual coercion, triangulating) present in your original piece, but I just wanted to say that you've identified a dynamic endemic in the community & one that we genuinely need to talk about more.
Also!! This piece is obviously the strongest because it had more time to cook, but I just wanted to say that the experience of reading it was incredibly compelling. I really like how your use of repetition replicates the exhaustion that your narrator feels, with every single task and mental concern delineated to the point of overwhelm.