Trigger
Today’s topic, children, is Triggers.
I see that word pop up in some (read: almost all) blogs I’ve been haunting lately. And when I say “pop up” I mean “the word appears more often than the comma in a paragraph.”
Then the post goes on to tell some vague reference to someone’s unpleasant experience. I use the word unpleasant because the writing is so vague that the casual reader can’t be sure if the author has undergone a visit to the dentist or gone through the Bataan Death March. Then the comments section is filled with lots of e hugs and applause for owning their pain and the usual slurry of ugogrrl / ugoboi brand of empty but correct things to say when someone uses the magical “Trigger Warning” phrase in their post.
I’m left to wonder, is blogistan filled with people who just can’t cope with anything in their lives, or does everyone with a modem live in some sort of Mad Max Outland? Or, maybe I’m jaded. I can buy that I’m jaded. It’s lead to difficulties before in relationships. It isn’t that I don’t care, it’s that I know it could be worse most of the time.
Really? You turn into a fountain of tears because some zipperhead swatted your ass while at a concert? Invalidated your space, reduced you to a body part? Bernice Worden was hung like butchered pig by Ed Gein. She was reduced to body parts. The skin of her face was found in a bag in the frontroom. Eminem’s lyrics are full of hating women and you can’t hold back the horror and rage? Ted Bundy hit one of his victims in the mouth so hard, two of her molars were embedded in the cinderblock wall of her dorm bedroom. Those are just 2 of the popular ones, the shit you can google up. I’m not even getting into interviews I’ve had with forensic pathologists, FBI, crime scene photos I shouldn’t have gotten my hands on, or things I’ve seen done to animals and children.
I remember reading a blog where the author was taking the TV show LOST to task because the female castaways never showed a permeating fear of being raped by the male castaways. The post went on to say how it was a dishonest portrayal of male/female dynamics. That even if all the men never showed violent tendencies toward them, the women should be shown being afraid of the possibility that the men might turn on them. Forget that the show isn’t about that, it’s dishonest, dammit!
It of course came with a trigger warning and was lauded as “yes! Finally someone said IT!”
You know who isn’t concerned about gender dynamics on a TV show about time travel, right now? Women brutalized because of the Virgin Cure Myth; and maybe Euna Lee and Laura Ling while they get tried and sentenced to 12 years of hard labor on fraudulent charges of spying on North Korea. And possibly the women they were trying to help while investigating sex slave smuggling through China. I might go out on a limb and say “Everyone who isn’t a Westerner and has the free time on their hands to think that up.”
I’m obviously not talking about truly graphic and obviously horrible recounting of some act or ordeal, but even then why say “Trigger Warning!!!!!” when the responsible reader will get to the part that’s hard to take and then oh… stop reading if it’s that bad. Or maybe it’s all just something more benign, like a short hand to say “Get ready, this shit’s about to get heavy.”
I see that word pop up in some (read: almost all) blogs I’ve been haunting lately. And when I say “pop up” I mean “the word appears more often than the comma in a paragraph.”
Then the post goes on to tell some vague reference to someone’s unpleasant experience. I use the word unpleasant because the writing is so vague that the casual reader can’t be sure if the author has undergone a visit to the dentist or gone through the Bataan Death March. Then the comments section is filled with lots of e hugs and applause for owning their pain and the usual slurry of ugogrrl / ugoboi brand of empty but correct things to say when someone uses the magical “Trigger Warning” phrase in their post.
I’m left to wonder, is blogistan filled with people who just can’t cope with anything in their lives, or does everyone with a modem live in some sort of Mad Max Outland? Or, maybe I’m jaded. I can buy that I’m jaded. It’s lead to difficulties before in relationships. It isn’t that I don’t care, it’s that I know it could be worse most of the time.
Really? You turn into a fountain of tears because some zipperhead swatted your ass while at a concert? Invalidated your space, reduced you to a body part? Bernice Worden was hung like butchered pig by Ed Gein. She was reduced to body parts. The skin of her face was found in a bag in the frontroom. Eminem’s lyrics are full of hating women and you can’t hold back the horror and rage? Ted Bundy hit one of his victims in the mouth so hard, two of her molars were embedded in the cinderblock wall of her dorm bedroom. Those are just 2 of the popular ones, the shit you can google up. I’m not even getting into interviews I’ve had with forensic pathologists, FBI, crime scene photos I shouldn’t have gotten my hands on, or things I’ve seen done to animals and children.
I remember reading a blog where the author was taking the TV show LOST to task because the female castaways never showed a permeating fear of being raped by the male castaways. The post went on to say how it was a dishonest portrayal of male/female dynamics. That even if all the men never showed violent tendencies toward them, the women should be shown being afraid of the possibility that the men might turn on them. Forget that the show isn’t about that, it’s dishonest, dammit!
It of course came with a trigger warning and was lauded as “yes! Finally someone said IT!”
You know who isn’t concerned about gender dynamics on a TV show about time travel, right now? Women brutalized because of the Virgin Cure Myth; and maybe Euna Lee and Laura Ling while they get tried and sentenced to 12 years of hard labor on fraudulent charges of spying on North Korea. And possibly the women they were trying to help while investigating sex slave smuggling through China. I might go out on a limb and say “Everyone who isn’t a Westerner and has the free time on their hands to think that up.”
I’m obviously not talking about truly graphic and obviously horrible recounting of some act or ordeal, but even then why say “Trigger Warning!!!!!” when the responsible reader will get to the part that’s hard to take and then oh… stop reading if it’s that bad. Or maybe it’s all just something more benign, like a short hand to say “Get ready, this shit’s about to get heavy.”