Chapter 11: Q or Abuse? Blurred Boundaries and Naming Harm

This chapter examines one of the most volatile relational consequences of Qbelief, when emotional volatility and denial slide into coercion and harm. As Rupture shows, the consequences of radicalisation are not fixed endpoints but shifting relational states that evolve through everyday interaction. The same dynamics that once sustained connection can harden into control or collapse into fear. What begins as disagreement over truth can, over time, take on the texture of abuse. SNCs described living within atmospheres of dread and tension that changed with each encounter. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s (2013) theory of affective economies, we trace how emotions circulate unevenly through these relationships and attach to particular bodies. Historically, emotion has been stuck to women’s bodies in general and anger to Black women’s bodies in particular, while white and male bodies have been aligned with reason and authority. Within Qrelationships, these alignments often appeared inverted. Qbelievers, frequently described as white and male, asserted authority through emotional volatility, while SNCs, often women or people of colour, described suppressing emotion and performing rationality as a form of safety work.