We need the ability to use political analysis
We’re not triggered, we’re pissed off. Susan Cox at Feminist Current:
After it was revealed that Donald Trump bragged on tape in 2005 about getting away with sexually assaulting women because he’s such a big “star,” many American women said Trump’s callous dismissal of his actions as “locker room talk,” as well as Sunday night’s debate, felt “triggering.” As described in a reader letter to The Atlantic:
“Last night’s debate was a triggering event for pretty much every woman I know. That also seems to be the general reaction online amongst women I don’t know. Whether we were raped, assaulted, harassed, or in an abusive relationship, Trump last night embodied everything we have had to deal with throughout our lives.”
Women began sharing their stories of sexual harassment and assault online in order to condemn Trump’s words and actions. It’s as if we hoped that if we made our pronouncements of personal psychological suffering loud enough through collective amplification, someone would finally give a damn.
But maybe the world will just think oh the poor feeble things and then go back to business as usual.
When social reality appears as a set of individual “conditions” or dispositions, wherein each person is “born this way,” we lose the ability to use political analysis as a means to explain social trends or patterns. For example, if BDSM is just another sexual “orientation,” feminism loses the ability to critique the sexualization of dominance and submission in the cultural maintenance of male supremacy.
Especially if the critique is accused of kink shaming.
I watched the debate and events leading up to it, and found myself psychologically affected for the worse. I felt extreme anxiety that Clinton was going to be hurt or even murdered. I watched Trump’s psychological abuse and manipulation, and how the world reacted ineffectually to it, and felt panicked and vulnerable, and as though I was just as much a target as Clinton (and the truth is, I am – all women are), and that no one would understand and no one would help. The feeling of not being able to be understood, and therefore not being able to be helped, was made worse by the fact that the emotions I was feeling made it almost impossible to effectively communicate my distress. I think my response was related to my experience of being in a psychologically abusive relationship for many years, because THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT IT FELT LIKE. I don’t know if “triggered” is the best word to describe my response because of its political baggage, but what else could I call it?
I remember the first time I ever heard the phrase “kink shaming.” I genuinely thought it was a joke and laughed right in the person’s face before realizing nobody else was laughing. They said I was being deliberately obtuse when I said I thought that being considered a freak was half of the appeal.
She starts off so well — that women expressing how they feel “triggered” or “sickened” or affected in some other unpleasant way is easily dismissed as a personal issue, and we shouldn’t be afraid to point out when something is simply wrong — and then she veers off and suddenly the enemy is people’s description of their sexual identities and preferences in completely different contexts.
There is certainly some misuse going on with those, not least excusing abusive relationship behaviour as BDSM (thanks, 50 Shades), or trying to stick “non binary” on everyone who doesn’t conform to a narrow stereotype of their gender. But it’s this misuse that is the problem, and those who commit it to invalidate women speaking up against injustices. Not the existence of people who the labels actually apply to.
In its current form, the argument could easily read “lesbians should shut up because now all women not attracted to a specific man will be labelled as such” (indeed that’s exactly her argument against asexuals). It’s inches away from scapegoating.