Checklist for Trans People to Identify Abuse

Your partner may be abusive if they:

• Refer to you as “it,” or with your old pronouns, especially when angry
• Coerce you into having or not having certain surgeries, especially sexual reassignment surgery (SRS)
• Hide or throw out, or threaten to hide or throw out, your hormones or other medications
• Tell you that you are not a “real” woman, a “real” man, or a “real” genderqueer/human being/person
• Make fun of parts of your body that remind you of the gender you were assigned at birth, especially your genitals, face, and/or breasts
• Tell you that your surgery wasn’t good enough
• Leave you, or threaten to leave you, if you have or refuse to have certain surgeries or hormones
• Tell you that no one will believe you because you are Trans
• Tell you that no one else will want you because you are Trans
• Force you not to transition, or to transition faster than you want to
• Call you by your old name, especially when angry
• Threaten to tell your friends/family/coworkers/landlords that you are Trans
• Threaten to tell your friends/family/coworkers/landlords and/or the police that you are a sex worker (whether or not you actually are)
• Threaten to call immigration if you don’t have status
• Refuse to let you meet any of their friends and family, because they don’t want anyone to know that they are “dating a tranny”
• Refuse to let you tell anyone, especially their family and friends, that you are Trans
• Refuse to be seen in public with you
• Tell you that you’ll never be a “real” man/woman/genderqueer unless you get breast implants/breast reduction/facial feminization/T shots/SRS/Phalloplasty
• Tell you that you have to or are not allowed to become a sex worker
• Refuse to acknowledge your new name and/or pronouns
• Refuse to use condoms during sex (including oral, anal, and manual sex)
• Send you threatening or excessive text messages, emails, or phone calls
• Require you to tell them where you are and who you are with constantly

They may also be abusive if they:

• Hit
• Bite
• Scratch
• Beat
• Kick
• Strangle
• Threaten

…you, in a non-consensual way (i.e., it isn’t a bite you agreed on ahead of time). They may also be abusive if, in the course of BDSM/Kink play, you did agree on this ahead of time, but they refused to acknowledge your safe word/safe action/stop word, or the words "no" or "stop".

Resource developed by Morgan Page for T-GUAVA.