Trans* survivors: telling our story

I have been a victim of childhood sexual abuse, mistreatment and bullying. I feel vulnerable and also resilient, and that is why I want to tell my story.

"We should tell our stories, as loudly as we can and as often as we can. [...] We should claim the space that no one will give us, for our rage and our power. Healing from child sexual abuse as individuals requires collective healing, it requires an end to capitalism, to white supremacy, to heteropatriarchy, it requires radical movements led by survivors. Self-determination and transformative justice grow every time we challenge a world that wants to tell our stories instead of us."
Caroline Picker

In this article I want to tell my story, and put it in a social and political context, as Caroline Picker calls for in her contribution to the book Queering Sexual Violence . But before I begin, a few content warnings: I will talk about child abuse, sexual abuse, suicidal ideation, bullying, because they are part of my story. I invite you to take care of yourself, to observe and listen to yourself while you are reading this article. If it stirs you up too much, maybe leave it for a while and focus on your emotions. What stirs you up? What do they tell you? You can also read the article accompanied by a person you trust. Above all: take care of yourself! This society is already hurting us too much. We don't need to hurt ourselves.
I am a non-binary trans* person. I am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, and child abuse in the form of neglect and emotional abandonment by my parents. I was also bullied from elementary through high school. I continue to struggle with complex post-traumatic stress disorder, although I have learned to live with my traumas: to live, not just survive. I feel vulnerable, but at the same time strong, resilient, and this is why I want to tell my story.

A few weeks ago I read a poem by Angie River, "To My Little Gender Bender", also in the book Queering Sexual Violence. A mother's poem of love for her gender non-conforming, six year old gender bender child. I cried, I cried for two hours. The poem connected me to my own story, to the lack of love, but it also made me rewrite - yet again - the story of my gender. It's hard to write your own story when all you have are your emotions, what your body tells you, and no memories. My childhood and adolescence are rather marked by memory gaps, the absence of memories. I have absolutely no memory of the first ten years of my life, and very few of the next ten years. But my body remembers in the form of emotions, emotional flashbacks.

What happened to me when I read the poem was one of these emotional flashbacks. I used to think that as a child - or girl? - I hid who I was out of fear, that outwardly I tried to be a boy. The poem made me rethink this, and now I think that in reality that didn't work, that my gender non-conformity was obvious and, at least for some time in my childhood, an open conflict with my parents, perhaps especially with my father. I really know - I feel - that I never fitted in with masculinity, but I used to interpret that as just a thought, an internal feeling, and not so outwardly obvious. Now I think no, that it was obvious.

Being trans and non-binary, a complex trauma

Complex trauma. Almost all the non-binary people I know more closely struggle with complex trauma. Pete Walker, a psychologist who has also struggled with his own complex trauma, says: "Our recovery efforts are hampered until we understand how much of our suffering is about early emotional abandonment, about the great emptiness that arises from the lack of parental interest and loving commitment, and about the distressing experience of being small and powerless as you grow up in a world where there is no one to support you."

According to Pete Walker, the central theme is emotional abandonment. Before I came to accept sexual abuse as part of my childhood as well, my psychologist commented at one point that I didn't need sexual abuse to explain my symptoms, that I had suffered enough neglect. Pete Walker continues:  "Traumatic emotional neglect occurs when a child has no single parent or caregiver to whom he or she can turn in times of need or danger, and when he or she has no one for an extended period of time who is a relatively constant source of comfort and protection. Growing up emotionally neglected is like almost dying of thirst right outside the fenced-in source of a parent's kindness and concern. Emotional neglect leaves children feeling useless, unloved and terribly empty, with a hunger that gnaws deep into the core of their being, leaving them starving for human warmth and comfort - a hunger that often transforms over time into an insatiable appetite for addictive substances and/or processes".
I remember my psychologist, in one session, asking me when I first felt loved, and I had no answer. My mind went blank...

Is it a coincidence that almost all non-binary people around me have complex trauma, although none of them I know from a therapeutic context? I don't think so. There is some research that shows that gender nonconforming children often have a worse relationship with their parents than gender conforming children, both in childhood and early adolescence.
A Finnish team says in one of their research: "Gender-atypical behaviour in childhood may induce negative parental responses due to, for example, traditional parental attitudes towards acceptable behaviour for boys and girls. In fact, several studies have found that parents respond negatively to gender non-conforming behaviours, especially when boys engage in feminine behaviours". The team concludes that "a reciprocal model implies a bidirectional phenotypic feedback loop as a causal explanation for the association. The loop could reinforce both typical and atypical behaviour (...) A reciprocal model also includes the possibility that for some participants, gender-atypical behaviour preceded negative parental relationships, while for others, negative parental relationships preceded gender-atypical behaviour".

We can talk a lot about education for equality, about overcoming gender roles and stereotypes in education, but the research paints a different picture. And this research, as well as others like it, does not even talk explicitly about trans or non-binary people. It is very likely that with increased gender non-conformity, the relationship with parents will get even worse. It is not hard to imagine how easily the conditions for developmental trauma or complex trauma are present.

It is perhaps not surprising, then, that in research on the reality of non-binary people in Spain, 12% of the participants had no contact with any member of their family at the time of filling in the questionnaire, 87% practised cispassing in the family, 58% frequently, thus concealing their gender identity. It is unlikely that this does not originate already in childhood and adolescence.
A report by Transgender Europe states: "More than 38% of all trans respondents scored the lowest on the openness scale, suggesting that approximately one in three trans respondents are not open about their gender identity. This situation is exacerbated in the case of young transgender people, with almost one in two transgender people aged 15-17 not being open to anyone. Hiding gender identity or sexuality has been shown to be very damaging to people's self-esteem, self-worth and confidence, especially during the formative years." Add bullying, transphobia, and surviving in a cisnormative society. Is it any wonder, then, that, according to research in the UK, 84% of trans teenagers have self-harmed, 92% have thought about taking their own lives, and 45% have attempted suicide?
I know this suicidal ideation very well. It has been with me all my life, and I thought it was "normal" (what is normal?). It usually consisted of making elaborate plans about how to kill myself that were impossible to carry out, but when I started to deal with my trauma I also had moments of suicidal impulses that really scared me. I could easily have been part of the 45% who have attempted suicide.

Being trans and non-binary and abuses beyond neglect

While emotional neglect is clearly a form of abuse of children, this is not the end of the story. Amita Yalgin Swadhin writes in her contribution to the book Queering Sexual Violence: "We know that, regardless of sexual orientation, people who exhibit gender non-conforming - or genderqueer - behaviour in childhood are at much greater risk of sexual abuse.

New research has shown that children who display gender non-conforming behaviour - through dress, mannerisms and/or interests - before the age of 11 - known to be about one in ten children - are at greater risk of sexual abuse at age 17 than their gender conforming peers. The risk of sexual abuse is particularly alarming for gender non-conforming boys, with rates two to six times higher than for gender-conforming boys". She refers to sobering research published in the Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The summary of the results is already revealing: "Exposure to physical, psychological, and sexual abuse in childhood and probable PTSD were elevated in youth in the top decile of gender nonconformity in childhood compared with youth below the nonconformity median. [...] Gender nonconformity predicted higher lifetime risk of probable PTSD in youth after adjustment for sexual orientation." The researchers note that childhood maltreatment "increases the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) directly by triggering PTSD and indirectly by increasing both the likelihood of exposure to subsequent stressful events and the risk of developing PTSD following exposure to a stressful event.

Therefore, if gender-nonconforming children are at increased risk of being abused, they may also be at increased risk of developing PTSD compared to gender-conforming children". Obviously, since many of these children have poorer relationships with their parents, and do not even have a single trusted caregiver, these are ideal conditions for the development of PTSD or complex PTSD.
Although in all these studies gender non-conformity is considered quite broadly, and is not limited to trans* or non-binary children, adolescents or adults - in fact, they are not even mentioned in these studies - I found a more specific study: Disparities in Childhood Abuse Between Transgender and Cisgender Adolescents . According to this research, transgender adolescents "may be at elevated risk for childhood abuse due to this population's distinct experiences with gender identity and gender expression throughout development". Transgender adolescents "conform less closely to societal expectations of gender expression during childhood, even before they identify with a gender identity that differs from their sex assigned at birth. Children with a non-conforming gender identity are more likely to experience abuse compared to their peers with a conforming gender identity".

The researchers conclude that transgender adolescents "are more likely to report psychological, physical and sexual abuse during childhood compared to heterosexual CGA (cisgender adolescents). Our findings align with those of previous studies that found high rates of childhood abuse among transgender people. There is growing evidence that TGAs experience mental health problems to a greater extent than CGAs, and it is likely that childhood maltreatment contributes to the development of mental health problems among TGAs".

A review of research Child abuse victimization among transgender and gender nonconforming people: A systematic review came to the following conclusions: "Despite the variety of methods, these studies paint a picture of abuse that is significantly related to CGNC (childhood gender nonconformity) and transgender status. All four studies that investigated whether or not CGNC was associated with child maltreatment concluded that it was. Two studies found that the higher the CGNC, the more the child was abused."

We know that rates of sexual abuse of trans and non-binary people in childhood are very high. The US NGO FORGE estimates that between 50% and 66% of trans and gender non-conforming people suffer sexual abuse at least once in their lives. But, in Spain, nobody talks about the issue, nor are there specific services or resources for trans and gender non-conforming survivors, neither by trans associations, nor by associations that work with survivors of sexual violence, which, for the most part, only work with cis women.

We are left alone, without support. Our situation is very different from that of cis survivors of sexual abuse. As a FORGE guide for trans* survivors of sexual abuse states, "as a transgender or gender non-conforming survivor of sexual abuse, you may feel that your experience is too complex for people - possibly even you - to understand. Sexual assault already inextricably mixes issues of sex, gender, body image, power and self-image without the complication of gender identity issues; if you add this, people may not seem to understand. And it may be true that you haven't found people capable of understanding it before".

It is true that until now I have struggled to understand how my gender identity as a non-binary person intersects with the sexual abuse I suffered as a child. Looking at the research findings, although I cannot say that my gender non-conformity in childhood directly caused my father's sexual abuse, I am convinced that it facilitated it, especially since I also had no emotional support from my mother - I rejected her, wished her dead. Is there an easier victim than a child, already traumatised by emotional abandonment, a lonely, unsupported child?

My survival strategy was to dissociate, to not feel myself, to escape into my own world. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, it took me decades to connect with my gender identity, and I am almost convinced that I needed to find myself first before I could face my trauma. Since then, facing my trauma has also increasingly connected me with my gender identity from my childhood. Yet another wound.
I return to Caroline Picker, to the quote at the beginning of this article. "Healing from childhood sexual abuse as individuals requires collective healing, it requires an end to capitalism, to white supremacy, to heteropatriarchy, it requires radical movements led by survivors." Where is this movement Caroline is talking about? Where, especially, is the radical movement led by trans and non-binary survivors?

Instead of conclusions

Judith Butler says in her essay Violence, Mourning, Politics: "Each of us is politically constituted by virtue of the social vulnerability of our bodies - as a site of desire and physical vulnerability, as a public site of affirmation and exposure. Loss and vulnerability seem to be the consequence of our socially constituted bodies". "Being aware of this vulnerability can become the basis for a peaceful political solution, just as denying it through fantasies of domination (institutionalised fantasies of domination) can strengthen the case for war. However, we cannot ignore this vulnerability. We must pay attention to it, even stick to it, in order to begin to think about what politics might continue to maintain the idea of bodily vulnerability, a situation in which we can be defeated or lose others," says the philosopher.

I am very aware of my own vulnerability and at the same time I feel strong. I no longer want to hide my vulnerability, my wounds. By living my vulnerability openly, others can no longer use my wounds, my own vulnerability to hurt me. Living my vulnerability makes me strong, makes me feel empowered, in control. As Audre Lorde says in Transforming Silence into Language and Action: "What are the words you don't have yet? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow daily and try to deal with in silence, until they sicken and kill you?" No more silences! This is my story, this is what I need to say.

Originally published in Spanish in El Salto: https://www.elsaltodiario.com/opinion/supervivientes-trans-contemos-historia