Coercive control, a framework originally conceptualized in Evan Stark’s Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Everyday Life and widely utilized in domestic violence theory, is one that can be expanded to understand the tactics and underlying values of all forms of authoritarian control. I have argued for this in other essays and have alluded […]
Author: Lee Cicuta
Gender Liberation
Every transgressive gender is a point of pressure and tension on the cissexual system. Living proof of the lie. Which is exactly why that system wants so badly to kill us. In my view, gender liberation has the potential to center the subversive possibilities of transness: bringing specific focus to the ways that trans […]
Self Assertion With a Body Out of Control: Chronic Pain, Transition, and Body Modification
I have been in nonstop pain for the last five years of my life. While pain and frequent illness have been features of my lived experience for as long as I can remember, chronic pain introduced itself first through a TMJ disorder and over the years since has made itself at home in most parts […]
Leave, Or Else: Giving Ultimatums to Abuse Victims
Abuse is ubiquitous in our society, and as a result there are very few among us, if any, who have not been abused themselves or in proximity to someone else being abused. Myths about why and how abuse occurs run rampant and the ones that dominate are ones that ultimately serve in the maintenance of […]
Playing With Power: The Essential Differences Between Kink and Abuse
A frequent critique of kink, especially hard kink that utilizes physical force (ex: slapping, whipping, etc.), is that it is indistinguishable from abuse, or is itself abuse. Without a thorough understanding of the dynamics of abuse, this perspective can be difficult to impossible to adequately refute. In this essay it is my aim to offer […]
Cry Like A Fag, Scream Like A Woman
Cis men’s emotions — what they are, how they feel them, how they deal with them, what patriarchy expects from them — have been treated as a concern of feminist theory for the totality of its history. Unsurprising, as patriarchy is a system that makes successfully understanding and navigating the emotional landscapes of men a matter of vital importance […]
Masculinity: Contested Territory
So frequent is the assertion in feminist discourse that masculinity is inseparable from patriarchy that many feminists use “masculinity” and “patriarchy” interchangeably in their theorizing, treating them as one in the same. When gender-nonconforming women (including trans and intersex women) and trans masculine people find ourselves in the position to offer a direct critique point […]
The Point of DARVO
DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender) is a common tactic deployed by abusers to co-opt one of the few (potential) sources of power available to the survivor — disclosure — and turn it towards their own project of coercive control. The abuser denies allegations of abuse (if any have yet been made, sometimes abusers preempt their victim), attacks […]
“Anti-Sex” and the Real Sexual Politics of the Right
So common is the conceptualization of reactionaries as having “anti-sex” politics that it is hardly remarked upon. They hate sex workers, they hate it when women and other marginalized genders have a lot of sex, queer sex, or extramarital sex, they want to keep children from any form of sexual education, etc. What do these […]
Tactics for the Fight Against Abuse: Learning from Anti-Fascism
The Size of the Problem We live in a culture of abuse. With acknowledgement that these numbers are insufficient due to underreporting: more than 60% of adults in the so-called United States have experienced at least one ACE (Adverse Childhood Experience) and a quarter of adults have experienced three or more ACEs. Over 33% of women […]