I wrote this after an interaction I had that came out of me offering a video by Jane Elliot as fodder for conversation.
One of the wimmin who viewed Elliot’s famous video where she transforms a class room into an experiment in racial oppression directed at white blue eyed university students, and decided that the best way to cope with any stress, emotional upset or recognition she experienced was to cry trigger. The whole discussion went to pot, of course.
I realize that there have been so many different situations I’ve been in with feminist folks where a much needed, moving conversation about oppression was completely derailed by someone crying “TRIGGER!!!”
I thought I’d put something into the collective consciousness that might contribute to a shifting out, phasing out of this particular tactic.
This is what I wrote:
Yes, I’m a feminist.
With one caveat, though…If you are one of the incessantly triggered feminists, often white
feminists, who is constantly attempting to shift spaces occupied by many
(different kinds of people with many different kinds of triggers)
so that everyone directs their attention to ascertaining how best to
make you feel more comfortable in situations where none of us feel
comfortable because what’s on the table, what is on the agenda being
discussed in any given moment may be of massive significance and calls
for everyone to find a way to responsibly identify, claim and deal with
their own emotional, psychological baggage, either moving through it, or
moving away from the group if that baggage cannot be put in perspective
without copious emotionally care and stroking from people who are
somehow managing to deal with their own emotional triggers…If you have ever been in a conversation with a Black feminist or
feminist of colour, or in a room where the oppression/s of people of
colour was being explored in a particularly mercenary fashion and you
had the impulse to start overtly talking about being triggered, thereby
placing the onus on any/all people of colour in the room to immediately
turn and see to your preshus fee-fees and boo-boos…Fuck off.
Hard limit.
I should have explained this earlier, as I’m well versed in this particular load of crap avoidance strategy.
I don’t mean being triggered.Being triggered I get…because I get triggered.
But sitting your own trigger/s down in the middle of a conversation
that is moving, that needs to move and expand, so that everything
shrinks and recedes and reorients itself towards care of and protecting
of you…that approach, that tactic I’m so well aware of.As someone who does get deeply triggered multiple
times a day, who does get trigger layered over trigger layered over
trigger right here on fetlife and who does need to keep moving, keep
functioning, keep unpacking, keep excavating, I think that triggers have
their place and can be handled responsibly without turning into an
all-out, act-out, “look at me” moment that turns everything around the triggered person on its ear.This is called having healthy coping strategies and not compelling others to deal with your issues.
Go no further, if this sounds like you or like something you might be capable of doing if the conditions were right.I don’t think there are enough conscious, ethical people in most
politically radical or feminist spaces who understand the basics of what
triggers are, let alone how how these can be strategically and hierarchically (who
decided that people who are triggered get to have every bit of the
floor for as long as they need it or to destroy the floor as it were,
the whole conversation if they so choose?) used to derail political conversations under the guise of making sure someone feels “safe”.Trigger is special.
Trigger trumps all.
Trigger automatically has the floor in any conversation.
Trigger is right.
Trigger must be heard and not questioned or challenged.
Trigger can never be held accountable.
Trigger must not be asked about if this is really the best time to have a
massive cussing, bratty, tantrum because they do not feel validated.Trigger, in the wrong hands, can be very useful in conversations where trigger would have normally had to be accountable.
Dry. Dry. Dry as biscuits. But disturbingly effective.
So, yeah…
If you’re a white feminist who is easily, publicly triggered in the
midst of weighty conversations that might be causing you and everyone
else copious amounts of stress or if someone should ask you to come
correct and not offer you any support to do so…if being triggered
comes easily in these moments, much to the same privileged effect of how
white cis wimmin used to swoon in the old days, fuck off.I’m not interested in making fet-friends with you because you and
your irresponsibly articulated, directed, utilized, strategically voiced
triggers are dangerous to any discussion you might feel stressed about
or any conversation that might have to do with your choices or with the
choices of your peoples where you should reasonably be expected to come
correct, come present, come honest, come accountable, come ethical.Again…
Hard limit.
No body-checking trigger folk.
No booby-trapping “I’m so triggered right now, everyone please listen to me” mostly white, definitely privileged feminists.All the spoons in the world would not be enough to give me the
fortitude I’d need to help me process the kinds of shit storms that
swirl around the public and very strategic announcements of the
triggered folk.I don’t have any spoons.
I have mismatched and broken plastic knives
and forks with which I do pitch battle everyday because I have no
choice.Thank you and goodbye.
if what you’re reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again…then link me.
