I want to talk for a second about a tactic Krug employed in the screenshotted conversation. No one needs my opinion on the broader situation with her so I'm going to leave that alone, but this specific thing of dropping unsolicited trauma is a common deflection tactic. https://twitter.com/waywardnegro/status/1301602632453312512

What happened: she was confronted about her behavior, and she immediately told this story about how her mother was raped. She then proceeded to make the whole conversation about that.

It turns out the entire story was bullshit--but this tactic comes up a lot.

Telling someone a deeply personal thing about yourself is a way of forcing emotional intimacy. And for abusers who worm their way into marginalized communities, it's also a way of syphoning emotional support.

It's especially common as a way of deflecting or disarming criticism.

Someone says "hey we need to talk about how you're behaving" and the abuser replies with an unsolicited disclosure of trauma or mental illness.

They then build on that disclosure to launch an attack: "I told you this personal thing and you're betraying me by criticising me."

It's a way of using a position of perceived vulnerability to gain the upper hand and control the conversation and the other party. "I trusted you with this information you didn't ask for, so you are morally obligated to be worthy of that trust by prioritizing my comfort."

And beyond that, even when it's not being used to deflect criticism (it often is), it's a way for the abuser to center themselves. Someone tells you something painful and you feel like an asshole if you close that door on them by saying no, I'm not here to support you, stop.

A few years back, friends of mine had to deal with this in a group they'd started for women in their community. A man started showing up at all their events, and within half an hour of meeting any woman there, they'd know his whole damn life story.

When women in the community started speaking up and saying he was making them uncomfortable, some folks were confused. What exactly had he done? He wasn't sexually harassing anyone?

Maybe not, but he was still sucking all the air out of every room he entered.

The community banned him, and identified assuming inappropriate levels of emotional intimacy as a form of harassing behavior. Because even if he really wasn't doing anything else (and I can't say for sure that he wasn't), his behavior was still crossing people's boundaries.

I can think of other examples of this more overt version--people using a marginalized community as the non-consensual porter for their emotional baggage.

But as a deflection of criticism, it's often more subtle.

As a deflection, it's using trauma or mental illness to say that criticism or boundaries are off the table due to the person's vulnerability. "You're reminding me of a past trauma," or "you're triggering my anxiety or depression," or "you're just like my abuser."

In the case of that one fucking guy who wrote that article about how women telling him not to stalk them was abusive, it was "you know I was traumatized by past abandonment, so you leaving is intentionally using my past trauma to hurt me."

(fuck that guy).

And hey, sometimes people have sore spots. Due to mental illness, trauma, or just life.

But there's a difference between "this is what I need for us to have this conversation" and "you cannot question my behavior."

And there's also a difference between "This is a thing I can't change about myself so given that we need to work out how to proceed" and "this is a thing I cannot change, so you have to live with it because refusing to let me keep hurting you is ableist."

Sometimes, people's sore spots will lead to a fundamental incompatibility, even when everyone's acting in good faith. The person who can't stand yelling simply can't be around the person who's natural speaking volume is too loud for them and no one's the asshole.

But when someone's claiming that the thing they cannot change, or even discuss, is their pattern of harmful or inappropriate behavior? You're probably seeing this deflection tactic in action.