[CW: Partner Abuse, Psychological, Verbal and Sexual Abuse]
I left my old group for many reasons but a big one was that I had been in an abusive relationship with another detransitioned radical feminist, Devorah Zahav, and I didn’t trust that most people in my old group would believe me if I spoke out about it. She was basically the leader of the detransitioned radical feminist community. She had an influential blog (redressalert on tumblr), had created a lot of the online support groups and/or helped run them, organized in-person gatherings for detransitioned and desisted women, edited and put out a zine of detransitioned women’s writings, and made connections with older anti-trans lesbian feminists, especially lesbian separatists and members of the Michfest community. She played a huge role in creating the detransitioned radical feminist community and making it what it was.
I was more or less her right-hand woman. I worked alongside her for years, was friends and later dated her for three years. I knew her for about six-seven years total, starting back in 2013. She was the first detransitioned woman I ever met. The way she treated me while I was still getting to know her and while we were friends was markedly different from how she treated me when we started dating. She abused me throughout our relationship, psychologically, verbally and sexually. Looking back, I can see how she deceived and manipulated me both while we were friends and after we started a romantic relationship. She gained my trust and used that to fuck with my head and violate me.
I feel devastated now by how she treated me. It took me a long time to trust my perceptions that how she was treating me was wrong. While I was dating her, I never felt safe enough to talk to other detransitioned women about how she treated me. Her public persona was all about being a radical feminist and putting women and especially lesbians first. She idealized lesbian relationships while in private she screamed at me and said cruel things that left me feeling gutted. She regularly took out her frustrations on me. I was always on edge, waiting for the next explosion.
I wasn’t the first detransitioned women she’d dated and it appeared that she was both attracted to my suppressed transmasculinity and wanted to control it. She was attracted to parts of my body that were different as a result of taking t and treated me in a way that left me feeling objectified and used. I’ve more or less been stone since my relationship with her and no longer engage in sexual activities that used to bring me pleasure because they’re too upsetting now.
I don’t think she ever cared about me, she just tricked me into thinking that she did so that she could use me psychologically and sexually. I don’t think she cared about other people in the detransitioned radical feminist community either, she was using them too. She’s basically a cult leader or something close to it, using her own charisma and manipulation combined with anti-trans feminist ideology to draw people to her so she can control and abuse them. She especially targets transmasculine people with a history of trauma, trying to convince us that our transmasculinity is a result of that trauma. She does this in order to control us, she has no interest in actually helping people heal from their trauma because then they’ll no longer need her “support” and she wouldn’t be able to control or use them anymore.
She certainly didn’t care about actually helping me heal from my trauma, especially when I started to figure out that accepting my transmasculinity/genderqueerness and past transition helped me heal better than treating them as trauma responses. She rewarded me for believing in her theories about how being trans was rooted in trauma and misogyny and punished me when I started to doubt and question those beliefs. She treated me like I was “crazy” whenever I said something about my own life and experience that didn’t align with her ideology. It took me a long time to realize that she never actually cared about me and all her supposed support was manipulation. I’m still completely devastated by this realization. I trusted her enough to let her read some of my old journals, something I’d never done with anyone else. I shared so many intimate details with my life with her only to later realize that she used my trust to get inside my head, hurt and violate me.
We ended up breaking up after three years but stayed friends for a while because while I knew I didn’t want to be in a relationship with her, it took time to fully believe that she really was abusive and that I wasn’t overreacting. When I finally decided to cut off contact with her completely, I knew this also meant leaving my old community. By that point I was starting to figure out that the detransitioned radical feminist community was an ex-trans cult and wanted to get away from it for that reason alone but I also figured that most people in it wouldn’t want to believe that main leader of that group was highly abusive. Devorah is very charming and charismatic in public and makes social connections easily. I thought that most people would choose to believe in her public persona and whatever defenses she came up with over my stories of abuse.
I just wanted to get away from a person and group that had hurt me for years. Even though by that time I’d realized that my old group was harmful and cultish, I still cared about a lot of the people in it. It was hard to walk away. I was in the early stages of leaving, where I was sure enough of my perceptions to get up the nerve to leave but still having a hard time fully trusting myself and getting out of the groups’ perceptions of reality. It’s a disconcerting, in-between space to be in. I was still worried that I was “crazy”, making shit up and overreacting while also having reached the breaking point where I knew something was very wrong and I had to make great changes in my life. Leaving felt like I was betraying the community I’d spent six years helping to build and turning my back on people I cared about but I had to leave to free myself and reclaim myself and my life. I told Devorah not to contact me anymore and just stopping talking to most of the other detrans women I knew.
I got out largely with the help of my current partner, Lee, who believed me when I told him about how Devorah had treated me and about how detransitioned radical feminist community was toxic and cultish. I needed a witness and someone who cared about me as a person and just wanted me to happy. Being in a relationship with someone who actually loves and respects me has brought home even more how badly I was being treated before.
I still have a lot of healing to do ahead of me. It’s hard for me to fathom how someone like Devorah can exist. Just the idea of using a person’s trauma and acting as if you want to help them heal from it in order to manipulate and abuse them horrifies me so much I have a hard time imagining a person willing to do that. When I think about some of the things Devorah did to me, a lot of it is still so horrifying that I have a hard time believing that it could be real. But I know it’s real because how my body and mind feel deeply violated. I trust myself even while parts of my mind still struggle to accept what really happened.
I’m tired of carrying these feelings of hurt and violation silently. Speaking out is scary but I feel like I have to in order to heal and get on with my life. Devorah Zahav is neither radical nor feminist, she uses her version of feminism to control and abuse transmasculine people and other trans people who were assigned female. She’s harmed a lot of people in her life and also engaged in harmful political activism spreading anti-trans propaganda and creating an ex-trans movement that’s made society a more dangerous place for all trans people. The detransitioned radical feminist community is the creation of an abusive wannabe cult leader seeking to fulfill her own selfish desires for power and control. All the talk about liberation and healing are traps to ensnare people and draw them in. I regret all the years I spent working with Devorah because now I realize I was helping her harm other people just as she was harming me.
Devorah tried to convince me that killing a core part of myself would help me heal from trauma. It didn’t work and I figured out ways to heal on my own. I survived her abuse and I’m healing and rebuilding my life. I’m angry and I’m determined to find ways to stop people like her from hurting other trans people. I don’t want to keep all this rage and pain locked up inside of me anymore. I’m still afraid of speaking out but I need to say something, I need to start talking about this part of my life.
[For those in detransitioned radical feminist community who are familiar with Devorah’s allegations against Irene/Mochi, I affirm that those are true. Irene did assault Devorah. I spoke to Devorah soon after Irene assaulted her and provided support as she worked to heal afterwards. Irene herself told me that she had physically assaulted a previous partner. I’m saying all this because I don’t want Irene to use this statement to deny her own abusive behavior.]