Queersplaining Callie Wright

Thank you for sharing it all! Loved the voice episode

The video “Mask Off” by Lindsay Ellis accurately reflects the experience of abuse, shaming, and exclusion I experienced from Callie Wright and from a few members of the Queersplaining Discord community.

A disagreement over whether a popular trans YouTuber’s tweet was sarcastic or not, and over whether unsubstantiated rumours about that YouTube were true or not (I did some Googling and found conclusive proof that the rumours weren’t true, but I was not allowed to speak on that topic or share what I had found), led to Callie and at least one other person saying that I was a bad and unethical person and that I was a threat to the community. This was my primary trans community and the primary online community I relied on for human interaction at a time when I was isolated alone at home almost all of the time because of COVID-19.

To Callie and others, I brought up that this was reminiscent for me of the trauma I had being bullied and excluded from an IRL trans community, which led to me detransitioning, going back in the closet, and repressing my transness for 8 years. Callie assured me that wasn’t going to happen again in their community, but then they went ahead and did it.

One of the things I did that was perceived as a threat to the community was writing posts that were deemed to be too long about a topic (the aforementioned YouTuber) that was causing tension among people in the community. These posts were in a designated TW channel with appropriate CW/TW warnings. Callie didn’t say that I said anything wrong; I don’t think they even read what I wrote. They just took issue with the length.

I said something like: “no one has to read what I wrote if they don’t want to. They don’t have to agree with it, or like it, and it isn’t my job to get them to agree with it or like it.” Callie interpreted that as saying, “if what I wrote is transphobic/misogynistic/racist/etc. or otherwise harms someone, I don’t care and I won’t take responsibility for it.” I reassured Callie that’s absolutely not what I meant, and that of course I would take responsibility if I ever said such things. Callie didn’t believe, told me they more or less had decided I was a bad person, and then banned me from the group.

This was extremely triggering and retraumatizing for me, largely because of the past trauma I mentioned above. And also because rejection and betrayal by people you trust and depend on is often traumatic. It caused me a huge amount of hurt and anger because it was so arbitrary, so nonsensical, so unfair, so unjust, so uncaring, so violent.

What Lindsay Ellis describes in the “Mask Off” video is the same sort of experience. Where extremely unfair and unfounded interpretations of words are made largely due to hypervigilance from trauma, the harm caused by those words is either massively overstated or completely fabricated, and a person is then arbitrarily shamed, bullied, and shunned.

I can relate hard to Lindsay’s experience because it’s happened to me, on a much smaller scale, more than once. What it ultimately turns out to be is simply the straightforward human vices of bullying, abuse, and ostracism wearing the mask of social justice discourse. (This is, incidentally, why it is so easy for far-right trolls to wear the mask of social justice discourse to bully, harass, and try to destroy progressive and/or marginalized people they hate — under the guise of being marginalized, leftist crusaders. Instances of this are documented in Lindsay Ellis’ video.)