warning: mentions of sexual and gender-based violence

I definitely don't want to minimize this issue, and it is a very difficult topic to navigate within a community that is yeah, disproportionately impacted by online sexual violence, but also uniquely reliant on online spaces for sexual expression.

I don't think this is the instance you're referring to, but I made a post about the difficulties socializing with other trans women while managing trauma and neurodivergence, and received multiple replies advocating for Discord as a vector to simply meet other trans women. One of those replies was similar to what you outlined here, and aimed to normalize online kink spaces as social kink spaces (a pervasive issue all on its own), and assumed that I'd be open to forming relationships with random users in that setting. My response to that was discomfort with that notion even if just on the grounds that there would obviously be a possibility of harmful power dynamics due to no guarantee on the age of other users.

Now, I, as I'm sure some or even many of you are as well, am a survivor of sexual violence. I also would have never realized that I was trans if it wasn't for online spaces where I could express myself sexually, and of course, trans women already have to deal with the intersecting violence of objectification as women, fetishization as trans women, and hyper-sexualization as queer people generally. Oppression and the sexualized construction of trans women forces many of us into dangerous private (online) spaces where our only vector of validation is to engage in a markedly trans-misogynist performativity.

Naturally, for many young, repressed trans women, myself included, that validation as sexual women is too relieving to discard out of hand, and our education on sexual violence and capacity to give consent under these conditions results in a large number of those young trans women being victimized without even understanding that they are experiencing sexual violence. ** As always, it is never the victims' fault that they are victimized, only the perpetrators.**

I agree completely that any responsible trans woman in this community is obligated to address these vectors of sexual violence that I'm sure many of us have already been traumatized by. The difficulty is in how we do that without expelling trans women who expect that behaviour, as they are likely to think this is merely how trans women are treated, and have internalized the notion that they deserve to be treated that way. At the same time, that form of expression may be the only way they feel comfortable expressing their gender identity as, again, it may be the only way they've been afforded to. I'm sure many of you also know the pain that comes from taking yourself seriously as a woman, and challenging internalized trans- and typical-misogyny while still struggling to feel valid.

I think the examples you use here are great to demonstrate this difficulty, as one appears to be a clear cut instance of fetishization, and the other potentially a reproduction of those norms that victimized trans women may believe to be expected. It's easy to say they don't belong here on the grounds discussed above, but if we're having a discussion on the tolerability of sexualization in this vulnerable community, we do have to then discuss the nuance that there will be trans women who come here with harmful internalized values, and it will be very difficult to distinguish them from predatory bad actors much of the time.

sorry for the long comment, this is a topic I obviously struggle with quite a lot