First of all, thanks for your civil response!
Well, okay, it seems like I was wrong about the origin of that information. Thanks for ponting it out to me. But it doesn’t really change my point, because I was never tying to lay blame, but pointing out how it has been bad for both sides, which is still true. If someone were to come to me and claim that it’s not a feminist issue at all because it was feminists’ “fault”, they’d be the ones pointing fingers and ignoring how many women have been forced to take care of their children alone, often resulting in povetry. Essentially, these issues are two sides of the same coin. I can’t think of a single gender issue that only negatively affects one gender.
This should be a good thing; recognizing these issues affect both genders (not always in equal amounts of course) will get twice as many people to take action and creates deeper understanding of gender issues. But you said that MRA are likely to tune me out if I were to point this out to them, which makes me afraid to champion the idea of intertwined gender issues.
I read the thread again and don’t see what I missed. I’m guessing you never read the thread fullly, because you don’t see to understand what I meant when I said that “this is the perfect example of what I’m talking about”.
I know Mindysan asked the question (in not just one of the first posts, but the very first post). And the problem wasn’t you answering her, it’s the way the whole conversation got twisted.
Your first post was fine - while I believe your examples were kind of bad and you didn’t make your point any stronger with more examples and mocking, you were voicing your opinion in direct reply to a question. I did cringe a little bit at your unnecessary “I’m sure there are “OMG there are girls here eww” types, though.” comment, become it comes off as somewhat belittling, implying as if those straw-men sexists are the only kind to be worried about (again, sexism =/= loudly sexist haters) and dismissing the real cornerns about how much crap teen girls can sometimes get in our society, often in subtle ways.
Mindysan said to you that she doesn’t see the appeal in having a community where you just ridicule people (or “oddballs and and the easily offended”, in your words). Your reply (about how people on BB make fun of rednecks and sexists too) is puzzlingly passive-agressive and it sounds like you’re not really talking to Mindysan anymore but rather some straw-man. Mindysan had been arguing the whole time that just ridiculing people helps no one, so pointing out that some people on what you perceive to be “her side” do this as well doesn’t counter anything she has said.
It’s your next post where it took a real nose dive, because you severely misundertood something Mindysan had said. You quoted a part of Mindysan’s second post, where she said this:
“But yes, let’s keep shitting on teen girls because we think they are “dumb”. That will end well, I’m sure.”
This was in reply to retchdog, who was arguing exactly what she’s disapproving; that it’s okay to ridicule teens because they’re stupid and egostical and deserve to be brought down. At this point, they weren’t even talking about whether there’s sexism involved (because retchdog didn’t believe so), they were talking about teens on Tumblr in general; Mindysan even specified that she’s not talking about the convention organizers but Tumblr users (of which many are young girls) in the paragraph above the one you quoted. Somehow you took this to mean that she was saying that it’s not okay to criticize the organizers who took 17,000 dollars, and you somehow also combined that with the ideas about sexism from her first post and assumed she’s accusing people who do so of misogyny. You ended your with the very cringe-worthy “Do we really want to build a brave new world where women are exempt from criticism?” which showed how us vs. them mentality even though the sides you perceived to be in this thread didn’t exist. Implying that women who complain about sexism wish to be free from critisicm is a staple form of mockery for those who dismiss the real corncerns of women, and it didn’t really do you any favors to end with that note.
Mindysan tried to explain what she had meant to you in a clearly frustrated but surpringly patient way, even though she really didn’t need to, because it’s not like she hadn’t explained herself clearly. She even points out that the people who she was talking about, regular Tumblrs users, were catually the people who were victims of this scam/whatever. Your only response to her is that it was her fault the conversation turned this way. You then also completely unnecessarily added two more examples, now with pictures too, of people saying ridiculous things on Tumblr, at which point it just seemed like you were going out of your way to make a point. To someone who disagrees with the very idea of a community dedicated to ridiculing others and their views, seeing someone go on mocking (mostly) feminist views just seems spiteful. Defending a community which can get carried away in its mockery and really hurt people in he process doesn’t put you in a very good light either.
I think that’s why Rob and others were so frustrated with you in this thread. Misreading something and letting that turn into a hostile attitude, and taking a question about why people mock Tumblr as an opportunity to showcase how you dislike some extreme feminists and their unique views. Considering that this is not the first time you’re talking about these things in Boing Boing, regular readers can’t help but think “here he goes again”.
What I find extremely dangerous is people like you who think they have the right to decide for other people what they are allowed to feel bad about. The chewing thing is just a minor thing for me and I brought it up only as an example of how PTSD can manifest itself in all kinds of weird things. It’s just a small part of a larger trauma that I battle with everyday, but dismissing it as ridiculous (which now both you and Shane Simmons have done) or using it as an example of overly-sensitive people wanting to be protected from the world (which I have never done or asked for) really undermines efforts to get people to listen and understand how people with PTSD feel.
And how in the world is saying “I find this thing triggering” asking to be shielded from the world? There’s nothing wrong with just talking about them. I have never asked for any trigger warnings here or anywhere else. It’s true that there are some people in the internet who want warnings for some rare triggers and I don’t think the world has any obligation to comply. I actually think that even warnings for common triggers aren’t absolutely necessary (wise, maybe, but not the responsibility of people who post things online), but I understand why others ask to have them and I think that should be respected. If something (like a video with explicit rape scene which comes out of the blue) is likely to bother a number of people, a trigger warning might not hurt. The point of the warning isn’t to “shield them from the world”. It’s just to give them a heads up so people can be ready for it, and if they are in a state of mind where they don’t think it’s a good idea to face those feelings, they can avoid it. Believe me, when you have PTSD, you live with the anxiety constantly. You know you have to face those emotions, but doing so in your own terms and at your own pace is the key to PTSD theraphy. Sadly, not many people understand this key component of living with trauma nor do they care enough to try to learn to understand. Maybe they’ve seen a few people ask for warnings for weird triggers and start painting all rape victims with the same brush and assume they’re overly-sensitive whiners. “Oh, she claims to be triggered by chewing? She must be one of those people who want to be shielded from their emotions!”
Why are you so bothered by people talking (on the internet, no less) about being hurt by things that you deem ridiculous, anyway? I know a lot of people like you, who like to recount things they’ve experienced and think that because they got through it, others aren’t allowed to “complain” about it. When you use yourself as the yardstick for how others are supposed to respond to different problems, you get some really skewed results, especially because you aren’t gonna have any personal experience of most things. While it’s true that there will always be people who are dicks and you will always have to deal with things that make you anxious, it doesn’t mean that we should just shrug and say “that’s life”. Bullying is very common, but we should still try to decrease it and take every case seriously because it can really hurt people. The kind of attitude you have is the reason why bullying flourishes; acting like the problem is the victim who can’t take it and complains about it, instead of the people who are being assholes.
No one is “entitled” to feeling secure in this world, but helping people by trying to understand their problems and maybe altering their own behavior to a reasonable extent is not only be easy, but what being a human is all about. In most cases, anxiety can only be countered by the person themselves, no one else. But the road can be long - you can’t just immediately try to “suck it up”, you talk about it with close friends or a therapist, gain confidence and experience, slowly come into contact with the stimulus that makes you anxious until you can live with (it rarely goes away completely). It’s true that in this world, you often have to be tough, but ridiculing people who are in a bad place only makes things worse. That doesn’t mean you have to pamper them (you seem to think there are only two options, honest ridicule or completely shielding someone from everything they don’t like); if it’s a close person, you can even use harshly honest words as long as they are supportive words. It certainly helped me to have someone kicking me in the butt when I was so depressed that I had a hard time getting out of bed or eating anything. But if someone had instead ridiculed my feelings and told me to get over it, well… I don’t even want to know. Your “ridicule people to bring them down to earth” idea might only work if the issue isn’t very serious and you say it to someone who is already self-confident and also close to you. Support, understanding and honesty are what friends should give to someone who is having some real problems, the rest is up to them.
No, it is a trigger. You’re making a really strange distinction there that doesn’t exist and while I know you have good intentions, you’re really making it harder for rape victims to get people to listen what they are saying. Are you saying that the trigger must be directly related to the rape (or other traumatic event) in order to count? It doesn’t work that way. The brain can make the weirdest connections. It’s called a trigger because some events trigger those same feelings you had during the trauma and start looping it.
You seem to think that because you also have similiar Asperger’s related sensitivity, you know how I feel and can tell what is or isn’t a trigger. Like I said, I think the Asperger’s sometimes plays a part in it by making me extra sensitive to certain things, but it’s my PTSD that takes those stimuli the wrong way. There are times when sounds and touches bother me in a way that has nothing to do with PTSD. Then there are things that, for a reason or another, trigger me and bring me back to that same anxious, unsafe feeling I had when I was raped. I know that feeling; it’s hard to explain, but it’s not like normal anxiety, it’s more severe and has a definite sexual undertone that always makes me feel unsafe and disgusted with myself (like I’m dirty). Sometimes it goes straight to a full blown panic attack and I feel like I can’t breathe, but like all anxiety, it’s a whole scale and can also just makes me feel very uncomfortable and unsafe (which, if I can’t get it under control, can turn into a panic attack).
I can’t believe I actually have to try to convince people that yes, that feeling I get definitely brings me back to the day I was anally raped. It feels quite surreal, like a setup for a post-moden joke.
Now I really need a break and just need to go do something that lets my mind rest and not think about all this, like play a video game.
