LGBT+ psychologist harassed by left-wing activists? “This is too much”

Krystyna Romanowska: How did it happen that you went from being an expert, therapist and ally of LGBTQA people to being excluded by the community you work for and with which you cooperate?

Dominik Haak: Let me start with a disclaimer. I am a very strong person. If someone has been called a fag since childhood, before he even knew what it meant, he must have a thick skin.

I’m used to people insulting me in the street, kicking me, spitting on me. In high school, I experienced terrible bullying – unimaginable nowadays. On public transport, I was denied the right (and still is) to be with “normal people”. They wished for death in the gas chamber. A TVP psychologist-expert in “Pytanie na breakfast” discriminated against me, saying that I had to undergo treatment for my orientation.

I have been criticized and insulted because of my sexual orientation for so long that it has become an unpleasant everyday occurrence. To tell the truth: few things bother me anymore, I can live with this constant aggression. I fight for my dignity in court whenever I can.

Interestingly, during my psychology studies, which were so tolerant and inclusive, I also encountered intolerance and discrimination, and after starting my career, also in the psychological environment.

Okay, but nothing has changed in your public and professional activities: you have been dealing with patients from the LGBTQA community for years, you mainly support transgender and non-binary people, lobbying for a more liberal approach to the right to gender reassignment, you write about polyamory and BDSM. Why this sudden attack?

I do what I do best and what I think is right. I am publicly LGBT+, I am also a psychotherapist, sexologist, and I run my own mental health clinic. Due to my involvement in the rights of transgender and non-binary people, a few years ago I quickly found myself in the crosshairs of the media and right-wing parties. My surname was changed on various occasions in the former TVP, on the profile of Krzysztof Bosak, or in discussions of Ordo Iuris and Kai Godek.

However, right-wing attacks are nothing compared to what I have experienced and continue to experience from the so-called young (internet) left. It turned out that I am a chauvinist, and certainly a racist (!), I appropriate black culture, I am an Ableist, a transphobe, a therapeutic parasite and a man who “capitalizes psychological services”.

To be honest, I did not expect that the attack from the left would be so sophisticated and at the same time devastating in its absurdity. Not only am I being attacked by my own community – let me remind you that in the years 2018-2020 I was the first person to speak about non-binary in the media from a specialist’s perspective – but I am also being deprived of my own values ​​that I believe in in my private life . I feel like a victim of cancel culture, although – to be honest – before it happened to me, I didn’t even know what the famous term “call out” meant (a collective verbal attack on the online account of a canceled person and calling out his name on various occasions – editor’s note). Now I know all too well what I’m reminded of not only by the symptoms of post-traumatic stress, the stack of sedatives, but also by my gradual withdrawal from many spaces.