You Are Triggering Me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and Trauma - Bully Bloggers

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You Are Triggering me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric

of Harm, Danger and Trauma
by Jack Halberstam
I was watching Monty Pythons The Life of Brian from 1979 recently, a hilarious rewriting of the life
and death of Christ, and I realized how outrageous most of the jokes from the film would seem today.
In fact, the film, with its religious satire and scenes of Christ and the thieves singing on the cross,
would never make it into cinemas now. The Life of Brian was certainly received as controversial in its
own day but when censors tried to repress the film in several different countries, The Monty Python
crew used their florid sense of humor to their advantage. So, when the film was banned in a few
places, they gave it a tagline of: So funny it was banned in Norway!
(https://bullybloggers.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/12fdfd9731cdf4f49bdc347bb7841489.jpg)
Humor, in fact, in general, depends upon the unexpected (No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!);
repetition to the point of hilarity you can have eggs, bacon and spam; spam, eggs, spam and
sausage; or spam, spam, spam and spam!); silliness, non-sequitors, caricature and an anarchic blend
of the serious and the satirical. And, humor is something that feminists in particular, but radical
politics in general, are accused of lacking. Recent controversies within queer communities around
language, slang, satirical or ironic representation and perceptions of harm or offensive have created
much controversy with very little humor recently, leading to demands for bans, censorship and name
changes.
(https://bullybloggers.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/feminist_humor_fb.jpg)Debates among people

who share utopian goals, in fact, are nothing new. I remember coming out in the 1970s and 1980s into
a world of cultural feminism and lesbian separatism. Hardly an event would go by back then without
someone feeling violated, hurt, traumatized by someones poorly phrased question, another persons
bad word choice or even just the hint of perfume in the room. People with various kinds of fatigue,
easily activated allergies, poorly managed trauma were constantly holding up proceedings to shout
in loud voices about how bad they felt because someone had said, smoked, or sprayed something
near them that had fouled up their breathing room. Others made adjustments, curbed their use of
deodorant, tried to avoid patriarchal language, thought before they spoke, held each other, cried,
moped, and ultimately disintegrated into a messy, unappealing morass of weepy, hypo-allergic,
psychosomatic, anti-sex, anti-fun, anti-porn, pro-drama, pro-processing post-political subjects.
Political times change and as the 1980s gave way to the 1990s, as weepy white lady feminism gave
way to reveal a multi-racial, poststructuralist, intersectional feminism of much longer provenance,
people began to laugh, loosened up, people got over themselves and began to talk and recognize that
the enemy was not among us but embedded within new, rapacious economic systems. Needless to
say, for women of color feminisms, the stakes have always been higher and identity politics always
have played out differently. But, in the 1990s, books on neoliberalism, postmodernism, gender
performativity and racial capital turned the focus away from the wounded self and we found our
enemies and, as we spoke out and observed that neoliberal forms of capitalism were covering over
economic exploitation with language of freedom and liberation, it seemed as if we had given up
wounded selves for new formulations of multitudes, collectivities, collaborations, and projects less
centered upon individuals and their woes. Of course, I am flattening out all kinds of historical and
cultural variations within multiple histories of feminism, queerness and social movements. But I am
willing to do so in order to make a point here about the re-emergence of a rhetoric of harm and
trauma that casts all social difference in terms of hurt feelings and that divides up politically allied
subjects into hierarchies of woundedness.
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At this point, we should recall the four Yorkshire men skit from Monty Python where the four old
friends reminisce about their deprived childhoods one says we used to live in a tiny old
tumbledown house the next counters with house!? You were lucky to live in a house. We used to
live in a room And the third jumps in with: room? You were lucky to have a room, we used to
have to live in a corridor. The fourth now completes the cycle: A corridor! We dreamed of living in a
corridor! These hardship competitions, but without the humor, are set pieces among the triggered
generation and indeed, I rarely go to a conference, festival or gathering anymore without a protest
erupting about a mode of representation that triggered someone somewhere. And as people call
each other out to a chorus of finger snapping, we seem to be rapidly losing all sense of perspective
and instead of building alliances, we are dismantling hard fought for coalitions.
(https://bullybloggers.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/tsss2012-postcard.jpeg)
Much of the recent discourse of offense and harm has focused on language, slang and naming. For
example, controversies erupted in the last few months over the name of a longstanding nightclub in
San Francisco: Trannyshack, and arguments ensued about whether the word tranny should ever
be used. These debates led some people to distraction, and legendary queer performer, Justin Vivian
Bond, posted an open letter on her Facebook page telling readers and fans in no uncertain terms that
she is angered by this trifling bullshit. Bond reminded readers that many people are delighted to
be trannies and not delighted to be shamed into silence by the word police. Bond and others have
also referred to the queer custom of re-appropriating terms of abuse and turning them into
affectionate terms of endearment. When we obliterate terms like tranny in the quest for
respectability and assimilation, we actually feed back into the very ideologies that produce the homo
and trans phobia in the first place! In The Life of Brian, Brian finally refuses to participate in the antiSemitism that causes his mother to call him a roman. In a brave coming out speech, he says: Im
not a roman mum, Im a kike, a yid, a heebie, a hook-nose, Im kosher mum, Im a Red Sea
pedestrian, and proud of it!
And now for something completely differentThe controversy about the term tranny is not a
singular occurrence; such tussles have become a rather predictable and regular part of all kinds of
conferences and meetings. Indeed, it is becoming difficult to speak, to perform, to offer up work
nowadays without someone, somewhere claiming to feel hurt, or re-traumatized by a cultural event,
a painting, a play, a speech, a casual use of slang, a characterization, a caricature and so on whether or
not the damaging speech/characterization occurs within a complex aesthetic work. At one
conference, a play that foregrounded the mutilation of the female body in the 17th century was cast as
trans-phobic and became the occasion for multiple public meetings to discuss the damage it wreaked
upon trans people present at the performance. Another piece at this performance conference that
featured a fortune teller character was accused of orientalist stereotyping. At another event I
attended that focused on queer masculinities, the organizers were accused of marginalizing queer
femininities. And a class I was teaching recently featured a young person who reported feeling
worried about potentially triggering a transgender student by using incorrect pronouns in relation
to a third student who did not seem bothered by it! Another student told me recently that she had
been triggered in a class on colonialism by the showing of The Battle of Algiers. In many of these
cases offended groups demand apologies, and promises are made that future enactments of this or
that theater piece will cut out the offensive parts; or, as in the case of Trannyshack, the name of the
club was changed.
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As reductive as such responses to aesthetic and academic material have become, so have definitions
of trauma been over-simplified within these contexts. There are complex discourses on trauma
readily available as a consequence of decades of work on memory, political violence and abuse. This
work has offered us multiple theories of the ways in which a charged memory of pain, abuse, torture
or imprisonment can be reignited by situations or associations that cause long buried memories to
flood back into the body with unpredictable results. But all of this work, by Shoshana Felman
Macarena Gomez-Barris, Saidiya Hartman, Cathy Caruth, Ann Cvetkovich, Marianne Hirsch and
others, has been pushed aside in the recent wave of the politics of the aggrieved.
(https://bullybloggers.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/your_trigger_warnings_are_triggering_me_by_me
d5j2mey.gif)
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. And so, while
in the past, we turned to Freuds mystic writing pad to think of memory as a palimpsest, burying
material under layers of inscription, now we see a memory as a live wire sitting in the psyche waiting
for a spark. Where once we saw traumatic recall as a set of enigmatic symptoms moving through the
body, now people reduce the resurfacing of a painful memory to the catch all term of trigger,
imagining that emotional pain is somehow similar to a pulled muscle as something that hurts
whenever it is deployed, and as an injury that requires protection.
(https://bullybloggers.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/k5715.gif)Fifteen to twenty years ago, books

like Wendy Browns States of Injury (1995) and Anna Chengs 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. Let me be clear saying that you feel harmed by another queer persons use of a reclaimed
word like tranny and organizing against the use of that word is NOT social activism. It is censorship.
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. With the help of friendly adults, therapy, queer youth groups and national
campaigns, these same youth internalize narratives of damage that they themselves may or may not
have actually experienced. Queer youth groups in particular install a narrative of trauma and
encourage LGBT youth to see themselves as endangered and precarious whether or not they
actually feel that way, whether or not coming out as LGB or T actually resulted in abuse! And then,
once they age out of their youth groups, those same LGBT youth become hypersensitive to all signs
and evidence of the abuse about which they have learned.
(https://bullybloggers.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/lgbt_teens.jpg)
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 antibullying 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. However, as Christina
(https://bullybloggers.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/978-0-8223-54703_pr.jpg)
(https://bullybloggers.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/safespace.jpg)Hanhardts Lambda Literary

award winning book, Safe Space: Neighborhood History and the Politics of Violence, shows, the safe space
agenda has worked in tandem with urban initiatives to increase the policing of poor neighborhoods
and the gentrification of others. Safe Space: Gay Neighborhood History and the Politics of Violence traces
the development of LGBT politics in the US from 1965-2005 and explains how LGBT activism was
transformed from a multi-racial coalitional grassroots movement with strong ties to anti-poverty
groups and anti-racism organizations to a mainstream, anti-violence movement with aspirations for
state recognition.
And, as LGBT communities make safety into a top priority (and that during an era of militaristic
investment in security regimes) and ground their quest for safety in competitive narratives about
trauma, the fight against aggressive new forms of exploitation, global capitalism and corrupt political
systems falls by the way side.
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.
I want to call for a time of accountability and specificity: not all LGBT youth are suicidal, not all LGBT
people are subject to violence and bullying, and indeed class and race remain much more vital factors
in accounting for vulnerability to violence, police brutality, social baiting and reduced access to
education and career opportunities. Lets call an end to the finger snapping moralism, lets question
contemporary desires for immediately consumable messages of progress, development and access;
lets all take a hard long look at the privileges that often prop up public performances of grief and
outrage; lets acknowledge that being queer no longer automatically means being brutalized and lets
argue for much more situated claims to marginalization, trauma and violence. Lets not fiddle while
Rome (or Paris) burns, trigger while the water rises, weep while trash piles up; lets recognize these
internal wars for the distraction they have become. Once upon a time, the appellation queer named
an opposition to identity politics, a commitment to coalition, a vision of alternative worlds. Now it
has become a weak umbrella term for a confederation of identitarian concerns. It is time to move on,
to confuse the enemy, to become illegible, invisible, anonymous (see Preciados Bully Bloggers post
on anonymity in relation to the Zapatistas). In the words of Jos Muoz, we have never been queer.
In the words of a great knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, we are now no longer the
Knights who say Ni, we are now the Knights who say Ekki-ekki-ekki-ekki-PTANG. Zoom-Boing,
znourrwringmm.
(https://bullybloggers.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/i-chzbgr.jpg)
Tags: feminist humor (https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/tag/feminist-humor/), Halberstam

(https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/tag/halberstam/), monty python
(https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/tag/monty-python/), queer culture
(https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/tag/queer-culture/), triggering
(https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/tag/triggering/)
COMMENTS 353 Comments
CATEGORIES Current Affairs, Film, Higher Education, Political Rants and Raves, Pop Culture
AUTHOR halberst
353 Responses to You Are Triggering me! The Neo-Liberal

Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and Trauma
Kat July 5, 2014 at 12:51 pm #
Wow. Thank you!!
REPLY
Robert Borneman July 5, 2014 at 5:34 pm #
Very well thought-out and very well articulated assessment of the culture of umbrage in
which Americans (of all political stripes) currently find themselves. Thank you for this superb
piece of writing.
REPLY
Bink July 6, 2014 at 11:19 am #
Culture of UmbrageI love that. So apt.
Will Shetterly July 7, 2014 at 12:17 am #
Just checking. Your rebuttal consists of Is not! and Typo!? Youre right about the typo, but
you may want to read a little more about neoliberalism. I recommend David Harveys book,
which pretty much backs up Halberstams argument. For example: Neoliberal rhetoric, with
its foundational emphasis upon individual freedoms, has the power to split off libertarianism,
identity politics, multi-culturalism, and eventually narcissistic consumerism from the social
forces ranged in pursuit of social justice through the conquest of state power. It has long
proved extremely difficult within the US left, for example, to forge the collective discipline
required for political action to achieve social justice without offending the desire of political
actors for individual freedom and for full recognition and expression of particular identities.
Neoliberalism did not create these distinctions, but it could easily exploit, if not foment, them.
REPLY
Martin Knutsen July 7, 2014 at 4:42 am #
Agreed. There is an inflation in terms, when the use of the word trigger no longer refers to a
neural reaction that bypasses the rational mind but just to a bad memory. The sad element is
that it becomes harder to discuss real traumas of all kinds when the scientific terms become
buzzwords. Believe me, you are not traumatized by the use of the word tranny.
REPLY
anamorphotic July 7, 2014 at 10:00 pm #
Apologies if this point was already made before. Ive definitely been feeling the deja-vu and
irritation with the current movement following the more negative aspects of the second wave
feminist movement in particular the lesbian community of that era. In that part of your blog I
totally agree and felt quite heartened to see someone writing what I have been trying to
articulate to my friends who have been having the same discussion. Where I believe you took a
left turn was at the description that not all LGBT has had trauma and that the It Gets Better
Movement encourages people to think of themselves as victims. I think it detracts from your
main argument and gets into a battle of hair splitting. Of course people who are LGBT have
faced incredible alienation and violence. Not everyone, yes. But it does put one in the line of
fire. For example the Sister of Perpetual Indulgence and her husband who were beaten at Pink
Saturday, an event that they put on. And no one lifted a finger to help while it was happening.
Some even cheered it. In writing about this, what I am trying to say is that I believe that there
is trauma and the trauma is legitimate. However, (and I think this would strengthen your
argument), it is the job of the trauma survivor to take care of themselves. This does not mean
that they engage in the Sisyphean task of attempting to get their environment to conform to
their perspective of what their personal needs are. DBT, which is a great therapy tool for
trauma survivors, is the work of learning that one can self-regulate their emotions. That ones
moods and anxieties are ultimately under ones own control and not actually thrown off my
some external random threat. Sure, something external may cause a reminder of something in
the past that was beyond horrid. It is then the job of the trauma survivor to figure out what
they need to get their own self regulated again.THAT is wellness. Telling other people what
words to use or that they cant wear certain colors or shut a door because of a childhood
memory is called being a gigantic controlling douche.
REPLY
Eoin May 13, 2015 at 5:56 pm #
Brilliant points. Expecting the world and its inhabitants to conform to ones own (highly
personal) trauma response is indeed an exercise in futility. Doing so also constitutes the
very kind of safety behavior (in CBT terms) which most likely maintains said trauma
response.
Kate July 5, 2014 at 2:33 pm #
How do you connect Hanhardts book about the history of neighborhood movements and the
shifting relationship of those movements to the state and police, and activist calls for safer
space, calls that ask the group to be accountable to each other, not to outside state actors? Or do
you think theyre all of a piece?
REPLY
bullybloggers July 5, 2014 at 5:59 pm #
Hanhardts book, in part, traces the transformation of a multi-racial politics of alliance in queer
communities to an anti-violence agenda. This narrowing of queer politics to issues of safety
and personal security is important to understand in terms of the new discourse of triggering,
harm and trauma.
REPLY
Liberty Mahalakshmi July 6, 2014 at 6:37 am #
This link between safe space and policing is a valid observation. An explanation might be
that third sector funding is increasingly tied to outcomes that measure hate crime
reporting, anti-social behaviour, health problems (STDs, addiction, mental health, HIV),
community safety etc.
Overall, this is a very well argued article and I agree that identity politics has perhaps
travelled too far into the cul de sac of triggered feelings and blame. I have some sympathy
for this point of view because I have seen activists tear each others reputations and selfesteem apart over personal choices and semantics
However, I agree with the first part of the following statement but not the second, saying
that you feel harmed by another queer persons use of a reclaimed word like tranny and
organizing against the use of that word is NOT social activism. It is censorship.
Allow me to elaborate. While I feel that organizing against follow activists is a poor use of
energies and counter-productive, I do not see it as censorshiprather, I see it as the right to
reply. Everyone has their own preferences, choices and opinions. If you call me a tranny, I
might call you a bigot, but if you call yourself a tranny I might assume you are either
suffering from internalised phobia OR that you are a defiant, kick-ass activist who is
reclaiming a pejorative as a badge of honour. That would be my opinion, neither
endorsement nor censorship.
For me, compassion is needed here. We activists understand oppression because we have
experienced it up close and personal. Chances are, if you feel triggered than so does the
person who is reclaiming the wordthat is why they are reclaiming it! It is rather like the
practice of using a small amount of poison to innoculate oneself against poisons.
Koko July 7, 2014 at 2:19 pm #
Unfortunately I cannot reply to the comment from Liberty Mahalakshmi, but I wanted to
let them know that I am about to put their last 2 sentences into my favourite quotes list.
Pratibha Parmar July 5, 2014 at 3:00 pm #
Just brilliant ! Thanks Jack for the much needed illuminating sense & sensibility !
REPLY
altaira5hatton July 5, 2014 at 3:26 pm #
You have a sexy brain. Thanks for writing!
REPLY
Nuncat July 5, 2014 at 3:32 pm #
Thank you for one of the most thoughtful essays on this issue that I have read. As a professor who
teaches a class about science, gender & power, I have struggled to deal with the sudden
emergence of this issue.
REPLY
Maribel Alvarez July 5, 2014 at 3:56 pm #
Thank you!!!!! This is the smartest commentary I have read on activist politics since.. Well,
maybe the 90s. Reminds me in tone of perplexity of Stuart Halls essay on Thatcherismtoad in
the garden. And urgent plea for a sensible radicality. your points are made with such integrity,
layering, intelligence and transparency. Pure brilliance. As a folklorist I teach on the subject of
humor (and race, sexuality, stereotypes, etc) in my intro classes And it is one of the hardest
sections of the entire semester.
REPLY
Terry July 5, 2014 at 3:58 pm #
OH MY GOD THANK YOU
REPLY
Lito Elio Porto July 5, 2014 at 4:05 pm #
Absolutely perfect. Ive been attempting to make the same points, albeit much less eloquently,
since I had use of reason. Very appreciate appreciated.
REPLY
Ja'miey Dale King July 5, 2014 at 4:08 pm #
An excellent, thorough and highly poignant piece.
REPLY
amazondream July 5, 2014 at 4:22 pm #
OMG!! YOU DONT BELIEVE IN MY PAIN!!!!!!!!!
REPLY
amazondream July 5, 2014 at 4:23 pm #
By that I mean Thank you for a clear and concise revealing of the new brand of censorship.
REPLY
Geeti July 5, 2014 at 4:45 pm #
Thank you thank you!!
Your point about safe spaces and the tie-in to security made me think safe space almost
never gets tied to critiques of security regimes, or to struggles for/over land. Triggering doesnt
seem to extend beyond the first world. LGBT in the military somehow doesnt *literally* trigger.
REPLY
LB July 5, 2014 at 4:49 pm #
I really love this article but realized that I didnt want to link to it on my Facebook because a lot of
my Facebook friends might be triggered by even just the title suggesting that maybe I wasnt
taking their triggers seriously.
REPLY
DebraP July 7, 2014 at 12:16 pm #
I had a similar thought, but I posted it with a simple Interesting read so as to share it in a
somewhat detached way. Passive aggressive I know, but does the job.
REPLY
Troy July 5, 2014 at 4:54 pm #
This critique needs to be expanded to other realms as well beyond queer and feminist politics, it
seems to have become a universal problem on the left.
REPLY
whatliamsays2013 July 5, 2014 at 5:26 pm #
I think this may be related to a specifically U.S. context. I am British and I dont find that most
people I encounter on a day to day basis really think like this. Having said that notions of safety
and compliance are really popular in professional contexts like the media and education. My
grandmother is in her 80s and although she is very racists it can be quite refreshing to speak to
someone who lived through WW2.
REPLY
Danie Manos July 8, 2014 at 8:46 am #
I am an American who has been living in England for 6 months attending Uni and I have seen
this kind of rhetoric way more in England than I have back home I think its a young person
thing, or you just have to be around the right people.
REPLY
Tanya October 14, 2015 at 4:10 am #
I go to a UK uni and definitely identify with this. Everytime I tried to do anything in the
LGBT*Q+ society it got such backlash because it triggered someone that in the end I just gave
up. It made my charity work and art shows and education events etc. impossible to run.
REPLY
Julie Weinshel Tepper July 5, 2014 at 5:35 pm #
Bravo. This so needed to be said in exactly this emphatic and undefensive way. Thank you!
REPLY
Scott Gerard Prinster July 5, 2014 at 6:37 pm #
Could you suggest some basic reading and resources for responding in constructive ways to the
culture of the aggrieved? Thank you!
REPLY
Hugh Haiker July 5, 2014 at 6:45 pm #
I wont be able to fully capture what this article means to me. I recently quit a doctoral program at
the University of Denver because this exact type of infighting made it impossible for me to learn
there. Scholars supposedly dedicated to social justice seemed to be more about self-promotion and
ego protection. My queerness was rendered irrelevant by my white male face, and when I called
out the pragmatic concerns regarding the overemphasis of personal narratives, I was accused of
employing my privilege to oppress the voices of others. I feel more sane for reading this. Thank
you, deeply.
REPLY
I try to be!
REPLY
narrativeeschatology July 8, 2014 at 11:47 pm #
How do you feel about shemale?
REPLY
kjq July 5, 2014 at 7:08 pm #
Thank you for such an articulate analysis of a troubling trend.
REPLY
Assimilationist Tranny July 5, 2014 at 7:16 pm #
Also, Jack, how Im the world do you get from trans people dont like cis folks using to anti-trans
slurs to trans people are assimilationist? Its almost as if you can only come up with the most
insulting explanation possible, perhaps because youre a shitty academic with an ugly soul.
REPLY
You are right, it could be my ugly soul but heres the thing Assimilationist Tranny not all
trans people mind the T-Word thats what I am trying to say. Some of us like it!! It was never
a medical term and not only a slur, it has a long history as a term of affection used by trannies
for and about trannies and like many other queer slang terms, it does important work: dyke,
queer, fag. I am sorry you found the explanation offered here offensive but if I hit a nerve,
maybe it is worth thinking things through just a littlethank you for reading.
REPLY
Tai Miller July 6, 2014 at 1:35 am #
Real safe space should allow for the word tranny because it reflects the very specific
experiences of some of the people in that space. Some people claim that word and its
important to them and by putting it down youre triggering them, usually to anger.
KNE July 6, 2014 at 1:42 am #
Im sympathetic to your general argument, but I dont think that it the argument accurately
describes the motivations animating the t-word controversy as cleanly as it seems you
believe. A better frame of reference is the n-word debates among african americans, and
notions of intergroup vs intragroup usage. From what I hear from trans folks whove
expressed opposition to the casual use of the word, I dont think personal pain is really the
issue as much as collective dignity. (Note: dignity is not an assimilationist goal.) In any case
its easy enough for white dudes like me just to not say the n-word, and its easy enough
for cis people like me to just not say the T-word.
quendergeer July 6, 2014 at 2:54 am #
It was certainly impressive how you managed to link queer youth trying to create safe
spaces to the military industrial complex. Thats the sort of theoretical chutzpah that lets
you call grass roots resistance to reactionary rhetoric neo-liberal and still paint yourself
as a queer outsider resisting assimilation.
Lilee July 6, 2014 at 11:43 am #
Wow, Genderqueer, you say nothing so eloquently. Also, other person, tranny cannot be in
any way equated to nigger. Why are we so afraid of words! Its not like were using them to
oppress. Were talking about them. How do you talk about something and not name it?
What does that do psychologically? Rhetorically? Transvestites were not physically
enslaved in America and then politically and economically enslaved for well, they still
are. That word carries with it all of the racism and violence of those actions. Its a word
used to dehumanize. As a cisfemale bisexual monogamist, I never used the word tranny as
a slur. As soon as I was told by a genderqueer youth that it was a slur (not because Id used
it, but out of context), I never used it again. Except in this kind of conversation. In fact, in
my job as a rhetoric teacher, I have corrected students who have used it descriptively,
unaware that it is offensive because they often live in little bubbles of unawareness that
education is supposed to pop, not reinforce with steel and barbed wire.
S July 6, 2014 at 11:42 am #
Sadly for you, theres no Lambda award for being rude on the Internet.
REPLY
Spinning For Difficulty July 11, 2014 at 3:02 am #
@quendergeer (no reply button) .It was certainly impressive how you managed to link
queer youth trying to create safe spaces to the military industrial complex.
We live in a society today where young boys doodling a cartoon which includes a picture of a
gun in class or shooting their hands like guns in the schoolyard has led to the police being
called out to the school.
Meanwhile the (real world) wars rage on and nobody does anything or even cares.
It sure does suit the military industrial complex to keep everyone distracted by training them
to (a) focus exclusively on themselves in the most self-obsessed way. Me, me, me! (b) equate
group conformity with being good (and thus individuality as bad).
Perhaps you might like to explore the links between the military industrial complex and, say,
Hollywood which when it isnt putting out movies glorifying violence and military
intervention as the go-to solution to all the worlds problems is putting out movies which
normalise and promote narcissistic, egotistical, self entitled, attention seeking, morally
bankrupt personalities as normal, functional and even desirable character traits. Go figure.
This victim-culture style of self obsessed me, me, me outrage is a million miles from TRUE
MORAL OUTRAGE born of true empathy, compassion and the genuine pursuit of virtue.
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Sally Ember, Ed.D. July 12, 2014 at 8:31 am #
I love this, Spinning: Hollywood which when it isnt putting out movies glorifying
violence and military intervention as the go-to solution to all the worlds problems is
putting out movies which normalise and promote narcissistic, egotistical, self entitled,
attention seeking, morally bankrupt personalities as normal, functional and even desirable
character traits. Go figure. Thanks.
Trigger Happy July 5, 2014 at 7:18 pm #
This blog triggered me (in a good way!). Thanks for the provocations.
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bored, unsurprised July 5, 2014 at 8:19 pm #
wow, this is incredibly poorly reasoned, reactionary, and loaded with assumptions. i am a queer
person in my mid-20s who used to really value your work, but the refusal to take trauma
survivors and people with disabilities seriously is really not as radical or edgy as you think it is. i
can understand how a culture of sharing more openly about trauma and its effects could feel
alienating to an older generation who perhaps took experiencing trauma and abuse for granted, as
a normal experience that should just be gotten over, not dwelled upon or talked about in public.
but this doesnt mean that the shift is wrong. i am pleased, not resentful, when i see younger
youth advocating for themselves in ways that i wasnt able to. calling it neoliberalism feels like a
pretty egregious leap. its also pretty wild to assume that all queer youth now have supportive
parents! yes, its more common than it was in the past, but its certainly not universal. ive known
many queer people my age and younger who have survived abuse (by parents, by police and
prisons, by partners) that would be considered horrific by any metric. uc santa barbara, one of the
schools that has been in the news for students advocating for trigger warnings in courses, was
recently the site of a misogynist mass shooting. are we really saying that that is not legitimate
trauma?!
theres much more i could say but i dont want to spend my whole day picking apart every faulty
point here. this is boring, irrelevant, and full of shit.
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Me July 5, 2014 at 9:24 pm #
I think the biggest problem is that people constantly see themselves as victims. If you see
yourself as a victim, then yes, everyone will look like an attacker. Its okay to feel hurt, but
running away from it by calling something a trigger and not dealing with it doesnt help
anyone at all, least of all oneself.
There is a huge difference from responding with a victim mentality and advocating. Its
usually pretty obvious to tell the former from the latter when someone opens their mouth (or
types on their computer).
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JustAskingForALittleUnderstanding July 8, 2014 at 9:07 am #
The thing is, though, that triggers can affect trauma survivors whether or not they see
themselves as victims. Theres also a big difference between hurt feelings that you can
shake off, and panic symptoms and other effects of PTSD. Let me offer an example: having
slurs thrown at me is simply upsetting to me, but I experience autonomic and sympathetic
nervous system stimulation (raised heart rate, shortness of breath, and other symptoms of
panic attacks) when I smell the cologne my attacker was wearing, or when I kept seeing
him running across campus back before he graduated. The latter is what triggering is, and
the former is not, at least for me. People landing in the realm of the former might benefit
from toughening their skin, as you would suggest, but those of us who experience
triggered panic attacks as a result of verbal, visual or other sensory stimuli cant just
toughen our skin. Trust me, we would if we could; but the brain doesnt work that way. If it
did, I might be able to understand where all this is coming from, but for the moment I just
feel like the debate this feeds into, about triggering and trigger warnings and the new
trendy attitude condemning them, will only hurt people, because of a fundamental
misunderstanding of what a trigger really is.
TL;DR Triggering is short for triggering a panic attack or other fight-or-flight nervous
system activity, and the now-trendy i refuse to put trigger warnings on this or
acknowledge the PTSD experience so suck it up attitude is damaging and gross. Equally
gross is the willful ignorance of people whove appropriated the word and used it to mean
that they just feel hurt, angry or sad because of something that was said or shown to them.
Matt July 5, 2014 at 10:12 pm #
I dont think the author is failing to take trauma survivors seriously. The overuse of
triggering is actually taking the concept away from them. Triggers in the psychological
sense arent things that make you feel aggrieved or mildly uncomfortable, which is the way it
started being used in social justice spaces.
For fucks sake, Ive literally seen a post dealing with sexual violence being trigger-warned for
misogyny but not sexual violence!
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Geeti July 5, 2014 at 10:14 pm #
I think the problem isnt that trauma is being acknowledged and brought into the open, but
that its being assimilated into a neoliberal institution of biomedical care that reduces complex
emotion to diagnostic checklists, and strips grief of its political meaning. I think that plays a
big role in perpetuating the idea that the grief of others ought not to be touched an idea that
creates isolated lifeworlds, one per person, making the suffering of queer people outside of
richer countries seem too far away and too small.
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xandracoe July 6, 2014 at 4:13 am #
Excellent phrasing: asssimilated into a neoliberal institution of biomedical care that
reduces complex emotion to diagnostic checklists, and strips grief of its political meaning.
And yes, I think that goes to the heart of the problem. What we call trauma used to be
called life.
will July 6, 2014 at 5:42 am #
Bored, you should watch the century of the self.
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sirenis July 6, 2014 at 9:17 pm #
Speaking of boring, irrelevant, and full of shit, as a trauma survivor I find the constant
grasping of people for special consideration of their triggers to be venal bullshit.
Real triggers are very seldom as neat and self explanatory as people often claim they are, and
being triggered is often evidence of healing. 2 years into treatment this view would have had
my full sympathy, 10 years out it has my contempt. Crying for protection and kid glove
treatment only slows down the healing process. Trying to score political points this way is just
cheap.
Using your cultivated and curated pain to shut down discussions, especially in an academic
setting, is reprehensible.
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XH July 7, 2014 at 4:38 pm #
Yes! This! This reply is perfect! Thank you!
Silver H. August 16, 2014 at 3:17 pm #
For the sake of the article, which makes some interesting points, I can understand
trigger(ing) in relationship to hyper-individualism in current activism. However, I think
the outrage about the mere notion of trigger warnings is misplaced when put into proper
context.
In reality, a trigger warning functions along the lines of spoiler alert (which also has its
share of critics). The term seems closely linked to the Internet and serves to allow a person
to make the decision to engage or not with specific content; it does so because we live in a
world where the Internet lives in our pocket and we tend to mindlessly scroll through
Facebook, Reddit, Twitter etc. at any free moment of the day (not all but any). There are
times wed prefer to avoid certain content for very practical reasons: in the 15 minutes
before a job interview or business meeting, while we are procrastinating studying for an
important exam, just after a fight with a partner of loved kne, after a difficult therapy
session. The list goes on.
This also analogous to spoiler alerts, because people are very sensitive to having a movie of
tv show they want to see ruined before they have chance to view it. They can and probably
will return to the content after having viewed said tv show or movie. Trigger warnings do
the same thing; they allow someone to decide when the appropriate time is to engage with
certain content.
This has a natural extension into academia where students are expected to employ critical
thought to various material and maintain a certain grade point average while doing so.
Allowing a student to decide what time is best to engage with potentionally triggering
material doesnt create a culture of victomhood; it simply empowers a person. Students
dont take one course per term; they take many. Sometimes a student has lots of obligations
and doesnt feel that confronting triggering material is appropriate for them at that time.
That doesnt mean that they are running away from their problems and will never engage
with material that triggers them, nor does it mean they will perpetually avoid any material
that triggers.
You can link the term to individualism and neoliberalism, but I dont think its fair to say it
creates a culture of victomhood. I run in social activist circles and dont hear people
shouting about triggers in person. It came from the Internet and still mainly occurs on the
web. If anything its a symptom or expression of Internet culture.
indiyesreally July 7, 2014 at 11:15 pm #
^word
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Spinning For Difficulty July 11, 2014 at 3:24 am #
While its true that some people suffer terrible childhoods of abuse and trauma, its always
good to maintain a sense of perspective.
It is the people who make false claims of their own trauma who are really causing harm (by
trivialising the concept of trauma). Calling them out (see video) is a positive thing for everyone
*including* genuine victims of trauma.
Twitter induced Shell Shock
uc santa barbara, one of the schools that has been in the news for students advocating for
trigger warnings in courses, was recently the site of a misogynist mass shooting.
This is a perfect example of how victim culture distorts reality in order to invent or maintain a
threat narrative.
The guy you refer to (Eliot Rogers) killed more men than women. He stabbed men to death
with his bare hands. And yet he is labelled a misogynist by feminists. Feminist bloggers all
over the internet have been caught out referring to him as That misogynist guy who killed all
those WOMEN (what about the men he killed?)
That is like labelling a meat eater a vegetarian, and ignoring the fact that he just won a
hamburger eating contest.
We now live in a society where people want to enhance their own (groups) victim status so
badly they are willing to distort reality, omit FACTS and barefaced lie to themselves and
everyone else.
This is not healthy or productive.
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Gztlms October 8, 2014 at 12:45 pm #
You missed some of his points. Trauma is real, but pursuing individualized responses orients
us away from collective solutions. He discusses the hard hard work of decades of thinking and
research on trauma and oppression and how those hard fought understandings are not
considered (even with with a counter-argument) but instead simply ignored. (wheres the
respect there?) His argument is not reactionary, but social and collective and concerned with
how individualized ideas of suffering obscure collective violence and oppression. Heres a
section Id like to hear your thoughts on:
books like Wendy Browns States of Injury (1995) and Anna Chengs 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.
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Just-a-thought July 5, 2014 at 8:21 pm #
Point, to be taken gently so as not to trigger: When the t* slur is written or spoken it simply
works to let the speaker of the phrase of off the hook of uttering the the word tranny. Sadly, as
reader, I have to fill in what the asterisk after the t might be in the context of the sentence. In this
case, the *=ranny. Slurs are linguistic sand traps, sometimes.
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One of those traumatized whiners July 6, 2014 at 5:47 pm #
im assuming everyone here does not understand how PTSD works (doesnt want to talk about
it by name because clearly, if validity comes from institutions, putting these queer and trans
gentrifying youth firmly into the DSM is a threat to Jacks made-up authority on the subject),
but thanks for the meaningless quip of a first sentence
that may be true, re: how to talk about a slur when not a member of the group it does violence
to (hint: AFAB people are not a member of the group this slur does violence to, despite all of
the masculine entitlement that wants to grab up every instance of victimization funny how
that works, in the context of this garbledymook post it can). i am listening to my trans/*
sisters on this one, though, and i have been told not to write it out, in the same way i wouldnt
write out n* because i actually listen to other people because my head isnt so firmly lodged up
my own ass
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betafive July 10, 2014 at 3:31 pm #
You know what they say about assumptions
also, everyone making the WERE NOT TALKING ABOUT PEOPLE WITH REAL PTSD
argument are literally doing the equivalent thing to WERE NOT TALKING ABOUT PEOPLE
WHO WERE REALLY RAPED
that percentage of fakers for attention is around 1%, yall. i realize center disabled
students, friends, nieces, nephews, kids, coworkers, etc, is really difficult, but that doesnt
mean you get to have a tantrum on the internet and think anyone outside of your queer theory
ala 1994 circlejerk wordpress clique is going to like it
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Mark Denaci July 5, 2014 at 8:22 pm #
A powerful and thought-provoking post! It gets at issues you have so eloquently raised in the past
about the speakers privilege in relation to claims of victimhood. While I dont see these issues
as either/orthat is, we dont necessarily have to ignore questions of personal pain or safety in
order to broaden our focus to more structural issuesI think you have articulated something that
has the potential to provoke a truly necessary dialog within queer communities.
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Please July 5, 2014 at 8:39 pm #
Sometimes I wonder what things would be like without any men telling us that we women are
ruining feminism with our stupid whining.
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^ this
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I wonder July 7, 2014 at 1:16 am #
Sometimes I wonder what things would be like if people used well reasoned arguments to
discuss and counter other arguments instead of using claims to identity and standpoint
epistomology to smuggle in facile ad hominems.
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betafive July 8, 2014 at 12:24 am #
^ this
elle July 10, 2014 at 3:42 am #
Well reasoned arguments such as, for example, references to Monty Python sketches?
jamesworrad July 5, 2014 at 8:55 pm #
Mesmerising essay, though I should point out The Four Yorkshiremen Sketch wasnt a Monty
Python sketch. Rather, it was written by some of the Pythons for an earlier series called At Last,
The 1948 Show and was later used by the Pythons on tour.
Despite this extreme insensitivity to my nations comedy culture I find it in myself to forgive you.
I hope we can both bloom into better human beings thanks to this.
Yours,
Major James Worrad (Mrs)
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thank you for the correction, nudge nudge wink wink:)
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Evren July 5, 2014 at 8:58 pm #
I read it right after coming home. It is really great, and long overdue. I am so looking forward to
discussing it in Queer Theory this Fall. xoxo
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leatherargento July 7, 2014 at 12:25 pm #
Unless youre the professor, I wouldnt do that. Retaking a course is a bitch when the whole
department sees you as mini-Hitler.
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Evren July 7, 2014 at 9:14 pm #
Meaning it would be ok to be mini-Hitler as the professor (which I would be by the virtue
of bringing this piece up)?
Alex July 11, 2014 at 11:26 am #
Im pretty sure thats why a lot of people become professors.
marcos July 5, 2014 at 9:02 pm #
This generation of activists are in general unworthy heirs to the sacrifices made by those who
came before us, in the civil rights movement, at Comptons Cafeteria and at Stonewall. Under
much more challenging circumstances, these brave ordinary folks put their lives and bodies on the
line to take a stand against injustice. Stonewall was not a safe space. There were no trigger
warnings. There was plenty of alcohol to be had. Yet when Puerto Rican trannies and NYU gay
boys stood up to the mafia and cops, the neighborhood had their backs. The antioppression/privilege neo-feminist gender studies academics, activists and advocates would have
crumbled up and blown away in the wind. Too many play dates has created a generation that
never had to deal with anyone who they did not like. Thus, anyone who challenges their politics
must be doing so because they hate them personally.
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Matt July 5, 2014 at 10:27 pm #
I dont think this romanticizing of the past is accurate. Many people at the Stonewall riots were
homeless. They were the marginalized among the marginalized. They werent braver, they
were just more desperate.
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There was not homeless to speak of, not as we know it now, in NYC in the late 1960s.
Homelessness as we know it did not arise until the early 1980s when Reagan began to
clearcut the safety net. Stonewall and Comptons era queers fought back when confronted,
took risks, and did not call a time out to process being triggered. ACTUP era queers took
risks and fought back, no safe spaces, no trigger warnings. Freedom is not free, you have to
fight for it and defend it.
ggrkl July 5, 2014 at 11:44 pm #
The anti-oppression/privilege neo-feminist gender studies academics, activists and advocates
would have crumbled up and blown away in the wind
Cute, calling people weak for having ideas that offend your delicate sensibilities. Why cant
they be brave and iconoclastic?
Too many play dates has created a generation that never had to deal with anyone who they
did not like. Thus, anyone who challenges their politics must be doing so because they hate
them personally.
Take your whitewashed neoliberal rhetoric back to FAUX-news, please. There are lots of
blatantly oppressed/homeless (!) lgbt people these days, they might not be imprisoned but its
ludicrous to call them unworthy just because the middle class is large.
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Many adherents to these narcissistic philosophical frameworks are confrontation adverse
when it comes to confronting actual sources of real oppression yet when it comes to
attacking people who appear to think like them, there are no holds barred. Snap, snap.
Any criticism of the articles of faith implies that the critic must identify with the worst
opponents of the vulnerable one. Hence, any critical analysis of identity politics, antioppression organizing or trigger warnings means that critic, no matter how radical, is
tantamount to Fox News. Either one is with you or one is against you.
We plumbed the depths of identity politics and radical feminism 30 years ago and
abandoned them for a reason, they do not resonate with the communities.
The homeless and imprisoned LGBT are not the unworthy ones. The unworthy ones are the
activists, advocates and academics who refuse to take risks, refuse to put their bodies and
lives on the line and yet have no compunctions about attacking their allies for personal
conduct or choice of worse more so than their opponents bad acts
This notion that advocate becomes the communities they advocate for is the height of
narcissism. Without democratic legitimacy of the communities in question, the advocate is
really speaking for themselves or whomever is funding their advocacy operation, the
government or corporate foundations. There are reasons why the presence of organizers in
a community does not mean that the community is organized.
brynkelly July 5, 2014 at 9:15 pm #
Blargh. A couple points:
1) Affect is not the same as emotion. It is not the same as cognition. It does not respond to the logic
of neoliberalism, or for that matter, much logic at all. Massumi? Sedgwick? Hello, is this thing on?
2) Much of your arguments about the professionalization of safety and safer neighborhoods
were blatantly ripped off from INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, and not cited, which in
addition to being plagiarism, is pretty racist.
3) #dontlucidturndownforwhat? as the kids say.
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#ludicturn, w/e, you know what i mean
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I dont know what you meanat all!
Blargh! A couple more points:
1. censorship has always been bad for feminist and queer communitieshello? Mic check,
Butler, Vance, Lorde.
2. The professionalization of safety and the critique of anti-violence campaigns in place of
multi-coalitional anti-racist politics comes via Christina Hanhardts excellent book
3. #getonwithityourmotherwasahamsteryourfathersmelledofelderberries as the kids say?
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Hrmmmm free speech is about the most neoliberal of neoliberal concepts. Free speech
is a lot like free markets: only the strong survive. Im gonna (CONTENT WARNING)
hang myself by saying this, but though McKinnon was wrong about a lot of things, I think
she was right about that.
And there are a lot of kinds of censorship out there, but a grassroots movement of some
disabled college kids asking for a simple accommodation is I think about the least of
anyones worries about some kind of Maoist cultural crackdown or w/e people are afraid
is gonna happen.
Asking for accommodation is one thing. Stopping the show to act out and blamethrowing
at anyone who does not divine the appropriate term that does not trigger the secret
history of the individual is something completely different.
2) No. Stop that. Even if there was plagiarism, its not pretty racist just because those
plagiarized from are of color.
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Than Atos July 5, 2014 at 10:15 pm #
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for writing this. I often have trouble articulating these
types of concerns myself and frankly in the current political environment on the progressive side I
feel like a villain for having them.
I agree with a lot of the comments here the current generation of activists right now are in no
way worthy to carry the banner that their forefathers and foremothers fought for. Its deeply
troubling to see what ought to be a united front against institutional oppression degenerate into
the worst sort of factional identity politics and ideological infighting.
Even more troubling is the knee-jerk reaction to excommunicate anyone and everyone for any
perceived transgression against the current orthodoxy. Its an immediate presumption of bad faith
and an impulse to subject everyone straying from the ideological orthodoxy to the least charitable
interpretation possible.
Id like to echo another reader and ask if you have any suggestions on further reading regarding
the emergence of this authoritarian streak in LGBT activism. Id be very interested.
Thanks again!
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Than: having been in the romanticized era you write about , here, I have to point out there
were plenty of factional identity politics and ideological infighting among feminists, queer
and all racist activists. Lesbians were excluded, marginalized (and told to blend in better) or
in hiding among the leadership of the feminist movement; women of color were not invited
to the table; and transexuals were butts of jokes, relegated to the next room in women-only
safe spaces, or didnt exist for most of the white, middle class feminists; no one even
talked about AIDS, for way too long.
Believe me when I say this current generation is no worse and, in most ways, much better.
Dont write the youngsters off quite yet. We elders werent all worthy of the banners, either,
but we carried them, nonetheless.
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Han July 5, 2014 at 10:20 pm #
As someone who is a part of this, I do feel myself looking at well-mannered people as attackers
because of this mindset. BUT, on the same hand, MANY LGBT persons have been abused. while I
dont find language not directed at me as triggering (and often find the word childish), its
important to realize many LGBT persons were and are abused. At the very least bullied as
children (which CAN leave a lasting, painful mark) and at most, such as trans women of color,
afraid to walk around without being literally attacked (which leads to a high murder rate of trans
persons, especially women, especially women of color). While I rejoice in the reclaiming of words,
many people find them hurtful I believe a balance needs to be found between the whining cries
of youre triggering meeee, and people who are actually experiencing flashbacks to abuse.
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Jacqueline Waters July 6, 2014 at 3:32 am #
(which leads to a high murder rate of trans persons, especially women, especially women of
color) do you know this to be a fact or is it a political talking point. I just ran the numbers
from the Department of Justice and the murder rates of trans vs non trans and within a margin
of error you have just as much chance of being murdered trans or not, this is statistically
congruent with people of color as well. In other words a woman of color is just as likely
(actually the numbers indicate just a tad bit more so) to be murdered as a trans woman of
color. Taking race out of the equation you will find the same results compared to the rest of the
populationyour actually just a tuny fraction LESS likely to be murdered while trans than any
other person in the united states based on population numbers from the census and the
murder rates from the DOJ in 2012.
Alo that begs the question, were these murders BECAUSE these people were trans or was it
that they just HAPPENED to be trans?
If I plan to jump off a building and then smoke a joint and do it, did the marijuana make me
jump because they found THC in my blood during the autopsy? Or maybe, just maybe they
are just using numbers to justify a political agenda?
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Liberty Mahalakshmi July 6, 2014 at 12:16 pm #
Actually, if you are a trans woman of colour you are far more likely to be murdered or a
victim of violent crime, particularly in the Americas. Look at the TDOR website. I know
that Sarah Brown in the UK did the maths a few years ago and posted them on her Aunty
Sarah Blog.
How on earth does being afraid to walk around without being literally attacked lead to a
high murder rate of trans persons? Thats just dumb.
People who experience flashbacks to abuse in the course of their day-to-day existence need
to deal with that, not expect to be sheltered and protected from triggers by everyone they
encounter.
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Just-a-thought July 5, 2014 at 11:39 pm #
Am I mistaken, it could happen!, or did this article not begin with an analysis of the lack of
humour that plagued second wave feminism? No one punching you down, rather you seem most
desiring of that subject position. I have to ask: what exactly is the appeal of safe spaces, safe zones,
safe words, et al? What affects are found within this bubble of safety?
penned,
a 3rd wave feminist (with a acerbic sense of humor)
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Tai Miller July 6, 2014 at 1:30 am #
A good question. Safe space should be a place where we can share our experiences, without
ridicule, so we can learn from them. Those are political safe spaces. Its also important that we
feel safe personally, say, in our homes or walking down the street. That is,we should be safe
from direct physical harm. A lot of people dont have those basic kinds of safety and we
should be worried about it, its making us an unsafe and unkind society. That said, we live in a
hard world and we all have bad experiences that stay with us, some are worse than others, this
article isnt talking about people with real PTSD say from being in a war, that need safe space.
What people who feel triggered want is attention. People not getting enough attention is also a
big problem in this world. I hope that explains it. Sometimes we all need safe space, and
sometimes we just need to deal with it.
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Katie July 5, 2014 at 11:44 pm #
These comments are really fascinating. Thanks for writing this I also didnt want to post it to
Facebook and then did anyway after noting the irony. Its a really useful piece of writing, and
captures so much in a very brief set of paragraphs.
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ejones7 July 6, 2014 at 1:40 am #
What does it mean when older people who participate(d) in decades of queer social activism
without recourse to anti-bullying campaigns or social services or multiple representations of other
queer people building lives are angry that younger queer people still feel and are abused,
traumatized, abandoned, misrecognized, beaten, bashed and damaged?
Angry at the claim to an identity, a request for space, an appeal to protection?
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.
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Catherine July 7, 2014 at 8:34 pm #
Well said, ejones7
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caro July 6, 2014 at 1:59 am #
i find this a thoughtful piece that can unfortunately can be easily misconstrued or misread to
justify reactionary ideas. it would be even better if you could touch upon why/how trigger
warnings and the idea behind safe spaces came about. otherwise, while you speak from within the
leftist queer community, without putting up a larger context like that, the ideas in the post can
easily swing rightward.
for instance, lets be clear: theres no such thing as a safe spaceonly a space that seeks to be a safer
one. there is nothing in this world that is free from the economic system that it lives in. capitalism,
imperialism, patriarchy, heterosexism, transphobia, national oppression they permeate
everything, including our own minds. to falsely advertise a space as safe is to actually bring
people to harm by leading people to believe that the space can achieve perfection in a world that
is thoroughly harmful and objectifying.
in addition, trigger warnings are still very important for the people who are traumatized by rape,
murder, child abuse, etc. but being triggered in this world is a constant reality. we should seek to
put trigger warnings on things (and specify what the warnings are) without silencing the need to
discuss those painful topics. trigger warnings are what they arewarningsso that certain people
can avoid the topics for self-preservation or come back later when they are able to manage their
trigger responses better. it is not an excuse for silencing important topics. i dont often like to talk
about rape. but i do because rape existsthrivesin the atmosphere of silence. we talk about
painful topics to seek to abolish the oppression about it. want to end rape? we have to end
patriarchy. that includes discussing its many aspects and contradictions within a class society.
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will July 6, 2014 at 5:58 am #
true, it took a long careful read to make sure that the article wasnt being mean.. I think the
point that could be made more obvious from the start is the fact that this triggering can be
used against communities doing good work, as a kind of trolling that divides and conquers
people who are trying to do good work.
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Suey Park July 6, 2014 at 2:56 am #
Censorship! argument is used by those who are used to having unrestricted freedom by the
state, erasing slavery/imperialism/colonialism.
In order to combat neoliberalism, itd be more strategic to address structural inequality that
creates trauma than those who experience it.
Sometimes white academics use neoliberalism to obscure the reality of black suffering. Point to
the structure! Im not complicit in it!
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Lilee July 6, 2014 at 12:04 pm #
I think that you have a point. AT the same time, you missed the point, and may not experience
the reality, that many of those who demand trigger warnings for themselves and for people
adjacent to them who may or may not want them have NOT experienced any trauma. Most of
the loudest voices demanding trigger warnings are white kids in college. The irony of a bunch
of kids at UC Santa Barbara, one of the wealthiest communities in California, one of the most
expensive states to live in, demanding trigger warnings to protect them from trauma in their
elite school would be funny if it werent so sad.
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What July 6, 2014 at 10:54 pm #
ucsb was literally just the site of a mass shooting
Devin Ens July 6, 2014 at 3:13 am #
Well thought-out analysis, there. Way to make a point.
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Gemma Seymour July 6, 2014 at 3:30 am #
It seems to me that it is something less than productive for a person who is not a trans woman to
presume to instruct trans women on the propriety of semantic constructions which are used
primarily, or even exclusively, to attack the validity of trans women. Trans women dont need
CAFAB gender dilettantes to tell us what should offend us.
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Murat July 6, 2014 at 8:37 am #
So what youre saying is that only trans women have the right to speak on this topic at all?
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liamandthebees July 6, 2014 at 12:04 pm #
no, that is not what gemma is saying. she appears to be pointing out the obnoxiousness of
non-trans-women folk (aka jack halberstam) telling trans women how to feel about the
word tranny, which is a word that historically and presently is usually defined by
cisgender folk and many times trans masculine people with a steady infusion of
microaggressive and oppressive stereotypes toward trans women.
liamandthebees July 6, 2014 at 11:23 am #
right on, gemma. this exactly.
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And I thought that it was short for transvestite. You presume to not only know what it best
for everyone, you presume to know the mind of people who use a word, and assume who
they are and declare their sameness. You obnoxious trans-womenfolk are all alike.
not the biologist July 6, 2014 at 1:28 pm #
In response to Lilee: knowing the minds of the users of the word is irrelevant. The material
consequences of tranny, in marking out the AMAB woman as a class against whom slurs
and thus open discrimination are acceptable and normalised, who are fundamentally men
performing femininity, fall overwhelmingly upon trans women. Drag queens, crossdressers
etc: these groups only rarely and conditionally suffer the abuse and assaults and
restrictions arising from that acceptable-target category, because they are only rarely and
conditionally visible as members of it in public, and categorisation as men is (by the
testimony of members of those groups) accurate. Feminine AMAB agender/gender-variant
people may or may not, situationally and depending on their presentation, experience
those consequences. Trans men and AFAB people of all kinds do not.
So if there is one group with a substantial portion of members reporting experience of
severe real-world consequences because tranny is normalised in the wider culture, and on
the other hand a group primarily composed of those upon whom the consequences are
severely diminished or totally invisible (and a few who do experience those consequences)
clinging to it as a sort of in-group signifier, its obvious to me which a movement which
apparently aspires to solidary and unity and the material wellbeing of its members should
prioritise. That this is the opposite of whats happening in many Queer spaces where
trans women are hearing shut up, this is different to the slurs which target us! alongside
the usual lazy allegations of assimilationism and censorship says everything about the
value of Queer solidarity for us.
Many of us obnoxious trans women are certainly alike in that were thoroughly tired of
Queer embracing and defending TERFs, empowering abusers and reconstructing systems
of masculine privilege, while expecting to be immune to the criticisms these behaviours
would warrant if they came from outside.
What does CAFAB mean please?
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CAFAB, AMAB, TERFWTF?
Twitter is destroying our language
um or you could google it. language UNRUINED!
I miss words. Why is T even part of LGB? It seems like T is a category unto itself that
has nothing to do with lesbians, gays, or bisexuals. Was it a mistake to merge the
movements? I despise the words erasure and invisibility because I see them overused
to the point of rendering them meaningless. Doesnt anyone read George Orwells Politics
and the English Language anymore?
Are you suggesting there is unity of sentiment amongst trans women on the politics of trigger
warnings, identity politics and anti-oppression/privilege activism and how these politics are
played out in political groups?
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Deena Lilygren July 7, 2014 at 12:40 pm #
And this is exactly why I am suspicious of any author doing this type of rhetorical backbends
in order to silence a group of people. To bury this point in talk about trigger warnings and
pretend this isnt about one group having a tantrum about being told not to use the word
tranny is insulting.
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Remove the phrase being told not to use from Deenas comment, and I agree 100%.
leatherargento September 14, 2014 at 6:50 pm #
Youre personalizing this. You cant see past your little corner of the activist world because
you are triggered by inner compulsions, not by outer actions.
No ones telling you not to be offended. Youre being told that your offense is your own
problem to deal with.
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Jen October 29, 2015 at 5:41 pm #
Except many trans women have historically defended the use of tranny. What Halberstam is
saying here is literally nothing new, and certainly not a function of DAFAB folks telling
DAMAB folks what to say or think. Trans women arent a monolith or hivemind; stop trying to
speak for everyone in a large and varied group.
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Ella Gardiner July 6, 2014 at 5:32 am #

what perception. I love being a trannie,
our standards are high.
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Bullied once, forever entitled.
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sharingempathy July 6, 2014 at 12:01 pm #
Zinger! (And, I mean that in a good way!)
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Mike Keller July 6, 2014 at 9:30 am #
In a joint statement, the Peoples Front of Juda and the Judn Peoples Front acknowledged that
their proposed merger is on hold due to the inability of the two groups to agree on a name for the
new organization. The statement continued that they remain hopeful.
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terremoto July 7, 2014 at 10:37 am #
Splitter!!!
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dianeperazzo July 6, 2014 at 9:57 am #
Well said! I find the practice of trigger warnings unsettling and makes me further regret the
overprotective culture of fear and paranoia in which we have raised our children.
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Nebris July 6, 2014 at 10:16 am #
These type of microscopic arguments over language etc [like Facebooks 70 gender definition
dropdown menu] are a sign of political impotence and the perfect mechanism with which to
perpetuate ones victimhood while avoiding the real Social Justice battles, you know, the ones that
involve Money and Power.
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Yes! I got that from this blog post too!
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Raybaybay July 6, 2014 at 10:20 am #
David Harvey feels triggered by this use of neo-liberal.
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elffeet July 6, 2014 at 10:51 am #
Oh thank god. Youve put into words what has been driving me nuts for several years now!
Thank you.
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user July 6, 2014 at 10:57 am #
Reblogged this on The Talking Cock-up Blues and commented:
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. With the help of friendly adults, therapy,
queer youth groups and national campaigns, these same youth internalize narratives of damage
that they themselves may or may not have actually experienced. Queer youth groups in particular
install a narrative of trauma and encourage LGBT youth to see themselves as endangered and
precarious whether or not they actually feel that way, whether or not coming out as LGB or T
actually resulted in abuse! And then, once they age out of their youth groups, those same LGBT
youth become hypersensitive to all signs and evidence of the abuse about which they have
learned.
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S July 6, 2014 at 11:59 am #
Thank you for highlighting the emergence of a hierarchy where the most traumatized and
triggered voices are becoming the standard to which all discourse should be normalized. Being
able to characterize other peoples language and identities as triggering is a construction of the
speakers privilege, and is driven by the belief that ones own experiences and beliefs are more
valid than those of others.
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To quickly dovetail on this note, the further entrenched we become in this speakerly insistence
on being triggered, traumatized, and violated we mimic the Monty Python skit: A house? We
lived in a room! Youre lucky, we lived in a corridor. Corridor? We lived in a hole in the
ground. We got evicted from our hole in the ground.
Far from normative, myself, this linguistic slide is far from anti-normative. Rather, its the
Olympics of agony. Except no one is landing a one foot vault like Kerri Strug in 1996.
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Cheryl July 6, 2014 at 11:59 am #
Thanks for this wake-up call.
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Censorship! argument is used by those who are used to having unrestricted freedom by the
state, erasing slavery/imperialism/colonialism. < right on
i'm with you here also on this article being used to defend abusive behavior and that helping
professionals/organizers sharing this are demonstrating their untrustworthiness (particularly as
allies).
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Allies to whom? A few hundred people steeped in this insular theory? Or allies to whole
communities who, by and large, cast a gimlet eye at those activists, academics and advocates
who spew out this incomprehensible psychobabble jibber jabber on their behalf ?
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But putting linguistic handcuffs on professors because of the sensitivities of theoretical injuries is
real censorship and real danger.
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RAGNARKKURR (@raggijons) July 7, 2014 at 9:37 pm #
Halberstams situated context, geopolitically and academically, provides his perspectives on
the t*word and trigger warnings with a privileged platform.
While I understand that, yes, privileged activists are increasingly overusing *trigger warnings*
and participate in oppression olympics, trauma, violence, discrimination and oppression are
very real phenomena.
The sanctioning of the t*words usage also denies the privilege Jack has in growing up within
the U.S., or a place in general where violent forms of cisheteronormativity, cissexism,
heterosexism, misogynies and violence (structural, physical, material, emotional) are still
thriving.
It also ignores how a word like tranny is used to justify violence and discrimination. It ignores
the rankling possibility of tranny being a triggering word, because of its usage vis--vis trauma
such as rape or violence.
Its also easy to be like, if theres a historical precedent for acceptance, lets ignore people today
whos experiences with the terminology have been rampant and violent. Or in places where
trans rights are not existent. Or trans hatred and ignorance still cause tangible, material,
physical consequences for trans people, especially for those without access to adequate mental
& medical healthcare.
Its also easy to speak with such grandiloquence when a lot of poor uneducated trans (and
queer) folks cant. When theyve been kicked out of their homes and taken to the streets. If and
when a history of trauma is their history. When something like survival sex work is maybe the
only viable quick-fix way to avoid starvation. When the word tranny is used by police, other
violent state members, and bigots to justify violence. When youre not discussing the
intersections of race, citizenship, language, religion, (mental & physical) disability, education,
access to discourse, but glossing over them to emphasize gender & sexuality.
Capitalism fucks us all over (besides those churning its cogs), but thats based (at least in the
U.S., but many places globally as well) on former histories of imperialism, colonialism, slavery,
transnational domination&extraction. You ignore how the gender binary is itself instigated by
racist-colonial projects. You ignore your privilege in currently passing as masc when some of
us trannies are not afforded or cannot afford such privileges.
So disappointed in this argument, even though I know where its coming from. One cannot see
the struggles of truly marginalized communities from the peak of the ivory tower.
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caro July 8, 2014 at 9:20 am #
i hear ya loud and clear. see my comment above:
https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/2014/07/05/you-are-triggering-me-the-neo-liberalrhetoric-of-harm-danger-and-trauma/#comment-8505
JakeD July 14, 2014 at 8:55 pm #
Using your privilege to further egalitarian discourse is not ignoring privilege. If we
pathologically reduce ones speech to where one comes from (as so many Halberstam
critics are doing), we are unable to see where ones speech can lead to. This critique, almost
like a deep freeze, undermines decolonization. It rehearses, reiterates, and reproaches the
status quo. Ive yet to hear a critique that substantiates the dangers of the word tranny as it
is co-opted. No one is arguing against the violence of this word contextually; it fact, greater
violence can stem from its monolithic interpretation. It saddens me to see such a
conservative trans-community, but glad the conversation has many who are willing to
listen. Along a similar state of affairs: Israel justifying the genocide of Palestinians based on
their right to self defense. A tacit example of the triggers necropolitical results.
Tracey Yeadon-Lee July 6, 2014 at 12:19 pm #
Thank you for this such a thoughtful, welcome and much needed piece!
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Sadly, I think you are right that abusers will use it to justify their rudeness and insensitivity but
that doesnt mean the article is rude or insensitive. Abusers often have a knack of twisting any
side of the argument.
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sirenis July 6, 2014 at 11:49 pm #
As a survivor of DV with PTSD I have to admit this comment is a perfect example of why this
article is necessary. No, someone disagreeing with you is not a form of abuse. Making that
comparison is incredibly disrespectful and ignorant. And appropriating the language of
trauma is not a valid way to silence people you disagree with intellectually.
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not the biologist July 6, 2014 at 12:24 pm #
Yes, lets all jump in line and be good little lockstep soldiers in someone elses war. God forbid we
question whether the in-group were told were supposed to identify with is actually doing things
that benefit us, or whether the actions of elements within it materially harm us just as much as
those of the wider culture. More, in fact, when the members of Queer who a structurally
misogynist, masculinist, ciscentric society considers most acceptable and grants a voice are those
who least represent the needs and struggles of the most marginalised. God forbid we refuse to
hand out free passes just because someone drew a line and put us on the same side as people who
attack us.
If theres one lesson we delicate (yet dangerous!) Bad Trans People must learn, it is apparently that
we are incapable of accurately identifying the things which do us harm. If only wed stop telling
you youre hurting us when youre hurting us, eh? If only we would just *understand* that your
desire to have an edgy reclaimed slur naturally trumps the fact cis culture treats your use of
tranny as permission from within Queer to keep trans women in a non-serious, non-female,
acceptable-target category and subject us to all the consequences of that. Consequences which
dont fall on you, fall on drag queens only occasionally and gender-variant people conditionally,
but which fall on trans women every single second of every single day. Or is the word of all the
trans women who report those consequences suspect, because were not strong, resilient and
radical-masculine like you?
Ill tell you this: if you want these awful, divisive trans people to become wholehearted members
and supporters of Queer, the route to it is right in front of you. Solidarity must be earned, not
demanded. Understand that it means making sacrifices, and that the dominant male and
masculine voices within Queer have given up very little and gained everything. Tranny is a tiny
concession, and yet apparently not one which unity would be worth your making.
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jakeish July 6, 2014 at 1:36 pm #
Yes. Thank you for this comment.
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Janik July 6, 2014 at 6:28 pm #
First of all, your every single second of every single day isnt at all hyperbolic or too extreme
to be taken seriously. This all or nothing, if youre not for us, youre against us, Ally is
something you EARN, not something you claim attitude is it helping anything or anyone? Or
is it just fueling rage? Is it just making people feel good about bad-mouthing the very people
who stand in front of grocery stores gathering signatures on petitions to put LGBTQ issues on
ballots? Because Ive done that, and Im tired of people who enjoy the freedom my parents
generation won for them in marches and protests telling us to all go fuck ourselves because we
cannot grasp the depths of their pain. Their beloved, precious, self-defining, all-encompassing
pain.
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chiMaxx July 8, 2014 at 8:45 pm #
naturally trumps *the fact* cis culture treats your use of tranny as permission from within
Queer to keep trans women in a non-serious, non-female, acceptable-target category and
subject us to all the consequences of that.
*Is* this a fact?
What evidence do you have that cis culture gives a rats ass what goes on within Queer?
What in the world makes you think that if all your allies stopped using the word tomorrow
cis culture would modify its use of the word one iota?
Has marking a word taboo and getting allies to stop using it in various ways ever done
anything but intensify the power of that word to be used as a slur by those who use it with
that intent?
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dentedbluemercedes July 6, 2014 at 12:58 pm #
Neoliberal does not mean what you clearly think it means. It most often refers to the Republican
/ conservative fetishization of Randian-style free market capitalism, free of social programs, free
of regulations and free of restrictions on the corporate world. While there is a bit of the freespeech-without-consequence perspective to it (a.k.a. your position, not the position that you
criticize), it is a radicalized and bastardized form of libertarianism.
Im not personally interested in playing oppression olympics or word police, and believe that
theres also a divisive undertone in the tranny debate.
That said, its not an issue without nuance. One persons sense of being infantilized and reduced
in agency by calls for safe space and focusing on victimhood is another persons opportunity to
exorcise their very real personal pain and start on a path toward healing. We are not all at the
same stage in our lives.
So while I see value in some of what youre saying, trauma does indeed exist, and is not helped by
rationalizing the deliberate disrespecting and disregarding of that trauma. And while that might
not have been the intended take-away, the f yeah response certainly suggests thats where
readers are going.
Its a balance. And personally, if that balance leans anywhere, Id rather it lean toward respect.
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Excellent comment! Mutual respect, compassion and agencythe way to go!
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If the comments of others in mixed groups that are not blatantly and intentionally abusive is
enough to demolish ones sense of self simply because they do not validate ones self
conception sufficiently, then one needs to seek professional help to deal with that. Nobody is
entitled for everyone else to buy their schtick, not in love, not in business, not in friendship,
nowhere. That is not the same thing as bullying by any measure.
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GoodBadGirl July 6, 2014 at 11:11 pm #
Its a balance. And personally, if that balance leans anywhere, Id rather it lean toward
respect. **This**! Thank you dentedbluemercedes. It seems to me a mind as dexterous as Jack
Halberstrams should be capable of making these arguments without demeaning so many
people.
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Oliver Wendell Holmes July 7, 2014 at 11:32 pm #
Well, this is a tangent, but I feel compelled to point out some differences between neoliberalism and libertarianism.
Neo-liberalism is not a GOP ideology; it is the economic ideology of the Democratic Party
(though shared by some GOP members, and with some Dem exceptions). It does, indeed,
advocate free markets (market liberalization) but it does so on a different basis from
libertarianism: utilitarian, instead of procedural justice or natural rights. It uses the criteria
of market failure to decide the appropriate role of government. Libertarianism, on the other
hand, uses a theory of justice to say that the governments role is not empirically determined at
all. It resists neo-liberal attempts to remedy market failures. It says that taxation is theft,
welfare is exploitation of the rich, etc., on moral grounds.
Neo-liberalism seeks market-based (or social choice theory-based) solutions to problems
which libertarians believe should not be solved at all, or deny the existence of (when that is
more convenient). For example, neo-liberalism says that the solution to global warming is capand-trade, whereas libertarianism offers no possibility of solution and thats why libertarians
are prone to deny that the problem even exists. (Similarly, many libertarians are natural
monopoly denialists.)
I say all this as an opponent of neo-liberalism, which like libertarianism is fundamentally
inhumane in its way of dealing with the working class, and serves as a way of rationalizing
and normalizing poverty and inequality. (Libertarianism says that inequality is morally just;
neo-liberalism dispenses with justice considerations, saying that inequality is efficient and that
efficient economic growth will solve distributional problems.) Id like to keep these ideologies
straight in order to better oppose them. They both stand in the way of the abolition of poverty,
but through different means.
Sorry for the tangent. I wont follow up on this, promise!
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I appreciate your attempt to clarify this. I think what confuses many peopleand
especially people who think in terms of social privilege rather than economic privilege is
that neoconservatives are a subset of neoliberals. Heres David Harvey: US
neoconservatives favour corporate power, private enterprise, and the restoration of class
power. Neoconservatism is therefore entirely consistent with the neoliberal agenda of elite
governance, mistrust of democracy, and the maintenance of market freedoms. But it veers
away from the principles of pure neoliberalism and has reshaped neoliberal practices in
two fundamental respects: first, in its concern for order as an answer to the chaos of
individual interests, and second, in its concern for an overweening morality as the
necessary social glue to keep the body politic secure in the face of external and internal
changes.
Flufftronix (@flufftronix) July 6, 2014 at 12:59 pm #
This was a breath of fresh air! But censorship isnt the word youre looking for. Thats
something states do (ie, in your example, banning The Life of Brian), not marginalized
people/movements/etc.
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Tommi Paalanen July 7, 2014 at 7:03 pm #
I agree that censorship is a bit too strong a word here, but as it can be used in selfcensorship, its meaning is definitely broader than just state censorship.
Also, a term moralist shaming could be useful here. It is a way of silencing undesired views
by collectively painting them as immoral, insensitive, misogynous, racist etc. without proper
analysis or discussion.
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Annie July 6, 2014 at 1:06 pm #
While I agree that the overuse of trigger warnings has led to the over-simplification of definitions
of trauma, critiques of such warnings are often complicit in this simplification, tending to treat all
claims of being triggered as similar instances of harm, whether or not the instance in question is
the name of a nightclub or explicit accounts of rape. Curiously, this has also resulted in the
construction of a different hierarchy of woundedness, in which older scholar/activists who, we
are reminded, had no recourse to anti-bullying campaigns or social services or multiple
representations of other queer people building lives, tell younger privileged generations to
get over themselves. Certainly, there is a problem with reducing queer politics to arguments
over language, slang, and naming, but Id wager that much of the anger surrounding academic
responses to trigger warnings has more to do with the tendency to treat these warnings as if
they are always in service of a larger political goal. As a result, the other side can only respond by
pointing out that there trauma is REAL, which doesnt really get anyone anywhere. Do we need to
have a conversation about these issues? Absolutely. But this isnt going to be initiated by older
scholars telling younger students/scholars/activists that they need to laugh and loosen up (as
much as I may love Monty Python).
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Janik July 6, 2014 at 6:38 pm #
yes it is. It has been. Were having it. You just participated in it.
There is something to be said for loosening up, or at least building some resilience. Its okay
to be uncomfortable, enraged, scared, embarrassed, shocked, and other unpleasant feelings. It
isnt the responsibility of educators to protect students, especially not adult students, from
opinions, images, thoughts, and words that may produce the above feelings. Resilience is a
LIFE skill.
We have to talk about all of it. Its good for us! Its good for me, who generally thinks that the
upcoming millenials are the biggest group of whiners of all time, to hear that Im an old, usedup, irrelevant piece of shit! So I can go, Hey, wait, why do you think that? Am I? Where am I
going wrong here? What am I missing. Hmmm. Lets think about this. And then I read. I talk
to people. I form opinions. I learn. I grow.
Why focus on who has the right or the invitation to start the conversation? Its started. It will
keep going. I, for one, am interested in where it goes.
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Captainlaurie July 6, 2014 at 1:30 pm #
I stopped reading this after I realized that you were incorrectly referring to Brian as Jesus. Brian
wasnt Jesus, thats the whole point. His life began with a case of mistaken identity, because he
was born in the manger next to Jesus. And Jesus is actually a very small character in the film
theres a depiction of the Sermon on the Mount where Brian sees Judith for the first time, which
leads him to get mixed up in the PFJ. Later, when hes trying to escape from some Roman soldiers,
he gets up on a platform in a marketplace full of prophets and spouts out a bunch of ridiculous
nonsense to blend in, and some people hear this and start following Brian around, proclaiming
him the messiah. Part of what makes it such awesome religious satire is the idea that any random
dude standing on a raised platform can yell a bunch of religious-sounding drivel, and people will
latch onto that, because most people are idiots desperate to find a herd to follow.
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halberst July 6, 2014 at 3:07 pm #
Oops. Right. I did not re-watch all of the Life of Brian just bits. I watched all of the Holy Grail
though and cannot wait to work through all the Monty Pythons again!! This makes everything
even funnier. Ta mate!
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IVY July 6, 2014 at 1:47 pm #
Thank you Jack Halberstam for this insightful and needed piece. You are articulating around a
broadly held concern in many activist communities that people are afraid to speak on for fear of
reprisal, censorship or being labeled as supporting oppressive behavior. Its extremely
encouraging to see the overwhelmingly positive response from so many of the readers who share
similar critiques. Conflating this critique with being supportive of abusive behavior is
problematic and whats needed is honest dialogue and debate around an issue people are clearly
concerned about.
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dmhannah July 6, 2014 at 1:55 pm #
I think that while people engage in activism it is also possible to be inclusive and, in doing so,
forming a safe space within activist circles. But I also think the type of identity politics you were
referring to (making struggle a competition) is not the kind I am thinking of that is beneficial and
productive. Additionally, sometimes people need to be called out for being oppressive, but it
shouldnt ruin their lives they should be able to address it, move on from that and continue
doing meaningful work because we NEED THEM. But right now I think a lot of SJ-ers arent
giving people that chance. Over semantics, a faux-pas, one offensive thing they said that they
apologized for laterbut not everyone grew up in the suburbs surrounded by academics and
received a liberal arts education. Humans are going to fuck up. Let them fuck up, let them recover,
and move on.
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Rafi Metz July 6, 2014 at 2:25 pm #
Quite refreshing. Thank you. As I always say: Dont agonize, organize!
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Inevitably, some of the comments have already degenerated into ad hominems and divisive
generalisations. Academic memes and acronyms obscure meaning and people flaunt their
credentials while denying others entitlement to an opinion.
There is (some) validity in everyones opinion here. If you disagree, explain why rather than
denying someones right to an opinion.
Please.
There are trans women here who argue that Jack is not allowed to tell us what to thinkis that
really what Jack is doing? I dont think so.
There are many trans women (and trans men and genderqueers and drag queens/kings) who use
the word to describe themselves.
Wouldnt it be a lot easier if we all agreed to disagree? If we take responsibility for our own
opinions and speech, while allowing others the same freedom and responsibility, the debate can
move on. Otherwise we will continue to recite the same old arguments and counter-arguments,
which is energy-sapping and distracts us from our activism.
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Quince July 6, 2014 at 3:02 pm #
Absolutely! And yet, I have one question: Are parrots not pets, too?
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halberst July 6, 2014 at 3:05 pm #
Finally a question I can answer! Yes, parrots are pets but I just wanted to make a subtle
reference to the dead parrots sketch from Monty Python!
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Hmmm pets? Hurrumph!!!..
I prefer to liberate parrots from their cages and set those beautiful, colourful beings free to
terrorise the local sparrow population lolz
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Jeson July 6, 2014 at 3:22 pm #
The word trigger is a major trigger for me.
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Chris July 6, 2014 at 3:37 pm #
But, in the 1990s, books on neoliberalism, postmodernism, gender performativity and racial
capital turned the focus away from the wounded self and we found our enemies and, as we spoke
out and observed that neoliberal forms of capitalism were covering over economic exploitation
with language of freedom and liberation, it seemed as if we had given up wounded selves for new
formulations of multitudes, collectivities, collaborations, and projects less centered upon
individuals and their woes.
This may all be true, and I agree with you on the trigger crybabies, but youve got to say, that
didnt really lead to much, did it? None of those projects actually led to the emergence of a strong
socialist movement or real political change. We just got Clinton, Bush, Blair, Obama etc.
Thats the problem with the New Left. Theres so much talk about great new ideas and
collectivities and stuff, but no on off campus ever cares.
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bittersickqueen July 6, 2014 at 4:38 pm #
So since trans feminine folks have already called out the way you used this entire article to justify
why your are allowed to use the t-slur.
I just have to say that making the issue of trigger warnings about those whiny kids who dont
know real struggle instead of analyzing its effectiveness as a way of creating access for folks in
movement work is super ableist. (I mean besides the way you make fun of people with MCS for
holding up what I guess is *real activist work*?) The whole idea that some folks are *actually*
triggered but everyone else is just whiny sets up movement leadership as gatekeepers deciding
whose trauma is real enough to warrant accommodation.
Trigger warnings can be seen as part of a movement that collectivizes work towards increased
access in social movements (and I mean we have a long way to go judging by this article and
commenters) rather than putting the onus on participants to manage their trauma (which is
actually a super neoliberal response.).
So yeah do I get to say that this article triggered me? Cause it did. Someone trying to explain away
someone elses trauma is gas lighting and can bring up stuff for folks. But I guess Im just *too
sensitive* and need to stop expecting movements not to re-inscribe the effects of oppression,
right? We wouldnt want to turn into censors who divide movements over arbitrary things (like
access I guess lol).
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stop it with the reactionary nonsense July 6, 2014 at 5:27 pm #
Jack, are you really going to spew that kind of ableist crap? Your audience is imaginary, some
straw queers you drew up, quite honestly. Sure there are some people who need to learn the
difference between being uncomfortable, emotionally activated, and triggered. And yes Im sure
that the capital S Safe Space agenda that you and your reference speak to here are real things
that operate alongside hate crime legislation and things like that to police and criminalize. But this
is not the only way intentional harm reduction works. You have drawn up your suburban,
compulsory-healthy/abled, class privileged, all white queer audience just to tear it down (which
doesnt make sense considering your past work) and you know what? It isnt working. Because
your audience isnt so singular, and it isnt real. There are ways of attending to the way-toosimplistic broadening of the meaning of trauma without throwing people with trauma and
triggers into the gutter. Queer and trans folks are not exempt from trauma or what doctors like to
call mental illness just because some queer/trans people have a ton of (racial, classed, gendered,
health) privilege, and you telling us to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps is some straight up
normal bullcrap. Get over yourself, just because you might not have struggled with mental health
or might have worked through it doesnt mean everybody else is making a big deal out of their
own experiences. And just because we, in our communities, ask others to be intentional and
careful with our triggers while we heal does not equate to censorship and is definitely not
neoliberal. Taking care of each other is actually hella subversive. It is part of resistance.
And guess what? Queer and trans people dont only have gendered/sexualized trauma
(surprise!), but every other kind of trauma that is possible because were people and we live in the
world. And those traumas create verbal, chemical, and visual triggers.
Go head though, Jack, go ahead delegitimizing peoples emotional trauma and dismissing the
voices of folks who are struggling. Patriarchy and white supremacy clearly need some help with
that.
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Eoin July 6, 2014 at 5:38 pm #
Thank you for this article, Jack. As someone who works with those who have experienced
psychological trauma, I am struck by a glaring irony inherent in the strategies of the aggrieved to
whom you refer, i.e. a feature shared by just about all trauma-focused approaches to therapy is the
progressive attempt to support clients in dropping safety behaviors (such as avoidance) which so
often develop following a trauma, e.g. avoiding certain places, people, stimuli which remind one
of the original traumatic event. The world will always be rife with such stimuli, regardless of how
many times we argue with someone not to say something which triggers us. Therefore, it is
through processing of the trauma memory, learning to cope with and alleviate our response to
matched triggers, as well as challenging (compassionately) the role of learning processes such as
assimilation and over-accommodation that recovery ensues. Put simply, we need to actively
engage in corrective learning to counter the effects of trauma rather than expect the impossible,
i.e. that we can bicker our way to a world devoid of any possible triggers.
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Lisa Duggan July 7, 2014 at 6:10 pm #
Thanks for this very helpful comment Eoin. It is indeed true that within the therapeutic model
itself, perpetual avoidance of triggers is NOT a healing strategy. And also, the things that
trigger trauma survivors are never entirely rational or predictable. It could be a certain
flower or a certain smell, rather than a literal representation. We can and should have debates
over the politics of language, but the trigger warning strategy is not only depoliticizing (imho),
but ineffective.
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Eoin July 7, 2014 at 7:46 pm #
Thanks, Lisa. It seems striking to me that aside from the few people posting here who
have themelves experienced trauma there is little discussion of the largely therapeutic
context in which a term such as trigger was likely derived. I have to admit that Im not as
familiar as many here are with theories/frameworks such as neoliberalism, LGBT-related
theory, etc. But it seems worthwhile to consider such matters also with reference to
evidence-supported approaches used with those attempting to recover from the effects of
psychological trauma.
No, I was commenting on language. And, how it works. We know what the t* word means. (I am
also one of those folks that has actual PTSD).
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I was also no where near college in 1994. Just so we are all good and clear.
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Audrey July 6, 2014 at 6:32 pm #
Ok. This article really baffled me. Im 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 arent banded together on
one united front. Im 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 theyve 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 youre a white upper middle class
cisgender gay boy growing up in SF, your queer childhood is probably pretty good. If youre 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, Im 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 whos a part of the queer community doesnt mean
they understand jackshit about your experience. Just because somebody is gay or bi or pan
doesnt 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 isnt 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 thats a terrifying prospect for a lot of us. For many of us, our stories are all
we have. Our words are all we have. Weve got no other proof, so if you choose not to believe us,
theres nothing we can do. So really, its 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) Theres 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 arent paying their proper respects. In short: We solved everything for you! We wrote
books! Why didnt you read them!?
But, look. Queer childhoods are almost by their very nature isolated. Were pretty thin on the
ground, queers, and if youre growing up in a small town, no matter WHAT era, its really easy to
think that youre the only one. You keep thinking that for years and years. Most of us didnt 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 didnt 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
didnt.
I think this is why the language of todays queers is so incomprehensible to older queers. It wasnt
built with your direct influence. So from the outside, demands for trigger warnings may seem
ludicrous, but from the inside, its 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 isnt a big deal. This language
has been in development online for maybe five years. Its got a lot of growing left to do. Right
now, its still somewhat cumbersome. This is why the language seems clunky and over-sensitive:
its a language in its infancy. By the time weve refined it, made it efficient and elegant and subtle,
therell 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. Ill just end
this section with a quote from Supernatural: Kids aint supposed to be grateful. Theyre
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 nonoperative trans woman, usually naked. It doesnt 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, theyre not talking about drag
queens or transvestites or even trans men. Theyre 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 preop, usually naked can you understand why it doesnt make sense for people who arent 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 cant just declare a word like the t-word reclaimed and wipe your
hands of the whole discussion, because words arent static! Their meanings change over time!
Ahh! I cant 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 dont 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. Youre talking about a group of people who are mostly in our early twenties. Its
the nature of ones 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 weve 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, selfobsessed 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 thats not the fault of US for being more melodramatic and selfobsessed than previous generations, its just growing pains of a civilization adapting to the digital
age.
Just some thoughts.
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Aaron July 7, 2014 at 10:31 pm #
just wanted to say this is a great comment
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Incorrect! Im a person under thirty, and tranny sure doesnt mean that to me.
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Audrey: Well-done! I completely agree with you. You made my heart sing and give me more
hope for your generation than Ive had in a while. Cogent, articulate, insightful, intelligent,
meaningful, accurate and ingenious! I dont mean to sound matronizing, but I am almost 60.
So, the older generation isnt hopeless, either. THANK YOU!
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Todd July 6, 2014 at 7:08 pm #
@ OoTTW: Do you have any data on how many trans/bi/queer/gay youth have an actual
diagnosis of PTSD?
Simply claiming to have it isnt, obviously, the same as being diagnosed with it.
Unless there is solid data on the subject, asserting the widespread presence of PTSD among the
above groups cheapens the diagnosis and certainly weakens your argument. Its one thing to have
lived through difficulty, and I do not disparage such a challenge, but its entirely another to have
PTSD. Facts matter here.
( I recognize that many, if not most, will not have access to the necessary facilities to get a
diagnosis, but that lack of access is something you and I likely agree needs to change. Healthcare
should be a civil right.)
Tranny, fag, queer are all words that marginalized communities have reclaimed as theirs in the
face of oppression. This is a simple historical observation, amply demonstrated by groups from
ACT-UP to Dykes on Bikes to Queer Nation. Taking tranny away from self-identified trannies is
not only counterproductive, but actively assists those who benefit from a fractious and splintered
opposition. My ideological and cultural opponents are Christian theocrats, neoliberal politicians
and corporations, heteronormativity and AIDS-phobia. I certainly do not count you among those
enemies, and hopefully, you dont see me, for all my disagreement with you, among yours.
This debate reminds me of the very early days of the AIDS epidemic. Certain people, mostly gay
white men working for establishment corporations, had health insurance, while others, mostly
people of color, the poor, and the young, did not. Those who had coverage were called golden
life boaters, and they were accused of being privileged and insensitive to the plight of those
without coverage. It was not a productive debate: there needed to be action on developing
treatments, establishing support networks, and forcing government action. Eventually, people
here in San Francisco developed a model of support that became as inclusive as possible. Shanti
(an organization providing practical and emotional support for PWAs, their family, partners, and
loved ones) trainings constantly emphasized the need to recognize privilege and to combat it.
Of course, such efforts were imperfect but by forwarding compassion in place of controversy, San
Franciscans dealing with a horrifying epidemic were able to achieve enough political unity to
develop effective institutions in response to the deadly crisis.
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narrativeeschatology July 8, 2014 at 11:49 pm #
Trannies are appropriating PTSD from the disabled.
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Space Crip July 6, 2014 at 7:13 pm #
People with various kinds of fatigue, easily activated allergies, poorly managed trauma were
constantly holding up proceedings to shout in loud voices about how bad they felt because
someone had said, smoked, or sprayed something near them that had fouled up their breathing
room.
I think this sentence in particular demonstrates this posts complete failure to understand the
concepts of accessibility or self-advocacy. Because, wow, isnt it just awful when disabled people
(whether that be people with multiple chemical sensitivities or mental disabilities) advocate for an
environment that is just as accessible to them as it is to non-disabled people?
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Catherine July 7, 2014 at 8:44 pm #
I so agree with you on this point. Space Crip.
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No. Feeling triggered is not a mental disability. That sort of disableist nonsense trivializes
actual mental disabilities. Dont do that.
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Space Crip July 8, 2014 at 1:02 am #
Feeling triggered is not a mental disability, but trigger and content warnings were
developed at the grassroots level to accommodate people with actual mental or
psychiatric disabilities relating to trauma or compulsive or self-harming behavior. Many
years ago, before trigger warnings became the source of academics ire, small online
communities (like LiveJournal) used trigger warnings as a courtesy to friends in their circle
when discussing things like rape or disordered eating or cutting. This gave people with
PTSD, eating disorders, or who self-harmed the option of looking at the content being
warned for or not. Trigger warnings are still used in many communities for those purposes.
So what? Because a handful of marginalized LiveJournal users fostered and enabled the
perpetuation of a culture of moral indignation and victimhood, were all obliged to
participate?
Im triggered by trigger warnings. They give me flashbacks to the traumatic abuse Ive
suffered at the hands of entitled narcissists. Wheres my fucking safe space?
@Space Crip:
Remember the joke about the girl who dug with such glee and abandon through a pile of
manure that happened to be delivered the morning of her birthday. There must be a horse
in there somewhere! she shouted.
If people want to enlist a small circle of friends or of the similarly afflicted to do this with
them, then bully for them. If they want to make their home a place where they can remove
their emotional armor, more power to them.
But when they step outside the circle or outside the home and try to impose these
behavioral and linguistic rules on the wider community, when they attack allies who dont
share the private idiosyncratic vocabulary of sensitivities, connotations, and definitional
associations that they have cultivated with their closed circle, then they become censorious
whiners.
But glory doesnt mean a nice knock-down argument, Alice objected.
When I use a word, Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, it means just what I
choose it to mean neither more nor less.
The question is, said Alice, whether you can make words mean so many different things.
The question is, said Humpty Dumpty, which is to be master thats all.
And, of course, Trigger is a horse.
Also, just stop using the tired old this demonstrates a complete failure to understand line.
It comes off both condescending and dumb.
Judith obviously understands the concepts of accessibility and self-advocacy; he just
disagrees with you about effect them.
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syrens July 6, 2014 at 8:43 pm #
Reblogged this on syrens and commented:
This piece got my attention because it was about Trigger Warnings. Im ambivalent about
trigger warnings. On the one hand, I have definitely wound up with tunnel vision and my
shoulders up around my ears and my breath coming too fast and too short, due to subject matter
that freaks me the fuck out. I definitely would have appreciated a heads-up so that Id know what
I was getting myself into. But I also have some side-eye for Im Feeling Triggered when,
rather than meaning I am on the edge of a panic attack it means I dont like feeling
uncomfortable, and this subject is uncomfortable for me (particularly when the uncomfortable is
due to things like I feel guilty about my privilege just as a for-instance). Its easy to abuse, is
what Im getting at. And this particular post talks about how the trauma olympics isnt a good
way to organize (or Organize) ourselves. At the same time, I do give this post a bit of a side-eye
about (for example) words that are getting reclaimed by people who were never hurt by them in
the first place. The feel I get from this piece which, given that Im two drinks in at this point,
may not be accurate is that, because we (as queers) arent necessarily getting beaten up, raped
straight, thrown in jail, or otherwise brutalized *because of our sexual orientations*, our desire to
make our space Safe is not legit, on some level. Like having a GSA in your school means you
cant think about how youre X perecentage less likely to get hired for a job if youre out, or that
you cant be a queer white-collar government worker *and* an incest survivor (for example), or
something. Im hoping Im missing something on this that the author is really saying something
like Hey there, white, cis queers, maybe *dont* be all Im So Opressed just because youre
queer when other people in your (or your?) communities are *actually* still getting harassed by
Concerned Citizens (sometimes that means cops, sometimes that means gentrifiers, and so-on)
because theyre brown/sexworking/trans/all-of-the-above/etc.
I dont know. Anyway. Give it a read and see what you think.
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Amy Dentata July 6, 2014 at 9:20 pm #
Cherry-picking extreme, rare examples to dismiss a much broader social awakening that has has a
net benefit for survivors of trauma. Dismissing the real danger that still exists for queer people
whether or not they faced danger upon initially coming out.
These younger folks, with their gay-straight alliances, their supportive parents and their new
right to marry regularly issue calls for safe space.'
Not all young kids have GSAs or supportive parents. This is a caricaturization of an entire
generation, of which a large number have suffered abuse, because abuse is very, very common.
Going from These hardship competitions, but without the humor, are set pieces among the
triggered generation to:
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 These younger folks, with their gay-straight
alliances, their supportive parents and their new right to marry
So. Hardship competitions, eh?
May as well have written kids these days have it perfect! Back in my day we didnt even have
marriage! The author is engaging in the same suffering competition that the article accuses
others of performing, except on the basis of age.
lets acknowledge that being queer no longer automatically means being brutalized
Within very small bubbles of the world. Often, wealthy white bubbles. These bubbles are the
exception, not the norm. The author apparently has been living in one of those bubbles for so long
hes forgotten that violence still exists outside of these bubblesand certainly still exists within as
well.
This article is an insipid omg trigger warnings, what drama queens rant dressed up as
something with substance. Next time remember to actually bring the substance.
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alejo July 6, 2014 at 9:31 pm #
Umm, OK. Theres one or two kernels of usefulness here: I appreciate critiques of the tendency in
some political circles to over-psychologize oppression at the expense of critiquing systems of
oppression that can be way outside of personally experienced feelings of empowerment or hurt.
That is a thing that happens, and I agree its often linked to neoliberalisms emphasis of the
individual and rejection of actual structural modes of understanding what happens in the world. I
also think narratives that dramatize and assign wounded affect to queer youth happen and are at
times very much a part of a basically conservative politics.
But the rest of this post and many of the comments are just so grossly dismissive of younger queer
folks, and of the marginalization of trans women in and outside of activist / queer / radical
circles, and of the notion that theres political and ethical good to be found in interpersonal
decency and thoughtfulness. I think you can critique the over-emphasis on personal emotion and
the pained romanticization of queer youth without all this kinda macho celebration of not giving a
fuck about other people, yknow?
Like, Ive seen, on occasion, people ask for or demand trigger warnings, or decry their absence, in
ways Ive found to be dishonest and self-serving. This, though, has in my experience been rare
and mostly been from folks who were already pretty privileged and entitled and this description
does not include the majority of queer / LGBT youth. Queer youth arent quivering pain-
receptacles, but neither are we exclusively problem-free kids who face zero anti-queer violence or
systemic discrimination and just mindlessly freeload off the accomplishments of our predecessors
on our happy road to assimilation or comfortable bourgeois boheme self-satisfaction.
I legitimately dont understand the widespread backlash against the act of letting people know
when potentially triggering content is in the pipeline. Like, during my undergrad I went to a
school that was mostly non-white and largely black, in a mostly black city, and I took a class on
the political history of photography in the US, and the professor who was no social justice
warrior, just a pretty run-of-the-mill moderate-liberal art historian thought it would be
reasonable and kind to give folks a warning about disturbing content a couple of weeks before we
did segments on how the KKK distributed photos of lynched people (who were mostly black men
and sometimes black women, Jews, and white anti-segregationists) and on how the photos of the
dead Emmett Till helped expose the horrific violence of white supremacy. Was he doing this
because he was cowed by the neoliberal politically correct orthodoxy? No he warned us about
such content because he knew he was teaching a class to many black students who may have been
subject to traumatizing racial violence themselves, and students who were likely the friends and
family of young men who look a lot like Till. He was being thoughtful and letting people know
that there was some explicit imagery of terrible racialized violence coming up, and folks should
prepare themselves for such content because maybe theyd experienced something like it, or
feared they or their loved ones might. That is not censorship and its not necessarily pandering to
a neoliberal trauma-centering subject. Neither is asking for that kind of decency. Its being kind to
the humans around you, and trying to create a culture of thoughtfulness about the reality of
oppression in peoples lives and the fact that such oppression can be especially upsetting or
traumatizing.
Not all trans women or trans-feminine people have had the word tranny used against them in
violent or threatening or dehumanizing contexts. Plenty have. Not all trans women or transfeminine folks object to the term because it holds connotations of trans misogynistic violence.
Plenty do. For those reasons, its really kind of shitty for folks who are not trans women or transfeminine to rah-rah tranny identity when theyre not so likely to have it be used harmfully
against them or people with similar identities or bodies to theirs. Misogyny happens, and therere
some expressions of misogyny that hit trans women and trans-feminine people especially hard,
and being thoughtful about that type of sexism should be a pretty basic part of feminist behavior.
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If the stakes for sharing something are so high as to render someone untrustworthy simply by
posting an article, then the stakes of your conversation are too high. Of course trigger warnings
are important. Of course trauma and abuse are real. And yes, people who repost just to rectify the
trauma of having felt awkward in a conversation see! I was right! you just need to toughen
up a bit!! are missing the point, which is that any conversation that is worth having matters more
than any temporary moment of awkwardness. Likewise, the conversation, the alliance, the
support system, the context it all needs to be resilient and able to withstand these moments as
well.
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Thats not making an apology for bigotry its suggesting that there should be room for people
to be able to get things wrong without driving them out of the conversation.
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SHN July 6, 2014 at 9:56 pm #
Ive only discovered this blog now when I saw someone on my twitter timeline link to this superb
piece.
As a leftwing feminist from an earlier era (Im 54) who was very active in feminist campaigns
throughout the late 70s, 80s & 90s on issues like domestic violence & gender discrimination I
have grown utterly exhausted and disgusted with the total deterioration of feminist discourse into
stuff like this triggering crap.
I especially appreciate your citation of a film like Life of Brian. Ive often said the same thing of
that film or films like Blazing Saddles they NEVER could be made today. Yet I love those films
and make no apologies for enjoying them.
I detest the infantilism of this new discourse online esp among a certain segment of twitter
feminists with whom it is impossible to have any kind of conversation. They use jargon and
slang that is utterly impenetrable.
They are totally fixated on the self on bullying and exclusion.
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TJ July 8, 2014 at 9:07 am #
All you alleged adults in your 40s and 50s getting together to have this great big circle jerk
about how whiny and entitled the kids today are, and how much tougher things were in your
day, and how you had to walk twelve million miles uphill in the snow to deliver newspapers
or what the fuck ever you realise that were trying to solve problems that YOU spoiled
fuckers caused, right?
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you realise that were trying to solve problems that YOU spoiled fuckers caused
Ah, generational warfare. The identitarian response would be to accuse you of ageism, but
thats because identitarians, by definition, cant see the real problem. The fuckers are, and
always have been, the .01% of the population that controls the rest. The most encouraging
thing I see in the new generation is a growing support for socialism.
lago July 7, 2014 at 12:36 am #
framing vocalization about trauma triggers as a neoliberal affectation is extremely condescending
and harmful. equating trauma symptoms with offense is inaccurate, misogynistic, and the oldest
trick in the book. its disgusting as fuck. you seem unable to handle the fact that a few people
seriously a few, less than 10% of americans have PTSD (and im sure than less than 5% of them
know what their triggers are) are actually speaking out in self-defense about the lack of
sensitivity towards survivors that our culture exhibits. why is that? because academia can no
longer be a giant irresponsible boys club? because *oh my god* abusers actually have to start
recognizing that their actions have consequences and that the people they harm will speak out?
fuck this crappy thinkpiece. i care about survivors ability to function in a deeply misogynistic
and violent world so much more than i care about comedy. this is some MRA bullshit in disguise.
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Rob July 7, 2014 at 2:27 am #
First off, a very interesting read. Thank you for raising these issues this piece has provoked a fair
bit of discussion in my community.
Id be interested in your take on Bernice Johnson Reagons piece Coalition Politics: Turning the
Century. She addressed a number of the themes youre dealing with here, and I think her analysis
might be worth looking at. More specifically, I think she strikes a balance between attending to the
needs of a coalition and the needs of the individuals who comprise it thats lacking in this writing.
Building a coalition is hard, jarring work youre trying to meld together the needs of disparate,
often conflicting groups. But, at the same time, you have to be careful to attend to the people who
are the movement. Theres a tendency in privileging the coalition over the individuals to erase the
same people who always get erased. Sylvia Rivera comes to mind.
Thats my main concern here. While youve done an excellent job highlighting how people can be
fragile, to the point of being narcissistic, the framing seems to imply that anyone who gets
wounded by their coalition partners should just shut up. That makes me uneasy.
It might also be worth taking a look at Ngc Loan Trns piece, Calling IN: A Less Disposable Way
of Holding Each Other Accountable.
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Jen Hollis July 7, 2014 at 2:47 am #
Weepy, white feminism, huh? Lets unpack thatas you grad school types are fond of saying in
your overlong screeds. (Lets also thoughtfully not problematize it, as problematize is not a
gahtdamned word.)
So, weepy and white
First, I dont recall ever actually seeing feminist icons of that era like Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan
or Naomi Wolf sniffling, tearing up, or getting otherwise lacrimosabut let us set aside this
absolute lack of weeping; really, what I think you might have been going for was aggressive,
ball busting, and humourlesswaitnoI think you hit the women arent funny stereotype.
Scratch that. Good work.
Still, nice deployment of the term weepy, (i.e. weak and overly emotional) to broadly
delegitimise the feminist critique. I think between us we can agree that feminism in that era was
probably just on its period. Or perhaps it had its panties in a bunch.
Second, I might just mention the technicality that white racists would not consider any of the
abovementioned feminist superstars white. In fact, all three of these women belong to an ethnic
group which the white racism of the 20th century in the US and Europe labeled sub-human,
discriminated against, and ultimately tried to exterminate through a genocidal campaign. That
said, this trivial fact is not meant to infringe on the very important agency of non-white (or
progressive-white) racists to decide for themselves, arbitrarily and as individuals, who can be
labeled white and subsequently negated through that label.
I think we can all agree its more fun to do things this way. Or were just super lazy.probably its
that.
Finally, using sexist ad hominem to dismiss, in a single broad stroke, all white'(ish?), women who
took their experience and thoughts seriously, a bit conventional and expected, no?
I think, as a man, using your natural strength, humour and cleverness, you could have come up
with something funnier. I say this only because we all know men are funny and strong, as are the
people they decide are also funny and strong, according to their whims. Not that men have
whims, of course, as they are also super rational.
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alejo July 7, 2014 at 12:19 pm #
Jen,
Terms like white woman tears were, in my understanding, originally proliferated in activist
/ feminist / dyke communities by woman of color who were frustrated by how white
feminists and white lesbians would deploy shows of woundedness and sadness in a way that
utilized racist tropes about people of color being mean or aggressive, or that treated assertive
behavior by women of color as bad while celebrating that kind of behavior from white
women, or that let white people turn conversations about racism into white guilt and navelgazing. Thats a thing that happened and happens and it makes sense that people subject to
that kind of racist redirection would come up with a short-hand way of referencing it.
I think Halberstam was writing with that history in mind, especially since a lot of their
argument here seem to be that theres currently a harmful and significant tendency to
prioritize the feelings of the privileged over structural analysis and activism for systemic
change. I think theres a grain of truth to this claim, though I think this piece over-generalizes
and over-states the problem and has a lot of things just wrong. But displays of sadness and
hurt can certainly be used to deflect critique and support oppression, and this has been true for
a very long time hence the development of terms like white lady tears decades ago. See
also: feminists who write about manipulative man-tears and the like.
That said, its clear that not everyone knows about that history, and I absolutely think
deploying that rhetoric as a white, well-off, famous academic of masculine gender has a *way*
different tone. There can be good in white activists arguing against the white whine, but not so
much without more subtlety than Halberstam offers here. Im aware of some of the history of
white woman tears and I still found its use in this piece to be kinda sexist and dismissive
while cleverly referencing anti-racist and activist discourses just enough to provide a smug
alibi (allybi?). I can well imagine many folks not familiar with the term seeing Halberstams
use as just plain misogynistic.
So, yeah. Snark as a style of writing, and the self-satisfaction and lack of subtlety that generally
come with it, often kinda fucking suck. Its weird and disappointing to see an academic who
wrote things that were significant to me when I was younger make acting like this now.
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just somebody July 7, 2014 at 6:32 am #

okay, i never went to a fancy post-secondary school or took a course on all this very heady stuff
so i dont know if im truly qualified to comment here. I have seen the type of discourse you refer
to, quite rampantly, especially in (admittedly predominately caucasian) lgbt groups, as well as
online, but have never understood why. So maybe im not qualified to speak to this issue, but i am
a person who has been forced into sex-work, extended homelessness, raped nine times, shot,
chased down and beaten with a bicycle chain, laughed at in the er when they realized i was trans,
assaulted by police just because, had to fight almost everyday in later elementary grades and
junior high, been called nerd, weirdo, faggot, sissy, bitch, nigger, ewww thats a man, etc. on
countless occasions, had bottles tossed at me, and kicked out of my mothers home for being a
sick, deceptive, homosexual transvestite. I guess yalls term for this sort of stuff is
trauma?
Here in dc (home of the redskins), were often called trannies or queens as a matter of fact
rather than insult. But i did not realize tranny was an offensive term until i read some person on
the internets opinion who lives all the way on the other side of the country. I still have never met
a person who is offended by the word tranny in real life!
Been through alot perhaps, but i used to share a camp with vietnam and gulf war vets and that
little crap ive been through is nothing compared to what theyve seen, been through, and put
others through. Im not trying to belittle anyone elses experiences, and do believe that people
should be far more compassionate and considerate than they are but it seems (speaking only
from my experience) that loving my enemies, turning the other cheek, being slow to anger, and
exhibiting compassion and consideration, kindness and general respect for others AND where
they might be coming from -has gotten those others as well as myself alot further in terms of
cooperations, relationships and personal evolutions than nit-picking over terms which are
themselves arbitrary, and necessarily in constant evolution. And this seems to extend to all aspects
of life, not just lgbt issues, even in todays over-sensitized amerika I thought my generation
was supposed to be the ME generation, but these younguns sure seem to wanna take the cake.
Please try to exercise your own inner strength just a little, every once in a while and maybe try to
be a little less self-centered, perhaps even forgiving, every now and again. Youd be surprised at
the results!
Oh yes, and i also thought the article was pretty darn good (and could actually read and
understand it too lol).
p.s. the same mother who once called me sick and deceiver and homosexual with soooo
much disgust is now my best friend and i hers
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Wes July 8, 2014 at 1:47 pm #
you are absolutely qualified to comment here and your perspective is insightful and your
shimmering resilience shines bright like a diamond!
this is exactly the kind of perspective that i feel like jack is advocating for compassion, a
sense of humor, forgiveness, etc.
thank you for your comment. it made reading all that other mess worth it.
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Portia July 7, 2014 at 8:33 am #
I love this article. l have long felt the left and the liberal generally tend to fragment
unproductively into injury-privilege, psychobabble, semantic fine points and narrow group
identifications. Whereas if we look at the big picture, the enemy is a rapacious capitalist economy
every time, & every kind of oppression flows from it & ought to give us common cause.
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repatri July 7, 2014 at 9:39 am #
The problem with radical/queer*/trans*/activist circles is that theyre just that circles. When
queer is reduced to an identity rather than a positionality within a broader struggle it just becomes
an isolated subculture which has as its foundation policing and attack rather than solidarity and
an open orientation towards STRUGGLE. Over the past 20 years the queer circles im involved
with have become more introverted, and have become more and more specialized in language
(especially psychiatric language, something that deserves a much longer look at) to the point
where I wonder how a lot of peeps function in the outside world, at work etc. Many of my
friends have confided in me that they havent felt comfortable talking about certain topics with
each other out of fear that it will result in triggering, and that this will be dealt with through mass
online media posts, shaming, humiliation, isolation from friendship groups etc is this the world
we want to build?
To work together, to have an open orientation towards struggle is difficult and you cant expect
not to be hurt in some way when people who arent socialised in the same cirlces say things that
attack the core of your self.
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I'm triggered July 7, 2014 at 9:53 am #
I'm Triggered - #imtriggered
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Lena July 7, 2014 at 9:52 am #

Reblogged this on A Blog About Culture and commented:
Following the implications of hurt feelings, finger-pointing, sensitivity, and as one commenter
put it the culture of umbrage that envelops the cultural sphere.
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TJ July 7, 2014 at 11:33 am #
Reblogged this on The Unhappy Consciousness and commented:
One of the best pieces I have read recently on some of the problems with contemporary identity
politics.
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The Advocationist July 7, 2014 at 11:35 am #
Amazing. Great article! One Ive been waiting to read for a LONG time!
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majortominor July 7, 2014 at 12:00 pm #
Im a prof at an elite liberal arts college who teaches courses on gender and sexuality, as well as
American lit. Been teaching for 18 years. The only times Ive ever received complaints from
students of the nature of we needed a warning or why did we have to watch that were for
depictions of consensual sex between men in a book by Samuel Delany. I also teach about slavery,
racial violence, and lynchingincluding lynching photos. Never received a single complaint about
being triggered by that material. I dont have any problem with profs doing their own thing, but
make an institutional policy on trigger warnings and youll see a lot of homophobia, transphobia,
and the like rain down, with institutional sanction. People will be demanding trigger warnings for
representations of homosexuality, of women who choose to have abortions, etc.
I also have to say that the generation gap here is striking. Coming of age in the ACT UP era, we
never believed we could live in a safe world. Because you cant. No one can. Thats just the way it
is. People who try to convince that you can are usually trying to seize power in some waywitness
the War on Terror, the War on Drugs.
I sometimes feel like a lot of todays activists were raised in pizza meetings with their college
deans. I know thats more indicative of the generation gap than anything else, but thats how it
feels.
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TJ July 8, 2014 at 9:04 am #
Yeah, those entitled kids today, thinking they have the right to be safe from harm. How dare
they.
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majortominor July 8, 2014 at 9:23 am #
Good luck with that.
The right to be safe? From what? Life? And lets not forget: its exactly the unspoken
promise of the War on Terror: Americans have the historically unique and exceptional right
to be safe. And damnation to everyone else.
Ginkgo July 8, 2014 at 12:56 pm #
Yeah, those entitled kids today, thinking they have the right to be safe from harm. How
dare they.
Well exactly. Because if it isnt their job to protect themselves, it becomes someone elses.
And why should it?
GIngko, I dont understand your comment. Also, there is a big difference between
protecting oneself, which of course everyone ought to do, and believing one can be, or has
a right to be, safe from harm. I apologize for not being better at explaining why I think
this across what seems to be a very big impasse/divide, but I also dont see very many
people on the pro- trigger warning trying to actually engage this issue, which Murat
articulates powerfully in my opinion.
Just because you dont *mean* for a position to be conservative or eminently exploitable by
conservatism doesnt mean that it isnt.
Arlene Goldbard July 7, 2014 at 12:19 pm #
Thanks for a really interesting take on this. I linked to your essay in the blog I posted today on this
subject. http://arlenegoldbard.com/2014/07/07/on-safety-and-umbrage/
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Straw Queer July 7, 2014 at 1:15 pm #
As one proud Tranny to another, thank you Jack! People who are overly and unduly offended are
truly offensive. Guess what folks, we all suffer! Life is tough! Stop the white whining! Grow a
pair! By A Pair I mean ovaries, of course! Hope that triggered you!
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sitara July 7, 2014 at 1:30 pm #
You claim that getting offended over words such as tranny, rather then focusing on real
discrimination, constitutes censorship, not activism, thus holding the trans community back.
However, considering tranny is a short from of transgender, I can understand why it might
be easier to reclaim then, say, words such as nigger or faggot, which do have historical weight
and have been used to oppress certain groups of people. Additionally, in my experience, the term
trigger has primarily been employed to warn victims of sexual assault that the content they are
about to see includes graphic depiction of sexual assault. In many cases, trigger warning is an act
of compassion. Lastly, I think you vastly underestimate the maturity of LGBTQ youth; the
majority that I have come into contact with were grateful that they had a strong support system
and did not face the abuse that many sexual minority teens do. That being said, to trivialize the
suffering of LGBTQ teens (who are 4 times more likely than straight teens to kill themselves) by
claiming the majority make themselves out to be victims, is largely false. Speaking as a teen, yes,
we occassionally buy into the my life is so hard narrative, but generally, teens want to be and
want to be seen as strong, happy, and successful.
All these critisisms aside, I do agree with your sentiment that various modern social justice
movements need to work together instead of pointing fingers at each other. While I believe words
ARE very important, they are not as important as images, behaviors, laws, and other social norms
that need to be reformed.
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Caylin Allison Todd July 7, 2014 at 1:42 pm #
While I can understand your feelings on the cumbersome political acrobatics to avoid triggering
folk, I feel that there may be some oversimplification when it comes to the Tranny slur. I
personally believe we should reclaim it at some point, but I also feel that in order to do so it must
be done by ourselves. No one in the 60s would want a white ally throwing around Nigger to
diminish the negative context, just as gay folk wouldnt want straights to try and reclaim Faggot
in the 80s either. You mentioned ACT UP helped turned gay slurs around, and thats cool, but
they were gay- it was theirs to reclaim.
To put it in perspective, transgender people face an inordinate amount of violence and hostility;
about half of LGBT murders are of a transwomen (mostly transwomen of colour) despite being an
almost invisible minority in size, about 43 percent of us commit suicide, and we lack the same
basic rights and freedoms as our cisgender counterparts. Worst of all, most folk dont even have a
clear understanding that Transsexuals arent Drag Queens. Forcing us to adapt to a generalized
slur for both of us kind of puts us in a rough spot when were trying to find a job, partner, or life
and all people can think in the back of their head is that weve somehow associated with a gay bar
novelty. Considering our situation, its just not a great time to muddy the waters of a perceptually
confused America for flair factor.
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amy July 7, 2014 at 3:12 pm #
I agree with most of this and hate the phrase trigger warning, but I dont think all of it is just
whiny bullshit. I especially disagree with the part about the word tranny.
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queerkitsch July 7, 2014 at 4:34 pm #
I have a lot of feelings and thoughts regarding this post but what is sitting on the tip of my tongue
is how ironic it is that Halberstam is suggesting that trigger warning is detracting from actual
battles that need to be fought yet this article is doing just that. While I dont have a problem with
the conversation this piece is buzzing because it seems that unlike Halberstam I see these
dialogues as essential to other battles but it us vividly ironic and also gas the potential to be
manipulated it the wrong hands (such as MRAs mobilizing the censorship train of thought)
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queerkitsch July 7, 2014 at 4:40 pm #
I have a lot of feelings and thoughts regarding this post but what is sitting on the tip of my tongue
is how ironic it is that Halberstam is suggesting that trigger warnings are detracting from actual
battles that need to be fought yet this article is doing just that. While I dont have a problem with
the conversation this piece is buzzing because it seems that unlike Halberstam I see these
dialogues as essential to other battles but it is vividly ironic and also has the potential to be
manipulated it the wrong hands (such as MRAs mobilizing the censorship train of thought)
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Barry Woods July 7, 2014 at 5:08 pm #
BUT, the life of Brian is not a re-writing of the life of Christ
It tells the story of Brian Cohen (played by Chapman), a young Jewish man who is born on the
same day as, and next door to, Jesus Christ and is subsequently mistaken for the Messiah
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Python%27s_Life_of_Brian
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CAV July 7, 2014 at 5:40 pm #
A lot of this resonates incredibly strongly with me. OTOH what is his obsession with denigrating
white lady feministshe erases black feminists and lesbian separatists from one era, then credits
them with saving feminism in a later era. I was part of 90s feminism, but frankly, other than
confronting Operation Rescue, we didnt face or overcome anything as difficult 50s-70s feminists
did. And by the 80s, at least we werent being actively sabotaged by other women (at least not as
much). Birth control, Roe v. Wade, Title XIdoes he really think all this was accomplished by a
bunch of pathetic whiners?
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Karin Fromuranus July 8, 2014 at 9:54 am #
yeah, this was bugging me too.
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William Burns July 7, 2014 at 8:59 pm #
Wow, that is a lot of Monty Python references. Definitely getting a fellow child of the seventies
vibe.
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Queen July 7, 2014 at 9:23 pm #
Great piece, Jack. Im so sick of trigger warnings and trauma/therapy culture, people glossing
over systemic problems in favor of a politics of personal grievance. I keep thinking about the way
Foucault talked about confession trigger warnings are part of this.
In relation to child abuse, Ian Hacking says that Ever since Augustine, conversion experiences
have been associated with confessions the retelling of ones own past, the true past that one had
been denying. All this if familiar: therapy as conversion, confession, and the restructuring of the
remembrances of ones past.
Beat up your partner? Something mustve triggered you, like a flashback. Eat your sons whole
birthday cake at 2 in the morning? We cant blame you. Defecate in a charity book deposit box?
We all cope in our own ways. Enjoy Coldplays music? The source of the pathology is apparent.
Be triggered, confess, or whatever: You are hereby absolved of guilt. Amen.
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You know what triggers me? The prison industrial complex. Pervasive societal heteronormativity.
Rape culture. The AIDS epidemic.
No one is entitled to not feel triggered. As RuPaul said, bitch, you need to get stronger.
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TJ July 8, 2014 at 9:02 am #
Yes, rape victims and people with PTSD just need to suck it up.
And people in wheelchairs just need to get over themselves and go for a jog.
And people with schizophrenia need to eat more vegetables.
Seriously, did you even dedicate 000.5 seconds worth of actual thought to this issue before
vomiting up that nonsense?
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A rape victim should certainly be able to expect that their sweetheart will honor a request
not to wear the some cologne the rapist wore, because it triggers bad feelings. But they
cant expect they will never encounter that scent on the subway or see bottles for it in the
drug store nor expect everyone who will be discussing the issue of rape to put up a trigger
warning. So, yeah, a certain amount of sucking it up is necessary. Because the alternative is
the world of Harrison Bergeron.
And people in wheelchairs have to suck it up and realize that otherseven people they
lovemay still enjoy dancing, leaping and running. And they dont get a trigger warning
before Julie Andrews bursts into singing Climb Every Mountain at the start of The Sound
of Music.
Trying to police the use of a wordespecially trying to convince allies from dropping it
only increases the power of the word to do harm. If, as Audrey writes above, the only
meaning of tranny to those who would use it to torment is a pre-operative or nonoperative trans woman, usually naked, then silencing those who use it to mean something
else only increases its power to harm. The *only* way to be able to stop a word from
harming is to reclaim itto actively change its meaning through changing the context of its
use, and that means using it more, not less.
Thats why the biggest applause moment in the original British Queer as Folk is Stuarts
self-outing, when he claims every slur and negative stereotype and thereby robs them of
their power to harm him: Because Im queer. Im gay. Im homosexual. Im a poof, Im a
poofter, Im a ponce. Im a bumboy, baddieboy, backside artist, bugger. Im bent. I am that
arsebandit. I lift those shirts. Im a faggot-ass, fudge-packing, shit-stabbing uphill gardener.
I dine at the downstairs restaurant, I dance at the other end of the ballroom. Im Moses and
the parting of the red cheeks. I fuck and I am fucked. I suck and I am sucked. I rim them
and wank them, and every single mans had the fucking time of his life. And I am not a
pervert. If theres one twisted bastard in this family, its this little blackmailer here.
You want to carve out a safe space in your home: Go for it. There should be a place in your
life where you can take off your armor. But the world is not your safe space and never will
be. Whining about that fact makes you weaker. Policing the language of your friends and
allies makes them weaker and only increases the power of the policed words to do harm.
And only people are peoplenot corporations, and not identity-based political groups.
People may have triggersusually quite idiosyncratic and unexpected ones (after my
partner died of AIDS, I once spontaneously collapsed in tears in the nutrition supplements
aisle of the drugstore seeing a shelf lined with cans of Ensure)groups and identities do
not.
Your words, bro. Mine were something else entirely.
Murat July 8, 2014 at 6:16 pm #
The argument is not about sucking it up, getting over oneself, toughen it out. Nobody is
arguing the experiences of victims should be ignored. Nobody is dismissing vulnerability.
The issue is whether there is a right not to be triggered. Thats an entirely different thing,
really.
@Murat: If the issue is whether there is a right not to be triggered then there is no issue
to discuss. Of course there is no such right.
Leave it July 8, 2014 at 3:24 am #
You are an academic, not an activist, so please stick to that. And if you dont like the focus of
certain kinds of activists, why not focus on lifting up the work of groups you respect. Maybe even
donating some of your neoliberal university salary?
And I hope you avoid neurological trouble, including neurotoxicity, since you appear to be a hater
and denier of people trying to get by with chemical sensitivities. I sincerely hope that you never
know what that feels like.
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mary July 8, 2014 at 7:31 am #
everyones responsible for their own behaviour/language. if someone says theyre offended or
hurt by something you do or say its up to you whether you take it seriously, but you dont tell
them to shut up. people complaining about people complaining is absurd. you talk about
infighting, about useless discourse? this article is a perfect example. if you want to work on
something more productive instead of addressing peoples neoliberal butthurt then do just that!
why are you wasting time complaining on the internet???
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TJ July 8, 2014 at 9:08 am #
Making your argument with shitty Homestuck comics: a true hallmark of academic rigor.
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Sable July 8, 2014 at 10:16 am #
You say there is no humor in the current Queer Liberation movement, but I disagree. Personally I
found it hilarious a long established member of the Academy would say street level activists are
not being radical enough while at the same time warn them about being unable to find
employment in existing institutional power structures if they keep this up.
Was this level of irony intentional and scripted out? Or was it instead a simply a by-product of the
desire to be another trans masculine person telling trans women they are not being radical enough
in their gender politics?
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Will Shetterly July 8, 2014 at 12:28 pm #
You say there is no humor in the current Queer Liberation movement, but I disagree.
Mocking others isnt humoror if it is, every bullys a comic. Humor calls for being able to
laugh at anything, and especially at yourself.
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matt July 8, 2014 at 11:07 am #
The Life of Brian is not about Christ, its about religions in general. Jesus is portrayed in the film,
at least two times once as a baby, and then again during his Sermon on the Mount. The film is
about Brian, and how people believe him to be a prophet and blindly follow him (e.g. Yes, were
all individuals! and How should we fuck off?). Its not a rewriting of Christs life, because
Christ was in the film. Its an absurd, and very funny, view on religion.
And next, you say how the movie would be banned in cinemas today, I would disagree. Have you
seen the movies put out today? Theres tons of sex and violence, making religious satire look like
childs play. Maybe the scene of Chapmans penis would be a bit saucy, but there is full-frontal
nudity in movies today. And the scenes of Christ you mention would surely not be banned
today, as 1) the first scene is him as a baby, and 2) during his Sermon on the Mount, he is properly
portrayed as a fine man, but its the people who misread his comments which make the humor
(see: the cheese makers). Which, again, is just satire on how people misinterpret (or: read what
they want to read) religious dogma.
I know I am taking away from the general content of this article, however, I wanted to help clarify
what The Life of Brian is about (per what the Pythons, themselves, have said check YouTube
interviews). I have to defend Python and this film, as I love both greatly. This film shouldntve
been banned in Norway, or other countries, because,like you, they believe it was mocking Christ.
Its not. Its mocking religion.
Thanks for your time.
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Natalie Shaw (@AllGodsDangers) July 8, 2014 at 1:09 pm #
I look forward to when this episode passes and the queers who object to being called quaking
whiners return to their regular activity of throwing bricks and bottles at cops. Or at least
posting pictures of other people doing that 40 years ago on twitter or on the next flyer for their
radical nonprofit.
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Scarlett July 9, 2014 at 1:10 am #
A-FUCKING-MEN.
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David Jager July 9, 2014 at 9:20 am #
It is also problematic when discourse is reduced to what is essentially a flat paradigm.
Conversation is more than stilted when your advance strategy is I have the right to stop your
argument in its tracks if you say anything that makes me feel bad, or reminds me of time when I
was made to feel bad. What is the point of conversation then? Why not eliminate the idea of
discourse and rhetoric altogether ( its confrontational and oppositional underpinnings were so
agressive and patristic to begin with!) and replace it with support groups, where we all huddle
together for comfort saying mutually reassuring bromides? There is also a problem in the
assumption of a historical continuity between all the different disposessed members of
community. Why is it that when attempting to addressing self-identified communities the lexical
subdivisions become increasingly nuanced and complex ( you can never use the right term or
pronoun), but when it comes to a history of abuse or oppression, they suddenly stand shoulder to
shoulder and unified with every victim of a vaguely similar provenance from the present moment
all the way back through recorded history? The extension of this argument is also that the
offender becomes strangely identified (notwithstanding their intent), with some shiboleth of
monolithic cisgendered oppression. Its an interesting and very unsubtle division. The oppressed
subject stands shoulder to shoulder with the oppressed, and the cisgendered oppressor stands
unwittingly on the side of the oppressor, given that they are unwitting cogs in the crushing
machine of heteronormativity. Thats the big picture, right? But in contextualizing the history of
sexuality in this way arent we allowing tropes of power to permeate every aspect of our intimate
lives? Am I supposed to raise my fist in solidarity every time I have an orgasm? What happened
to privacy, indeterminacy, ambiguity? This is part of the larger problem of the politicization of
sexuality. If its about power sharing, and votes, then there is no room for discourse. Its about
raising up the largest voting block and grabbing your share of safe space. If its a discourse of
power we want, then we dont want a discussion, we want to negotiate for our own territory, and
to hell with whatever you were thinking over there. Which is fine, and understandable- but its
hardly a great end game for discourse. My understanding of discourse was that it requires an
uknowable other, something that forces us to shift and refine our position into something that
ultimately fits in a larger and ( temporarily unified) paradigm. I thought this was the work of
culture. But if culture is so thoroughly permeated by cisgendered oppression that it isnt fit to
stand, then we adopt a revolutionary paradigm, and hope to forge a new space where everyone
can define themselves as intricately as possible without ever having to answer to anything that
might question their journey of sexuality and individuation. A sexuality, in other words. that does
away with the other. Wasnt it Foucault who taught us to be extremely careful to dismantle not
only the content of a discourse but to step back and observe its larger context?
REPLY
eriktrips July 9, 2014 at 8:02 pm #
I am going to write more elsewhere. I think. In fact I might not post this here at all but lets see if I
can remain within the point I think I want to make here before I go off and make all the others that
are demanding that I write them down or they will keep me up all night.
Disclaimer: this is going to be broad and not directed at any single person writing here. It is also
not going to address anything regarding the word we are fighting aboutat least not directly. But I
am noticing this other point of conversation that maybe I can add a little substance to? I keep
reading about people who *really really* have PTSD and arent just faking it and I figure I can
speak to this a little bit since I really really do have PTSD and have really really experienced
multiple flashbacks as we sometimes call them, that come out of the blue sometimes and wreck
whole days, weeks, months, sometimes years.
So hi. There is more to say about us people with PTSD but the only point I am going to make here
concerns the rhetoric of the wounded self and of personal responsibility as complementary neoliberal devices for discounting cultural violence and cultural responsibility. Because on the one
hand, if the wounded self needs to be refigured as something other than an isolated psychological
entity, then so does personal responsibility need to be refigured as something other than Your
Problem, Not Mine.
Thats all, really. Tangential to the concerns of trans* people except maybe insofar as I am one of
those too and untangling everything to deal separately with each
identity/label/diagnosis/problem/feature/thing-that-I-somehow-am-although-not-quite-somuch-like-is-usually-described is nearly impossible for me anymore.
If as a culture we are going to address multiple systemic oppressions then I think we have to also
look at how Personal Responsibility places many oppressed populations in an untenable position:
that of single-handedly addressing and ameliorating the conditions of their oppression, quite
without the help of those benefitting from those conditions and certainly without bothering
anyone whose lives are not affected by those conditions.
I can be more concrete but since this is sort of a sideline issue except that you all brought up
trauma and when you do that sometimes it summons me although most often you wouldnt
know it I am going to leave off here with this:
I am not sure we can have this both ways: either the wounded self gets taken up entirely in
political and cultural resistance, not to be told it is Our Problem when it appears something might
need to be done collectively about the collective woundedness that remains after the self is
dismissedbecause it does remainor we be sent on our way to individual psycho-therapy so that
we can take personal responsibility and not bother anyone else and not reenter society until we
are better and able to function like normal folk and let The Movement get on with its business.
Which we would be part of. But were broken and must go to the shop for a little while first.
Maybe you see the contradiction that I see here? Maybe not. I will have to try again later.
Ok I kept going. I should probably add then that I do not advocate censorship and have no power
to censor anything. Nor do I advocate the reification of personal freedom as primary over our
responsibility to each other. In the US that is a very unpopular opinion I realize.
Ok. Thats all. For now. Here. I think.
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adrianstephenson July 9, 2014 at 10:24 pm #
The piece has interesting points. But I think it also scapegoats millennials, the crowd probably
most into using trigger warnings and fighting these little battles over language. Youre looking at
a bunch of 15-25 year olds saying, why are you so occupied with insults when you could fight
the neoliberal-capitalist-regime! as if there arent 15-25 year olds doing that, and as if we all just
came perfectly formed out of this vacuum to transform the world order and decided to complain
about what someone said to us on the internet instead.
But what I would really like to say is: there is a valid place for trigger warnings and being
concerned about language. And it does help make us sensitive to the racist, sexist,
heteronormative systems of privilege and oppression you would like us to focus on. Taking time
to develop humor and jokes that arent racially or sexually charged, and calling out the problems
they cause, is a ground-up way of confronting large top-down systems. Using trigger warnings
helps create safe space, and being sensitive to requests for them validates peoples identities in
powerful ways it says to rape survivors, abuse survivors, LGBT folks that have found
themselves subject to slurs and harassment, people struggling with mental illness, whatever: you
are a valid person and I recognize that you exist. Instead of saying what I want to say and
ignoring your existence, Im going to acknowledge it and create space where we can all talk
together about it.
Do triggers sometimes get a little inane? Yes. Are millennials too busy looking at their cell phones
and feeling bad about themselves? Some of us probably are! But that doesnt mean what we *do*
do doesnt count as activism (the personal is political, after all), or that understanding and
subverting the politics of language isnt a way to fight oppression.
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SD Holman July 10, 2014 at 2:08 am #
Thank you Jack for taking the time to write this smart, funny and interesting article.
I have been thinkin a lot about this stuff and I have felt censored by my fellow queers for not
using the right words.
Wasnt/isnt it post-structuralisms fault really for making the use of the right language so
important? And it is; keeping in mind of course we are not static, that language and meaning
changes over time and in different ways in different communities, but that is another article
Where we run into so much difficulty and heartache is when we use smart ideas as the stick to
beat each other with.

There is a lot of privilege, bullying and judgment that gets thrown around in our queer
communities, this is not news or new in marginalized communities; of course so much has been
written on that- when we feel so little power-we cant get to the guy who is throwing the babys in
the water, so we attack the ally right next to us because they have so much more privilege than
we do; as my late beloved wife said dont become a leader we eat our own. A sad state of affairs
indeed. but keep up the resistance, even if it feels like it changes nothing- because it keeps us
human. Thank you for continuing to do the work you do.
love, a Tranny fag butch dyke
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michaelnovick July 10, 2014 at 3:28 am #
I am in my late 60s and have been in the movement since the 60s and havent had much contact
with this whole train of thought although I do most of my political work with people 40 years or
more younger than I am. I will have to say, to me it sounds like the difference between anger and
resentment. Stuff you resent, you are actually holding on to, kind of nursing it like a drink,
maintaining an attachment to. Anger is a lot healthier; you express it, release it, use it to motivate
effective action, and move on. Saying something triggers you is giving away a whole lot of
power and autonomy to someone else, and denying your own responsibility for your own
feelings. Every oppositional movement always carries within it an incorporation of the values and
beliefs of the system it opposes; simultaneously that system always seeks to produce a kind of
killed-virus version of the opposition (bourgeois feminism, porkchop nationalism, assimilationist
gays and lesbians, etc) to inoculate people against the infectious real deal of revolution. People
just have to learn not to throw the baby out with the bathwater; to identify the systemic enemy
and to engage in struggles that will weaken it and strengthen the forces of liberation. Doing so
will require, demand great fortitude, self-sacrifice and the willingness to withstand and overcome
serious trauma, repression and loss. Learn a lesson from the CA prisoner hunger strikers, who
have been subjected to torture isolation for decades in many cases and have found and expressed
a healing solidarity and humanity in their resistance.
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Laura July 10, 2014 at 3:31 am #
A misunderstanding, unfortunately. The point is not that we erode and divide communities with
our trauma, and it is not that we are ignoring the real enemies, but that we have discovered over
years of organizing with your ilk who our community really is, and who our enemies really are.
What you experience as a supposed loss of community is in fact the reality of class conflict a
class conflict in which you are the exploiter class.
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Will Shetterly July 10, 2014 at 12:46 pm #
we have discovered over years of organizing with your ilk who our community really is
People who think in terms of your ilk seem to be more interested in fighting than uniting.
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laroquod July 10, 2014 at 11:36 am #
Obligatory pedantry: I think you meant hypo-allergenic which describes substances which are
less likely to trigger allergies. Hypo-allergic would designate a person is who not very allergic to
anything in the first place.
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d4m10n July 10, 2014 at 12:04 pm #
Reblogged this on Blue Ball Skeptics and commented:
Excellent middling-to-long form piece on the insurgent rhetoric of emotional trauma.
REPLY
seth edenbaum July 10, 2014 at 3:23 pm #
Its always amused me how many people defend queer theory and queerness as being attacked by
the right without defending it explicitly as being of the left. Queerness isnt a critique of class; its
defined as mocking bourgeois normalcy, and that fits in fine with conservatism of the Old Regime,
as if does with Reagan and neoliberal America. I remember an agent of a British oligarch say in
passing that after his meeting with my boss discussing million dollar deals he was off to a die in
in midtown. As Johann Hari pointed out years ago With the exception of Jean-Marie Le Pen, all
the most high-profile fascists in Europe in the past thirty years have been gay. Tell me about Tom
of Finland.
The demimonde is never radical; Ive been around it long enough to know. The utopian collapsing
of art and life is a hallmark of both fashion and fascism, and Holly Golightly is an icon of antihumanism, of anti-political sensitivity as opposed to democratic responsibility. The only person
Ive ever heard refer to the tyrannicides, Harmodius and Aristogeiton as models of homosexual
love and honor was Robert Hughes, in 1981.
And if you really want to wonder how things have changed in popular cinema, never mind Life
of Brian, check the scenes on the beach in Morocco is Prick Up Your Ears
http://blog.edenbaumstudio.com/2014/03/repeat-more-vivid-proof-not-mentioned.html
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wakingofthebear July 10, 2014 at 6:08 pm #
Congratulations on being Freshly Pressed, although you blog obviously doesnt need the boost.
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tealtomato July 10, 2014 at 6:10 pm #
Wow, fascinating article. Recently a staunch feminist, I find your perspective very interesting. My
opinion is that freedom is the best goal including peoples freedom from their own sexism
(racism, homophobia, or any ism or phobia). Yours is one to consider, Ill have to mull this
over for awhile. I agree that our fight should be more united. A human is never the enemy.
REPLY
adikpesolomon July 10, 2014 at 6:14 pm #
Reblogged this on adikpesolomon and commented:
Life is minded all time!
REPLY
appslotus July 10, 2014 at 6:23 pm #
Reblogged this on Apps Lotus's Blog.
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Chasing23 July 10, 2014 at 6:25 pm #
Great Name! Bully bloggers!
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moderndayruth July 10, 2014 at 6:41 pm #
A friend of mine shared your post on facebook recenly and i read it with great interest. Congrats
on being freshly pressed!
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J.W. McNabb July 10, 2014 at 7:49 pm #
Although I do not personally have much experience with the subject matter, I agree
wholeheartedly with the overall position you present here.
We have come to a point in our society when what is said is not what we mean, what we think is
constantly scrutinized, and what we feel is weighed and measured against what others say we
should feel. Many have lost their sense of self, and instead have molded who they are into what
they think people want them to be. And, your position on trigger words is spot on it is quickly
becoming the equivalent to the young shepherd boy who cried wolf. The voices of those who are
truly yearning to be heard are being drowned out by the ones yelling at the top of their lungs
because they simply want more attention.
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allthoughtswork July 10, 2014 at 9:41 pm #
It can all be summed up in four little words: Its not my fault!
Thats rightyour sagging health, your dwindling finances, your waves of manic anxietythese
can all be conveniently and cathartically pinned on some outside force. Theres always something
OUT THERE that supersedes your own strength, integrity, and personal evolution. Why grow
when you can sue?
Nobody argues whether the sun exists because thats obvious. Well, our intrinsic value and
freedom is obvious, too, but we spend all day arguing about it with morons who dont agree. If
you really wanna piss them off, ignore them and have a fantastic life, anyway. Drives em crazy
and no lawyers.
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Sarabi Nikolanna Eventide July 11, 2014 at 2:03 am #
Thank you so much for writing this. Ive been having this debate with some friends for a while.
They want to censor my use of the word nigga which I consider a reclaimed word. People say
all variations are offensive, but I believe the -er version is the only truly offensive version, and
even then I dont see the point in taking it out of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. That just
ruins good literature.
Im actually planning on writing an article on this topic for my schools newspaper. Youve given
me some interesting things to think about. Now I need to find counterarguments so I can address
them as well. Again, thank you for being a breath of fresh air in our overly-sensitive world.
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Desire July 11, 2014 at 7:25 am #
WOW this was an epic read! Brilliant!
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creativeconfessions July 11, 2014 at 9:15 am #
Thank you very much for this well-reasoned, eloquent statement. I myself have suffered from
being triggered in the past thanks to my own personal series of traumatic events, but I discovered
when working as a part-time teacher at one point that a lot of people take the term trigger way
too far. Yes, many have faced traumatic experiences and situations and certain day-to-day
occurrences may give them excruciatingly painful flashbacks, but the term trigger has now
become so loosely and freely used that it has lost most of its initial meaning. Ive been wanting to
get my thoughts down into a cohesive set of words for a while but I really couldnt have said it
better myself. This is poignant. Thank you for sharing!
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thefanartist July 11, 2014 at 10:56 am #
Brilliant!
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Sherwin July 11, 2014 at 3:29 pm #
Please check with me before talking about trigger.
Thanks
Roy Rogers.
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BW July 11, 2014 at 6:39 pm #
I wonder how much of the substance in this is lost in people responding to the bully-ish tone of
the polemic (on a site called Bullybloggers shock!). If Im reading correctly the critique is
targeting a politics that centers self-preservation and security over the risky work of collective
liberation.
Courage and resilience arent cis-masculinist principles, nor are they arent monopolized by
whiteness just as vulnerability need not be the primary, let alone exclusive, mode of
blackness/femmeness/gender-nonconformity/wagelessness. Courage and resilience are vital not
only for surviving systems designed to contain and kill us, but more importantly for overcoming
and smashing them to bits so that we might thrive collectively. Yes, we are vulnerable and
radically unsafe, and those of us who act on our radical politics in ways that threaten hierarchies
and material structures should expect and prepare to face even greater risk. But we are and
always have been more than vulnerable, and we must be more if we want our lives to approach
anything proximate to dignity and well being instead of victimhood.
When we identify queerness with possibility rather than location, I wonder how certain claims of
disability reveal themselves as cynical unwillingness and complicity in face of fear. But rather than
shame people in their resistance against risk, maybe we can follow Toni Cade Bambaras example
in sharing stories and art that make revolution irresistable? Instead of determining whether
ones traumas are authentic or whether ones political authenticity and credibility requires
verification within in a hierarchy of traumatic experiences, we might benefit from sharing more
stories about people who have moved forward with determination after theyve fallen, or about
the persons unknown who took tremendous risk, who were never caught and live among us. If
some people feel compelled to defend the safety of relative innocents or canonize the dead who
have been entrapped by the state due to their blackness/femmeness/gendernonconformity/wagelessness, perhaps the rest of us can commit more resources and imagination
toward aiding and abetting those of us that are guilty of wanting something more queer than the
present state of things. Some of us call that abolition.
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Therese Lu July 11, 2014 at 7:16 pm #
Thanks for sharing! Very insightful piece.
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lemurtide July 12, 2014 at 2:49 am #
Consider the fact that the author thinks the voluntary deployment of trigger warnings by a
handful of academics (an artificial problem affecting approximately 0% of the overall
population) is more pressing than his own furtherance of dismissive sexist argumentation in a
culture which still violently and institutionally abuses womenanyone seen the latest research on
widespread non-investigation of rape at universities?
At least someone knows how to think about phrases like the authors weepyfeminism.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/07/09/men-really-need-to-stopcalling-women-crazy/
REPLY
imaxme July 12, 2014 at 3:12 am #
Reblogged this on Imax World Of Max's Blog.
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Brilliant, Jack: saying that you feel harmed by another queer persons use of a reclaimed word
like tranny and organizing against the use of that word is NOT social activism. It is censorship.
I applaud your considered thinking on these difficult topics.
I have lived through and participated in most of the eras you describe. You forgot t mention the
part where some claim that my recognition of my bisexuality is considered false by others. I also
insist that most people are bisexual (biologically correct), and that anyone who has even a
modicum of attraction, in dreams or otherwise, to both or all genders is bi-, or omnisexual. I get a
lot of hate mail for that.
My pet peeve: applauding EVERYONE and exalting mediocrity in the process. Good on ya!
REPLY
Reblogged this on Sally Ember, Ed.D. and commented:
Brilliant, Jack: saying that you feel harmed by another queer persons use of a reclaimed word
like tranny and organizing against the use of that word is NOT social activism. It is censorship.
I applaud your considered thinking on these difficult topics.
I have lived through and participated in most of the eras you describe. You forgot t mention the
part where some claim that my recognition of my bisexuality is considered false by others. I also
insist that most people are bisexual (biologically correct), and that anyone who has even a
modicum of attraction, in dreams or otherwise, to both or all genders is bi-, or omnisexual. I get a
lot of hate mail for that.
My pet peeve: applauding EVERYONE and exalting mediocrity in the process. Good on ya!
REPLY
murph July 12, 2014 at 4:15 pm #
I offer my feedback not to contend with your assertions, which I mostly agree with, but hopefully
to spark some kind of useful dialectical engagement.
As a person who suffers from mild to intense post-traumatic stress disorder, I wholeheartedly
believe that the force of trauma is repeatedly mis-directed within communities of resistance. We
are generationally conditioned to direct the pure blinding rage of a trauma response either (a)
inwards, through actions of self-harm or (b) horizontally, through accusing others who basically,
in terms of a global analysis, have the same level of power as we do. Escalation of horizontal
hostility is a hallmark of trauma, and is used repeatedly by the state to dismantle and dissolve our
movements. What we really need is (c) to funnel the rage upwards in the power system, to direct
it as a force at those who would keep a system of global inequity in place.
As a person who spends a fuckton of time both managing my PTSD and pouring my life into anticapitalist organizing, I am daily left with the question: how do I actually use my trauma responses
as fuel for my work? Being triggered, having a trauma reaction, is one of the consistently most
physically and mentally intense things that happens to me. I become severely dissociated, can
often become actively suicidal, am overcome with a sense of learned helplessness and futility
about everything, am uncontrollably burning with rage, and often have to spend days managing
these symptoms to bring myself back to a baseline functional state. Trauma is pre-lingual, outside
of the logic of standard social exchange. I cant go to an organizing meeting and be functional if
Im hella triggered. I can barely control the rage so as to not harm myself or my comrades.
So my question to you: how do we shift the cultural patterning around trauma to de-escalate
horizontal hostility and use it as a weapon in the struggle? The critique your article offers, while
spot on in many ways, is almost substantively empty as long as it lacks an implementable
framework for action for those of us who, without one, collapse into a quivering sobbing mess.
Repeatedly and without end.
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Chris July 12, 2014 at 9:01 pm #
Reblogged this on I Fucking Hate Facebook and commented:

As much as I love my feminism, I think I have to agree
REPLY
sonatano1 July 12, 2014 at 9:42 pm #
I really just barely understand what triggering is Ive never spent any time in these circles, so I
cant say anything about how they operate. But I think your piece seemed very insightful. The
context was much appreciated.
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Ali Kat July 13, 2014 at 2:27 am #
Fabulous article. In depth and very well written. Bravo !
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runaroundandfalldown July 13, 2014 at 5:34 pm #
Im glad for the well thought out delivery of this essay. Its an issue that I see constantly. A group
achieving social change by coloring themselves as victims for sympathy isnt a healthy way to
self-represent. Regardless, of course, for whether the status of victim it is earned, which
trivializes the term for that groups members who have suffered.
Thanks for the smart reminder that being (or being recognized as) LGBT, female, or a person of
color is not the end-all of human suffering. And it shouldnt be treated as such for an inclusive
society!
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Nocturntable July 14, 2014 at 3:27 pm #
Reblogged this on nocturntable and commented:
There are no safe spaces. Make your own.
REPLY
Delphine July 15, 2014 at 10:57 am #
I found this a most illuminating read. Its logic reaches beyond the gender paradigm. I struggle
with the stultifying politically correct world that we live in in North America where
communication has become a bit like walking on raw rotten eggs one unwitting wrong step and
you stink.
Sometimes very simple truths can no longer be spoken, and astonishingly, politicians appear
prone to claiming victimhood as a credential in attempting to represent my social and economic
interests. I dont think one needs to wallow in perpetual victimhood in order to develop strength
and courage. I think breaking free from it helps. And when breaking free victimizes someone else,
where are we then?
Take the perpetual conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians each the victim of the other.
That mentality is not serving them in creating a way to live together, is it? We need to get over
ourselves and get on with the business of co-existing without becoming abusive about it. Thanks
for a great article, Jack.
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incompetentilluminati July 16, 2014 at 11:32 am #
I disagree with some of the ideas here, chiefly the ones about how were evolving into some kind
of weaker society within the LGBT movement. Were not becoming more sensitive: weve always
been sensitive. Weve just come into a society, suddenly, where we can talking about feelings
without some asshole yelling faggot! As for triggers, I understand that it can reach the point
of ridiculousness, but lets try to see it differently. The truth is that the very idea of a Safe Zone
is a farce. There are no safe zones in our society, it does NOT always get better, and there are
triggers everywhere. We have to live in society to affect any kind of social change, and that means
wading through the muck and a good bit of hate.
But take triggers. For the first time, here are young people who have been subjected to abuse and
rape (and who by no means have it easy simply because theyve come from a new generation
on this point, I disagree with you so hard I waggled my fist ruefully at the screen) that are
confiding in the general public about their vulnerability. It is an utterly stupid act because its not
helping anyone by trying to further censorship, but I find it tragic and a tad heartbreaking that
suddenly people see this as a weak generation, a brood of idiots and mental midgets who cant
take a punch like their daddies and mommies. Theyve taken just as many punches, statistics
about child abuse, the prevalence of rape, and new studies into the damaging effects of such
traumatic experiences, especially on young minds are abound.
Theyre just having trouble internalizing it and forming a hard outer shell. Lets not convince
ourselves were tougher than they are because we cry on the inside.
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Chupa October 17, 2014 at 7:57 pm #
This is the best thing I have read in several years. Thank you very much for writing it.
REPLY
skyride November 8, 2014 at 3:06 pm #
Reblogged this on Life on the Margins and commented:
Reblogged from Bully Bloggers.
Thoughts on this, but to come later.
REPLY
camilletoh November 15, 2014 at 10:44 pm #
You lost me right near the beginning where, during the description of how excessively politically
correct your activist groups became in your younger days, you add in a few snide words about
perfume allergies.
What does that have to do with the topic?
People may choose whether or not they freak out when someone says tranny but they do not
choose to have physical illnesses. If a person risks an asthma attack or anaphylaxis or even a less
visible fragrance reaction like dizziness or headache, if they get exposed, yet they want to
participate in a group, why should they not ask their allies to take the easy, painless step of
making the meetings scent free? What would you have them do instead- hide at home and not be
part of the community, or silently endure exposure & then get sick and end up missing a couple
days of work or even going to the hospital? If a person like that asked their group to
accommodate and they did, it seems implied that you think those friends were being too soft.
Shall we ignore all physical disabilities as too PC no more ramps for wheelchair users or
captions for the deaf? Will your tough love approach give people the backbone they need to shake
their allergy, mobility problems or bad hearing? Of course not. Disabilities accommodation is the
only way some of us have even half a chance of living a full life. It is not like the other examples
you use- it is not a case of people developing a self pitying attitude because theyve been
encouraged to whine.
I really dont get why you had to take a swipe at physical disabilities. People cant change their
disabilities no matter how insensitively you treat them. That perfume example should never have
been included in an article thats essentially about communication. It is off topic, aside from
alienating disabled readers like me, who might otherwise have enjoyed the article.
REPLY
Tina November 23, 2014 at 7:29 pm #
Reblogged this on Learning in Public.
REPLY
dudebro April 16, 2015 at 5:26 pm #
As a straight white male with only a tangential exposure to queer culture I found this article
enlightening.
REPLY
jutelo May 12, 2015 at 4:55 am #
Reblogged this on JN201: Print and Online Media.
REPLY
Carolyn Kitione May 13, 2015 at 7:13 am #
Reblogged this on Over the Rainbow.
REPLY
740TAO July 19, 2015 at 1:51 pm #
Reblogged this on LMGTFY.
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venuspluto67 July 20, 2015 at 8:04 am #
I think there should be trigger warnings for discussions of violence and rape because the effects of
those things on people who have been subjected to them are an overriding concern that trumps
other considerations. However, the culture of trigger warnings as it currently exists has
degenerated into yet another form of wallowing in the sort of self-pitying victimhood that has
become so beloved of the left in this country of late. This doesnt make anybody a stronger person,
rather it makes them weak, pathetic, and unable to deal with the real world. This is just one of the
plethora of valid reasons that so many people outside the hallowed halls of academia hold
political correctness in utter contempt.
REPLY
Trackbacks/Pingbacks
1. in response to Jack Halberstams You are Triggering Me | blog - July 5, 2014
[] (term coined by my friend Michelle), and after i read jack halberstams article You Are
Triggering Me: The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger, and Trauma, i had a lot of []
2. Response to Halberstams You are triggering me! | Don't Go Quietly Bi - July 5, 2014
[] The original post I am responding to:
https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/2014/07/05/you-are-triggering-me-the-neo-liberalrhetoric-of-harm… []
3. trigger warning : sur la rhtorique nolibrale de la souffrance, du danger, et du traumatisme |
wandering queer - July 6, 2014
[] https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/2014/07/05/you-are-triggering-me-the-neo-liberalrhetoric-of-harm… []
4. ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN | lex gill - July 6, 2014
[] From Jack Halberstam, You are triggering me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger
and Trauma: []
5. Against Niceness | Celeste LeCompte - July 6, 2014
[] You Are Triggering me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and Trauma []
6. Around the Web Digest: Week of June 29 | Savage Minds - July 6, 2014
[] Jack Halberstam wrote a thought provoking analysis of trigger warnings in the context of
neoliberalism. (Bully Bloggers) []
7. You Are Triggering me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and Trauma | Todd Lester July 6, 2014
[] found this article interesting and love the visual:) What do you think? In a round about
way, makes me []
8. Snarking back | Teile des Ganzen - July 6, 2014
[] a link to the blog post called You Are Triggering me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm,
Danger and Trauma, written by queer academic Jack Halberstam, popped up in my Twitter
timeline. I started []
9. Finding the Fire to Go On | Dog Dharma's Blog - July 6, 2014
10. Why I No Longer Use Trigger Warnings | cet mohamed-moore - July 6, 2014
[] way and its only this year that Ive disavowed them as a rule. It took for me to read this post
on the Bully Bloggers site to enumerate []
11. You Are Triggering me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and Trauma | Bully
Bloggers | The Ferrous Scrolls - July 6, 2014
[] via You Are Triggering me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and Trauma | Bully
Bloggers. []
12. The Ethic of Queer Toughness en|Gender - July 7, 2014
[] just read Jack Halberstams manifesto on queer toughness Youre Triggering Me! The Neo
Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger, and Trauma and Im watching it gather appreciative repostings across a queer internet that is exhausted []
13. Trigger warning: Trigger warnings (towards a different approach) | Rewriting The Rules - July
7, 2014
[] Jack Halberstam: You are triggering me! The neo-Liberal rhetoric of harm, danger and trauma
[]
14. Trigger Warning: a response to Jack Halberstam. | alicebreckless - July 7, 2014
[] down to compose this response to Jack Halberstams piece on trigger warnings, which is over
here, was a content note. A content note is a little flag at the start of a piece that says, yo: []
15. On Safety and Umbrage | Arlene Goldbard - July 7, 2014
[] a bit of Jack Halberstams incisive blog about this phenomenon from Bully Bloggers, the blog
site he shares with three other academics (which means you have to wade through a bit of []
16. Jack Halberstams Flying Circus: On postmodernism and the scapegoating of trans women July 7, 2014
[] With mainstream discussion around trigger warnings circling the drain of bad faith and
broken ethics, Jack Halberstams article on the matter was as inevitable as it is unhelpful. []
17. Trans/plant/portation - July 7, 2014
[] or wrote a readable deconstruction of language, politics, and identity. Instead, Halberstam
waded into the very tired tranny debate, and along the way, managed to become the next Dan
Savage, Tosh.0, Seth MacFarland of the LGBT []
18. Jack Halberstam on Bully Bloggers | The Subversive Intellectual - July 7, 2014
[] You Are Triggering me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, []
19. Transgression and humour | CMA Resistance ss2014 - July 8, 2014
20. Jack Halberstam and the Disappointing Lack of Pulling the Trigger Puns in this Very
Important Cultural Conversation | Unhand My Thesaurus - July 8, 2014
21. Trigger to fire | Technology as Nature - July 9, 2014
[] above were inspired by this, though lately Ive been pondering cultural shifts, their frequent
undetected celerity and then []
22. Are Trigger Warnings for White People? (Guest Post by Kristina Meshelski) | Daily Nous - July
9, 2014
[] Kristina Meshelski, an assistant professor of philosophy at CSU Northridge, has kindly
authored the following guest post about the recent discussion of trigger warnings at Bully
Bloggers by Jack Halberstam (USC), You Are Triggering Me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm,
Danger, and Trauma. []
23. Wednesday Links! | Gerry Canavan - July 9, 2014
[] Dialectics of the Trigger Warning []
24. You Are Triggering me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and Trauma - TRPWL :
TRPWL - July 10, 2014
[] Continue reading at BullyBloggers []
25. Why I Yelled at the Kara Walker Exhibit | Sub.ver.sive Intellect--uals - July 10, 2014
[] reading through Halberstams Bully Bloggers piece, You are Triggering Me! The Neo-liberal
Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and Trauma, I have decided to revisit Nicholas Powers report on his
experience at Kara Walkers []
26. Natalia Cecires On the neoliberal rhetoric of harm | Sub.ver.sive Intellect--uals - July 10,
2014
[] discussion on Halberstams piece, here is Natalia Cecires rightful critique giving voice to
students and their own connection []
27. Thought Dump: You Are Triggering Me! | The Politiconomist - July 11, 2014
[] latest broadsiding of Social Justice that is making its way through my social circles is Jack
Halberstams You Are Triggering Me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and T. I will
be answering the underlying concerns of that are fueling the shares in a separate post. []
28. Do Trigger Warnings Change Anything? - Queerly Foward - July 13, 2014
[] warnings in higher education, recently reignited by Jack Halberstams viral blog post You
Are Triggering Me: The Neo-liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger, and Trauma, I cant help but
worry that Halberstam, and I too for that matter, are weighing in on an issue []
29. Weekend Links, Vol. 44: Occupation is a Feminist Issue | Bluestockings Magazine - July 13,
2014
[] Halberstam disses the use of trigger warnings because those darned millenials.[Bully []
30. Trigger Warnings, Trauma, & a Politics of Thick Life: On Halberstams You are Triggering
Me, and Povinellis Empire of Love | WIT - July 14, 2014
[] been thinking about Jack Halberstams brilliant and provocative piece on trigger warnings
quite a bit this past week, especially in light of the many comments it provokedwhich he aptly
[]
31. Easily triggered? A social engineers view. - July 14, 2014

[] the internet after cleaning out and tidying the lab table, and my attention is drawn to Youre
Triggering me! a clever and witty post by the Bully Bloggers, with bonus points for Monty
Python []
32. Combat! blog makes remarks, inaudible to internet : COMBAT! - July 14, 2014
[] from unnecessary attachments, e.g. hygiene. While I continue my sense journey, how about
you read this controversial article about the rhetoric of trauma in contemporary gender activism?
The whole internet is made and/or []
33. Trig Reciprocal Functions: Im a Trans Woman Adjunct Prof and I Use Trigger Warnings |
aoifeschatology - July 14, 2014
[] the subject, throwing my hands up in dismay at the fray, if not for a scholar I greatly admire,
Jack Halberstam, offering a much-discussed intervention into the []
34. You Are Triggering me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and Trauma | Women Born
Transsexual - July 16, 2014
[] From BullyBloggers: https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/2014/07/05/you-are-triggeringme-the-neo-liberal-rhetoric-of-harm… []
35. Regarding Generation Wars: some reflections upon reading the recent Jack Halberstam essay
| Women Born Transsexual - July 21, 2014
[] Halberstam recently published an essay called You Are Triggering me! The Neo-Liberal
Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and Trauma, and its been making waves on the activist internets over
the last week. It felt like a bit of a []
36. Trigger Warning: Capitalism | Creative Infrastructure - July 21, 2014
[] of the best critiques of the practice are by sociologist (and my cousin) Laurie Essig, another by
Jack Halberstam, and this by Arlene Goldbard. While reading through these critiques, I
coincidentally happened to []
37. Confessions of a Horrible Person: What I learned from Cards Against Humanity | Why
Mondays Are Cool - July 22, 2014
[] to it. So why, then, do I love a game that I should hate? Because no one can ever keep up with
an ever-changing list of things that offend people. At any given moment, your existing will offend
at least three people and theres nothing you []
38. Joke Work and the Other in Halberstams Critique of Trigger Warnings: Neoliberalism and
Leftist Disavowal of Ethics | Sexistentialism - July 22, 2014
[] I want to situate a discussion of Jack Halberstams recent and controversial article, You Are
Triggering Me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and Trauma. Halberstam offers a
sweeping critique of the tendency in young, []
39. Dal giardino di ZAM. Un dialogo tra Federico Zappino e Olivia Fiorilli - July 24, 2014
[] recente, ha posto una questione simile nel dibattito interno al femminismo; altrettanto di
recente J. Jack Halberstam ha denunciato alcune tonalit neoliberali del queer. E Cristina Morini,
Beatrice Busi e Simona de []
40. Nel giardino di Zam di Federico Zappino e Olivia Fiorilli | Quaderni di San Precario - July
24, 2014
recente J. Jack Halberstam ha denunciato alcune tonalit neoliberali del queer. E Cristina Morini,
Beatrice Busi e Simona de []
41. Dal giardino di ZAM MilanoInMovimento - July 24, 2014
recente J. Jack Halberstam ha denunciato alcune tonalit neoliberali del queer. E Cristina
Morini, Beatrice Busi e Simona []
42. The GLAAD Boards Tranny Trouble: How Its Trans Takeover Is Reshaping LGBT Politics /
Queerty - July 24, 2014
[] with Kahrl and Boylan assert that suppressing words we dont like gives them more power to
harm. Dr. Jack Halberstam, Professor of English and Director of The Center for Feminist Research
at Unive, wrote an excellent analysis of this rhetoric of harm, danger, and trauma expressed by
Boylan and []
43. This Aint The Help? OITNBs White Savior Industrial Complex Christina Belcher / University
of Southern California | Flow - August 31, 2014
[] debate about call out culture originated with Jack Halberstams post on Bully Bloggers, You
Are Triggering me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and Trauma. Various writers have
responded to Halberstam. []
44. test | Flow - September 3, 2014
[] debate about call out culture originated with Jack Halberstams post on Bully Bloggers, You
Are Triggering me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and Trauma. Various writers have
responded to Halberstam. []
45. Thoughts On: Effective Protests VS Throwing The Baby Out With The Bath Water |
FragMEANTz: Meaningful fragments of my life and imagination - September 3, 2014
[] a change of topic; pot, fan fiction, zombies, Twilight, Burning Man, The Grateful Dead,
karaoke, trigger warnings, FetLife, Kombucha, the person they are smitten with, []
46. Sarah Irving - September 6, 2014
[] happy with talking about my own situation in this kind of environment is, sort of, illustrated
in this excellent post by Jack Halberstam on the neo-liberal rhetoric of harm, danger and
trauma. It describes a political situation in []
47. Community Solidarity And Personal Responsibility | Ecstatic Revolution - September 17, 2014
[] THIS! I want to plaster this everywhere. Seriously, I want to hug Jack Halberstam for this
writing: https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/2014/07/05/you-are-triggering-me-the-neoliberal-rhetoric-of-ha []
48. The Beat, The Pulse, and The Call | Sound and Queery - September 25, 2014
[] Ive been reflecting on in a different way since moving to Austin. The first is the somewhat
recent post from Jack Halberstam on Bully Bloggers about trigger warnings, which, in the spirit of
generosity []
49. Civility Disobedience | Bully Bloggers - October 13, 2014
[] an earlier blog on this site, Jack Halberstam explored how a neoliberal rhetoric of individual
pain obscures the violent []
50. Tense Conversations | From the President - October 27, 2014
[] Halberstam, Jack. You Are Triggering Me! The Neo-liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and
Trauma. Bully Bloggers. N.p., 5 July 2014. Web. 25 Sept. 2014.
<https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/2014/07/05/you-are-triggering-me-the-neo-liberalrhetoric-of-…. []
51. Group Task 2 | #HashtagMC - November 18, 2014
[] You are triggering me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and Trauma []
52. What, Why, When, Where, and How?: 5 Common Questions About Trigger Warnings Answered
Everyday Feminism - January 8, 2015
[] Thousands and thousands of words have been written about whether we should add a
handful of words at the beginning of our blog posts, articles, and Facebook statuses. []
53. Wie sinnvoll sind Trigger-Warnungen in Veranstaltungen der Gender und Queer Studies? |
feministische studien - January 29, 2015
[] einem viel diskutierten Text hat Jack Halberstam auf dem queeren Blog Bully Bloggers die
Notwendigkeit von Trigger-Warnungen in []
54. 3620 Podcast | Annenberg School for Communication - February 2, 2015
[] Jack Halberstam, You are Triggering Me []
55. SKOKs Queer Art of (Political) Protest. | International Student Blog - March 6, 2015
[] makes you question your assumptions about a variety of topics. From explaining his
opposition to trigger warnings (a increasingly common practice in classrooms in the U.S. at least,
where instructors forewarn []
56. Arriving at the Milestone Ph.D. from U of Chicago! | Yuan-Chen Li
- May 25, 2015
[] Monk and the Philosopher, reading sincerely about the younger generations painful triggers
in this post-traumatic culture, and thought about the next project. Stay Connected! I will keep []
57. Who Gets to Feel their Feels? On the power and politics of academic emotions | Clare Forstie May 29, 2015
[] he participated in that culture. What do we actually do, in the classroom? Kipnis and, in an
earlier post about trigger warnings, Jack Halberstams arguments suggest that we should
essentially tell both students that []
58. More like interSEXYnality, AMIRITE? | samquigley - May 31, 2015
[] and then read this very good thing on trigger []
59. Is That a Read"? The Contentious Politics of Drag Performance | JSTOR Daily - June 8, 2015
[] to the backlash has ensued, with prominent transgender critics like Justin Vivian Bond
and Jack Halberstam balking at activists excessive policing of language (also in the use of the
word tranny []
60. Srie de lt : Le Vendredi, on zone sur les Internets. Episode 1. | Le Lancer de Galaxie du
Dentifrice - July 3, 2015
[] Le tweet de lapocalypse (le 10 va vous tonner) Le lynchage, une vieille histoire nest-ce pas.
Un contrepoint intressant dun prof trans sur la rhtorique de la souffrance. []
61. You Are Triggering me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and Trauma | Bully
Bloggers | existentialwight - July 6, 2015
[] https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/2014/07/05/you-are-triggering-me-the-neo-liberalrhetoric-of-har… []
62. The Fashion Offensive. #1: FUCK OFF - CULTURE ON THE OFFENSIVE - August 2, 2015
[] winds up policing the very group that it claims to speak for. Queer theorist Jack Halberstem
illustrates the problems of this new []
63. Guest post: People uncritically generalizing their personal experience - August 5, 2015
[] was just reminded of this excellent article from a year ago (looking at some of the theoretical
underpinnings/implications of the rise of use of []
64. the trigger warning I'm putting in my syllabus | - August 19, 2015
[] of academics and teachers think trigger warnings in college classrooms signal the decline of
deep, authentic inquiry into complex social issues. They believe trigger warnings are a symbol of
the Dumbing Down of the []
65. Trigger Warnings and the Adult Conversation About Them | Proof of Burden - August 20, 2015
[] and academia. This does not include Laura Kipnis (Freud justifies sleeping with my students),
Jack Halberstadt (Freud justifies me ignoring intersectionality organizing), the authors of the
aforementioned []
66. My trigger-warning dilemma - December 2, 2015
[] in a particular way. Always young, mostly women. Very often a student attacking a
professor, always aggrieved or upset, often displaying signs of emotional instability or hysteria.
These trigger-victims almost []
67. Why I No Longer Use Trigger Warnings - cet mohamed moore - December 15, 2015
[] only this year that Ive disavowed them as a rule. It took for Bryant Cross to share this post on
the Bully Bloggers site to enumerate []
68. Somewhere in the Blogosphere: Digital Dieting and Emerging Identity Heather's Blog January 23, 2016
[] yet this strange addiction on still wanting to know more. In other words, I started to suffer
from FOMO if I wasnt online. Therefore, I needed to put some barriers in place to eliminate some
of the []
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You Are Triggering me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric

(https://bullybloggers.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/feminist_humor_fb.jpg)Debates among people

(https://bullybloggers.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/k5715.gif)Fifteen to twenty years ago, books

(https://bullybloggers.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/safespace.jpg)Hanhardts Lambda Literary

Tags: feminist humor (https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/tag/feminist-humor/), Halberstam

353 Responses to You Are Triggering me! The Neo-Liberal

Twitter induced Shell Shock

Ella Gardiner July 6, 2014 at 5:32 am #

Katie July 6, 2014 at 9:36 pm #

just somebody July 7, 2014 at 6:32 am #

I'm Triggered - #imtriggered

Lena July 7, 2014 at 9:52 am #

beat each other with.

Reblogged this on I Fucking Hate Facebook and commented:

31. Easily triggered? A social engineers view. - July 14, 2014

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