Cross-post | Notes on a Detransition 6: Empathy Hijacking | by Victoria Gugenheim

Victoria’s Substack Notes on a Detransition 6: Empathy Hijacking

The formula every socially adept predator and predatory AGP uses to take control of your emotions and further their causes. Victoria G Nov 12, 2025

We hear a lot of talk about suicidal empathy and weaponised empathy, but these are only the surface level descriptors of what's actually happening as they don't name the exact mechanism of action. Arty Morty called it "Heartwashing", when women feel sorry for predatory TiMs, and the incredible Laura Richards called it "Garnering Himpathy", when a psychopath tries to charm a judge or jury.

What's actually going on here is Empathy Hijacking, and it's what every charming predator and malignant belief system have in common, from gender as an ideology to the 1979 Iranian Islamist Revolution, and it's one of the reasons well meaning people end up throwing women as an entire sex class under the bus.

Predators know how to make empathic people, traumatised people, vulnerable people, naive people, feel sorry for them. Overwhelmingly, the perpetrators are male with something to gain, and if they want to push their agenda, be it avoiding jail or entering a lesbian bar, they have steps they follow. Here I will be focusing on my experience with predatory Trans Identified Males that I was subjected to, but you can apply this formula to any predator using these steps to gain advantage and push their agenda anywhere in the world. The formula is the same.

The Process:

1. Determining Hunting Grounds:

Preferred hunting spots are student bars and nights where the women are young with little money, social media, online servers, kink and queer communities and events, charities and protests, political parties and their meetings, plus anywhere they can have their status raised while claiming victimhood. It can also happen at workplaces, other movements they can tack themselves onto, and in any establishment wanting to seem progressive. The key is there needs to be susceptible people there.

2.Targeting Prey:

Empathy hijackers are adept at finding useful idiots, the naive, and especially the sexually traumatised. As the BDSM/Kink and queer scenes attract a lot of autistic women, the predator sees it as having a smorgasboard of prey to choose from. After finding someone young and broke/traumatised/autistic/all of the above, or a useful idiot with status, the hijacker will introduce himself. If the target is experiencing a life upheaval like homelessness that the predator could solve with a spare room or a couch, or they are really caught up in recent trauma, so much the better for him, it will make the hijacking easier.

It's worth noting that some of those empathy hijacked this way will also go on to be abused by the TiM and further manipulated as they get progressively groomed and drawn into their orbit. The core drivers for those predatory are their needs for power and domination, and that can extend to domination over a person and breaking them down, not just domination of a social group, charity or cause. Oftentimes these dominations can go together.

3. The Warm Up : “Camaraderie Cuckooing”:

There can often be gentle introduction, but the methods vary. This part is almost like crowd work, where an entertainer will get the audience to let their guard down and be more receptive. Alcohol is sometimes involved, as some tend to have substance issues and it's a social lubricant. If this step is happening at an adult party, drugs will likely occur, especially stimulants like cocaine and ecstasy, and dissociates like ketamine or GHB. These make their target at once excited, disoriented and suggestible. At any of these events, they will use talking, flattering, a bit of forced teaming such as 'girls sticking together', sisters not cisters, sharing pronouns, and/or feigning interest in their chosen target, in order to get their target to let their guard down and build faux rapport. The formula is assess what will work, build faux rapport.

What's insidious about this is pronouns etc aside, women outside of the radfem spheres and under 40 do tend to engage in flattering small talk when they meet one another as they're cautious, but want to build potential friendships, so this part is a type of cuckooing; mimicking the social actions of their target.

In a work environment, they will build rapport with both the people who can make things happen, like the boss and HR, and also work on anyone the empathy hijacker deems subordimate and easily manipulated, especially women who seem to them fragile, too nice, and with poor boundaries.

4. Himpathy Garnering /Heartwashing:

This can be the same evening/event, over a few days or weeks, or it can take longer if they are really working on someone in real life. In my case, I was groomed over months. At this point when he thinks you're ready, the poor-me-ing begins, which is also the cuckooing of trauma, making it all the more distasteful when they target survivors who have a tendency to bond quickly over their shared experiences of it.

Topics are selected to make their target really emotionally hurt on their behalf. This can be about how difficult their former life was, how their former partner didn't understand them, how they had to rebuild their entire life, statistics about violence against trans identified people from Brazil extrapolated to the rest of the world, and so on. The idea is to make their target feel really sorry for them, and if they can bring you close to tears, he will deem you easy pickings.

5. Point of Entry:

As soon as their target is in feeling mode, they generally aren't in thinking mode. The target has had forced teaming, faux rapport, and has been worked on systematically in order to get to this state. Now, they're ripe for their empathy to be hijacked. This is when the predator's ideas will be pushed whether through conversation, sharing infographics, sharing info about less than stellar organisations, and so on. The target is invited to meets, sometimes with more predators and opportunists in them, and they become soaked in the cause. Further camaraderie cuckooing at these meets reinforces a sense of family or familiarity. They begin to feel the underpinnings of a very strong need to defend someone they believe has experienced harm, without ever having thought critically about it because conditions simply haven't allowed it. They have been awash with feelings of wanting to care for someone they believe is vulnerable, so now comes the final blow.

This part can also happen one on one if the target is a sexual interest and the predator is more of a loner; long calls, using the empathy as a form of validation or supply and ideology, all mixed in with the mirage of sweet nothings. Combinations of these two strategies can also occur.

6. Emotional Endgame: The Firewall of Pseudo Reason:

Once the ideological ideas are pushed, the firewall of pseudo reason builds around both that strong feeling of empathy and the emotionally charged and anchored set of beliefs, a wall that feels certain, but certainty too is an emotion. This builds as the person begins to feel anger at the plight of the predator in front of them. Now, the hijack is complete. The person hijacked can also be resaturated in that emotion at any time if the predator is adept. Now, if the beliefs are challenged, the hijacked will feel outrage and want to take action, shout down, or vehemently argue with installed talking points. Anything or anyone that tries to shake this firewall will be blocked out. The predator will continue to use highly charged emotions and the veneer of victimisation in order to keep control, can escalate if their grip loosens, and he may go on to initiate physical or sexual abuse.

7: Transmission:

Now the victim can go on to indoctrinate and recruit others. Usually this is easy as many in these communities are traumatised and will stick together, but this results in these people becoming community cannon fodder; wheeled out to protests, medicalised, and used as pawns.

In a workplace, a sense of fear and being unable to protest may take hold once the changes become embedded and there are no private places to shower or change any more for those around the indoctrinated, but they will be blind to that feeling as the hijacking has dehumanised other women for the sake of the Trans Identified Male.

If a high status useful idiot, this will be seen as an opportunity to educate friends, colleagues, people in upper management, and possibly even the medical profession.

What's especially galling when examining these steps is the clear hijacking and the cuckooing of human connection, and after people have realised this has happened to them it can lead to becoming cut off, traumatised, distrusting, or worse. I think as we examine this that we have to realise, myself included, that it's perfectly normal to want to connect and share experiences, and even tell your story. This shouldn't prevent you from wanting that connection, but we do have to now watch for patterns of this mutating, almost completely male form of opportunism.

It's also important to separate these steps from women especially who have experienced DV/SV/extreme life experiences, who may come across as talkative as a coping mechanism or veneer for their trauma, or may just have poor boundaries or unusual levels of openness. These women aren't planning an empathy hijack, they're emoting to connect.

And of course, you can have genuine people caught up in this and experiencing a very real type of distress who aren't predatory, but these are not the people I'm talking about. I've already spoken on proprioceptive issues that could make bodily distress worse, the women caught up in this, and much more, and will need to delve further into that later on, but here I've very specifically talked about predators.

At least now, you know how they operate.

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