31 y/o white passing mixed w/ Black monster woman from the Netherlands. Artist (occasionally). Writer (again, every so often). Prone to camera sniffing behavior, one of them θΔ folk.
AD: @blimpjackal
I'm reminded by mastodon that there's still some people who think that ptsd trumps everything. I'm sorry that parts of my existence as a member of a marginalized group trigger u sometimes but that's got nothing to do with me. it sucks to hear but in a lot of ways ptsd is a you problem and while I'm fine avoiding the most common topics, like... at some point there needs to be some boundaries/realization of responsibility here.
and as a ptsd-haver it kinda sucks that you're using it for cover
💯 and i think this is not a new dynamic as much as an old one that adapts to these new forms and styles of communication. i have some spicy thoughts about the whole dynamic that need more marinating; suffice to say i have been in a continuous process of understanding how much the exact thing you describe has informed my entire social media experience, unfortunately, and not just the last seven years
spicy unsaid thing is that even outside of this context ptsd is a community problem and a personal one but if I don't know you (and thus can't have guessed your password) the effects of it are not on me unless I directly caused them.
and that sucks but like, as someone with cptsd? i get the not really being able to see it as a boundary thing but it absolutely needs to be. because otherwise I'm having things dumped in my lap I was no part of, that there is no solution to but the person who dropped it there healing.
and like, communitywise? healing can happen¹ but it involves the community that's tightly knit, not randos you share a point of connection with and like the posts of.
I used to be a lot more accepting about this but as I see it ripple over the last fifteen years I've gotten pretty pragmatic. especially with how it often impedes anyone healing as it slowly evaporatively cools your social circles until only people who are willing to put up with it stay.
¹: but it can't if ppl keep retraumatizing each other by throwing it on their lap out of the blue, especially if that lap was already venting
thats about the same conclusion i have reached. it reinforces for me the need for organized caring in our spaces, but i havent the faintest idea or bit of energy to start with
the common example is terfs, of course, saying trans people existing triggers them.
but today's example is someone being triggered by me existing as a bisexual, asexual, trans, agender lesbian and like... c'mon. the kids aren't alright and I'm worried sometimes
Seems like folks are using "X triggers me" to stand in "I don't like X" which is a big yike. Congrats everyone, we've found something worse than the euphemism treadmill lol
oh no much deeper than that
I'm sure there's people who are that superficial but i promise it's actual ptsd from their identity (forged at least by a history of cooption) clashing with changing times and feeling like everything they knew is dropping out from under them. but that's very much a them thing to work through. and, well, a very university student perspective and without the context it uh. can genuinely be that painful. because everything is high stakes and has always been to them.
That's wild. Thanks for the explanation.
Seems I don't have as good a grasp on what can be a "trigger" as I thought I did. In my head it was "fight or flight" style things, so I'm surprised to learn that merely learning of someone else's identity can count.
Tho having written that out, conservative parents reacting strongly and negatively to their queer children comes to mind and I guess I'm more surprised to find it coming from this other direction.
right, but it's triggering fight or flight in these cases because their political upbringing has been that Lesbian is a United Front (as in lesbians must band together or be watered down in their political power) instead of a united front of all of those with similar oppressions. its... sorta a cycle of abuse and fearmongering that leads to newer cis lesbians just being like that because they tripped into things that were inspired by the same misunderstandings of political theory that spawned TERFs
always find this annoying as I am, if not Triggered, at least discomforted by people of a specific appearance
and this is a matter for therapy and for rarely and politely excusing myself from situations without elaborating, not for demanding my path be cleared before me
and let's face it this is not just a story of my personal virtue but also of having a traumatic experience attached to a group of people not vulnerable to "we all know this is a legitimate sort of person to be afraid of, after all aren't we all a little afraid of them"
yeah. mostly I just wish people realized that PTSD can inflict PTSD exponentially if it's applied uncritically, before they leave the path of destruction that often makes their friend groups self filter for people who are at worst okay with it as background radiation.
cos that's nnnnot where healing can happen, and leads to this sorta stuff being normalized as an ok form of interaction (that further alienates ppl and further concentrates it.
