Is "trigger rhetoric" neo-liberal?

[human strike]

I've seen this article making the rounds a lot on social media and a wide variety of opinions expressed on it (including some that worry me) - it's been a bit of a shitstorm all over my facebook feed. I'm conscious that we don't want to replicate that shitstorm here, but what are people's thoughts on this: You Are Triggering me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and Trauma (http://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/2014/07/05/you-are-triggering-me-the-neo-liberal-rhetoric-of-harm-danger-and-trauma/)

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Neoliberalism is an economic philosophy, so, no.

To me, a trigger warning is no different than a content warning at the start of a tv show.

[slum]

there is way too much going on here for me to parse it out right now but i have to make note of this since it's just a bizarre claim to include in such an essay:


Claims about being triggered work off literalist notions of emotional pain and cast traumatic events as barely buried hurt that can easily resurface in relation to any kind of representation or association that resembles or even merely represents the theme of the original painful experience


this is often exactly how PTSD works, although the use of "emotional pain" and "hurt" are extremely simplistic and don't even begin to cover the range of dissociative responses traumatized individuals have to traumatic recall or re-experiencing. all the better for the author's easy dismissal of the grievances of the exploited and oppressed.

as annoying as it is to have the science and language of PTSD taken up by Good Liberal Feminist personality cults on twitter or whatever irrelevant platform this argument originated on, it's even worse to have their detractors assume they know anything about post traumatic stress. maybe i'm just a big old patriarchal liberal empiricist, but PTSD is a real thing, with real science backing it up. i don't happen to think that it is economically or politically neutral, because violence, traumatic or not, is not economically or politically neutral. but if you're going to write such an article at least learn something about the subject under discussion before speaking as an authority.

[Sabot Cat]

This just in: being considerate to others' needs is liberal. Story at eleven.

[DigitalBluster]

This just in: being considerate to others' needs is liberal. Story at eleven.

It seems to me that anarchists, paradoxically, are often among the first to raise awareness of the need to be considerate of others (for which I admire them), and then to object to being told by others to be considerate (for which I don't). (This isn't directed at you; you just made me think of it.)

[bcbm]

certainly not a perfect article but i think it presents a compelling historical argument that is worth considering and discussing.



this is often exactly how PTSD works, although the use of "emotional pain" and "hurt" are extremely simplistic and don't even begin to cover the range of dissociative responses traumatized individuals have to traumatic recall or re-experiencing.

as annoying as it is to have the science and language of PTSD taken up by Good Liberal Feminist personality cults on twitter or whatever irrelevant platform this argument originated on, it's even worse to have their detractors assume they know anything about post traumatic stress. maybe i'm just a big old patriarchal liberal empiricist, but PTSD is a real thing, with real science backing it up.

i don't think they're talking about ptsd though. the full quote in context seems to be more about a general shift in thinking about psychological pain and trauma that has occurred over the past couple of decades:

Fifteen to twenty years ago, books like Wendy Brown’s States of Injury (1995) and Anna Cheng’s The Melancholy of Race: Psychoanalysis, Assimilation and Hidden Grief (2001) asked readers to think about how grievances become grief, how politics comes to demand injury and how a neoliberal rhetoric of individual pain obscures the violent sources of social inequity. But, newer generations of queers seem only to have heard part of this story and instead of recognizing that neoliberalism precisely goes to work by psychologizing political difference, individualizing structural exclusions and mystifying political change, some recent activists seem to have equated social activism with descriptive statements about individual harm and psychic pain.


all the better for the author's easy dismissal of the grievances of the exploited and oppressed.

This just in: being considerate to others' needs is liberal.

i think these are very strange conclusions to have taken from this article.

[Hermes]

I'm probably just misunderstanding the article, but, to me, a lot of the confusion probably stems from the writer not actually being very specific in who or what he's referring to, or does he? The most specific thing that I can recall is 'newer generations of queers' and 'younger folk'.

Like, these parts:


Is this the way the world ends? When groups that share common cause, utopian dreams and a joined mission find fault with each other instead of tearing down the banks and the bankers, the politicians and the parliaments, the university presidents and the CEOs? Instead of realizing, as Moten and Hearny put it in The Undercommons, that “we owe each other everything,” we enact punishments on one another and stalk away from projects that should unite us, and huddle in small groups feeling erotically bonded through our self-righteousness.


What does it mean when younger people who are benefitting from several generations now of queer social activism by people in their 40s and 50s (who in their childhoods had no recourse to anti-bullying campaigns or social services or multiple representations of other queer people building lives) feel abused, traumatized, abandoned, misrecognized, beaten, bashed and damaged? These younger folks, with their gay-straight alliances, their supportive parents and their new right to marry regularly issue calls for “safe space.


In a post-affirmative action society, where even recent histories of political violence like slavery and lynching are cast as a distant and irrelevant past, all claims to hardship have been cast as equal; and some students, accustomed to trotting out stories of painful events in their childhoods (dead pets/parrots, a bad injury in sports) in college applications and other such venues, have come to think of themselves as communities of naked, shivering, quaking little selves – too vulnerable to take a joke, too damaged to make one. In queer communities, some people are now committed to an “It Gets Better” version of consciousness-raising within which suicidal, depressed and bullied young gays and lesbians struggle like emperor penguins in a blighted arctic landscape to make it through the winter of childhood

It seems like he's trying to attack the trend towards assimilation, and highlight its institutional effects, but, to me, by casting too large a net and never exactly defining what it is he's against, it seems like he's fighting against the same type of bogeymen that people who rail against 'political correctness' or multiculturalism are.

as well, his argument seems to be that if we just put all of this bickering aside and formed a coalition, we would... I'm not sure.

Again, I've probably just misunderstood it, my reading comprehension has gotten even worse, I think.

[slum]

i don't think they're talking about ptsd though. the full quote in context seems to be more about a general shift in thinking about psychological pain and trauma that has occurred over the past couple of decades


heyyy i havent seen you in a while, welcome back.


i have the tendency to see all these discussions about "trigger language" in the context of PTSD since that's where the language of trauma and even the term "trigger" comes from. my issue with that passage is that the author literally defined a traumatic trigger, and tried to play it off like it was a joke. that's actually how triggers work in traumatized individuals; people can complain all they like about whether trigger warnings are censorship or "coddling" or overused or w/e, but there's no need to confuse the issue.

the "general shift in thinking about psychological pain and trauma that has occurred over the past couple of decades" is actually the realization among more layers of the scientific community and the general public that psychological pain, like mental illness, is detrimental to physical well-being and that trauma, especially institutionalized and socially condoned trauma against specific groups, is a real thing. i'm not averse to a debate over whether

"neoliberalism precisely goes to work by psychologizing political difference, individualizing structural exclusions and mystifying political change"
(a statement i'd agree with in the most general sense but think is misplaced in this argument- the presence of trauma language and the acceptance of trauma narratives in queer and feminist movement seems to me a tool for recognizing the exclusions we experience AS structural rather than individual), but the persistent backlash towards any integration of social violence and its health consequences into theories of economic exploitation frustrates me.

these topics seem to me so intimately connected and relevant, and yet the obsessive need of bloggers like the author to not have their jokes frowned at is always the order of the day when someone brings up trauma in a political discussion. it's a complete non-issue. what, are trans youth spending too much time in their neighborhood anarchist group talking about how they started having night terrors after they got assaulted? shouldn't they be out seizing the means of production instead? my god, man the barricades before someone gets the rape survivors going, or else the revolution is never going to get here and we're all going to be forced into consent workshops run by humorless feminists!

it just gets tiresome.

[bcbm]

heyyy i havent seen you in a while, welcome back.

thank you. wasn't planning to stay long but this was actually an article i wanted to discuss with other people so i thought i'd stick around a bit.


i have the tendency to see all these discussions about "trigger language" in the context of PTSD since that's where the language of trauma and even the term "trigger" comes from.

as i understood the blog, part of their concern was the use of trigger warnings and such moving away from this context into being used for anything that anyone might find remotely offensive, or even as a kind of posturing of 'i am against this?'


my issue with that passage is that the author literally defined a traumatic trigger, and tried to play it off like it was a joke. that's actually how triggers work in traumatized individuals; people can complain all they like about whether trigger warnings are censorship or "coddling" or overused or w/e, but there's no need to confuse the issue.

fair enough.


the "general shift in thinking about psychological pain and trauma that has occurred over the past couple of decades" is actually the realization among more layers of the scientific community and the general public that psychological pain, like mental illness, is detrimental to physical well-being and that trauma, especially institutionalized and socially condoned trauma against specific groups, is a real thing. i'm not averse to a debate over whether

(a statement i'd agree with in the most general sense but think is misplaced in this argument- the presence of trauma language and the acceptance of trauma narratives in queer and feminist movement seems to me a tool for recognizing the exclusions we experience AS structural rather than individual), but the persistent backlash towards any integration of social violence and its health consequences into theories of economic exploitation frustrates me.

agreed. i think the author overstates the case and ends up throwing out the baby with the bathwater, but i think they raise some legitimate concerns about how these things are playing out in real life in a number of activist/radical circles.


these topics seem to me so intimately connected and relevant, and yet the obsessive need of bloggers like the author to not have their jokes frowned at is always the order of the day when someone brings up trauma in a political discussion. it's a complete non-issue. what, are trans youth spending too much time in their neighborhood anarchist group talking about how they started having night terrors after they got assaulted? shouldn't they be out seizing the means of production instead? my god, man the barricades before someone gets the rape survivors going, or else the revolution is never going to get here and we're all going to be forced into consent workshops run by humorless feminists!

it just gets tiresome.

agreed again, though i'm not sure their target is groups talking about these issues in any sense so much as the way pain and greivance are sometimes used against people within groups, if that makes sense? sorry kind of repeating myself i realize

[Wuggums47]

I think it's a good thing that people put trigger warnings on posts that might trigger people. It helps people who get upset when they read about certain topics. There is only one thing that triggers me, but nobody bothers to put warnings on it, and I wish they would.

[slum]

thank you. wasn't planning to stay long but this was actually an article i wanted to discuss with other people so i thought i'd stick around a bit.

geez i didn't want to touch this one with a barge pole, you are a braver man than i. i think we're mostly in agreement, only i guess i find this article to be less useful in terms of internal critique. i feel like it's just rehashing the same old argument, and no one on either side is going to change their minds at this point just because someone else has come up with a new and more convoluted way to accuse someone else of being a liberal.

as someone who incorporates trauma theory into my marxism i'm also contractually obligated to defend it, or else the APA will revoke my armchair psych license, and then who'll be around to write exhausting essays about dissociation and alienation? who will bear my mantle, i ask you?



as i understood the blog, part of their concern was the use of trigger warnings and such moving away from this context into being used for anything that anyone might find remotely offensive



it's entirely possible that i've been around this particular argument so many times i'm unfairly ascribing motives to the author that they don't personally hold- but usually the "anti trigger warning" crew, when pressed, will use the "well I'm not talking about REAL PTSD" to side-step the issue while still placing blame, like this author does, on a "traumatic vocabulary", which does exist, and does have theory behind it, even if the people utilizing it aren't always aware of its subtleties. it's a problem because really, where is the line drawn? who has "real" PTSD? socialists are going to recognize straight out that the medical establishment is a mess, that diagnoses are not readily available, nor are they politically neutral or even "correct" in any meaningful way outside of the confines of the DSM. it used to be that just veterans "got" PTSD (after many decades of fighting their asses off for it to be recognized); now adays heartless insurance companies recognize that the majority of cases are civilian. even then, post traumatic experience is a spectrum, not all of which would qualify an individual for a "disorder"- this does not negate the real psychic distress someone might experience by being triggered for their particular trauma, even if they lack hyperarousal or other non-acute symptoms. basically there's no way to tell if someone is or is not experiencing a "valid" reaction.

in any event i don't think bloggers like the author are particularly concerned with how "over use" of trauma language might effect people with "real PTSD". this article began and ended with their main concern- censorship.


agreed. i think the author overstates the case and ends up throwing out the baby with the bathwater, but i think they raise some legitimate concerns about how these things are playing out in real life in a number of activist/radical circles. i really do sympathize with where the author is coming from. for radicals looking out on the mythological "american political landscape" presented to us on mainstream news, the 'cult of the offended' does rein supreme. bourgeois politics is all about obscuring economic realities and the talking heads on MSNBC and CNN et al have been particularly shrill in the last decade or so; shouting one another down for perceived slights makes for good ratings and top-notch obscurity. i can see why radicals are worried about this unproductive environment "creeping in" to our spaces.

but it bothers me that "offensive" in this context is never fully defined. it's generally used as a kind of "put down" to negate someone's experience of pain or discomfort, to make their claim to such a state seem petty or inappropriate (of course the irony of it is, traumatic triggers do cause inappropriate responses to stimuli- the whole point is that the brain is reacting to a life-threatening danger that isn't actually present, but was present at one time, and/or the trigger could be something innocuous and neutral to anyone but the individual).

there is a huge difference from being offended (a subjective, affective experience, a feeling) and being triggered, which can cause a wide range of subjective experiences (affective, dissociative, psychological, even physical). then there's the "i should be offended by this because of my political stance" or "i should be offended by this because everyone else is acting like they are". to equate all these experiences because of the language used to express them is an error; not only do you stand to delegitimize actual trauma, you're missing out on whatever internal group dysfunction is hiding under the "offendedness" and impeding your organizing.



agreed again, though i'm not sure their target is groups talking about these issues in any sense so much as the way pain and greivance are sometimes used against people within groups, if that makes sense? sorry kind of repeating myself i realize i'm not going to pretend i haven't seen this sort of behavior in groups online. i haven't seen much of it in real life, so it tends to read to me as "internet argument bugbear without actual organizing relevance", but i'm sure it happens. it's clearly dysfunctional. it's also not the fault of the language, if people are using it outside of its proper context (to talk about offensiveness, rather than trauma).

i'm rambling, sorry. not sure if this addresses any of your points or not.

here's my general stance: pretty much all people experience traumatic events. if these events are political, if they are a part of our material lives and take place in the context of an economic system that exploits and oppresses us, then one of the goals of normalizing trauma language, and of teaching people about how trauma works, is to explain those traumatic events and their sequelae in that political and economic context. that can be radicalizing. the endless argument over whether this language is being used in a stifling or censorious way, or if it is inherently liberal and individualist, is a distraction from real issues and is indicative of poor organizational culture if it is causing this much strife in activist communities. there's nothing wrong with the language.

[Slippers]

No. "Social justice" circles can occasionally be full of bourgeois liberal ideology and practice but there is nothing wrong with trigger warnings themselves and as a survivor of abuse and as someone who knows many in similar positions I think that they are important and it's good to create safe spaces for people.

[bcbm]

geez i didn't want to touch this one with a barge pole, you are a braver man than i.

well i have the benefit of doing it anonymously here; id never post it on facebook. i cringe thinking about what would follow from that.


i think we're mostly in agreement, only i guess i find this article to be less useful in terms of internal critique. i feel like it's just rehashing the same old argument, and no one on either side is going to change their minds at this point just because someone else has come up with a new and more convoluted way to accuse someone else of being a liberal. yeah, this is true. reading the comments on it pretty much cemented that. still, i am glad someone is saying it because i think it is touching on thoughts i think people have had but are afraid to talk about openly, at least in my very limited, peripheral experience.


as someone who incorporates trauma theory into my marxism i'm also contractually obligated to defend it, or else the APA will revoke my armchair psych license, and then who'll be around to write exhausting essays about dissociation and alienation? who will bear my mantle, i ask you? :lol:


it's entirely possible that i've been around this particular argument so many times i'm unfairly ascribing motives to the author that they don't personally hold- but usually the "anti trigger warning" crew, when pressed, will use the "well I'm not talking about REAL PTSD" to side-step the issue while still placing blame, like this author does, on a "traumatic vocabulary", which does exist, and does have theory behind it, even if the people utilizing it aren't always aware of its subtleties. it's a problem because really, where is the line drawn? who has "real" PTSD? socialists are going to recognize straight out that the medical establishment is a mess, that diagnoses are not readily available, nor are they politically neutral or even "correct" in any meaningful way outside of the confines of the DSM. it used to be that just veterans "got" PTSD (after many decades of fighting their asses off for it to be recognized); now adays heartless insurance companies recognize that the majority of cases are civilian. even then, post traumatic experience is a spectrum, not all of which would qualify an individual for a "disorder"- this does not negate the real psychic distress someone might experience by being triggered for their particular trauma, even if they lack hyperarousal or other non-acute symptoms. basically there's no way to tell if someone is or is not experiencing a "valid" reaction.

in any event i don't think bloggers like the author are particularly concerned with how "over use" of trauma language might effect people with "real PTSD". this article began and ended with their main concern- censorship. all good points and i basically agree. what do you make of the part tying in safe spaces and increased policing, etc? the book he's drawing that from sounds interesting.



there is a huge difference from being offended (a subjective, affective experience, a feeling) and being triggered, which can cause a wide range of subjective experiences (affective, dissociative, psychological, even physical). then there's the "i should be offended by this because of my political stance" or "i should be offended by this because everyone else is acting like they are". to equate all these experiences because of the language used to express them is an error; not only do you stand to delegitimize actual trauma, you're missing out on whatever internal group dysfunction is hiding under the "offendedness" and impeding your organizing. i guess this was more my impression of what the piece intended, albeit in a fairly ham fisted manner. its possible i am just projecting the critique i want on to this rather than really seeing the critique as is though. i don't feel confident staking too much interest in this in any case, vis-a-vis my relation to the topic.



i'm not going to pretend i haven't seen this sort of behavior in groups online. i haven't seen much of it in real life, so it tends to read to me as "internet argument bugbear without actual organizing relevance", but i'm sure it happens. it's clearly dysfunctional. it's also not the fault of the language, if people are using it outside of its proper context (to talk about offensiveness, rather than trauma). it has seemed pretty common to me online lately, at least in some circles. i can't speak to real life very much but through hearsay it seems like its happening at least in some places in pretty worrying ways. maybe not this exact issue, but related ones anyway.


i'm rambling, sorry. not sure if this addresses any of your points or not. its all good. you have a lot of interesting things to say on the subject, ramble away!


here's my general stance: pretty much all people experience traumatic events. if these events are political, if they are a part of our material lives and take place in the context of an economic system that exploits and oppresses us, then one of the goals of normalizing trauma language, and of teaching people about how trauma works, is to explain those traumatic events and their sequelae in that political and economic context. that can be radicalizing. the endless argument over whether this language is being used in a stifling or censorious way, or if it is inherently liberal and individualist, is a distraction from real issues and is indicative of poor organizational culture if it is causing this much strife in activist communities. there's nothing wrong with the language.makes sense. especially agree with the last part.

[slum]

all good points and i basically agree. what do you make of the part tying in safe spaces and increased policing, etc? the book he's drawing that from sounds interesting.


i'm actually intrigued by this and that book is on my list now, as are the two on politics and grief. i suspect there's something to it, but i am a little skeptical of the implication that queer people policing each others language is linked in any real way to the policing we experience by the state. to be perfectly honest the focus recently away from the violence we suffer from the state and from society at large onto the internal squabbles we have with one another annoys me in general and is reflective of the reduced radicalism and mainstreaming of the queer movement, which strikes me as very sad. it's only exacerbated by the internet and social media. queer radicalism is really isolated these days, the marriage brigade have kicked us all out for being too angry, and so we've started eating each other.

in terms of safe space and political space, and whether the twain shall meet, it's certainly not ideal, like pretty much everything in organizing. the problem is that a lot of real boots on the ground organizing, the 'survival pending revolution' kind, which i happen to think is the most effective, is going to involve folks who aren't getting the care they need, medically or psychologically. obviously political spaces aren't really designed to accommodate this. on the other hand, we make accommodations for, say, mobility impaired folks. people who need to work an extra shift to make rent and can't make a meeting. people who need childcare, etc. and our theory incorporates physical disability, food insecurity, social reproduction and eldercare. i don't think there's anything inherently wrong with trying to make some political spaces safer spaces. i'm certainly in favor of politicizing safe spaces, which is where i personally tend to spend my energy.



i guess this was more my impression of what the piece intended, albeit in a fairly ham fisted manner. its possible i am just projecting the critique i want on to this rather than really seeing the critique as is though.


iiiii'm probably doing the same thing, to be honest. it's hard to read this stuff as an individual argument anymore, the debate has been so exhaustive and so vitriolic.



it has seemed pretty common to me online lately, at least in some circles. i can't speak to real life very much but through hearsay it seems like its happening at least in some places in pretty worrying ways. maybe not this exact issue, but related ones anyway.

novara media put out a podcast this week (last week?) interviewing a writer for jacobin who ignited some kind of twitter war with a popular feminist over a similar deal. it might interest you. i mostly got really frustrated by the writer's super reductive (wrong) ideas about women's oppression and the reproductive sphere (my god does no one read engels anymore), but it's there if you're into pain.

[bcbm]

novara media put out a podcast this week (last week?) interviewing a writer for jacobin who ignited some kind of twitter war with a popular feminist over a similar deal. it might interest you. i mostly got really frustrated by the writer's super reductive (wrong) ideas about women's oppression and the reproductive sphere (my god does no one read engels anymore), but it's there if you're into pain.

i skimmed a bit about that previously. i guess the only time i encounter most of this stuff is when it 'gets crazy' enough to spill onto the left-trollosphere on facebook, so my view of it is probably pretty skewed. i don't really know how things are in real life where people have semi-functioning radical communities with tolerable people (does this exist?) besides through occasional hearsay from old friends in other cities.

[bcbm]

'on trigger warnings and the myth of community' (http://labrujamorgan.tumblr.com/post/91291166212/on-trigger-warnings-and-the-myth-of-community)

[audiored]

Jack operates from the presumption that we all exist in the same community. That we all have the same stake in triggers, in racist/transmisogynist language and actions. Jack assumes that we all have the same level of vulnerability or assume the same amount of risk when the t-slur is thrown around. He labors under the neo-liberal delusion that everyone’s trauma is equal. He says that trigger warnings erode community but we were never in the same community to begin with.

And that about wraps it up, there is no point in having the discussion. Have different goals, different purposes. Not in the same struggle. So why we talking about it?

Seems like the author of the first piece was talking to the author of the 2nd piece. The author of the 2nd piece is being specifically oppressed "boot on neck" by the author of the 1st piece.

I'm reading a lot about the politics of personality, recrimination, moralism, and ressentiments.



novara media put out a podcast this week (last week?) interviewing a writer for jacobin who ignited some kind of twitter war with a popular feminist over a similar deal. it might interest you. i mostly got really frustrated by the writer's super reductive (wrong) ideas about women's oppression and the reproductive sphere (my god does no one read engels anymore), but it's there if you're into pain.


Are you talking about Amber A'Lee Frost. The article she wrote is fairly solid I felt. The woman who attacked her is a red baiting pro-capitalist liberal stooge. So it is not surprise she went all rabid.

Frost was also on the DietSoap podcast a week or so ago. Some of her points I strongly agree with.

Marxist theory (and so often by extension Marxists) have a problem with (meaning they don't know wtf to do) the interpersonal. Which this whole thread is a good example of. And it creates an easy opening for liberal, idealist, individualist personality and morality politics. It turns the focus to one of building ressentiments towards each other, or identities, or (fill in the blank) instead of overcoming them.

[blake 3:17]

Thanks audiored. This new wave of weird identity/privilege politics is a politics of resentment as opposed to a politics of solidarity or generosity. I know a lot of folks using the language who come from a place of generosity but get caught in the logic of the hierarchies of oppression which is a dead end.

I think Halberstalm's article is fabulous. And I did talk about it on FB and shared it there.

The blog response is stupid and misinformed.

[Bad Grrrl Agro]

Why do people want to make trigger warnings about an ideology? I don't get it. After what I have survived, trigger warnings can be helpful. Forfucksake if you don't like trigger warnings ignore them. It isn't like someone is forcing you to not read graphic rape depictions with their trigger warnings. They actually are fucking helpful to some of us.

If you have a problem with someone being sensitive on behalf of trauma survivors, you just might be an asshole.

[blake 3:17]

Why do people want to make trigger warnings about an ideology? I don't get it.

The article linked to by the OP isn't about trigger warnings. They are not mentioned once in the body of it.

However, where there is a connection between victim politics and neo liberalism is the defeatism, narcissism, and social fragmentation which the latter produces.

Two of the better responses to the piece: http://alicebreckless.wordpress.com/2014/07/07/trigger-warning-a-response-to-jack-halberstam/

http://arlenegoldbard.com/2014/07/07/on-safety-and-umbrage/

[audiored]

neo liberalism is the defeatism, narcissism, and social fragmentation which the latter produces.




Agreed. It is weakness based, victim based politics.

And in my mind it does connect with the general neoliberal ideology of the defeat of the working class, of communism, etc. In fact it is an ideology that wants to hide the strength and power of the working class. Twist history. And make workers to see themselves as weak and feeble in the face of the power of capitalism.


Communism is not weakness, it is not victimhood. Communism is the strength of the working class in opposition to capitalism.


But I think we need to separate that out from the other topic in this thread which is about how we take care of each other when we are in struggle together against capitalism even if we don't come from the same "community".

[Bad Grrrl Agro]

The article linked to by the OP isn't about trigger warnings. They are not mentioned once in the body of it.

However, where there is a connection between victim politics and neo liberalism is the defeatism, narcissism, and social fragmentation which the latter produces.

Two of the better responses to the piece: http://alicebreckless.wordpress.com/2014/07/07/trigger-warning-a-response-to-jack-halberstam/

http://arlenegoldbard.com/2014/07/07/on-safety-and-umbrage/

Now I'm just confused.

[blake 3:17]

The piece is here: http://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/2014/07/05/you-are-triggering-me-the-neo-liberal-rhetoric-of-harm-danger-and-trauma/

I highly recommend it.

[Bad Grrrl Agro]

Agreed. It is weakness based, victim based politics.

And in my mind it does connect with the general neoliberal ideology of the defeat of the working class, of communism, etc. In fact it is an ideology that wants to hide the strength and power of the working class. Twist history. And make workers to see themselves as weak and feeble in the face of the power of capitalism.


Communism is not weakness, it is not victimhood. Communism is the strength of the working class in opposition to capitalism.


But I think we need to separate that out from the other topic in this thread which is about how we take care of each other when we are in struggle together against capitalism even if we don't come from the same "community".

It is not about victim politics. The need for acknowledging triggers is rooted in the need to combat violent gender-based systemic oppression.When you compartmentalize it about being about "individual victims" you are distorting the whole point of acknowledging triggers.

[Bad Grrrl Agro]

The piece is here: http://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/2014/07/05/you-are-triggering-me-the-neo-liberal-rhetoric-of-harm-danger-and-trauma/

I highly recommend it.

I'm glad you have had the education to take on reading those words, I sure as shit don't get that smart people talk. Smart people talk is for people with their heads in the clouds.

[blake 3:17]

A comment made on the blog post that some might relate to more:


July 6, 2014 at 6:32 pm #
Ok. This article really baffled me. I’m going to try to keep my response as brief as possible here.

1) This article really takes issue with the fact that young queers of today aren’t banded together on one united front. I’m baffled by this. I mean, yeah, generally we all have the same goals: economic opportunity, healthcare, safety, etc. But once we move past the platitudes, how much unity of experience IS there?

I think one of the most important developments in queer politics lately is the recognition of the fact that queers are NOT a monolith. Like, yes, things have gotten better for queer people in the past thirty years. But they’ve gotten better to differing degrees for different segments of the queer community. And for some INEXPLICABLE reason, these divisions follow lines of cultural inequality: things have gotten better for white queers than they have for POC queers, things have gotten better for cis queers than they have for trans queers, things have gotten better for male queers than they have for female queers. etc. So yeah, if you’re a white upper middle class cisgender gay boy growing up in SF, your queer childhood is probably pretty good. If you’re a gay trans girl growing up in rural Tennessee, your childhood is probably not as good. And therefore, one of the CRITICAL things to acknowledge is that different segments of the queer community have different experiences and different needs.

Look, I’m a gay trans woman. And one of the things you learn fast while being a gay trans woman is that just because you meet someone else who’s a part of the queer community doesn’t mean they understand jackshit about your experience. Just because somebody is gay or bi or pan doesn’t mean that they have any sense of how to interact with a trans woman or what being a trans woman is like. And you can say that being queer isn’t automatically a death sentence anymore, but I think a lot of the young trans women I know are going to have a long, bitter laugh over that one.

TRUST ME. The days of being bullied, of being assaulted, of being molested and raped, of being attacked are FAR from over. And if you think they are, then you are laughably disconnected from reality for many queers who are marginalized across multiple domains of oppression. All you have to do is read our words and hear our stories to appreciate that.

Are there young queers who are cashing out on a culture of victimhood? Yes. Are there young queers who are passing themselves off as more marginalized then they actually are? Yeah, definitely! There are always assholes. But the fact is, discounting and disbelieving their stories sets a precedent for discounting and disbelieving the stories of every young queer who claims to have been victimized. And that’s a terrifying prospect for a lot of us. For many of us, our stories are all we have. Our words are all we have. We’ve got no other proof, so if you choose not to believe us, there’s nothing we can do. So really, it’s a question of risk and benefit. Is it worth the risk of further isolating the real victims of hatred and violence in order to construct a culture of disbelief so that we can, what, believe that things really truly HAVE “gotten better?” That all of our hard work paid off?

2) There’s this angry, egoistic thread running through this article that really rubs me the wrong way: That previous generations did all the hard work that needed to be done, and that queer kids nowadays aren’t paying their proper respects. In short: “We solved everything for you! We wrote books! Why didn’t you read them!?”

But, look. Queer childhoods are almost by their very nature isolated. We’re pretty thin on the ground, queers, and if you’re growing up in a small town, no matter WHAT era, it’s really easy to think that you’re the only one. You keep thinking that for years and years. Most of us didn’t have older queers in our lives to turn to for guidance. I dunno where you all were at! San Francisco, I guess. But anyway, queers of this generation mostly found out there were other queers when we found the internet.

And surprise surprise, once we had the internet, we didn’t look for the books written by a previous generation. We looked for our peers. And we found them, and we connected with them, and we came up with our own language to describe our experiences, often quite independent of what queer theorists from years before had theorized. Did we benefit from the culture-wide changes that had been wrought, unbeknownst to us, before we were born and while we were babies? Yeah. Did those queer kids with cable TV have maybe a few more queers on television to identify with? Yeah. But did we have individual older queers in our lives to thank? A lot of us didn’t.

I think this is why the language of today’s queers is so incomprehensible to older queers. It wasn’t built with your direct influence. So from the outside, demands for trigger warnings may seem ludicrous, but from the inside, it’s just the way we accommodate each others’ trauma to the best of our ability. To many of us, the concept of a “trigger warning” just isn’t a big deal. This language has been in development online for maybe five years. It’s got a lot of growing left to do. Right now, it’s still somewhat cumbersome. This is why the language seems clunky and over-sensitive: it’s a language in its infancy. By the time we’ve refined it, made it efficient and elegant and subtle, there’ll be a whole new generation of queers starting from scratch all over again.

Should those queer kids of the future be thankful for what we accomplished? Maybe. I’ll just end this section with a quote from Supernatural: “Kids ain’t supposed to be grateful. They’re supposed to eat your food and break your heart, ya selfish dick!”

3) This article seems to completely miss the point that language CHANGES MEANING OVER TIME.

The whole debate over the word “tranny,” for example. Like, I get that at one point, the t-word may have meant something broadly connected to transvestites, drag queens, and cross-dressers. But to people under thirty, the t-word means one thing, and one thing only: a pre-operative or non-operative trans woman, usually naked.

We can try to diagnose when and why this shift happened. Personally, I lay the blame at the feet of porn companies and the American education system. Porn companies made the t-word and that OTHER word, “shemale,” into terms for porn featuring trans women. And as generations of kids, thanks to abstinence-only sex education, turned to internet porn to GET their sex education, they learned that those two words meant one thing, and one thing only: a pre-operative or non-operative trans woman, usually naked. It doesn’t really matter that the t-word used to have broader application. Because the only place that young people ever saw those words was on porn sites, those words developed new connotations.

Whether or not you accept the above reasoning as the cause, the fact is that for most people under thirty, both queer and hetero, both cis and trans, “trans woman” is what those words mean now. So when twenty-year-old boys say someone “looks like a tranny,” they’re not talking about drag queens or transvestites or even trans men. They’re making a disparaging comment about trans girls and trans women.

So with that in mind, does it make sense as to why trans women under thirty might be somewhat put out by (especially young) queer cis gay men and trans men using these words freely and as self-identifiers? Because now that the words have come to mean “just trans women, usually pre-op, usually naked” can you understand why it doesn’t make sense for people who aren’t trans women to try to “reclaim” them? And how feigning an ignorance of this change might make you an asshole?

In short: PLOT TWIST! You can’t just declare a word like the t-word “reclaimed” and wipe your hands of the whole discussion, because words aren’t static! Their meanings change over time! Ahh! I can’t believe I have to explain this to you! Gahh!

4) A lot of this article seems to boil down to this: “queer kids these days are self-obsessed and melodramatic! They take themselves too seriously and don’t have a sense of perspective!”

I would argue this has little to do with kids being QUEER, but has EVERYTHING to do with kids being YOUNG. You’re talking about a group of people who are mostly in our early twenties. It’s the nature of one’s early twenties to be self-obsessed and melodramatic. THIS is the age when we are desperately trying to figure out who we are. For people in their early twenties, ‘melodromatic” and “a bit self-obsessed’ are standard operating procedure. Hell, think of On the Road. Generation after generation of young adults have gone through this phase, and we’ve got the literature to prove it! The ONLY reason it seems worse now than ever before is that all of our diary entries are online.

I mean, be honest: how many people in their forties and fifties today kept angst-ridden, self-obsessed journals in their late teens and early twenties? And how many people ever had access to those entries? Maybe you did readings of them with all your radical friends. All twenty of them. The fact is that now, thanks to the internet, our diaries can be read by thousands of people, so they take up more cultural space. But that’s not the fault of US for being more melodramatic and self-obsessed than previous generations, it’s just growing pains of a civilization adapting to the digital age.

Just some thoughts.