You Are Triggering Me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and Trauma - Jack Halberstam

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You Are Triggering me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of

Harm, Danger and Trauma
by Jack Halberstam
I was watching Monty Python’s The Life of Brian from 1979 recently, a hilarious rewriting of the life and
death of Christ, and I realized how outrageous most of the jokes from the film would seem today. In fact,
the film, with its religious satire and scenes of Christ and the thieves singing on the cross, would never
make it into cinemas now. The Life of Brian was certainly received as controversial in its own day but
when censors tried to repress the film in several different countries, The Monty Python crew used their
florid sense of humor to their advantage. So, when the film was banned in a few places, they gave it a
tagline of: “So funny it was banned in Norway!”
(https://bullybloggers.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/12fdfd9731cdf4f49bdc347bb7841489.jpg)
Humor, in fact, in general, depends upon the unexpected (“No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!”);
repetition to the point of hilarity “you can have eggs, bacon and spam; spam, eggs, spam and sausage;
or spam, spam, spam and spam!”); silliness, non-sequitors, caricature and an anarchic blend of the
serious and the satirical. And, humor is something that feminists in particular, but radical politics in
general, are accused of lacking. Recent controversies within queer communities around language, slang,
satirical or ironic representation and perceptions of harm or offensive have created much controversy
with very little humor recently, leading to demands for bans, censorship and name changes.
(https://bullybloggers.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/feminist_humor_fb.jpg)Debates among people

who share utopian goals, in fact, are nothing new. I remember coming out in the 1970s and 1980s into a
world of cultural feminism and lesbian separatism. Hardly an event would go by back then without
someone feeling violated, hurt, traumatized by someone’s poorly phrased question, another person’s
bad word choice or even just the hint of perfume in the room. People with various kinds of fatigue,
easily activated allergies, poorly managed trauma were constantly holding up proceedings to shout in
loud voices about how bad they felt because someone had said, smoked, or sprayed something near
them that had fouled up their breathing room. Others made adjustments, curbed their use of deodorant,
tried to avoid patriarchal language, thought before they spoke, held each other, cried, moped, and
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ultimately disintegrated into a messy, unappealing morass of weepy,
hypo-allergic, psychosomatic, anti-sex, anti-fun, anti-porn, pro-drama,
pro-processing post-political subjects.
Political times change and as the 1980s gave way to the 1990s, as
weepy white lady feminism gave way to reveal a multi-racial,
poststructuralist, intersectional feminism of much longer provenance,
people began to laugh, loosened up, people got over themselves and
began to talk and recognize that the enemy was not among us but
embedded within new, rapacious economic systems. Needless to say,
for women of color feminisms, the stakes have always been higher and
identity politics always have played out differently. But, in the 1990s,
books on neoliberalism, postmodernism, gender performativity and
racial capital turned the focus away from the wounded self and we
found our enemies and, as we spoke out and observed that neoliberal
forms of capitalism were covering over economic exploitation with
language of freedom and liberation, it seemed as if we had given up wounded selves for new
formulations of multitudes, collectivities, collaborations, and projects less centered upon individuals and
their woes. Of course, I am flattening out all kinds of historical and cultural variations within multiple
histories of feminism, queerness and social movements. But I am willing to do so in order to make a
point here about the re-emergence of a rhetoric of harm and trauma that casts all social difference in
terms of hurt feelings and that divides up politically allied subjects into hierarchies of woundedness.
(https://bullybloggers.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/four-yorkshire-men11.png)
At this point, we should recall the “four Yorkshire men” skit from Monty Python where the four old
friends reminisce about their deprived childhoods – one says “we used to live in a tiny old tumbledown
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house…” the next counters with “house!? You were lucky to live in a house. We used to live in a
room…” And the third jumps in with: “room? You were lucky to have a room, we used to have to live in
a corridor.” The fourth now completes the cycle: “A corridor! We dreamed of living in a corridor!” These
hardship competitions, but without the humor, are set pieces among the triggered generation and
indeed, I rarely go to a conference, festival or gathering anymore without a protest erupting about a
mode of representation that triggered someone somewhere. And as people “call each other out” to a
chorus of finger snapping, we seem to be rapidly losing all sense of perspective and instead of building
alliances, we are dismantling hard fought for coalitions.
(https://bullybloggers.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/tsss2012-postcard.jpeg)
Much of the recent discourse of offense and harm has focused on language, slang and naming. For
example, controversies erupted in the last few months over the name of a longstanding nightclub in San
Francisco: “Trannyshack,” and arguments ensued about whether the word “tranny” should ever be
used. These debates led some people to distraction, and legendary queer performer, Justin Vivian Bond,
posted an open letter on her Facebook page telling readers and fans in no uncertain terms that she is
“angered by this trifling bullshit.” Bond reminded readers that many people are “delighted to be
trannies” and not delighted to be shamed into silence by the “word police.” Bond and others have also
referred to the queer custom of re-appropriating terms of abuse and turning them into affectionate terms
of endearment. When we obliterate terms like “tranny” in the quest for respectability and assimilation,
we actually feed back into the very ideologies that produce the homo and trans phobia in the first place!
In The Life of Brian, Brian finally refuses to participate in the anti-Semitism that causes his mother to call
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him a “roman.” In a brave “coming out” speech, he says: “I’m not a roman mum, I’m a kike, a yid, a
heebie, a hook-nose, I’m kosher mum, I’m a Red Sea pedestrian, and proud of it!
And now for something completely different…The controversy about the term “tranny” is not a singular
occurrence; such tussles have become a rather predictable and regular part of all kinds of conferences
and meetings. Indeed, it is becoming difficult to speak, to perform, to offer up work nowadays without
someone, somewhere claiming to feel hurt, or re-traumatized by a cultural event, a painting, a play, a
speech, a casual use of slang, a characterization, a caricature and so on whether or not the “damaging”
speech/characterization occurs within a complex aesthetic work. At one conference, a play that
foregrounded the mutilation of the female body in the 17th century was cast as trans-phobic and became
the occasion for multiple public meetings to discuss the damage it wreaked upon trans people present at
the performance. Another piece at this performance conference that featured a “fortune teller” character
was accused of orientalist stereotyping. At another event I attended that focused on queer masculinities,
the organizers were accused of marginalizing queer femininities. And a class I was teaching recently
featured a young person who reported feeling worried about potentially “triggering” a transgender
student by using incorrect pronouns in relation to a third student who did not seem bothered by it!
Another student told me recently that she had been “triggered” in a class on colonialism by the showing
of The Battle of Algiers. In many of these cases offended groups demand apologies, and promises are
made that future enactments of this or that theater piece will cut out the offensive parts; or, as in the case
of “Trannyshack,” the name of the club was changed.
(https://bullybloggers.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/trannyshack_b.png)
As reductive as such responses to aesthetic and academic material have become, so have definitions of
trauma been over-simplified within these contexts. There are complex discourses on trauma readily
available as a consequence of decades of work on memory, political violence and abuse. This work has
offered us multiple theories of the ways in which a charged memory of pain, abuse, torture or
imprisonment can be reignited by situations or associations that cause long buried memories to flood
back into the body with unpredictable results. But all of this work, by Shoshana Felman Macarena
Gomez-Barris, Saidiya Hartman, Cathy Caruth, Ann Cvetkovich, Marianne Hirsch and others, has been
pushed aside in the recent wave of the politics of the aggrieved.
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(https://bullybloggers.files.wordpress.com/2014/07
/your_trigger_warnings_are_triggering_me_by_meiharu-d5j2mey.gif)
Claims about being triggered work off literalist notions of emotional pain and cast traumatic events as
barely buried hurt that can easily resurface in relation to any kind of representation or association that
resembles or even merely represents the theme of the original painful experience. And so, while in the
past, we turned to Freud’s mystic writing pad to think of memory as a palimpsest, burying material
under layers of inscription, now we see a memory as a live wire sitting in the psyche waiting for a spark.
Where once we saw traumatic recall as a set of enigmatic symptoms moving through the body, now
people reduce the resurfacing of a painful memory to the catch all term of “trigger,” imagining that
emotional pain is somehow similar to a pulled muscle –as something that hurts whenever it is deployed,
and as an injury that requires protection.
/k5715.gif)Fifteen to twenty years ago, books like
Wendy Brown’s States of Injury (1995) and Anna Cheng’s
The Melancholy of Race: Psychoanalysis, Assimilation and
Hidden Grief (2001) asked readers to think about how
grievances become grief, how politics comes to demand
injury and how a neoliberal rhetoric of individual pain
obscures the violent sources of social inequity. But,
newer generations of queers seem only to have heard
part of this story and instead of recognizing that
neoliberalism precisely goes to work by psychologizing
political difference, individualizing structural exclusions
and mystifying political change, some recent activists
seem to have equated social activism with descriptive
statements about individual harm and psychic pain. Let
me be clear – saying that you feel harmed by another
queer person’s use of a reclaimed word like tranny and
organizing against the use of that word is NOT social
activism. It is censorship.
In a post-affirmative action society, where even recent

histories of political violence like slavery and lynching
are cast as a distant and irrelevant past, all claims to
hardship have been cast as equal; and some students,
accustomed to trotting out stories of painful events in
their childhoods (dead pets/parrots, a bad injury in sports) in college applications and other such
venues, have come to think of themselves as communities of naked, shivering, quaking little selves – too
vulnerable to take a joke, too damaged to make one. In queer communities, some people are now
committed to an “It Gets Better” version of consciousness-raising within which suicidal, depressed and
bullied young gays and lesbians struggle like emperor penguins in a blighted arctic landscape to make it
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through the winter of childhood. With the help of friendly adults, therapy, queer youth groups and
national campaigns, these same youth internalize narratives of damage that they themselves may or
may not have actually experienced. Queer youth groups in particular install a narrative of trauma and
encourage LGBT youth to see themselves as “endangered” and “precarious” whether or not they
actually feel that way, whether or not coming out as LGB or T actually resulted in abuse! And then, once
they “age out” of their youth groups, those same LGBT youth become hypersensitive to all signs and
evidence of the abuse about which they have learned.
(https://bullybloggers.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/lgbt_teens.jpg)
What does it mean when younger people who are benefitting from several generations now of queer
social activism by people in their 40s and 50s (who in their childhoods had no recourse to anti-bullying
campaigns or social services or multiple representations of other queer people building lives) feel
abused, traumatized, abandoned, misrecognized, beaten, bashed and damaged? These younger folks,
with their gay-straight alliances, their supportive parents and their new right to marry regularly issue
calls for “safe space.” However, as Christina
/978-0-8223-5470-3_pr.jpg)
/safespace.jpg)Hanhardt’s Lambda Literary award winning book, Safe
Space: Neighborhood History and the Politics of Violence, shows, the safe space
agenda has worked in tandem with urban initiatives to increase the
policing of poor neighborhoods and the gentrification of others. Safe
Space: Gay Neighborhood History and the Politics of Violence traces the
development of LGBT politics in the US from 1965-2005 and explains how
LGBT activism was transformed from a multi-racial coalitional grassroots
movement with strong ties to anti-poverty groups and anti-racism
organizations to a mainstream, anti-violence movement with aspirations
for state recognition.
And, as LGBT communities make “safety” into a top priority (and that
during an era of militaristic investment in security regimes) and ground their quest for safety in
competitive narratives about trauma, the fight against aggressive new forms of exploitation, global
capitalism and corrupt political systems falls by the way side.
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Is this the way the world ends? When groups that share common cause, utopian dreams and a joined
mission find fault with each other instead of tearing down the banks and the bankers, the politicians and
the parliaments, the university presidents and the CEOs? Instead of realizing, as Moten and Hearny put
it in The Undercommons, that “we owe each other everything,” we enact punishments on one another and
stalk away from projects that should unite us, and huddle in small groups feeling erotically bonded
through our self-righteousness.
I want to call for a time of accountability and specificity: not all LGBT youth are suicidal, not all LGBT
people are subject to violence and bullying, and indeed class and race remain much more vital factors in
accounting for vulnerability to violence, police brutality, social baiting and reduced access to education
and career opportunities. Let’s call an end to the finger snapping moralism, let’s question contemporary
desires for immediately consumable messages of progress, development and access; let’s all take a hard
long look at the privileges that often prop up public performances of grief and outrage; let’s
acknowledge that being queer no longer automatically means being brutalized and let’s argue for much
more situated claims to marginalization, trauma and violence. Let’s not fiddle while Rome (or Paris)
burns, trigger while the water rises, weep while trash piles up; let’s recognize these internal wars for the
distraction they have become. Once upon a time, the appellation “queer” named an opposition to
identity politics, a commitment to coalition, a vision of alternative worlds. Now it has become a weak
umbrella term for a confederation of identitarian concerns. It is time to move on, to confuse the enemy,
to become illegible, invisible, anonymous (see Preciado’s Bully Bloggers post on anonymity in relation to
the Zapatistas). In the words of José Muñoz, “we have never been queer.” In the words of a great knight
from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, “we are now no longer the Knights who say Ni, we are now the
Knights who say “Ekki-ekki-ekki-ekki-PTANG. Zoom-Boing, z’nourrwringmm.”
(https://bullybloggers.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/i-chzbgr.jpg)
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Tags: feminist humor (https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/tag/feminist-humor/), Halberstam

(https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/tag/halberstam/), monty python
(https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/tag/monty-python/), queer culture
(https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/tag/queer-culture/), triggering
(https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/tag/triggering/)
COMMENTS 369 Comments

CATEGORIES Current Affairs, Film, Higher Education, Political Rants and Raves, Pop Culture
AUTHOR halberst
369 Responses to “You Are Triggering me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric

of Harm, Danger and Trauma”
Kat July 5, 2014 at 12:51 pm #

Wow. Thank you!!
REPLY
Robert Borneman July 5, 2014 at 5:34 pm #
Very well thought-out and very well articulated assessment of the culture of umbrage in which
Americans (of all political stripes) currently find themselves. Thank you for this superb piece of
writing.
REPLY
Bink July 6, 2014 at 11:19 am #
Culture of Umbrage–I love that. So apt.
Will Shetterly July 7, 2014 at 12:17 am #

Just checking. Your rebuttal consists of “Is not!” and “Typo!”? You’re right about the typo, but
you may want to read a little more about neoliberalism. I recommend David Harvey’s book,
which pretty much backs up Halberstam’s argument. For example: “Neoliberal rhetoric, with its
foundational emphasis upon individual freedoms, has the power to split off libertarianism,
identity politics, multi-culturalism, and eventually narcissistic consumerism from the social forces
ranged in pursuit of social justice through the conquest of state power. It has long proved
extremely difficult within the US left, for example, to forge the collective discipline required for
political action to achieve social justice without offending the desire of political actors for
individual freedom and for full recognition and expression of particular identities. Neoliberalism
did not create these distinctions, but it could easily exploit, if not foment, them.”
REPLY
Martin Knutsen July 7, 2014 at 4:42 am #
Agreed. There is an inflation in terms, when the use of the word trigger no longer refers to a
neural reaction that bypasses the rational mind but just to a bad memory. The sad element is that
it becomes harder to discuss real traumas of all kinds when the scientific terms become
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buzzwords. Believe me, you are not traumatized by the use of the word “tranny”.
REPLY
anamorphotic July 7, 2014 at 10:00 pm #
Apologies if this point was already made before. I’ve definitely been feeling the deja-vu and
irritation with the current movement following the more negative aspects of the second wave
feminist movement – in particular the lesbian community of that era. In that part of your blog I
totally agree and felt quite heartened to see someone writing what I have been trying to articulate
to my friends who have been having the same discussion. Where I believe you took a left turn
was at the description that “not all” LGBT has had trauma and that the It Gets Better Movement
encourages people to think of themselves as victims. I think it detracts from your main argument
and gets into a battle of hair splitting. Of course people who are LGBT have faced incredible
alienation and violence. Not everyone, yes. But it does put one in the line of fire. For example the
Sister of Perpetual Indulgence and her husband who were beaten at Pink Saturday, an event that
they put on. And no one lifted a finger to help while it was happening. Some even cheered it. In
writing about this, what I am trying to say is that I believe that there is trauma and the trauma is
legitimate. However, (and I think this would strengthen your argument), it is the job of the
trauma survivor to take care of themselves. This does not mean that they engage in the Sisyphean
task of attempting to get their environment to conform to their perspective of what their personal
needs are. DBT, which is a great therapy tool for trauma survivors, is the work of learning that
one can self-regulate their emotions. That one’s moods and anxieties are ultimately under one’s
own control and not actually thrown off my some external random threat. Sure, something
external may cause a reminder of something in the past that was beyond horrid. It is then the job
of the trauma survivor to figure out what they need to get their own self regulated again.THAT is
wellness. Telling other people what words to use or that they can’t wear certain colors or shut a
door because of a childhood memory is called being a gigantic controlling douche.
REPLY
Eoin May 13, 2015 at 5:56 pm #
Brilliant points. Expecting the world and its inhabitants to conform to one’s own (highly
personal) trauma response is indeed an exercise in futility. Doing so also constitutes the very
kind of ‘safety behavior’ (in CBT terms) which most likely maintains said trauma response.
hagsdemesne February 4, 2018 at 8:56 pm #

” it has become a weak umbrella term for a confederation of identitarian concerns. It is time to
move on, to confuse the enemy, to become illegible, invisible, anonymous” . . . and get out of the
classroom and back on the streets
REPLY
Kate July 5, 2014 at 2:33 pm #
How do you connect Hanhardt’s book about the history of neighborhood movements and the
shifting relationship of those movements to the state and police, and activist calls for “safer space,”
calls that ask the group to be accountable to each other, not to outside state actors? Or do you think
they’re all of a piece?
REPLY
bullybloggers July 5, 2014 at 5:59 pm #
Hanhardt’s book, in part, traces the transformation of a multi-racial politics of alliance in queer
communities to an anti-violence agenda. This narrowing of queer politics to issues of safety and
personal security is important to understand in terms of the new discourse of triggering, harm
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and trauma.
REPLY
Liberty Mahalakshmi July 6, 2014 at 6:37 am #
This link between safe space and policing is a valid observation. An explanation might be that
third sector funding is increasingly tied to outcomes that measure hate crime reporting, anti-
social behaviour, health problems (STDs, addiction, mental health, HIV), community safety
etc.
Overall, this is a very well argued article and I agree that identity politics has perhaps
travelled too far into the cul de sac of triggered feelings and blame. I have some sympathy for
this point of view because I have seen activists tear each other’s reputations and self-esteem
apart over personal choices and semantics…
However, I agree with the first part of the following statement but not the second, “saying that
you feel harmed by another queer person’s use of a reclaimed word like tranny and
organizing against the use of that word is NOT social activism. It is censorship.”
Allow me to elaborate. While I feel that organizing against follow activists is a poor use of
energies and counter-productive, I do not see it as censorship…rather, I see it as the right to
reply. Everyone has their own preferences, choices and opinions. If you call me a tranny, I
might call you a bigot, but if you call yourself a tranny I might assume you are either suffering
from internalised phobia OR that you are a defiant, kick-ass activist who is reclaiming a
pejorative as a badge of honour. That would be my opinion, neither endorsement nor
censorship.
For me, compassion is needed here. We activists understand oppression because we have
experienced it up close and personal. Chances are, if you feel triggered than so does the
person who is reclaiming the word…that is why they are reclaiming it! It is rather like the
practice of using a small amount of poison to innoculate oneself against poisons.
Koko July 7, 2014 at 2:19 pm #

Unfortunately I cannot reply to the comment from Liberty Mahalakshmi, but I wanted to let
them know that I am about to put their last 2 sentences into my favourite quotes list.
Pratibha Parmar July 5, 2014 at 3:00 pm #

Just brilliant ! Thanks Jack for the much needed illuminating sense & sensibility !
REPLY
altaira5hatton July 5, 2014 at 3:26 pm #
You have a sexy brain. Thanks for writing!
REPLY
Nuncat July 5, 2014 at 3:32 pm #
Thank you for one of the most thoughtful essays on this issue that I have read. As a professor who
teaches a class about science, gender & power, I have struggled to deal with the sudden emergence of
this issue.
REPLY
Maribel Alvarez July 5, 2014 at 3:56 pm #
Thank you!!!!! This is the smartest commentary I have read on activist politics since….. Well, maybe
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the ’90s. Reminds me in tone of perplexity of Stuart Hall’s essay on Thatcherism…”toad in the
garden.” And urgent plea for a sensible radicality. your points are made with such integrity, layering,
intelligence and transparency. Pure brilliance. As a folklorist I teach on the subject of humor (and
race, sexuality, stereotypes, etc) in my intro classes… And it is one of the hardest sections of the entire
semester.
REPLY
Terry July 5, 2014 at 3:58 pm #
OH MY GOD THANK YOU
REPLY
Lito Elio Porto July 5, 2014 at 4:05 pm #
Absolutely perfect. Ive been attempting to make the same points, albeit much less eloquently, since I
had use of reason. Very appreciate appreciated.
REPLY
Ja'miey Dale King July 5, 2014 at 4:08 pm #
An excellent, thorough and highly poignant piece.
REPLY
amazondream July 5, 2014 at 4:22 pm #
OMG!! YOU DON’T BELIEVE IN MY PAIN!!!!!!!!!
REPLY
amazondream July 5, 2014 at 4:23 pm #
By that I mean “Thank you for a clear and concise revealing of the new brand of censorship.
REPLY
Geeti July 5, 2014 at 4:45 pm #
Thank you thank you!!
Your point about “safe spaces” and the tie-in to security made me think… “safe space” almost never
gets tied to critiques of security regimes, or to struggles for/over land. “Triggering” doesn’t seem to
extend beyond the first world. LGBT in the military somehow doesn’t *literally* trigger.
REPLY
LB July 5, 2014 at 4:49 pm #
I really love this article but realized that I didn’t want to link to it on my Facebook because a lot of
my Facebook friends might be triggered by even just the title suggesting that maybe I wasn’t taking
their triggers seriously. 😦
REPLY
DebraP July 7, 2014 at 12:16 pm #
I had a similar thought, but I posted it with a simple “Interesting read” so as to share it in a
somewhat detached way. Passive aggressive I know, but does the job.
REPLY
Troy July 5, 2014 at 4:54 pm #
This critique needs to be expanded to other realms as well beyond queer and feminist politics, it
seems to have become a universal problem on the left.
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REPLY
whatliamsays2013 July 5, 2014 at 5:26 pm #
I think this may be related to a specifically U.S. context. I am British and I don’t find that most people
I encounter on a day to day basis really think like this. Having said that notions of ‘safety’ and
‘compliance’ are really popular in professional contexts like the media and education. My
grandmother is in her 80’s and although she is very racists it can be quite refreshing to speak to
someone who lived through WW2.
REPLY
Danie Manos July 8, 2014 at 8:46 am #
I am an American who has been living in England for 6 months attending Uni and I have seen
this kind of rhetoric way more in England than I have back home… I think it’s a young person
thing, or you just have to be around the right people.
REPLY
Tanya October 14, 2015 at 4:10 am #
I go to a UK uni and definitely identify with this. Everytime I tried to do anything in the
LGBT*Q+ society it got such backlash because it triggered someone that in the end I just gave up.
It made my charity work and art shows and education events etc. impossible to run.
REPLY
Julie Weinshel Tepper July 5, 2014 at 5:35 pm #
Bravo. This so needed to be said in exactly this emphatic and undefensive way. Thank you!
REPLY
Scott Gerard Prinster July 5, 2014 at 6:37 pm #
Could you suggest some basic reading and resources for responding in constructive ways to the
culture of the aggrieved? Thank you!
REPLY
Hugh Haiker July 5, 2014 at 6:45 pm #
I won’t be able to fully capture what this article means to me. I recently quit a doctoral program at
the University of Denver because this exact type of infighting made it impossible for me to learn
there. Scholars supposedly dedicated to social justice seemed to be more about self-promotion and
ego protection. My queerness was rendered irrelevant by my white male face, and when I called out
the pragmatic concerns regarding the overemphasis of personal narratives, I was accused of
employing my privilege to oppress the voices of others. I feel more sane for reading this. Thank you,
deeply.
REPLY
I try to be!
REPLY
narrativeeschatology July 8, 2014 at 11:47 pm #
How do you feel about “shemale”?
REPLY
kjq July 5, 2014 at 7:08 pm #
Thank you for such an articulate analysis of a troubling trend.
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REPLY
Assimilationist Tranny July 5, 2014 at 7:16 pm #
Also, Jack, how I’m the world do you get from “trans people don’t like cis folks using to anti-trans
slurs” to “trans people are assimilationist”? It’s almost as if you can only come up with the most
insulting explanation possible, perhaps because you’re a shitty academic with an ugly soul.
REPLY
You are right, it could be my ugly soul but here’s the thing Assimilationist Tranny – not all trans
people mind the T-Word – that’s what I am trying to say. Some of us like it!! It was never a
medical term and not only a slur, it has a long history as a term of affection used by trannies for
and about trannies and like many other queer slang terms, it does important work: dyke, queer,
fag. I am sorry you found the explanation offered here offensive but if I hit a nerve, maybe it is
worth thinking things through just a little…thank you for reading.
REPLY
Tai Miller July 6, 2014 at 1:35 am #
Real safe space should allow for the word tranny because it reflects the very specific
experiences of some of the people in that space. Some people claim that word and it’s
important to them and by putting it down you’re triggering them, usually to anger.
KNE July 6, 2014 at 1:42 am #

I’m sympathetic to your general argument, but I don’t think that it the argument accurately
describes the motivations animating the “t-word” controversy as cleanly as it seems you
believe. A better frame of reference is the “n-word” debates among african americans, and
notions of intergroup vs intragroup usage. From what I hear from trans folks who’ve
expressed opposition to the casual use of the word, I don’t think personal pain is really the
issue as much as collective dignity. (Note: dignity is not an assimilationist goal.) In any case
it’s easy enough for white dudes like me just to not say the n-word, and it’s easy enough for
cis people like me to just not say the T-word.
quendergeer July 6, 2014 at 2:54 am #

It was certainly impressive how you managed to link queer youth trying to create safe spaces
to the military industrial complex. That’s the sort of theoretical chutzpah that lets you call
grass roots resistance to reactionary rhetoric “neo-liberal” and still paint yourself as a queer
outsider resisting assimilation.
Lilee July 6, 2014 at 11:43 am #

Wow, Genderqueer, you say nothing so eloquently. Also, other person, tranny cannot be in any
way equated to nigger. Why are we so afraid of words! It’s not like we’re using them to
oppress. We’re talking about them. How do you talk about something and not name it? What
does that do psychologically? Rhetorically? Transvestites were not physically enslaved in
America and then politically and economically enslaved for… well, they still are. That word
carries with it all of the racism and violence of those actions. It’s a word used to dehumanize.
As a cisfemale bisexual monogamist, I never used the word tranny as a slur. As soon as I was
told by a genderqueer youth that it was a slur (not because I’d used it, but out of context), I
never used it again. Except in this kind of conversation. In fact, in my job as a rhetoric teacher,
I have corrected students who have used it descriptively, unaware that it is offensive because
they often live in little bubbles of unawareness that education is supposed to pop, not
reinforce with steel and barbed wire.
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S July 6, 2014 at 11:42 am #
Sadly for you, there’s no Lambda award for being rude on the Internet.
REPLY
Spinning For Difficulty July 11, 2014 at 3:02 am #
@quendergeer (no reply button) “….It was certainly impressive how you managed to link queer
youth trying to create safe spaces to the military industrial complex. …”
We live in a society today where young boys doodling a cartoon which includes a picture of a gun
in class or shooting their hands like guns in the schoolyard has led to the police being called out
to the school.
Meanwhile the (real world) wars rage on and nobody does anything or even cares.
It sure does suit the military industrial complex to keep everyone distracted by training them to
(a) focus exclusively on themselves in the most self-obsessed way. Me, me, me! (b) equate group
conformity with being good (and thus individuality as bad).
Perhaps you might like to explore the links between the military industrial complex and, say,
Hollywood which – when it isn’t putting out movies glorifying violence and military intervention
as the ‘go-to’ solution to all the world’s problems – is putting out movies which normalise and
promote narcissistic, egotistical, self entitled, attention seeking, morally bankrupt personalities as
normal, functional and even desirable character traits. Go figure.
This victim-culture style of self obsessed me, me, me ‘outrage’ is a million miles from TRUE
MORAL OUTRAGE born of true empathy, compassion and the genuine pursuit of virtue.
REPLY
Sally Ember, Ed.D. July 12, 2014 at 8:31 am #
I love this, Spinning: “Hollywood which – when it isn’t putting out movies glorifying violence
and military intervention as the ‘go-to’ solution to all the world’s problems – is putting out
movies which normalise and promote narcissistic, egotistical, self entitled, attention seeking,
morally bankrupt personalities as normal, functional and even desirable character traits. Go
figure.” Thanks.
Trigger Happy July 5, 2014 at 7:18 pm #

This blog triggered me (in a good way!). Thanks for the provocations.
REPLY
bored, unsurprised July 5, 2014 at 8:19 pm #
wow, this is incredibly poorly reasoned, reactionary, and loaded with assumptions. i am a queer
person in my mid-20s who used to really value your work, but the refusal to take trauma survivors
and people with disabilities seriously is really not as radical or edgy as you think it is. i can
understand how a culture of sharing more openly about trauma and its effects could feel alienating
to an older generation who perhaps took experiencing trauma and abuse for granted, as a normal
experience that should just be gotten over, not dwelled upon or talked about in public. but this
doesn’t mean that the shift is wrong. i am pleased, not resentful, when i see younger youth
advocating for themselves in ways that i wasn’t able to. calling it neoliberalism feels like a pretty
egregious leap. it’s also pretty wild to assume that all queer youth now have supportive parents! yes,
it’s more common than it was in the past, but it’s certainly not universal. i’ve known many queer
14 of 77 2018-11-28, 2:25 p.m.

people my age and younger who have survived abuse (by parents, by police and prisons, by
partners) that would be considered horrific by any metric. uc santa barbara, one of the schools that
has been in the news for students advocating for trigger warnings in courses, was recently the site of
a misogynist mass shooting. are we really saying that that is not legitimate trauma?!
there’s much more i could say but i don’t want to spend my whole day picking apart every faulty
point here. this is boring, irrelevant, and full of shit.
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Me July 5, 2014 at 9:24 pm #
I think the biggest problem is that people constantly see themselves as victims. If you see yourself
as a victim, then yes, everyone will look like an attacker. It’s okay to feel hurt, but running away
from it by calling something a “trigger” and not dealing with it doesn’t help anyone at all, least of
all oneself.
There is a huge difference from responding with a victim mentality and advocating. It’s usually
pretty obvious to tell the former from the latter when someone opens their mouth (or types on
their computer).
REPLY
JustAskingForALittleUnderstanding July 8, 2014 at 9:07 am #
The thing is, though, that triggers can affect trauma survivors whether or not they “see
themselves as victims.” There’s also a big difference between hurt feelings that you can shake
off, and panic symptoms and other effects of PTSD. Let me offer an example: having slurs
thrown at me is simply upsetting to me, but I experience autonomic and sympathetic nervous
system stimulation (raised heart rate, shortness of breath, and other symptoms of panic
attacks) when I smell the cologne my attacker was wearing, or when I kept seeing him
running across campus back before he graduated. The latter is what triggering is, and the
former is not, at least for me. People landing in the realm of the former might benefit from
toughening their skin, as you would suggest, but those of us who experience triggered panic
attacks as a result of verbal, visual or other sensory stimuli can’t just toughen our skin. Trust
me, we would if we could; but the brain doesn’t work that way. If it did, I might be able to
understand where all this is coming from, but for the moment I just feel like the debate this
feeds into, about triggering and trigger warnings and the new trendy attitude condemning
them, will only hurt people, because of a fundamental misunderstanding of what a trigger
really is.
TL;DR – Triggering is short for ‘triggering a panic attack or other fight-or-flight nervous
system activity,’ and the now-trendy “i refuse to put trigger warnings on this or acknowledge
the PTSD experience so suck it up” attitude is damaging and gross. Equally gross is the willful
ignorance of people who’ve appropriated the word and used it to mean that they just feel
hurt, angry or sad because of something that was said or shown to them.
Matt July 5, 2014 at 10:12 pm #

I don’t think the author is failing to take trauma survivors seriously. The overuse of “triggering”
is actually taking the concept away from them. “Triggers” in the psychological sense aren’t things
that make you feel aggrieved or mildly uncomfortable, which is the way it started being used in
social justice spaces.
For fuck’s sake, Iv’e literally seen a post dealing with sexual violence being trigger-warned for
“misogyny” but not “sexual violence”!
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Geeti July 5, 2014 at 10:14 pm #
I think the problem isn’t that trauma is being acknowledged and brought into the open, but that
it’s being assimilated into a neoliberal institution of biomedical care that reduces complex
emotion to diagnostic checklists, and strips grief of its political meaning. I think that plays a big
role in perpetuating the idea that the grief of others ought not to be touched — an idea that
creates isolated lifeworlds, one per person, making the suffering of queer people outside of richer
countries seem too far away and too small.
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xandracoe July 6, 2014 at 4:13 am #
Excellent phrasing: “asssimilated into a neoliberal institution of biomedical care that reduces
complex emotion to diagnostic checklists, and strips grief of its political meaning.” And yes, I
think that goes to the heart of the problem. What we call trauma used to be called life.
will July 6, 2014 at 5:42 am #

Bored, you should watch the century of the self.
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sirenis July 6, 2014 at 9:17 pm #
Speaking of boring, irrelevant, and full of shit, as a trauma survivor I find the constant grasping
of people for special consideration of their triggers to be venal bullshit.
Real triggers are very seldom as neat and self explanatory as people often claim they are, and
being triggered is often evidence of healing. 2 years into treatment this view would have had my
full sympathy, 10 years out it has my contempt. Crying for protection and kid glove treatment
only slows down the healing process. Trying to score political points this way is just cheap.
Using your cultivated and curated pain to shut down discussions, especially in an academic
setting, is reprehensible.
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XH July 7, 2014 at 4:38 pm #
Yes! This! This reply is perfect! Thank you!
Silver H. August 16, 2014 at 3:17 pm #

For the sake of the article, which makes some interesting points, I can understand
“trigger(ing)” in relationship to hyper-individualism in current activism. However, I think the
outrage about the mere notion of trigger warnings is misplaced when put into proper context.
In reality, a trigger warning functions along the lines of “spoiler alert” (which also has its
share of critics). The term seems closely linked to the Internet and serves to allow a person to
make the decision to engage or not with specific content; it does so because we live in a world
where the Internet lives in our pocket and we tend to mindlessly scroll through Facebook,
Reddit, Twitter etc. at any free moment of the day (not all but any). There are times we’d
prefer to avoid certain content for very practical reasons: in the 15 minutes before a job
interview or business meeting, while we are procrastinating studying for an important exam,
just after a fight with a partner of loved kne, after a difficult therapy session. The list goes on.
This also analogous to spoiler alerts, because people are very sensitive to having a movie of tv
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show they want to see ruined before they have chance to view it. They can and probably will
return to the content after having viewed said tv show or movie. Trigger warnings do the
same thing; they allow someone to decide when the appropriate time is to engage with certain
content.
This has a natural extension into academia where students are expected to employ critical
thought to various material and maintain a certain grade point average while doing so.
Allowing a student to decide what time is best to engage with potentionally triggering
material doesn’t create a culture of victomhood; it simply empowers a person. Students don’t
take one course per term; they take many. Sometimes a student has lots of obligations and
doesn’t feel that confronting triggering material is appropriate for them at that time. That
doesn’t mean that they are running away from their problems and will never engage with
material that triggers them, nor does it mean they will perpetually avoid any material that
triggers.
You can link the term to individualism and neoliberalism, but I don’t think it’s fair to say it
creates a culture of victomhood. I run in social activist circles and don’t hear people shouting
about triggers in person. It came from the Internet and still mainly occurs on the web. If
anything it’s a symptom or expression of Internet culture.
indiyesreally July 7, 2014 at 11:15 pm #

^word
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Spinning For Difficulty July 11, 2014 at 3:24 am #
While it’s true that some people suffer terrible childhoods of abuse and trauma, it’s always good
to maintain a sense of perspective.
It is the people who make false claims of their own trauma who are really causing harm (by
trivialising the concept of trauma). Calling them out (see video) is a positive thing for everyone
…… *including* genuine victims of trauma.
Twitter induced Shell Shock
“……uc santa barbara, one of the schools that has been in the news for students advocating for
trigger warnings in courses, was recently the site of a misogynist mass shooting….”
17 of 77 2018-11-28, 2:25 p.m.

This is a perfect example of how victim culture distorts reality in order to invent or maintain a
‘threat narrative’.
The guy you refer to (Eliot Rogers) killed more men than women. He stabbed men to death with
his bare hands. And yet he is labelled a ‘misogynist’ by feminists. Feminist bloggers all over the
internet have been caught out referring to him as “That misogynist guy who killed all those
WOMEN” (what about the men he killed?)
That is like labelling a meat eater a ‘vegetarian’, and ignoring the fact that he just won a
hamburger eating contest.
We now live in a society where people want to enhance their own (group’s) victim status so badly
they are willing to distort reality, omit FACTS and barefaced lie to themselves and everyone else.
This is not healthy or productive.
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Gztlms October 8, 2014 at 12:45 pm #
You missed some of his points. Trauma is real, but pursuing individualized responses orients us
away from collective solutions. He discusses the hard hard work of decades of thinking and
research on trauma and oppression and how those hard fought understandings are not
considered (even with with a counter-argument) but instead simply ignored. (where’s the respect
there?) His argument is not reactionary, but social and collective and concerned with how
individualized ideas of suffering obscure collective violence and oppression. Here’s a section I’d
like to hear your thoughts on:
“books like Wendy Brown’s States of Injury (1995) and Anna Cheng’s The Melancholy of Race:
Psychoanalysis, Assimilation and Hidden Grief (2001) asked readers to think about how
grievances become grief, how politics comes to demand injury and how a neoliberal rhetoric of
individual pain obscures the violent sources of social inequity. But, newer generations of queers
seem only to have heard part of this story and instead of recognizing that neoliberalism precisely
goes to work by psychologizing political difference, individualizing structural exclusions and
mystifying political change, some recent activists seem to have equated social activism with
descriptive statements about individual harm and psychic pain.”
REPLY
Just-a-thought July 5, 2014 at 8:21 pm #
Point, to be taken gently so as not to trigger: When the “t* slur” is written or spoken it simply works
to let the speaker of the phrase of off the hook of uttering the the word tranny. Sadly, as reader, I have
to fill in what the asterisk after the “t” might be in the context of the sentence. In this case, the
*=ranny. Slurs are linguistic sand traps, sometimes.
REPLY
One of those traumatized whiners July 6, 2014 at 5:47 pm #
i’m assuming everyone here does not understand how PTSD works (doesn’t want to talk about it
by name because clearly, if validity comes from institutions, putting these “queer and trans
gentrifying youth” firmly into the DSM is a threat to Jack’s made-up authority on the subject), but
thanks for the meaningless quip of a first sentence
that may be true, re: how to talk about a slur when not a member of the group it does violence to
(hint: AFAB people are not a member of the group this slur does violence to, despite all of the
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masculine entitlement that wants to grab up every instance of victimization — funny how that
works, in the context of this garbledymook post — it can). i am listening to my trans/* sisters on
this one, though, and i have been told not to write it out, in the same way i wouldn’t write out n*
because i actually listen to other people because my head isn’t so firmly lodged up my own ass
REPLY
betafive July 10, 2014 at 3:31 pm #
You know what they say about assumptions…

also, everyone making the “WE’RE NOT TALKING ABOUT PEOPLE WITH REAL PTSD”
argument are literally doing the equivalent thing to “WE’RE NOT TALKING ABOUT PEOPLE
WHO WERE REALLY RAPED”
that percentage of “fakers” for “attention” is around 1%, y’all. i realize center disabled students,
friends, nieces, nephews, kids, coworkers, etc, is really difficult, but that doesn’t mean you get to
have a tantrum on the internet and think anyone outside of your queer theory ala 1994 circlejerk
wordpress clique is going to like it
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Mark Denaci July 5, 2014 at 8:22 pm #
A powerful and thought-provoking post! It gets at issues you have so eloquently raised in the past
about “the speaker’s privilege” in relation to claims of victimhood. While I don’t see these issues as
“either/or”–that is, we don’t necessarily have to ignore questions of personal pain or safety in order
to broaden our focus to more structural issues–I think you have articulated something that has the
potential to provoke a truly necessary dialog within queer communities.
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Please July 5, 2014 at 8:39 pm #
Sometimes I wonder what things would be like without any men telling us that we women are
ruining feminism with our stupid whining.
REPLY
^ this
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I wonder July 7, 2014 at 1:16 am #
Sometimes I wonder what things would be like if people used well reasoned arguments to
discuss and counter other arguments instead of using claims to identity and standpoint
epistomology to smuggle in facile ad hominems.
REPLY
betafive July 8, 2014 at 12:24 am #
^ this
elle July 10, 2014 at 3:42 am #

“Well reasoned arguments” such as, for example, references to Monty Python sketches?
jamesworrad July 5, 2014 at 8:55 pm #

Mesmerising essay, though I should point out The Four Yorkshiremen Sketch wasn’t a Monty Python
19 of 77 2018-11-28, 2:25 p.m.
sketch. Rather, it was written by some of the Pythons for an earlier series called ‘At Last, The 1948
Show’ and was later used by the Pythons on tour.
Despite this extreme insensitivity to my nation’s comedy culture I find it in myself to forgive you. I
hope we can both bloom into better human beings thanks to this.
Yours,
Major James Worrad (Mrs)
REPLY
thank you for the correction, nudge nudge wink wink…:)
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Evren July 5, 2014 at 8:58 pm #
I read it right after coming home. It is really great, and long overdue. I am so looking forward to
discussing it in Queer Theory this Fall. xoxo
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leatherargento July 7, 2014 at 12:25 pm #
Unless you’re the professor, I wouldn’t do that. Retaking a course is a bitch when the whole
department sees you as mini-Hitler.
REPLY
Evren July 7, 2014 at 9:14 pm #
Meaning it would be ok to be mini-Hitler as the professor (which I would be by the virtue of
bringing this piece up)?
Alex July 11, 2014 at 11:26 am #

I’m pretty sure that’s why a lot of people become professors.
marcos July 5, 2014 at 9:02 pm #

This generation of activists are in general unworthy heirs to the sacrifices made by those who came
before us, in the civil rights movement, at Compton’s Cafeteria and at Stonewall. Under much more
challenging circumstances, these brave ordinary folks put their lives and bodies on the line to take a
stand against injustice. Stonewall was not a safe space. There were no trigger warnings. There was
plenty of alcohol to be had. Yet when Puerto Rican trannies and NYU gay boys stood up to the mafia
and cops, the neighborhood had their backs. The anti-oppression/privilege neo-feminist gender
studies academics, activists and advocates would have crumbled up and blown away in the wind.
Too many play dates has created a generation that never had to deal with anyone who they did not
like. Thus, anyone who challenges their politics must be doing so because they hate them personally.
REPLY
Matt July 5, 2014 at 10:27 pm #
I don’t think this romanticizing of the past is accurate. Many people at the Stonewall riots were
homeless. They were the marginalized among the marginalized. They weren’t braver, they were
just more desperate.
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20 of 77 2018-11-28, 2:25 p.m.
There was not homeless to speak of, not as we know it now, in NYC in the late 1960s.
Homelessness as we know it did not arise until the early 1980s when Reagan began to clearcut
the safety net. Stonewall and Compton’s era queers fought back when confronted, took risks,
and did not call a time out to process being triggered. ACTUP era queers took risks and
fought back, no safe spaces, no trigger warnings. Freedom is not free, you have to fight for it
and defend it.
ggrkl July 5, 2014 at 11:44 pm #

“The anti-oppression/privilege neo-feminist gender studies academics, activists and advocates
would have crumbled up and blown away in the wind”
Cute, calling people weak for having ideas that offend your delicate sensibilities. Why can’t they
be brave and iconoclastic?
“Too many play dates has created a generation that never had to deal with anyone who they did
not like. Thus, anyone who challenges their politics must be doing so because they hate them
personally.”
Take your whitewashed neoliberal rhetoric back to FAUX-news, please. There are lots of blatantly
oppressed/homeless (!) lgbt people these days, they might not be imprisoned but it’s ludicrous to
call them “unworthy” just because the middle class is large.
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Many adherents to these narcissistic philosophical frameworks are confrontation adverse
when it comes to confronting actual sources of real oppression yet when it comes to attacking
people who appear to think like them, there are no holds barred. Snap, snap.
Any criticism of the articles of faith implies that the critic must identify with the worst
opponents of the vulnerable one. Hence, any critical analysis of identity politics, anti-
oppression organizing or trigger warnings means that critic, no matter how radical, is
tantamount to Fox News. Either one is with you or one is against you.
We plumbed the depths of identity politics and radical feminism 30 years ago and abandoned
them for a reason, they do not resonate with the communities.
The homeless and imprisoned LGBT are not the unworthy ones. The unworthy ones are the
activists, advocates and academics who refuse to take risks, refuse to put their bodies and
lives on the line and yet have no compunctions about attacking their allies for personal
conduct or choice of worse more so than their opponents bad acts
This notion that advocate becomes the communities they advocate for is the height of
narcissism. Without democratic legitimacy of the communities in question, the advocate is
really speaking for themselves or whomever is funding their advocacy operation, the
government or corporate foundations. There are reasons why the presence of organizers in a
community does not mean that the community is organized.
brynkelly July 5, 2014 at 9:15 pm #

Blargh. A couple points:
1) Affect is not the same as emotion. It is not the same as cognition. It does not respond to the logic of
21 of 77 2018-11-28, 2:25 p.m.
neoliberalism, or for that matter, much logic at all. Massumi? Sedgwick? Hello, is this thing on?
2) Much of your arguments about the professionalization of “safety” and “safer neighborhoods”
were blatantly ripped off from INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence, and not cited, which in
addition to being plagiarism, is pretty racist.
3) #dontlucidturndownforwhat? as the kids say.
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#ludicturn, w/e, you know what i mean
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I don’t know what you mean…at all!

Blargh! A couple more points:
1. censorship has always been bad for feminist and queer communities…hello? Mic check, Butler,
Vance, Lorde.
2. The professionalization of safety and the critique of anti-violence campaigns in place of multi-
coalitional anti-racist politics comes via Christina Hanhardt’s excellent book…
3. #getonwithityourmotherwasahamsteryourfathersmelledofelderberries as the kids say?
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Hrmmmm “free speech” is about the most neoliberal of neoliberal concepts. “Free speech” is a
lot like “free markets”: only the strong survive. I’m gonna (CONTENT WARNING) hang
myself by saying this, but though McKinnon was wrong about a lot of things, I think she was
right about that.

And there are a lot of kinds of censorship out there, but a grassroots movement of some
disabled college kids asking for a simple accommodation is I think about the least of anyone’s
worries about some kind of Maoist cultural crackdown or w/e people are afraid is gonna
happen.

Asking for accommodation is one thing. Stopping the show to act out and blamethrowing at
anyone who does not divine the appropriate term that does not “trigger” the secret history of
the individual is something completely different.

2) No. Stop that. Even if there was plagiarism, it’s not ‘pretty racist’ just because those plagiarized
from are of color.
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Than Atos July 5, 2014 at 10:15 pm #
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for writing this. I often have trouble articulating these types
of concerns myself and frankly in the current political environment on the progressive side I feel like
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a villain for having them.
I agree with a lot of the comments here – the current generation of activists right now are in no way
worthy to carry the banner that their forefathers and foremothers fought for. Its deeply troubling to
see what ought to be a united front against institutional oppression degenerate into the worst sort of
factional identity politics and ideological infighting.
Even more troubling is the knee-jerk reaction to excommunicate anyone and everyone for any
perceived transgression against the current orthodoxy. Its an immediate presumption of bad faith
and an impulse to subject everyone straying from the ideological orthodoxy to the least charitable
interpretation possible.
I’d like to echo another reader and ask if you have any suggestions on further reading regarding the
emergence of this authoritarian streak in LGBT activism. I’d be very interested.
Thanks again!
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Than: having been in the romanticized era you write about , here, I have to point out there were
plenty of “factional identity politics and ideological infighting” among feminists, queer and all
racist activists. Lesbians were excluded, marginalized (and told to “blend in better”) or in hiding
among the leadership of the feminist movement; women of color were not “invited to the table”;
and transexuals were butts of jokes, relegated to the next room in “women-only” “safe” spaces, or
“didn’t exist” for most of the white, middle class feminists; no one even talked about AIDS, for
way too long.
Believe me when I say this current generation is no worse and, in most ways, much better. Don’t
write the youngsters off quite yet. We elders weren’t all “worthy” of the banners, either, but we
carried them, nonetheless.
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Han July 5, 2014 at 10:20 pm #
As someone who is a part of this, I do feel myself looking at well-mannered people as “attackers”
because of this mindset. BUT, on the same hand, MANY LGBT persons have been abused. while I
don’t find language not directed at me as “triggering” (and often find the word childish), it’s
important to realize many LGBT persons were and are abused. At the very least bullied as children
(which CAN leave a lasting, painful mark) and at most, such as trans women of color, afraid to walk
around without being literally attacked (which leads to a high murder rate of trans persons,
especially women, especially women of color). While I rejoice in the reclaiming of words, many
people find them hurtful — I believe a balance needs to be found between the whining cries of
“you’re triggering meeee”, and people who are actually experiencing flashbacks to abuse.
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Jacqueline Waters July 6, 2014 at 3:32 am #
“(which leads to a high murder rate of trans persons, especially women, especially women of
color)” do you know this to be a fact or is it a political talking point. I just ran the numbers from
the Department of Justice and the murder rates of trans vs non trans and within a margin of error
you have just as much chance of being murdered trans or not, this is statistically congruent with
people of color as well. In other words a woman of color is just as likely (actually the numbers
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indicate just a tad bit more so) to be murdered as a trans woman of color. Taking race out of the
equation you will find the same results compared to the rest of the population…your actually just
a tuny fraction LESS likely to be murdered while trans than any other person in the united states
based on population numbers from the census and the murder rates from the DOJ in 2012.
Alo that begs the question, were these murders BECAUSE these people were trans or was it that
they just HAPPENED to be trans?
If I plan to jump off a building and then smoke a joint and do it, did the marijuana make me jump
because they found THC in my blood during the autopsy? Or maybe, just maybe they are just
using numbers to justify a political agenda?
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Liberty Mahalakshmi July 6, 2014 at 12:16 pm #
Actually, if you are a trans woman of colour you are far more likely to be murdered or a victim
of violent crime, particularly in the Americas. Look at the TDOR website. I know that Sarah
Brown in the UK did the maths a few years ago and posted them on her ‘Aunty Sarah’ Blog.

How on earth does “being afraid to walk around without being literally attacked” lead to “a high
murder rate of trans persons?” That’s just dumb.
People who experience “flashbacks to abuse” in the course of their day-to-day existence need to
deal with that, not expect to be sheltered and protected from “triggers” by everyone they
encounter.
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Just-a-thought July 5, 2014 at 11:39 pm #
Am I mistaken, it could happen!, or did this article not begin with an analysis of the lack of humour
that plagued second wave feminism? No one punching you down, rather you seem most desiring of
that subject position. I have to ask: what exactly is the appeal of safe spaces, safe zones, safe words, et
al? What affects are found within this bubble of safety?
penned,
a 3rd wave feminist (with a acerbic sense of humor)
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Tai Miller July 6, 2014 at 1:30 am #
A good question. Safe space should be a place where we can share our experiences, without
ridicule, so we can learn from them. Those are political safe spaces. It’s also important that we feel
safe personally, say, in our homes or walking down the street. That is,we should be safe from
direct physical harm. A lot of people don’t have those basic kinds of safety and we should be
worried about it, it’s making us an unsafe and unkind society. That said, we live in a hard world
and we all have bad experiences that stay with us, some are worse than others, this article isn’t
talking about people with real PTSD say from being in a war, that need safe space. What people
who feel triggered want is attention. People not getting enough attention is also a big problem in
this world. I hope that explains it. Sometimes we all need safe space, and sometimes we just need
to deal with it.
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Katie July 5, 2014 at 11:44 pm #
These comments are really fascinating. Thanks for writing this — I also didn’t want to post it to
Facebook and then did anyway after noting the irony. It’s a really useful piece of writing, and
captures so much in a very brief set of paragraphs.
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ejones7 July 6, 2014 at 1:40 am #
What does it mean when older people who participate(d) in decades of queer social activism without
recourse to anti-bullying campaigns or social services or multiple representations of other queer
people building lives are angry that younger queer people still feel and are abused, traumatized,
abandoned, misrecognized, beaten, bashed and damaged?
Angry at the claim to an identity, a request for space, an appeal to protection?
We enact punishments on one another and stalk away from projects that should unite us, and huddle
in small groups feeling erotically bonded through our self-righteousness.
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Catherine July 7, 2014 at 8:34 pm #
Well said, ejones7
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caro July 6, 2014 at 1:59 am #
i find this a thoughtful piece that can unfortunately can be easily misconstrued or misread to justify
reactionary ideas. it would be even better if you could touch upon why/how trigger warnings and
the idea behind safe spaces came about. otherwise, while you speak from within the leftist queer
community, without putting up a larger context like that, the ideas in the post can easily swing
rightward.
for instance, let’s be clear: there’s no such thing as a safe space–only a space that seeks to be a safer
one. there is nothing in this world that is free from the economic system that it lives in. capitalism,
imperialism, patriarchy, heterosexism, transphobia, national oppression… they permeate everything,
including our own minds. to falsely advertise a space as “safe” is to actually bring people to harm by
leading people to believe that the space can achieve perfection in a world that is thoroughly harmful
and objectifying.
in addition, trigger warnings are still very important for the people who are traumatized by rape,
murder, child abuse, etc. but being triggered in this world is a constant reality. we should seek to put
trigger warnings on things (and specify what the warnings are) without silencing the need to discuss
those painful topics. trigger warnings are what they are–warnings–so that certain people can avoid
the topics for self-preservation or come back later when they are able to manage their trigger
responses better. it is not an excuse for silencing important topics. i don’t often like to talk about rape.
but i do because rape exists–thrives–in the atmosphere of silence. we talk about painful topics to seek
to abolish the oppression about it. want to end rape? we have to end patriarchy. that includes
discussing its many aspects and contradictions within a class society.
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will July 6, 2014 at 5:58 am #
true, it took a long careful read to make sure that the article wasn’t being mean.. I think the point
that could be made more obvious from the start is the fact that this triggering can be used against
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communities doing good work, as a kind of trolling that divides and conquers people who are
trying to do good work.
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Suey Park July 6, 2014 at 2:56 am #
“Censorship!” argument is used by those who are used to having unrestricted freedom by the state,
erasing slavery/imperialism/colonialism.
In order to combat neoliberalism, it’d be more strategic to address structural inequality that creates
trauma than those who experience it.
Sometimes white academics use “neoliberalism” to obscure the reality of black suffering. “Point to
the structure! I’m not complicit in it!”
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Lilee July 6, 2014 at 12:04 pm #
I think that you have a point. AT the same time, you missed the point, and may not experience
the reality, that many of those who demand “trigger warnings” for themselves and for people
adjacent to them who may or may not want them have NOT experienced any trauma. Most of the
loudest voices demanding trigger warnings are white kids in college. The irony of a bunch of kids
at UC Santa Barbara, one of the wealthiest communities in California, one of the most expensive
states to live in, demanding “trigger warnings” to protect them from trauma in their elite school
would be funny if it weren’t so sad.
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What July 6, 2014 at 10:54 pm #
ucsb was literally just the site of a mass shooting
Devin Ens July 6, 2014 at 3:13 am #

Well thought-out analysis, there. Way to make a point.
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Gemma Seymour July 6, 2014 at 3:30 am #
It seems to me that it is something less than productive for a person who is not a trans woman to
presume to instruct trans women on the propriety of semantic constructions which are used
primarily, or even exclusively, to attack the validity of trans women. Trans women don’t need
CAFAB gender dilettantes to tell us what should offend us.
REPLY
Murat July 6, 2014 at 8:37 am #
So … what you’re saying is that only trans women have the right to speak on this topic at all?
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liamandthebees July 6, 2014 at 12:04 pm #
no, that is not what gemma is saying. she appears to be pointing out the obnoxiousness of
non-trans-women folk (aka jack halberstam) telling trans women how to feel about the word
“tranny,” which is a word that historically and presently is usually defined by cisgender folk
and many times trans masculine people with a steady infusion of microaggressive and
oppressive stereotypes toward trans women.
liamandthebees July 6, 2014 at 11:23 am #

right on, gemma. this exactly.
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And I thought that it was short for transvestite. You presume to not only know what it best for
everyone, you presume to know the mind of people who use a word, and assume who they
are and declare their sameness. You obnoxious trans-womenfolk are all alike.
not the biologist July 6, 2014 at 1:28 pm #

In response to Lilee: knowing the minds of the users of the word is irrelevant. The material
consequences of ‘tranny’, in marking out the AMAB woman as a class against whom slurs and
thus open discrimination are acceptable and normalised, who are fundamentally men
performing femininity, fall overwhelmingly upon trans women. Drag queens, crossdressers
etc: these groups only rarely and conditionally suffer the abuse and assaults and restrictions
arising from that acceptable-target category, because they are only rarely and conditionally
visible as members of it in public, and categorisation as men is (by the testimony of members
of those groups) accurate. Feminine AMAB agender/gender-variant people may or may not,
situationally and depending on their presentation, experience those consequences. Trans men
and AFAB people of all kinds do not.
So if there is one group with a substantial portion of members reporting experience of severe
real-world consequences because ‘tranny’ is normalised in the wider culture, and on the other
hand a group primarily composed of those upon whom the consequences are severely
diminished or totally invisible (and a few who do experience those consequences) clinging to
it as a sort of in-group signifier, it’s obvious to me which a movement which apparently
aspires to solidary and unity and the material wellbeing of its members should prioritise. That
this is the opposite of what’s happening in many Queer spaces – where trans women are
hearing ‘shut up, this is different to the slurs which target us!’ alongside the usual lazy
allegations of assimilationism and censorship – says everything about the value of Queer
‘solidarity’ for us.
Many of us obnoxious trans women are certainly alike in that we’re thoroughly tired of Queer
embracing and defending TERFs, empowering abusers and reconstructing systems of
masculine privilege, while expecting to be immune to the criticisms these behaviours would
warrant if they came from ‘outside’.

What does CAFAB mean please?
REPLY
CAFAB, AMAB, TERF…WTF?
Twitter is destroying our language

um or you could google it. language UNRUINED!

I miss words. Why is “T” even part of LGB? It seems like “T” is a category unto itself that has
nothing to do with lesbians, gays, or bisexuals. Was it a mistake to merge the movements? I
despise the words “erasure” and “invisibility” because I see them overused to the point of
rendering them meaningless. Doesn’t anyone read George Orwell’s Politics and the English
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Language anymore?

Are you suggesting there is unity of sentiment amongst trans women on the politics of trigger
warnings, identity politics and anti-oppression/privilege activism and how these politics are
played out in political groups?
REPLY
Deena Lilygren July 7, 2014 at 12:40 pm #
And this is exactly why I am suspicious of any author doing this type of rhetorical backbends in
order to silence a group of people. To bury this point in talk about “trigger warnings” and
pretend this isn’t about one group having a tantrum about being told not to use the word
“tranny” is insulting.
REPLY
Remove the phrase “being told not to use” from Deena’s comment, and I agree 100%.
leatherargento September 14, 2014 at 6:50 pm #

You’re personalizing this. You can’t see past your little corner of the activist world because
you are triggered by inner compulsions, not by outer actions.

No one’s telling you not to be offended. You’re being told that your offense is your own problem
to deal with.
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Jen October 29, 2015 at 5:41 pm #
Except many trans women have historically defended the use of “tranny.” What Halberstam is
saying here is literally nothing new, and certainly not a function of DAFAB folks telling DAMAB
folks what to say or think. Trans women aren’t a monolith or hivemind; stop trying to speak for
everyone in a large and varied group.
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Ella Gardiner July 6, 2014 at 5:32 am #
what perception. I love being a trannie,
our standards are high.
REPLY
Bullied once, forever entitled.
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sharingempathy July 6, 2014 at 12:01 pm #
Zinger! (And, I mean that in a good way!)
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Mike Keller July 6, 2014 at 9:30 am #
In a joint statement, the People’s Front of Judæa and the Judæn People’s Front acknowledged that
their proposed merger is on hold due to the inability of the two groups to agree on a name for the
new organization. The statement continued that they remain hopeful.
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terremoto July 7, 2014 at 10:37 am #
Splitter!!!
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dianeperazzo July 6, 2014 at 9:57 am #
Well said! I find the practice of trigger warnings unsettling and makes me further regret the
overprotective culture of fear and paranoia in which we have raised our children.
REPLY
Nebris July 6, 2014 at 10:16 am #
These type of microscopic arguments over language etc [like Facebook’s 70 gender definition
dropdown menu] are a sign of political impotence and the perfect mechanism with which to
perpetuate one’s victimhood while avoiding the real Social Justice battles, you know, the ones that
involve Money and Power.
REPLY
Yes! I got that from this blog post too!
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Raybaybay July 6, 2014 at 10:20 am #
David Harvey feels triggered by this use of ‘neo-liberal.’
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elffeet July 6, 2014 at 10:51 am #
Oh thank god. You’ve put into words what has been driving me nuts for several years now! Thank
you.
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user July 6, 2014 at 10:57 am #
Reblogged this on The Talking Cock-up Blues and commented:
In a post-affirmative action society, where even recent histories of political violence like slavery and
lynching are cast as a distant and irrelevant past, all claims to hardship have been cast as equal; and
some students, accustomed to trotting out stories of painful events in their childhoods (dead
pets/parrots, a bad injury in sports) in college applications and other such venues, have come to
think of themselves as communities of naked, shivering, quaking little selves – too vulnerable to take
a joke, too damaged to make one. In queer communities, some people are now committed to an “It
Gets Better” version of consciousness-raising within which suicidal, depressed and bullied young
gays and lesbians struggle like emperor penguins in a blighted arctic landscape to make it through
the winter of childhood. With the help of friendly adults, therapy, queer youth groups and national
campaigns, these same youth internalize narratives of damage that they themselves may or may not
have actually experienced. Queer youth groups in particular install a narrative of trauma and
encourage LGBT youth to see themselves as “endangered” and “precarious” whether or not they
actually feel that way, whether or not coming out as LGB or T actually resulted in abuse! And then,
once they “age out” of their youth groups, those same LGBT youth become hypersensitive to all
signs and evidence of the abuse about which they have learned.
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S July 6, 2014 at 11:59 am #
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Thank you for highlighting the emergence of a hierarchy where the most traumatized and triggered
voices are becoming the standard to which all discourse should be normalized. Being able to
characterize other people’s language and identities as “triggering” is a construction of the speaker’s
privilege, and is driven by the belief that one’s own experiences and beliefs are more valid than those
of others.
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To quickly dovetail on this note, the further entrenched we become in this speakerly insistence on
being triggered, traumatized, and violated we mimic the Monty Python skit: A house? We lived
in a room! You’re lucky, we lived in a corridor. Corridor? We lived in a hole in the ground. We got
evicted from our hole in the ground.
Far from normative, myself, this linguistic slide is far from anti-normative. Rather, it’s the
Olympics of agony. Except no one is landing a one foot vault like Kerri Strug in 1996.
REPLY
Cheryl July 6, 2014 at 11:59 am #
Thanks for this wake-up call.
REPLY
“Censorship!” argument is used by those who are used to having unrestricted freedom by the state,
erasing slavery/imperialism/colonialism. <– right on
i'm with you here also on this article being used to defend abusive behavior and that helping
professionals/organizers sharing this are demonstrating their untrustworthiness (particularly as
allies).
REPLY
Allies to whom? A few hundred people steeped in this insular theory? Or allies to whole
communities who, by and large, cast a gimlet eye at those activists, academics and advocates who
spew out this incomprehensible psychobabble jibber jabber on their behalf ?
REPLY
But putting linguistic handcuffs on professors because of the sensitivities of theoretical injuries is real
censorship and real danger.
REPLY
RAGNARÖKKURRÓ (@raggijons) July 7, 2014 at 9:37 pm #
Halberstam’s situated context, geopolitically and academically, provides his perspectives on the
t*word and trigger warnings with a privileged platform.
While I understand that, yes, privileged activists are increasingly overusing *trigger warnings*
and participate in oppression olympics, trauma, violence, discrimination and oppression are very
real phenomena.
The sanctioning of the t*word’s usage also denies the privilege Jack has in growing up within the
U.S., or a place in general where violent forms of cisheteronormativity, cissexism, heterosexism,
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misogynies and violence (structural, physical, material, emotional) are still thriving.
It also ignores how a word like tranny is used to justify violence and discrimination. It ignores the
rankling possibility of tranny being a triggering word, because of its usage vis-à-vis trauma such
as rape or violence.
It’s also easy to be like, if there’s a historical precedent for acceptance, let’s ignore people today
who’s experiences with the terminology have been rampant and violent. Or in places where trans
rights are not existent. Or trans hatred and ignorance still cause tangible, material, physical
consequences for trans people, especially for those without access to adequate mental & medical
healthcare.
It’s also easy to speak with such grandiloquence when a lot of poor uneducated trans (and queer)
folks can’t. When they’ve been kicked out of their homes and taken to the streets. If and when a
history of trauma is their history. When something like survival sex work is maybe the only
viable quick-fix way to avoid starvation. When the word tranny is used by police, other violent
state members, and bigots to justify violence. When you’re not discussing the intersections of
race, citizenship, language, religion, (mental & physical) disability, education, access to discourse,
but glossing over them to emphasize gender & sexuality.
Capitalism fucks us all over (besides those churning its cogs), but that’s based (at least in the U.S.,
but many places globally as well) on former histories of imperialism, colonialism, slavery,
transnational domination&extraction. You ignore how the gender binary is itself instigated by
racist-colonial projects. You ignore your privilege in currently passing as masc when some of us
“trannies” are not afforded or cannot afford such privileges.
So disappointed in this argument, even though I know where it’s coming from. One cannot see
the struggles of truly marginalized communities from the peak of the ivory tower.
REPLY
caro July 8, 2014 at 9:20 am #
i hear ya loud and clear. see my comment above: https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com
/2014/07/05/you-are-triggering-me-the-neo-liberal-rhetoric-of-harm-danger-and-trauma
/#comment-8505
JakeD July 14, 2014 at 8:55 pm #

Using your privilege to further egalitarian discourse is not “ignoring” privilege. If we
pathologically reduce one’s speech to where one comes from (as so many Halberstam critics
are doing), we are unable to see where one’s speech can lead to. This critique, almost like a
deep freeze, undermines decolonization. It rehearses, reiterates, and reproaches the status quo.
I’ve yet to hear a critique that substantiates the dangers of the word tranny as it is co-opted.
No one is arguing against the violence of this word contextually; it fact, greater violence can
stem from it’s monolithic interpretation. It saddens me to see such a conservative trans-
community, but glad the conversation has many who are willing to listen. Along a similar
state of affairs: Israel justifying the genocide of Palestinians based on their “right to self
defense”. A tacit example of the trigger’s necropolitical results.
Tracey Yeadon-Lee July 6, 2014 at 12:19 pm #

Thank you for this – such a thoughtful, welcome and much needed piece!
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REPLY
Sadly, I think you are right that abusers will use it to justify their rudeness and insensitivity but that
doesn’t mean the article is rude or insensitive. Abusers often have a knack of twisting any side of the
argument.
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sirenis July 6, 2014 at 11:49 pm #
As a survivor of DV with PTSD I have to admit this comment is a perfect example of why this
article is necessary. No, someone disagreeing with you is not a form of abuse. Making that
comparison is incredibly disrespectful and ignorant. And appropriating the language of trauma is
not a valid way to silence people you disagree with intellectually.
REPLY
not the biologist July 6, 2014 at 12:24 pm #
Yes, let’s all jump in line and be good little lockstep soldiers in someone else’s war. God forbid we
question whether the in-group we’re told we’re supposed to identify with is actually doing things
that benefit us, or whether the actions of elements within it materially harm us just as much as those
of the wider culture. More, in fact, when the members of Queer who a structurally misogynist,
masculinist, ciscentric society considers most acceptable and grants a voice are those who least
represent the needs and struggles of the most marginalised. God forbid we refuse to hand out free
passes just because someone drew a line and put us on the same side as people who attack us.
If there’s one lesson we delicate (yet dangerous!) Bad Trans People must learn, it is apparently that
we are incapable of accurately identifying the things which do us harm. If only we’d stop telling you
you’re hurting us when you’re hurting us, eh? If only we would just *understand* that your desire to
have an edgy ‘reclaimed’ slur naturally trumps the fact cis culture treats your use of ‘tranny’ as
permission from within Queer to keep trans women in a non-serious, non-female, acceptable-target
category and subject us to all the consequences of that. Consequences which don’t fall on you, fall on
drag queens only occasionally and gender-variant people conditionally, but which fall on trans
women every single second of every single day. Or is the word of all the trans women who report
those consequences suspect, because we’re not strong, resilient and radical-masculine like you?
I’ll tell you this: if you want these awful, divisive trans people to become wholehearted members and
supporters of Queer, the route to it is right in front of you. Solidarity must be earned, not demanded.
Understand that it means making sacrifices, and that the dominant male and masculine voices
within Queer have given up very little and gained everything. ‘Tranny’ is a tiny concession, and yet
apparently not one which unity would be worth your making.
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jakeish July 6, 2014 at 1:36 pm #
Yes. Thank you for this comment.
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Janik July 6, 2014 at 6:28 pm #
First of all, your “every single second of every single day” isn’t at all hyperbolic or too extreme to
be taken seriously. This “all or nothing,” if you’re not for us, you’re against us,” “Ally is
something you EARN, not something you claim” attitude is it helping anything or anyone? Or is
it just fueling rage? Is it just making people feel good about bad-mouthing the very people who
stand in front of grocery stores gathering signatures on petitions to put LGBTQ issues on ballots?
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Because I’ve done that, and I’m tired of people who enjoy the freedom my parents’ generation
won for them in marches and protests telling us to all go fuck ourselves because we cannot grasp
the depths of their pain. Their beloved, precious, self-defining, all-encompassing pain.
REPLY
chiMaxx July 8, 2014 at 8:45 pm #
“…naturally trumps *the fact* cis culture treats your use of ‘tranny’ as permission from within
Queer to keep trans women in a non-serious, non-female, acceptable-target category and subject
us to all the consequences of that.”
*Is* this a fact?
What evidence do you have that “cis culture” gives a rat’s ass what goes on “within Queer”?
What in the world makes you think that if all your allies stopped using the word tomorrow “cis
culture” would modify its use of the word one iota?
Has marking a word taboo and getting allies to stop using it in various ways ever done anything
but intensify the power of that word to be used as a slur by those who use it with that intent?
REPLY
dentedbluemercedes July 6, 2014 at 12:58 pm #
“Neoliberal” does not mean what you clearly think it means. It most often refers to the Republican /
conservative fetishization of Randian-style free market capitalism, free of social programs, free of
regulations and free of restrictions on the corporate world. While there is a bit of the free-speech-
without-consequence perspective to it (a.k.a. your position, not the position that you criticize), it is a
radicalized and bastardized form of libertarianism.
I’m not personally interested in playing oppression olympics or word police, and believe that there’s
also a divisive undertone in the “tranny” debate.
That said, it’s not an issue without nuance. One person’s sense of being infantilized and reduced in
agency by calls for safe space and focusing on victimhood is another person’s opportunity to exorcise
their very real personal pain and start on a path toward healing. We are not all at the same stage in
our lives.
So while I see value in some of what you’re saying, trauma does indeed exist, and is not helped by
rationalizing the deliberate disrespecting and disregarding of that trauma. And while that might not
have been the intended take-away, the “f– yeah” response certainly suggests that’s where readers are
going.
It’s a balance. And personally, if that balance leans anywhere, I’d rather it lean toward respect.
REPLY
Excellent comment! Mutual respect, compassion and agency…the way to go!
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If the comments of others in mixed groups that are not blatantly and intentionally abusive is
enough to demolish one’s sense of self simply because they do not validate one’s self conception
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sufficiently, then one needs to seek professional help to deal with that. Nobody is entitled for
everyone else to buy their schtick, not in love, not in business, not in friendship, nowhere. That is
not the same thing as bullying by any measure.
REPLY
GoodBadGirl July 6, 2014 at 11:11 pm #
“It’s a balance. And personally, if that balance leans anywhere, I’d rather it lean toward respect.”
**This**! Thank you dentedbluemercedes. It seems to me a mind as dexterous as Jack
Halberstram’s should be capable of making these arguments without demeaning so many people.
REPLY
Oliver Wendell Holmes July 7, 2014 at 11:32 pm #
Well, this is a tangent, but I feel compelled to point out some differences between neo-liberalism
and libertarianism.
Neo-liberalism is not a GOP ideology; it is the economic ideology of the Democratic Party
(though shared by some GOP members, and with some Dem exceptions). It does, indeed,
advocate free markets (“market liberalization”) but it does so on a different basis from
libertarianism: utilitarian, instead of “procedural justice” or “natural rights.” It uses the criteria of
market failure to decide the appropriate role of government. Libertarianism, on the other hand,
uses a theory of justice to say that the government’s role is not empirically determined at all. It
resists neo-liberal attempts to remedy market failures. It says that taxation is theft, welfare is
exploitation of the rich, etc., on moral grounds.
Neo-liberalism seeks market-based (or “social choice theory”-based) solutions to problems which
libertarians believe should not be solved at all, or deny the existence of (when that is more
convenient). For example, neo-liberalism says that the solution to global warming is cap-and-
trade, whereas libertarianism offers no possibility of solution and that’s why libertarians are
prone to deny that the problem even exists. (Similarly, many libertarians are natural monopoly
denialists.)
I say all this as an opponent of neo-liberalism, which like libertarianism is fundamentally

inhumane in its way of dealing with the working class, and serves as a way of rationalizing and
normalizing poverty and inequality. (Libertarianism says that inequality is morally just; neo-
liberalism dispenses with justice considerations, saying that inequality is efficient and that
efficient economic growth will solve distributional problems.) I’d like to keep these ideologies
straight in order to better oppose them. They both stand in the way of the abolition of poverty,
but through different means.
Sorry for the tangent. I won’t follow up on this, promise!
REPLY
I appreciate your attempt to clarify this. I think what confuses many people—and especially
people who think in terms of social privilege rather than economic privilege— is that
neoconservatives are a subset of neoliberals. Here’s David Harvey: “US neoconservatives
favour corporate power, private enterprise, and the restoration of class power.
Neoconservatism is therefore entirely consistent with the neoliberal agenda of elite
governance, mistrust of democracy, and the maintenance of market freedoms. But it veers
away from the principles of pure neoliberalism and has reshaped neoliberal practices in two
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fundamental respects: first, in its concern for order as an answer to the chaos of individual
interests, and second, in its concern for an overweening morality as the necessary social glue
to keep the body politic secure in the face of external and internal changes.”
Flufftronix (@flufftronix) July 6, 2014 at 12:59 pm #

This was a breath of fresh air! But “censorship” isn’t the word you’re looking for. That’s something
states do (ie, in your example, banning The Life of Brian), not marginalized people/movements/etc.
REPLY
Tommi Paalanen July 7, 2014 at 7:03 pm #
I agree that “censorship” is a bit too strong a word here, but as it can be used in “self-censorship”,
it’s meaning is definitely broader than just state censorship.
Also, a term “moralist shaming” could be useful here. It is a way of silencing undesired views by
collectively painting them as immoral, insensitive, misogynous, racist etc. without proper
analysis or discussion.
REPLY
Annie July 6, 2014 at 1:06 pm #
While I agree that the overuse of trigger warnings has led to the over-simplification of definitions of
trauma, critiques of such warnings are often complicit in this simplification, tending to treat all
claims of being triggered as similar instances of harm, whether or not the instance in question is the
name of a nightclub or explicit accounts of rape. Curiously, this has also resulted in the construction
of a different hierarchy of woundedness, in which older scholar/activists who, we are reminded,
“had no recourse to anti-bullying campaigns or social services or multiple representations of other
queer people building lives,” tell younger “privileged” generations to “get over themselves.”
Certainly, there is a problem with reducing queer politics to arguments over “language, slang, and
naming,” but I’d wager that much of the anger surrounding academic responses to “trigger
warnings” has more to do with the tendency to treat these warnings as if they are always in service
of a larger political goal. As a result, the other side can only respond by pointing out that there
trauma is REAL, which doesn’t really get anyone anywhere. Do we need to have a conversation
about these issues? Absolutely. But this isn’t going to be initiated by older scholars telling younger
students/scholars/activists that they need to laugh and “loosen up” (as much as I may love Monty
Python).
REPLY
Janik July 6, 2014 at 6:38 pm #
yes it is. It has been. We’re having it. You just participated in it.
There is something to be said for “loosening up,” or at least building some resilience. It’s okay to
be uncomfortable, enraged, scared, embarrassed, shocked, and other unpleasant feelings. It isn’t
the responsibility of educators to protect students, especially not adult students, from opinions,
images, thoughts, and words that may produce the above feelings. Resilience is a LIFE skill.
We have to talk about all of it. It’s good for us! It’s good for me, who generally thinks that the
upcoming millenials are the biggest group of whiners of all time, to hear that I’m an old, used-up,
irrelevant piece of shit! So I can go, “Hey, wait, why do you think that? Am I? Where am I going
wrong here? What am I missing. Hmmm. Let’s think about this.” And then I read. I talk to
people. I form opinions. I learn. I grow.
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Why focus on who has the right or the invitation to start the conversation? It’s started. It will keep
going. I, for one, am interested in where it goes.
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Captainlaurie July 6, 2014 at 1:30 pm #
I stopped reading this after I realized that you were incorrectly referring to Brian as Jesus. Brian
wasn’t Jesus, that’s the whole point. His life began with a case of mistaken identity, because he was
born in the manger next to Jesus. And Jesus is actually a very small character in the film–there’s a
depiction of the Sermon on the Mount where Brian sees Judith for the first time, which leads him to
get mixed up in the PFJ. Later, when he’s trying to escape from some Roman soldiers, he gets up on a
platform in a marketplace full of prophets and spouts out a bunch of ridiculous nonsense to blend in,
and some people hear this and start following Brian around, proclaiming him the messiah. Part of
what makes it such awesome religious satire is the idea that any random dude standing on a raised
platform can yell a bunch of religious-sounding drivel, and people will latch onto that, because most
people are idiots desperate to find a herd to follow.
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halberst July 6, 2014 at 3:07 pm #
Oops. Right. I did not re-watch all of the Life of Brian just bits. I watched all of the Holy Grail
though and cannot wait to work through all the Monty Pythons again!! This makes everything
even funnier. Ta mate!
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IVY July 6, 2014 at 1:47 pm #
Thank you Jack Halberstam for this insightful and needed piece. You are articulating around a
broadly held concern in many activist communities that people are afraid to speak on for fear of
reprisal, censorship or being labeled as supporting oppressive behavior. It’s extremely encouraging
to see the overwhelmingly positive response from so many of the readers who share similar
critiques. Conflating this critique with “being supportive” of abusive behavior is problematic and
what’s needed is honest dialogue and debate around an issue people are clearly concerned about.
REPLY
dmhannah July 6, 2014 at 1:55 pm #
I think that while people engage in activism it is also possible to be inclusive and, in doing so,
forming a “safe space” within activist circles. But I also think the type of identity politics you were
referring to (making struggle a competition) is not the kind I am thinking of that is beneficial and
productive. Additionally, sometimes people need to be called out for being oppressive, but it
shouldn’t ruin their lives – they should be able to address it, move on from that and continue doing
meaningful work because we NEED THEM. But right now I think a lot of SJ-ers aren’t giving people
that chance. Over semantics, a faux-pas, one offensive thing they said that they apologized for later…
but not everyone grew up in the suburbs surrounded by academics and received a liberal arts
education. Humans are going to fuck up. Let them fuck up, let them recover, and move on.
REPLY
Rafi Metz July 6, 2014 at 2:25 pm #
Quite refreshing. Thank you. As I always say: “Don’t agonize, organize!”
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Inevitably, some of the comments have already degenerated into ad hominems and divisive
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generalisations. Academic memes and acronyms obscure meaning and people flaunt their credentials
while denying others’ entitlement to an opinion.
There is (some) validity in everyone’s opinion here. If you disagree, explain why rather than denying
someone’s right to an opinion.
Please.
There are trans women here who argue that Jack is not allowed to tell us what to think…is that really
what Jack is doing? I don’t think so.
There are many trans women (and trans men and genderqueers and drag queens/kings) who use the
word to describe themselves.
Wouldn’t it be a lot easier if we all agreed to disagree? If we take responsibility for our own opinions
and speech, while allowing others the same freedom and responsibility, the debate can move on.
Otherwise we will continue to recite the same old arguments and counter-arguments, which is
energy-sapping and distracts us from our activism.
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Quince July 6, 2014 at 3:02 pm #
Absolutely! And yet, I have one question: Are parrots not pets, too?
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halberst July 6, 2014 at 3:05 pm #
Finally a question I can answer! Yes, parrots are pets but I just wanted to make a subtle reference
to the “dead parrots” sketch from Monty Python!
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Hmmm ‘pets’? Hurrumph!!!..
I prefer to liberate parrots from their cages… and set those beautiful, colourful beings free to
terrorise the local sparrow population lolz
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Jeson July 6, 2014 at 3:22 pm #
The word ‘trigger’ is a major trigger for me….
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Chris July 6, 2014 at 3:37 pm #
“But, in the 1990s, books on neoliberalism, postmodernism, gender performativity and racial capital
turned the focus away from the wounded self and we found our enemies and, as we spoke out and
observed that neoliberal forms of capitalism were covering over economic exploitation with
language of freedom and liberation, it seemed as if we had given up wounded selves for new
formulations of multitudes, collectivities, collaborations, and projects less centered upon individuals
and their woes.”
This may all be true, and I agree with you on the trigger crybabies, but you’ve got to say, that didn’t
really lead to much, did it? None of those projects actually led to the emergence of a strong socialist
movement or real political change. We just got Clinton, Bush, Blair, Obama etc.
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That’s the problem with the New Left. There’s so much talk about great new ideas and collectivities
and stuff, but no on off campus ever cares.
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bittersickqueen July 6, 2014 at 4:38 pm #
So since trans feminine folks have already called out the way you used this entire article to justify
why your are allowed to use the t-slur….
I just have to say that making the issue of trigger warnings about “those whiny kids who don’t know
real struggle” instead of analyzing its effectiveness as a way of creating access for folks in movement
work is super ableist. (I mean besides the way you make fun of people with MCS for ‘holding up’
what I guess is *real activist work*?) The whole idea that some folks are *actually* triggered but
everyone else is just whiny sets up movement leadership as gatekeepers deciding whose trauma is
‘real enough’ to warrant accommodation.
Trigger warnings can be seen as part of a movement that collectivizes work towards increased access
in social movements (and I mean we have a long way to go judging by this article and commenters)
rather than putting the onus on participants to “manage” their trauma (which is actually a super
neoliberal response….).
So yeah do I get to say that this article triggered me? Cause it did. Someone trying to explain away
someone else’s trauma is gas lighting and can bring up stuff for folks. But I guess I’m just *too
sensitive* and need to stop expecting movements not to re-inscribe the effects of oppression, right?
We wouldn’t want to turn into censors who divide movements over arbitrary things (like access I
guess lol).
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stop it with the reactionary nonsense July 6, 2014 at 5:27 pm #
Jack, are you really going to spew that kind of ableist crap? Your audience is imaginary, some straw
queers you drew up, quite honestly. Sure there are some people who need to learn the difference
between being uncomfortable, emotionally activated, and triggered. And yes I’m sure that the capital
“S” Safe Space “agenda” that you and your reference speak to here are real things that operate
alongside hate crime legislation and things like that to police and criminalize. But this is not the only
way intentional harm reduction works. You have drawn up your suburban, compulsory-
healthy/abled, class privileged, all white queer audience just to tear it down (which doesn’t make
sense considering your past work) and you know what? It isn’t working. Because your audience isn’t
so singular, and it isn’t real. There are ways of attending to the way-too-simplistic broadening of the
meaning of “trauma” without throwing people with trauma and triggers into the gutter. Queer and
trans folks are not exempt from trauma or what doctors like to call “mental illness” just because
some queer/trans people have a ton of (racial, classed, gendered, health) privilege, and you telling us
to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps is some straight up normal bullcrap. Get over yourself, just
because you might not have struggled with mental health or might have worked through it doesn’t
mean everybody else is making a big deal out of their own experiences. And just because we, in our
communities, ask others to be intentional and careful with our triggers while we heal does not equate
to censorship and is definitely not “neoliberal.” Taking care of each other is actually hella subversive.
It is part of resistance.
And guess what? Queer and trans people don’t only have gendered/sexualized trauma (surprise!),
but every other kind of trauma that is possible because we’re people and we live in the world. And
those traumas create verbal, chemical, and visual triggers.
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Go head though, Jack, go ahead delegitimizing people’s emotional trauma and dismissing the voices
of folks who are struggling. Patriarchy and white supremacy clearly need some help with that.
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Eoin July 6, 2014 at 5:38 pm #
Thank you for this article, Jack. As someone who works with those who have experienced
psychological trauma, I am struck by a glaring irony inherent in the strategies of the ‘aggrieved’ to
whom you refer, i.e. a feature shared by just about all trauma-focused approaches to therapy is the
progressive attempt to support clients in dropping safety behaviors (such as avoidance) which so
often develop following a trauma, e.g. avoiding certain places, people, stimuli which remind one of
the original traumatic event. The world will always be rife with such stimuli, regardless of how
many times we argue with someone not to say something which ‘triggers’ us. Therefore, it is through
processing of the trauma memory, learning to cope with – and alleviate our response to – ‘matched
triggers’, as well as challenging (compassionately) the role of learning processes such as assimilation
and over-accommodation that recovery ensues. Put simply, we need to actively engage in corrective
learning to counter the effects of trauma rather than expect the impossible, i.e. that we can bicker our
way to a world devoid of any possible triggers.
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Lisa Duggan July 7, 2014 at 6:10 pm #
Thanks for this very helpful comment Eoin. It is indeed true that within the therapeutic model
itself, perpetual avoidance of “triggers” is NOT a healing strategy. And also, the things that
“trigger” trauma survivors are never entirely rational or predictable. It could be a certain flower
or a certain smell, rather than a literal representation. We can and should have debates over the
politics of language, but the trigger warning strategy is not only depoliticizing (imho), but
ineffective.
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Eoin July 7, 2014 at 7:46 pm #
Thanks, Lisa. It seems striking to me that – aside from the few people posting here who have
themelves experienced trauma – there is little discussion of the largely therapeutic context in
which a term such as ‘trigger’ was likely derived. I have to admit that I’m not as familiar as
many here are with theories/frameworks such as neoliberalism, LGBT-related theory, etc. But
it seems worthwhile to consider such matters also with reference to evidence-supported
approaches used with those attempting to recover from the effects of psychological trauma.

No, I was commenting on language. And, how it works. We know what the t* word means. (I am
also one of those folks that has actual PTSD).
REPLY
I was also no where near college in 1994. Just so we are all good and clear.
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Audrey July 6, 2014 at 6:32 pm #
Ok. This article really baffled me. I’m going to try to keep my response as brief as possible here.
1) This article really takes issue with the fact that young queers of today aren’t banded together on
one united front. I’m baffled by this. I mean, yeah, generally we all have the same goals: economic
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opportunity, healthcare, safety, etc. But once we move past the platitudes, how much unity of
experience IS there?
I think one of the most important developments in queer politics lately is the recognition of the fact
that queers are NOT a monolith. Like, yes, things have gotten better for queer people in the past
thirty years. But they’ve gotten better to differing degrees for different segments of the queer
community. And for some INEXPLICABLE reason, these divisions follow lines of cultural inequality:
things have gotten better for white queers than they have for POC queers, things have gotten better
for cis queers than they have for trans queers, things have gotten better for male queers than they
have for female queers. etc. So yeah, if you’re a white upper middle class cisgender gay boy growing
up in SF, your queer childhood is probably pretty good. If you’re a gay trans girl growing up in rural
Tennessee, your childhood is probably not as good. And therefore, one of the CRITICAL things to
acknowledge is that different segments of the queer community have different experiences and
different needs.
Look, I’m a gay trans woman. And one of the things you learn fast while being a gay trans woman is
that just because you meet someone else who’s a part of the queer community doesn’t mean they
understand jackshit about your experience. Just because somebody is gay or bi or pan doesn’t mean
that they have any sense of how to interact with a trans woman or what being a trans woman is like.
And you can say that being queer isn’t automatically a death sentence anymore, but I think a lot of
the young trans women I know are going to have a long, bitter laugh over that one.
TRUST ME. The days of being bullied, of being assaulted, of being molested and raped, of being
attacked are FAR from over. And if you think they are, then you are laughably disconnected from
reality for many queers who are marginalized across multiple domains of oppression. All you have
to do is read our words and hear our stories to appreciate that.
Are there young queers who are cashing out on a culture of victimhood? Yes. Are there young queers
who are passing themselves off as more marginalized then they actually are? Yeah, definitely! There
are always assholes. But the fact is, discounting and disbelieving their stories sets a precedent for
discounting and disbelieving the stories of every young queer who claims to have been victimized.
And that’s a terrifying prospect for a lot of us. For many of us, our stories are all we have. Our words
are all we have. We’ve got no other proof, so if you choose not to believe us, there’s nothing we can
do. So really, it’s a question of risk and benefit. Is it worth the risk of further isolating the real victims
of hatred and violence in order to construct a culture of disbelief so that we can, what, believe that
things really truly HAVE “gotten better?” That all of our hard work paid off?
2) There’s this angry, egoistic thread running through this article that really rubs me the wrong way:
That previous generations did all the hard work that needed to be done, and that queer kids
nowadays aren’t paying their proper respects. In short: “We solved everything for you! We wrote
books! Why didn’t you read them!?”
But, look. Queer childhoods are almost by their very nature isolated. We’re pretty thin on the ground,
queers, and if you’re growing up in a small town, no matter WHAT era, it’s really easy to think that
you’re the only one. You keep thinking that for years and years. Most of us didn’t have older queers
in our lives to turn to for guidance. I dunno where you all were at! San Francisco, I guess. But
anyway, queers of this generation mostly found out there were other queers when we found the
internet.
And surprise surprise, once we had the internet, we didn’t look for the books written by a previous
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generation. We looked for our peers. And we found them, and we connected with them, and we
came up with our own language to describe our experiences, often quite independent of what queer
theorists from years before had theorized. Did we benefit from the culture-wide changes that had
been wrought, unbeknownst to us, before we were born and while we were babies? Yeah. Did those
queer kids with cable TV have maybe a few more queers on television to identify with? Yeah. But did
we have individual older queers in our lives to thank? A lot of us didn’t.
I think this is why the language of today’s queers is so incomprehensible to older queers. It wasn’t
built with your direct influence. So from the outside, demands for trigger warnings may seem
ludicrous, but from the inside, it’s just the way we accommodate each others’ trauma to the best of
our ability. To many of us, the concept of a “trigger warning” just isn’t a big deal. This language has
been in development online for maybe five years. It’s got a lot of growing left to do. Right now, it’s
still somewhat cumbersome. This is why the language seems clunky and over-sensitive: it’s a
language in its infancy. By the time we’ve refined it, made it efficient and elegant and subtle, there’ll
be a whole new generation of queers starting from scratch all over again.
Should those queer kids of the future be thankful for what we accomplished? Maybe. I’ll just end this
section with a quote from Supernatural: “Kids ain’t supposed to be grateful. They’re supposed to eat
your food and break your heart, ya selfish dick!”
3) This article seems to completely miss the point that language CHANGES MEANING OVER TIME.
The whole debate over the word “tranny,” for example. Like, I get that at one point, the t-word may
have meant something broadly connected to transvestites, drag queens, and cross-dressers. But to
people under thirty, the t-word means one thing, and one thing only: a pre-operative or non-
operative trans woman, usually naked.
We can try to diagnose when and why this shift happened. Personally, I lay the blame at the feet of
porn companies and the American education system. Porn companies made the t-word and that
OTHER word, “shemale,” into terms for porn featuring trans women. And as generations of kids,
thanks to abstinence-only sex education, turned to internet porn to GET their sex education, they
learned that those two words meant one thing, and one thing only: a pre-operative or non-operative
trans woman, usually naked. It doesn’t really matter that the t-word used to have broader
application. Because the only place that young people ever saw those words was on porn sites, those
words developed new connotations.
Whether or not you accept the above reasoning as the cause, the fact is that for most people under
thirty, both queer and hetero, both cis and trans, “trans woman” is what those words mean now. So
when twenty-year-old boys say someone “looks like a tranny,” they’re not talking about drag queens
or transvestites or even trans men. They’re making a disparaging comment about trans girls and
trans women.
So with that in mind, does it make sense as to why trans women under thirty might be somewhat
put out by (especially young) queer cis gay men and trans men using these words freely and as self-
identifiers? Because now that the words have come to mean “just trans women, usually pre-op,
usually naked” can you understand why it doesn’t make sense for people who aren’t trans women to
try to “reclaim” them? And how feigning an ignorance of this change might make you an asshole?
In short: PLOT TWIST! You can’t just declare a word like the t-word “reclaimed” and wipe your
hands of the whole discussion, because words aren’t static! Their meanings change over time! Ahh! I
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can’t believe I have to explain this to you! Gahh!
4) A lot of this article seems to boil down to this: “queer kids these days are self-obsessed and
melodramatic! They take themselves too seriously and don’t have a sense of perspective!”
I would argue this has little to do with kids being QUEER, but has EVERYTHING to do with kids
being YOUNG. You’re talking about a group of people who are mostly in our early twenties. It’s the
nature of one’s early twenties to be self-obsessed and melodramatic. THIS is the age when we are
desperately trying to figure out who we are. For people in their early twenties, ‘melodromatic” and
“a bit self-obsessed’ are standard operating procedure. Hell, think of On the Road. Generation after
generation of young adults have gone through this phase, and we’ve got the literature to prove it!
The ONLY reason it seems worse now than ever before is that all of our diary entries are online.
I mean, be honest: how many people in their forties and fifties today kept angst-ridden, self-obsessed
journals in their late teens and early twenties? And how many people ever had access to those
entries? Maybe you did readings of them with all your radical friends. All twenty of them. The fact is
that now, thanks to the internet, our diaries can be read by thousands of people, so they take up more
cultural space. But that’s not the fault of US for being more melodramatic and self-obsessed than
previous generations, it’s just growing pains of a civilization adapting to the digital age.
Just some thoughts.
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Aaron July 7, 2014 at 10:31 pm #
just wanted to say this is a great comment
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Incorrect! I’m a person under thirty, and ‘tranny’ sure doesn’t mean that to me.
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Audrey: Well-done! I completely agree with you. You made my heart sing and give me more
hope for your generation than I’ve had in a while. Cogent, articulate, insightful, intelligent,
meaningful, accurate and ingenious! I don’t mean to sound matronizing, but I am almost 60.
So, the older generation isn’t hopeless, either. THANK YOU!
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Todd July 6, 2014 at 7:08 pm #
@ “OoTTW”: Do you have any data on how many trans/bi/queer/gay youth have an actual
diagnosis of PTSD?
Simply claiming to have it isn’t, obviously, the same as being diagnosed with it.
Unless there is solid data on the subject, asserting the widespread presence of PTSD among the
above groups cheapens the diagnosis and certainly weakens your argument. It’s one thing to have
lived through difficulty, and I do not disparage such a challenge, but it’s entirely another to have
PTSD. Facts matter here.
( I recognize that many, if not most, will not have access to the necessary facilities to get a diagnosis,
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but that lack of access is something you and I likely agree needs to change. Healthcare should be a
civil right.)
Tranny, fag, queer are all words that marginalized communities have reclaimed as theirs in the face
of oppression. This is a simple historical observation, amply demonstrated by groups from ACT-UP
to Dykes on Bikes to Queer Nation. Taking tranny away from self-identified trannies is not only
counterproductive, but actively assists those who benefit from a fractious and splintered opposition.
My ideological and cultural opponents are Christian theocrats, neoliberal politicians and
corporations, heteronormativity and AIDS-phobia. I certainly do not count you among those
enemies, and hopefully, you don’t see me, for all my disagreement with you, among yours.
This debate reminds me of the very early days of the AIDS epidemic. Certain people, mostly gay
white men working for establishment corporations, had health insurance, while others, mostly
people of color, the poor, and the young, did not. Those who had coverage were called “golden life
boaters,” and they were accused of being privileged and insensitive to the plight of those without
coverage. It was not a productive debate: there needed to be action on developing treatments,
establishing support networks, and forcing government action. Eventually, people here in San
Francisco developed a model of support that became as inclusive as possible. Shanti (an organization
providing practical and emotional support for PWAs, their family, partners, and loved ones)
trainings constantly emphasized the need to recognize privilege and to combat it.
Of course, such efforts were imperfect but by forwarding compassion in place of controversy, San
Franciscans dealing with a horrifying epidemic were able to achieve enough political unity to
develop effective institutions in response to the deadly crisis.
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narrativeeschatology July 8, 2014 at 11:49 pm #
“Trannies” are appropriating PTSD from the disabled.
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Space Crip July 6, 2014 at 7:13 pm #
“People with various kinds of fatigue, easily activated allergies, poorly managed trauma were
constantly holding up proceedings to shout in loud voices about how bad they felt because someone
had said, smoked, or sprayed something near them that had fouled up their breathing room.”
I think this sentence in particular demonstrates this post’s complete failure to understand the
concepts of accessibility or self-advocacy. Because, wow, isn’t it just awful when disabled people
(whether that be people with multiple chemical sensitivities or mental disabilities) advocate for an
environment that is just as accessible to them as it is to non-disabled people?
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Catherine July 7, 2014 at 8:44 pm #
I so agree with you on this point. Space Crip.
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No. ‘Feeling triggered’ is not a mental disability. That sort of disableist nonsense trivializes actual
mental disabilities. Don’t do that.
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43 of 77 2018-11-28, 2:25 p.m.

Space Crip July 8, 2014 at 1:02 am #
“Feeling triggered” is not a mental disability, but trigger and content warnings were
developed at the grassroots level to accommodate people with “actual” mental or psychiatric
disabilities relating to trauma or compulsive or self-harming behavior. Many years ago, before
trigger warnings became the source of academics’ ire, small online communities (like
LiveJournal) used trigger warnings as a courtesy to friends in their circle when discussing
things like rape or disordered eating or cutting. This gave people with PTSD, eating disorders,
or who self-harmed the option of looking at the content being warned for or not. Trigger
warnings are still used in many communities for those purposes.

So what? Because a handful of marginalized LiveJournal users fostered and enabled the
perpetuation of a culture of moral indignation and victimhood, we’re all obliged to
participate?
I’m triggered by trigger warnings. They give me flashbacks to the traumatic abuse I’ve
suffered at the hands of entitled narcissists. Where’s my fucking safe space?

@Space Crip:
Remember the joke about the girl who dug with such glee and abandon through a pile of
manure that happened to be delivered the morning of her birthday. “There must be a horse in
there somewhere!” she shouted.
If people want to enlist a small circle of friends or of the similarly afflicted to do this with
them, then bully for them. If they want to make their home a place where they can remove
their emotional armor, more power to them.
But when they step outside the circle or outside the home and try to impose these behavioral
and linguistic rules on the wider community, when they attack allies who don’t share the
private idiosyncratic vocabulary of sensitivities, connotations, and definitional associations
that they have cultivated with their closed circle, then they become censorious whiners.
‘But “glory” doesn’t mean “a nice knock-down argument”,’ Alice objected.

‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I
choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.’
And, of course, Trigger is a horse.

Also, just stop using the tired old “this demonstrates a complete failure to understand…” line. It
comes off both condescending and dumb.
Judith obviously understands the concepts of “accessibility” and “self-advocacy;” he just

disagrees with you about effect them.
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syrens July 6, 2014 at 8:43 pm #
Reblogged this on syrens and commented:
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This piece got my attention because it was about Trigger Warnings. I’m… ambivalent about trigger
warnings. On the one hand, I have definitely wound up with tunnel vision and my shoulders up
around my ears and my breath coming too fast and too short, due to subject matter that freaks me
the fuck out. I definitely would have appreciated a heads-up so that I’d know what I was getting
myself into. But I also… have some side-eye for “I’m Feeling Triggered” when, rather than meaning
“I am on the edge of a panic attack” it means “I don’t like feeling uncomfortable, and this subject is
uncomfortable for me” (particularly when the uncomfortable is due to things like “I feel guilty about
my privilege” just as a for-instance). It’s easy to abuse, is what I’m getting at. And this particular post
talks about how the “trauma olympics” isn’t a good way to organize (or Organize) ourselves. At the
same time, I do give this post a bit of a side-eye about (for example) words that are getting reclaimed
by people who were never hurt by them in the first place. The feel I get from this piece – which,
given that I’m two drinks in at this point, may not be accurate – is that, because we (as queers) aren’t
necessarily getting beaten up, raped straight, thrown in jail, or otherwise brutalized *because of our
sexual orientations*, our desire to make our space Safe is… not legit, on some level. Like having a
GSA in your school means you can’t think about how you’re X perecentage less likely to get hired for
a job if you’re out, or that you can’t be a queer white-collar government worker *and* an incest
survivor (for example), or something. I’m hoping I’m missing something on this – that the author is
really saying something like “Hey there, white, cis queers, maybe *don’t* be all “I’m So Opressed”
just because you’re queer when other people in your (or “your”?) communities are *actually* still
getting harassed by Concerned Citizens (sometimes that means cops, sometimes that means
gentrifiers, and so-on) because they’re brown/sexworking/trans/all-of-the-above/etc.
I don’t know. Anyway. Give it a read and see what you think.
REPLY
Amy Dentata July 6, 2014 at 9:20 pm #
Cherry-picking extreme, rare examples to dismiss a much broader social awakening that has has a
net benefit for survivors of trauma. Dismissing the real danger that still exists for queer people
whether or not they faced danger upon initially coming out.
“These younger folks, with their gay-straight alliances, their supportive parents and their new right
to marry regularly issue calls for ‘safe space.'”
Not all young kids have GSAs or supportive parents. This is a caricaturization of an entire
generation, of which a large number have suffered abuse, because abuse is very, very common.
Going from “These hardship competitions, but without the humor, are set pieces among the
triggered generation” to:
“What does it mean when younger people who are benefitting from several generations now of
queer social activism by people in their 40s and 50s … These younger folks, with their gay-straight
alliances, their supportive parents and their new right to marry”
So. Hardship competitions, eh?
May as well have written “kids these days have it perfect! Back in my day we didn’t even have
marriage!” The author is engaging in the same “suffering competition” that the article accuses others
of performing, except on the basis of age.
“let’s acknowledge that being queer no longer automatically means being brutalized”
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Within very small bubbles of the world. Often, wealthy white bubbles. These bubbles are the
exception, not the norm. The author apparently has been living in one of those bubbles for so long
he’s forgotten that violence still exists outside of these bubbles—and certainly still exists within as
well.
This article is an insipid “omg trigger warnings, what drama queens” rant dressed up as something
with substance. Next time remember to actually bring the substance.
REPLY
alejo July 6, 2014 at 9:31 pm #
Umm, OK. There’s one or two kernels of usefulness here: I appreciate critiques of the tendency in
some political circles to over-psychologize oppression at the expense of critiquing systems of
oppression that can be way outside of personally experienced feelings of empowerment or hurt. That
is a thing that happens, and I agree it’s often linked to neoliberalism’s emphasis of the individual and
rejection of actual structural modes of understanding what happens in the world. I also think
narratives that dramatize and assign wounded affect to queer youth happen and are at times very
much a part of a basically conservative politics.
But the rest of this post and many of the comments are just so grossly dismissive of younger queer
folks, and of the marginalization of trans women in and outside of activist / queer / radical circles,
and of the notion that there’s political and ethical good to be found in interpersonal decency and
thoughtfulness. I think you can critique the over-emphasis on personal emotion and the pained
romanticization of queer youth without all this kinda macho celebration of not giving a fuck about
other people, y’know?
Like, I’ve seen, on occasion, people ask for or demand trigger warnings, or decry their absence, in
ways I’ve found to be dishonest and self-serving. This, though, has in my experience been rare and
mostly been from folks who were already pretty privileged and entitled – and this description does
not include the majority of queer / LGBT youth. Queer youth aren’t quivering pain-receptacles, but
neither are we exclusively problem-free kids who face zero anti-queer violence or systemic
discrimination and just mindlessly freeload off the accomplishments of our predecessors on our
happy road to assimilation or comfortable bourgeois boheme self-satisfaction.
I legitimately don’t understand the widespread backlash against the act of letting people know when
potentially triggering content is in the pipeline. Like, during my undergrad I went to a school that
was mostly non-white and largely black, in a mostly black city, and I took a class on the political
history of photography in the US, and the professor – who was no social justice warrior, just a pretty
run-of-the-mill moderate-liberal art historian – thought it would be reasonable and kind to give folks
a warning about disturbing content a couple of weeks before we did segments on how the KKK
distributed photos of lynched people (who were mostly black men and sometimes black women,
Jews, and white anti-segregationists) and on how the photos of the dead Emmett Till helped expose
the horrific violence of white supremacy. Was he doing this because he was cowed by the neoliberal
politically correct orthodoxy? No – he warned us about such content because he knew he was
teaching a class to many black students who may have been subject to traumatizing racial violence
themselves, and students who were likely the friends and family of young men who look a lot like
Till. He was being thoughtful and letting people know that there was some explicit imagery of
terrible racialized violence coming up, and folks should prepare themselves for such content because
maybe they’d experienced something like it, or feared they or their loved ones might. That is not
censorship and it’s not necessarily pandering to a neoliberal trauma-centering subject. Neither is
asking for that kind of decency. It’s being kind to the humans around you, and trying to create a
46 of 77 2018-11-28, 2:25 p.m.
culture of thoughtfulness about the reality of oppression in people’s lives and the fact that such
oppression can be especially upsetting or traumatizing.
Not all trans women or trans-feminine people have had the word ‘tranny’ used against them in
violent or threatening or dehumanizing contexts. Plenty have. Not all trans women or trans-feminine
folks object to the term because it holds connotations of trans misogynistic violence. Plenty do. For
those reasons, it’s really kind of shitty for folks who are not trans women or trans-feminine to rah-rah
‘tranny’ identity when they’re not so likely to have it be used harmfully against them or people with
similar identities or bodies to theirs. Misogyny happens, and there’re some expressions of misogyny
that hit trans women and trans-feminine people especially hard, and being thoughtful about that
type of sexism should be a pretty basic part of feminist behavior.
REPLY
If the stakes for sharing something are so high as to render someone “untrustworthy” simply by
posting an article, then the stakes of your conversation are too high. Of course trigger warnings are
important. Of course trauma and abuse are real. And yes, people who repost just to rectify the
“trauma” of having felt awkward in a conversation — “see! I was right! you just need to toughen up
a bit!!” are missing the point, which is that any conversation that is worth having matters more than
any temporary moment of awkwardness. Likewise, the conversation, the alliance, the support
system, the context — it all needs to be resilient and able to withstand these moments as well.
REPLY
That’s not making an apology for bigotry — it’s suggesting that there should be room for people to
be able to get things wrong without driving them out of the conversation.
REPLY
SHN July 6, 2014 at 9:56 pm #
I’ve only discovered this blog now when I saw someone on my twitter timeline link to this superb
piece.
As a leftwing feminist from an earlier era (I’m 54) who was very active in feminist campaigns
throughout the late 70s, 80s & 90s on issues like domestic violence & gender discrimination – I have
grown utterly exhausted and disgusted with the total deterioration of feminist discourse into stuff
like this “triggering” crap.
I especially appreciate your citation of a film like Life of Brian. I’ve often said the same thing of that
film or films like Blazing Saddles – they NEVER could be made today. Yet I love those films and
make no apologies for enjoying them.
I detest the infantilism of this new discourse online – esp among a certain segment of twitter
feminists – with whom it is impossible to have any kind of conversation. They use jargon and slang
that is utterly impenetrable.
They are totally fixated on the self — on bullying and exclusion.
REPLY
TJ July 8, 2014 at 9:07 am #
All you alleged ‘adults’ in your 40s and 50s getting together to have this great big circle jerk about
47 of 77 2018-11-28, 2:25 p.m.

how whiny and entitled the kids today are, and how much tougher things were in your day, and
how you had to walk twelve million miles uphill in the snow to deliver newspapers or what the
fuck ever… you realise that we’re trying to solve problems that YOU spoiled fuckers caused,
right?
REPLY
“you realise that we’re trying to solve problems that YOU spoiled fuckers caused”
Ah, generational warfare. The identitarian response would be to accuse you of ageism, but
that’s because identitarians, by definition, can’t see the real problem. The “fuckers” are, and
always have been, the .01% of the population that controls the rest. The most encouraging
thing I see in the new generation is a growing support for socialism.
lago July 7, 2014 at 12:36 am #

framing vocalization about trauma triggers as a neoliberal affectation is extremely condescending
and harmful. equating trauma symptoms with offense is inaccurate, misogynistic, and the oldest
trick in the book. it’s disgusting as fuck. you seem unable to handle the fact that a few people —
seriously a few, less than 10% of americans have PTSD (and i’m sure than less than 5% of them know
what their triggers are) — are actually speaking out in self-defense about the lack of sensitivity
towards survivors that our culture exhibits. why is that? because academia can no longer be a giant
irresponsible boys’ club? because *oh my god* abusers actually have to start recognizing that their
actions have consequences and that the people they harm will speak out? fuck this crappy
“thinkpiece.” i care about survivors’ ability to function in a deeply misogynistic and violent world so
much more than i care about comedy. this is some MRA bullshit in disguise.
REPLY
Rob July 7, 2014 at 2:27 am #
First off, a very interesting read. Thank you for raising these issues – this piece has provoked a fair
bit of discussion in my community.
I’d be interested in your take on Bernice Johnson Reagon’s piece Coalition Politics: Turning the
Century. She addressed a number of the themes you’re dealing with here, and I think her analysis
might be worth looking at. More specifically, I think she strikes a balance between attending to the
needs of a coalition and the needs of the individuals who comprise it that’s lacking in this writing.
Building a coalition is hard, jarring work – you’re trying to meld together the needs of disparate,
often conflicting groups. But, at the same time, you have to be careful to attend to the people who are
the movement. There’s a tendency in privileging the coalition over the individuals to erase the same
people who always get erased. Sylvia Rivera comes to mind.
That’s my main concern here. While you’ve done an excellent job highlighting how people can be
fragile, to the point of being narcissistic, the framing seems to imply that anyone who gets wounded
by their coalition partners should just shut up. That makes me uneasy.
It might also be worth taking a look at Ngọc Loan Trần’s piece, Calling IN: A Less Disposable Way of
Holding Each Other Accountable.
REPLY
Jen Hollis July 7, 2014 at 2:47 am #
‘Weepy, white feminism,’ huh? Let’s ‘unpack’ that–as you grad school types are fond of saying in
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your overlong screeds. (Let’s also thoughtfully not ‘problematize’ it, as ‘problematize’ is not a
gahtdamned word.)
So, weepy and white…
First, I don’t recall ever actually seeing feminist icons of that era like Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan or
Naomi Wolf sniffling, tearing up, or getting otherwise lacrimosa–but let us set aside this absolute
lack of weeping; really, what I think you might have been going for was ‘aggressive,’ ‘ball busting’,
and ‘humourless’…wait…no…I think you hit the ‘women aren’t funny’ stereotype. Scratch that.
Good work.
Still, nice deployment of the term ‘weepy,’ (i.e. weak and overly emotional) to broadly delegitimise
the feminist critique. I think between us we can agree that feminism in that era was probably just on
its period. Or perhaps it had its panties in a bunch.
Second, I might just mention the technicality that white racists would not consider any of the
abovementioned feminist superstars white. In fact, all three of these women belong to an ethnic
group which the white racism of the 20th century in the US and Europe labeled sub-human,
discriminated against, and ultimately tried to exterminate through a genocidal campaign. That said,
this trivial fact is not meant to infringe on the very important agency of non-white (or progressive-
white) racists to decide for themselves, arbitrarily and as individuals, who can be labeled white and
subsequently negated through that label.
I think we can all agree it’s more fun to do things this way. Or we’re just super lazy….probably it’s
that.
Finally, using sexist ad hominem to dismiss, in a single broad stroke, all ‘white'(ish?), women who
took their experience and thoughts seriously, a bit conventional and expected, no?
I think, as a man, using your natural strength, humour and cleverness, you could have come up with
something funnier. I say this only because we all know men are funny and strong, as are the people
they decide are also funny and strong, according to their whims. Not that men have whims, of
course, as they are also super rational.
REPLY
alejo July 7, 2014 at 12:19 pm #
Jen,
Terms like “white woman tears” were, in my understanding, originally proliferated in activist /
feminist / dyke communities by woman of color who were frustrated by how white feminists
and white lesbians would deploy shows of woundedness and sadness in a way that utilized racist
tropes about people of color being mean or aggressive, or that treated assertive behavior by
women of color as ‘bad’ while celebrating that kind of behavior from white women, or that let
white people turn conversations about racism into white guilt and navel-gazing. That’s a thing
that happened and happens and it makes sense that people subject to that kind of racist
redirection would come up with a short-hand way of referencing it.
I think Halberstam was writing with that history in mind, especially since a lot of their argument
here seem to be that there’s currently a harmful and significant tendency to prioritize the feelings
of the privileged over structural analysis and activism for systemic change. I think there’s a grain
of truth to this claim, though I think this piece over-generalizes and over-states the problem and
has a lot of things just wrong. But displays of sadness and hurt can certainly be used to deflect
critique and support oppression, and this has been true for a very long time – hence the
development of terms like “white lady tears” decades ago. See also: feminists who write about
manipulative “man-tears” and the like.
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That said, it’s clear that not everyone knows about that history, and I absolutely think deploying
that rhetoric as a white, well-off, famous academic of masculine gender has a *way* different
tone. There can be good in white activists arguing against the white whine, but not so much
without more subtlety than Halberstam offers here. I’m aware of some of the history of “white
woman tears” and I still found its use in this piece to be kinda sexist and dismissive while
cleverly referencing anti-racist and activist discourses just enough to provide a smug alibi
(allybi?). I can well imagine many folks not familiar with the term seeing Halberstam’s use as just
plain misogynistic.
So, yeah. Snark as a style of writing, and the self-satisfaction and lack of subtlety that generally
come with it, often kinda fucking suck. It’s weird and disappointing to see an academic who
wrote things that were significant to me when I was younger make acting like this now.
REPLY
just somebody July 7, 2014 at 6:32 am #
okay, i never went to a fancy post-secondary school or took a course on all this very heady stuff – so i
don’t know if i’m truly qualified to comment here. I have seen the type of discourse you refer to,
quite rampantly, especially in (admittedly predominately caucasian) “lgbt” groups, as well as online,
but have never understood why. So maybe i’m not qualified to speak to this issue, but i am a person
who has been forced into sex-work, extended homelessness, raped nine times, shot, chased down
and beaten with a bicycle chain, laughed at in the er when they realized i was trans, assaulted by
police just because, had to fight almost everyday in later elementary grades and junior high, been
called nerd, weirdo, faggot, sissy, bitch, nigger, “ewww that’s a man”, etc. on countless occasions,
had bottles tossed at me, and kicked out of my mother’s home for being a “sick”, “deceptive”,
“homosexual transvestite”. I guess y’all’s term for this sort of stuff is “trauma”?
Here in dc (home of the redskins), we’re often called “trannies” or “queens” as a matter of fact rather
than insult. But i did not realize “tranny” was an offensive term until i read some person on the
internet’s opinion who lives all the way on the other side of the country. I still have never met a
person who is offended by the word “tranny” in real life!
Been through alot perhaps, but i used to share a camp with vietnam and gulf war vets – and that
little crap i’ve been through is nothing compared to what they’ve seen, been through, and put others
through. I’m not trying to belittle anyone else’s experiences, and do believe that people should be far
more compassionate and considerate than they are – but it seems (speaking only from my
experience) that loving my “enemies”, turning the other cheek, being slow to anger, and exhibiting
compassion and consideration, kindness and general respect for others AND where they might be
coming from -has gotten those others as well as myself alot further in terms of cooperations,
relationships and personal evolutions – than nit-picking over terms which are themselves arbitrary,
and necessarily in constant evolution. And this seems to extend to all aspects of life, not just “lgbt”
issues, even in today’s over-sensitized amerika… I thought my generation was supposed to be the
“ME generation”, but these younguns sure seem to wanna take the cake.
Please try to exercise your own inner strength just a little, every once in a while – and maybe try to be
a little less self-centered, perhaps even forgiving, every now and again. You’d be surprised at the
results!
Oh yes, and i also thought the article was pretty darn good (and could actually read and understand
it too lol).
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p.s. the same mother who once called me “sick” and “deceiver” and “homosexual” with soooo much
disgust – is now my best friend and i hers
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Wes July 8, 2014 at 1:47 pm #
you are absolutely qualified to comment here and your perspective is insightful and your
shimmering resilience shines bright like a diamond!
this is exactly the kind of perspective that i feel like jack is advocating for – compassion, a sense of
humor, forgiveness, etc.
thank you for your comment. it made reading all that other mess worth it.
REPLY
Portia July 7, 2014 at 8:33 am #
I love this article. l have long felt the left and the liberal generally tend to fragment unproductively
into injury-privilege, psychobabble, semantic fine points and narrow group identifications. Whereas
if we look at the big picture, the enemy is a rapacious capitalist economy every time, & every kind of
oppression flows from it & ought to give us common cause.
REPLY
repatri July 7, 2014 at 9:39 am #
The problem with radical/queer*/trans*/activist circles is that they’re just that – circles. When queer
is reduced to an identity rather than a positionality within a broader struggle it just becomes an
isolated subculture which has as it’s foundation policing and attack rather than solidarity and an
open orientation towards STRUGGLE. Over the past 20 years the queer circles i’m involved with
have become more introverted, and have become more and more specialized in language (especially
psychiatric language, something that deserves a much longer look at) — to the point where I wonder
how a lot of peeps function in the ‘outside world’, at work etc. Many of my friends have confided in
me that they haven’t felt comfortable talking about certain topics with each other out of fear that it
will result in triggering, and that this will be dealt with through mass online media posts, shaming,
humiliation, isolation from friendship groups etc – is this the world we want to build?
To work together, to have an open orientation towards struggle is difficult and you can’t expect not
to be hurt in some way when people who aren’t socialised in the same cirlces say things that attack
the core of your self.
REPLY
I'm triggered July 7, 2014 at 9:53 am #
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I'm Triggered - #imtriggered
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Lena July 7, 2014 at 9:52 am #
Reblogged this on A Blog About Culture and commented:
Following the implications of hurt feelings, finger-pointing, sensitivity, and – as one commenter put
it – the “culture of umbrage” that envelops the cultural sphere.
REPLY
TJ July 7, 2014 at 11:33 am #
Reblogged this on The Unhappy Consciousness and commented:
One of the best pieces I have read recently on some of the problems with contemporary identity
politics.
REPLY
The Advocationist July 7, 2014 at 11:35 am #
Amazing. Great article! One I’ve been waiting to read for a LONG time!
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majortominor July 7, 2014 at 12:00 pm #
I’m a prof at an elite liberal arts college who teaches courses on gender and sexuality, as well as
American lit. Been teaching for 18 years. The only times I’ve ever received complaints from students
of the nature of “we needed a warning” or “why did we have to watch that” were for depictions of
consensual sex between men in a book by Samuel Delany. I also teach about slavery, racial violence,
and lynching–including lynching photos. Never received a single complaint about being triggered by
that material. I don’t have any problem with profs doing their own thing, but make an institutional
policy on trigger warnings and you’ll see a lot of homophobia, transphobia, and the like rain down,
with institutional sanction. People will be demanding trigger warnings for representations of
homosexuality, of women who choose to have abortions, etc.
I also have to say that the generation gap here is striking. Coming of age in the ACT UP era, we
never believed we could live in a safe world. Because you can’t. No one can. That’s just the way it is.
People who try to convince that you can are usually trying to seize power in some way–witness the
War on Terror, the War on Drugs.
I sometimes feel like a lot of today’s activists were raised in pizza meetings with their college deans. I
know that’s more indicative of the generation gap than anything else, but that’s how it feels.
52 of 77 2018-11-28, 2:25 p.m.
REPLY
TJ July 8, 2014 at 9:04 am #
Yeah, those entitled kids today, thinking they have the right to be safe from harm. How dare they.
REPLY
majortominor July 8, 2014 at 9:23 am #
Good luck with that.

The right to be safe? From what? Life? And let’s not forget: it’s exactly the unspoken promise
of the War on Terror: Americans have the historically unique and exceptional right to be safe.
And damnation to everyone else.
Ginkgo July 8, 2014 at 12:56 pm #

“Yeah, those entitled kids today, thinking they have the right to be safe from harm. How dare
they.”
Well exactly. Because if it isn’t their job to protect themselves, it becomes someone else’s. And
why should it?

GIngko, I don’t understand your comment. Also, there is a big difference between protecting
oneself, which of course everyone ought to do, and believing one can be, or has a right to be,
“safe from harm.” I apologize for not being better at explaining why I think this across what
seems to be a very big impasse/divide, but I also don’t see very many people on the pro-
trigger warning trying to actually engage this issue, which Murat articulates powerfully in my
opinion.

Just because you don’t *mean* for a position to be conservative or eminently exploitable by
conservatism doesn’t mean that it isn’t.
Arlene Goldbard July 7, 2014 at 12:19 pm #

Thanks for a really interesting take on this. I linked to your essay in the blog I posted today on this
subject. http://arlenegoldbard.com/2014/07/07/on-safety-and-umbrage/
REPLY
Straw Queer July 7, 2014 at 1:15 pm #
As one proud Tranny to another, thank you Jack! People who are overly and unduly offended are
truly offensive. Guess what folks, we all suffer! Life is tough! Stop the white whining! Grow a pair!
By “A Pair” I mean ovaries, of course! Hope that triggered you!
REPLY
sitara July 7, 2014 at 1:30 pm #
You claim that getting offended over words such as “tranny”, rather then focusing on real
discrimination, constitutes censorship, not activism, thus holding the trans community back.
However, considering “tranny” is a short from of “transgender”, I can understand why it might be
easier to reclaim then, say, words such as “nigger” or “faggot”, which do have historical weight and
have been used to oppress certain groups of people. Additionally, in my experience, the term
“trigger” has primarily been employed to warn victims of sexual assault that the content they are
53 of 77 2018-11-28, 2:25 p.m.

about to see includes graphic depiction of sexual assault. In many cases, trigger warning is an act of
compassion. Lastly, I think you vastly underestimate the maturity of LGBTQ youth; the majority that
I have come into contact with were grateful that they had a strong support system and did not face
the abuse that many sexual minority teens do. That being said, to trivialize the suffering of LGBTQ
teens (who are 4 times more likely than straight teens to kill themselves) by claiming the majority
make themselves out to be victims, is largely false. Speaking as a teen, yes, we occassionally buy into
the “my life is so hard” narrative, but generally, teens want to be and want to be seen as strong,
happy, and successful.
All these critisisms aside, I do agree with your sentiment that various modern social justice
movements need to work together instead of pointing fingers at each other. While I believe words
ARE very important, they are not as important as images, behaviors, laws, and other social norms
that need to be reformed.
REPLY
Caylin Allison Todd July 7, 2014 at 1:42 pm #
While I can understand your feelings on the cumbersome political acrobatics to avoid triggering folk,
I feel that there may be some oversimplification when it comes to the Tranny slur. I personally
believe we should reclaim it at some point, but I also feel that in order to do so it must be done by
ourselves. No one in the 60’s would want a white ally throwing around “Nigger” to diminish the
negative context, just as gay folk wouldn’t want straights to try and reclaim “Faggot” in the 80’s
either. You mentioned ACT UP helped turned gay slurs around, and that’s cool, but they were gay- it
was theirs to reclaim.
To put it in perspective, transgender people face an inordinate amount of violence and hostility;
about half of LGBT murders are of a transwomen (mostly transwomen of colour) despite being an
almost invisible minority in size, about 43 percent of us commit suicide, and we lack the same basic
rights and freedoms as our cisgender counterparts. Worst of all, most folk don’t even have a clear
understanding that Transsexuals aren’t Drag Queens. Forcing us to adapt to a generalized slur for
both of us kind of puts us in a rough spot when we’re trying to find a job, partner, or life and all
people can think in the back of their head is that we’ve somehow associated with a gay bar novelty.
Considering our situation, it’s just not a great time to muddy the waters of a perceptually confused
America for flair factor.
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amy July 7, 2014 at 3:12 pm #
I agree with most of this and hate the phrase “trigger warning”, but I don’t think all of it is just
whiny bullshit. I especially disagree with the part about the word “tranny”.
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queerkitsch July 7, 2014 at 4:34 pm #
I have a lot of feelings and thoughts regarding this post but what is sitting on the tip of my tongue is
how ironic it is that Halberstam is suggesting that trigger warning is detracting from actual battles
that need to be fought yet this article is doing just that. While I don’t have a problem with the
conversation this piece is buzzing because it seems that unlike Halberstam I see these dialogues as
essential to other battles but it us vividly ironic and also gas the potential to be manipulated it the
wrong hands (such as MRAs mobilizing the censorship train of thought)
REPLY
queerkitsch July 7, 2014 at 4:40 pm #
54 of 77 2018-11-28, 2:25 p.m.
I have a lot of feelings and thoughts regarding this post but what is sitting on the tip of my tongue is
how ironic it is that Halberstam is suggesting that trigger warnings are detracting from actual battles
that need to be fought yet this article is doing just that. While I don’t have a problem with the
conversation this piece is buzzing because it seems that unlike Halberstam I see these dialogues as
essential to other battles but it is vividly ironic and also has the potential to be manipulated it the
wrong hands (such as MRAs mobilizing the censorship train of thought)
REPLY
Barry Woods July 7, 2014 at 5:08 pm #
BUT, the life of Brian is not a re-writing of the life of Christ
” It tells the story of Brian Cohen (played by Chapman), a young Jewish man who is born on the
same day as, and next door to, Jesus Christ and is subsequently mistaken for the Messiah”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Python%27s_Life_of_Brian
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CAV July 7, 2014 at 5:40 pm #
A lot of this resonates incredibly strongly with me. OTOH what is his obsession with denigrating
“white lady feminists”–he erases black feminists and lesbian separatists from one era, then credits
them with saving feminism in a later era. I was part of 90s feminism, but frankly, other than
confronting Operation Rescue, we didn’t face or overcome anything as difficult 50s-70s feminists did.
And by the 80s, at least we weren’t being actively sabotaged by other women (at least not as much).
Birth control, Roe v. Wade, Title XI–does he really think all this was accomplished by a bunch of
pathetic whiners?
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Karin Fromuranus July 8, 2014 at 9:54 am #
yeah, this was bugging me too.
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William Burns July 7, 2014 at 8:59 pm #
Wow, that is a lot of Monty Python references. Definitely getting a fellow child of the seventies vibe.
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Queen July 7, 2014 at 9:23 pm #
Great piece, Jack. I’m so sick of trigger warnings and trauma/therapy culture, people glossing over
systemic problems in favor of a politics of personal grievance. I keep thinking about the way
Foucault talked about confession– trigger warnings are part of this.
In relation to child abuse, Ian Hacking says that “Ever since Augustine, conversion experiences have
been associated with confessions– the retelling of one’s own past, the true past that one had been
denying. All this if familiar: therapy as conversion, confession, and the restructuring of the
remembrances of one’s past.”
Beat up your partner? Something must’ve triggered you, like a flashback. Eat your son’s whole
birthday cake at 2 in the morning? We can’t blame you. Defecate in a charity book deposit box? We
all cope in our own ways. Enjoy Coldplay’s music? The source of the pathology is apparent.
Be triggered, confess, or whatever: You are hereby absolved of guilt. Amen.
55 of 77 2018-11-28, 2:25 p.m.

REPLY
You know what triggers me? The prison industrial complex. Pervasive societal heteronormativity.
Rape culture. The AIDS epidemic.
No one is entitled to not feel triggered. As RuPaul said, “bitch, you need to get stronger.”
REPLY
TJ July 8, 2014 at 9:02 am #
Yes, rape victims and people with PTSD just need to suck it up.
And people in wheelchairs just need to get over themselves and go for a jog.
And people with schizophrenia need to eat more vegetables.
Seriously, did you even dedicate 000.5 seconds worth of actual thought to this issue before
vomiting up that nonsense?
REPLY
A rape victim should certainly be able to expect that their sweetheart will honor a request not
to wear the some cologne the rapist wore, because it triggers bad feelings. But they can’t
expect they will never encounter that scent on the subway or see bottles for it in the drug store
nor expect everyone who will be discussing the issue of rape to put up a trigger warning. So,
yeah, a certain amount of sucking it up is necessary. Because the alternative is the world of
Harrison Bergeron.
And people in wheelchairs have to suck it up and realize that others–even people they love–
may still enjoy dancing, leaping and running. And they don’t get a trigger warning before
Julie Andrews bursts into singing “Climb Every Mountain” at the start of The Sound of Music.
Trying to police the use of a word–especially trying to convince allies from dropping it–only
increases the power of the word to do harm. If, as Audrey writes above, the only meaning of
“tranny” to those who would use it to torment is “a pre-operative or non-operative trans
woman, usually naked,” then silencing those who use it to mean something else only
increases its power to harm. The *only* way to be able to stop a word from harming is to
reclaim it–to actively change its meaning through changing the context of its use, and that
means using it more, not less.
That’s why the biggest applause moment in the original British “Queer as Folk” is Stuart’s
self-outing, when he claims every slur and negative stereotype and thereby robs them of their
power to harm him: “Because I’m queer. I’m gay. I’m homosexual. I’m a poof, I’m a poofter,
I’m a ponce. I’m a bumboy, baddieboy, backside artist, bugger. I’m bent. I am that arsebandit. I
lift those shirts. I’m a faggot-ass, fudge-packing, shit-stabbing uphill gardener. I dine at the
downstairs restaurant, I dance at the other end of the ballroom. I’m Moses and the parting of
the red cheeks. I fuck and I am fucked. I suck and I am sucked. I rim them and wank them,
and every single man’s had the fucking time of his life. And I am not a pervert. If there’s one
twisted bastard in this family, it’s this little blackmailer here.”
You want to carve out a safe space in your home: Go for it. There should be a place in your life
where you can take off your armor. But the world is not your safe space and never will be.
56 of 77 2018-11-28, 2:25 p.m.
Whining about that fact makes you weaker. Policing the language of your friends and allies
makes them weaker and only increases the power of the policed words to do harm. And only
people are people–not corporations, and not identity-based political groups. People may have
triggers–usually quite idiosyncratic and unexpected ones (after my partner died of AIDS, I
once spontaneously collapsed in tears in the nutrition supplements aisle of the drugstore
seeing a shelf lined with cans of Ensure)–groups and identities do not.

Your words, bro. Mine were something else entirely.
Murat July 8, 2014 at 6:16 pm #

The argument is not about sucking it up, getting over oneself, toughen it out. Nobody is
arguing the experiences of victims should be ignored. Nobody is dismissing vulnerability. The
issue is whether there is a ‘right’ not to be triggered. That’s an entirely different thing, really.

@Murat: If the issue is “whether there is a ‘right’ not to be triggered” then there is no issue to
discuss. Of course there is no such right.
Leave it July 8, 2014 at 3:24 am #

You are an academic, not an activist, so please stick to that. And if you don’t like the focus of certain
kinds of activists, why not focus on lifting up the work of groups you respect. Maybe even donating
some of your neoliberal university salary?
And I hope you avoid neurological trouble, including neurotoxicity, since you appear to be a hater
and denier of people trying to get by with chemical sensitivities. I sincerely hope that you never
know what that feels like.
REPLY
mary July 8, 2014 at 7:31 am #
everyone’s responsible for their own behaviour/language. if someone says they’re offended or hurt
by something you do or say it’s up to you whether you take it seriously, but you don’t tell them to
shut up. people complaining about people complaining is absurd. you talk about infighting, about
useless discourse? this article is a perfect example. if you want to work on something more
productive instead of addressing people’s “neoliberal” butthurt then do just that! why are you
wasting time complaining on the internet???
REPLY
TJ July 8, 2014 at 9:08 am #
Making your argument with shitty Homestuck comics: a true hallmark of academic rigor.
REPLY
Sable July 8, 2014 at 10:16 am #
You say there is no humor in the current Queer Liberation movement, but I disagree. Personally I
found it hilarious a long established member of the Academy would say street level activists are not
being radical enough while at the same time warn them about being unable to find employment in
existing institutional power structures if they keep this up.
Was this level of irony intentional and scripted out? Or was it instead a simply a by-product of the
desire to be another trans masculine person telling trans women they are not being radical enough in
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their gender politics?
REPLY
Will Shetterly July 8, 2014 at 12:28 pm #
“You say there is no humor in the current Queer Liberation movement, but I disagree.”
Mocking others isn’t humor—or if it is, every bully’s a comic. Humor calls for being able to laugh
at anything, and especially at yourself.
REPLY
matt July 8, 2014 at 11:07 am #
The Life of Brian is not about Christ, it’s about religions in general. Jesus is portrayed in the film, at
least two times – once as a baby, and then again during his Sermon on the Mount. The film is about
Brian, and how people believe him to be a prophet and blindly follow him (e.g. “Yes, we’re all
individuals!” and “How should we ‘fuck off’?”). It’s not a rewriting of Christ’s life, because Christ
was in the film. It’s an absurd, and very funny, view on religion.
And next, you say how the movie would be banned in cinemas today, I would disagree. Have you
seen the movies put out today? There’s tons of sex and violence, making religious satire look like
child’s play. Maybe the scene of Chapman’s penis would be a bit saucy, but there is full-frontal
nudity in movies today. And the “scenes of Christ” you mention would surely not be banned today,
as 1) the first scene is him as a baby, and 2) during his Sermon on the Mount, he is properly
portrayed as a fine man, but it’s the people who “misread” his comments which make the humor
(see: “the cheese makers”). Which, again, is just satire on how people misinterpret (or: read what
they want to read) religious dogma.
I know I am taking away from the general content of this article, however, I wanted to help clarify
what The Life of Brian is about (per what the Pythons, themselves, have said – check YouTube
interviews). I have to defend Python and this film, as I love both greatly. This film shouldn’t’ve been
banned in Norway, or other countries, because,like you, they believe it was mocking Christ. It’s not.
It’s mocking religion.
Thanks for your time.
REPLY
Natalie Shaw (@AllGodsDangers) July 8, 2014 at 1:09 pm #
I look forward to when this episode passes and the queers who object to being called quaking
whiners return to their regular activity of throwing bricks and bottles at cops. Or… at least posting
pictures of other people doing that 40 years ago on twitter or on the next flyer for their radical
nonprofit.
REPLY
Scarlett July 9, 2014 at 1:10 am #
A-FUCKING-MEN.
REPLY
David Jager July 9, 2014 at 9:20 am #
It is also problematic when discourse is reduced to what is essentially a flat paradigm. Conversation
is more than stilted when your advance strategy is “I have the right to stop your argument in its
tracks if you say anything that makes me feel bad, or reminds me of time when I was made to feel
58 of 77 2018-11-28, 2:25 p.m.

bad.” What is the point of conversation then? Why not eliminate the idea of discourse and rhetoric
altogether ( it’s confrontational and oppositional underpinnings were so agressive and patristic to
begin with!) and replace it with support groups, where we all huddle together for comfort saying
mutually reassuring bromides? There is also a problem in the assumption of a historical continuity
between all the different disposessed members of community. Why is it that when attempting to
addressing self-identified communities the lexical subdivisions become increasingly nuanced and
complex ( you can never use the right term or pronoun), but when it comes to a history of abuse or
oppression, they suddenly stand shoulder to shoulder and unified with every victim of a vaguely
similar provenance from the present moment all the way back through recorded history? The
extension of this argument is also that the offender becomes strangely identified (notwithstanding
their intent), with some shiboleth of monolithic cisgendered oppression. It’s an interesting and very
unsubtle division. The oppressed subject stands shoulder to shoulder with the oppressed, and the
cisgendered oppressor stands unwittingly on the side of the oppressor, given that they are unwitting
cogs in the crushing machine of heteronormativity. That’s the big picture, right? But in
contextualizing the history of sexuality in this way aren’t we allowing tropes of power to permeate
every aspect of our intimate lives? Am I supposed to raise my fist in solidarity every time I have an
orgasm? What happened to privacy, indeterminacy, ambiguity? This is part of the larger problem of
the politicization of sexuality. If it’s about power sharing, and votes, then there is no room for
discourse. It’s about raising up the largest voting block and grabbing your share of ‘safe space’. If its
a discourse of power we want, then we don’t want a discussion, we want to negotiate for our own
territory, and to hell with whatever you were thinking over there. Which is fine, and understandable-
but its hardly a great end game for discourse. My understanding of discourse was that it requires an
uknowable ‘other’, something that forces us to shift and refine our position into something that
ultimately fits in a larger and ( temporarily unified) paradigm. I thought this was the work of culture.
But if culture is so thoroughly permeated by cisgendered oppression that it isn’t fit to stand, then we
adopt a revolutionary paradigm, and hope to forge a new space where everyone can define
themselves as intricately as possible without ever having to answer to anything that might question
their journey of sexuality and individuation. A sexuality, in other words. that does away with the
other. Wasn’t it Foucault who taught us to be extremely careful to dismantle not only the content of a
discourse but to step back and observe its larger context?
REPLY
eriktrips July 9, 2014 at 8:02 pm #
I am going to write more elsewhere. I think. In fact I might not post this here at all but let’s see if I
can remain within the point I think I want to make here before I go off and make all the others that
are demanding that I write them down or they will keep me up all night.
Disclaimer: this is going to be broad and not directed at any single person writing here. It is also not
going to address anything regarding the word we are fighting about–at least not directly. But I am
noticing this other point of conversation that maybe I can add a little substance to? I keep reading
about people who *really really* have PTSD and aren’t just faking it and I figure I can speak to this a
little bit since I really really do have PTSD and have really really experienced multiple “flashbacks”
as we sometimes call them, that come out of the blue sometimes and wreck whole days, weeks,
months, sometimes years.
So hi. There is more to say about us people with PTSD but the only point I am going to make here
concerns the rhetoric of the wounded self and of personal responsibility as complementary neo-
liberal devices for discounting cultural violence and cultural responsibility. Because on the one hand,
if the wounded self needs to be refigured as something other than an isolated psychological entity,
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then so does personal responsibility need to be refigured as something other than Your Problem, Not
Mine.
That’s all, really. Tangential to the concerns of trans* people except maybe insofar as I am one of
those too and untangling everything to deal separately with each identity/label/diagnosis/problem
/feature/thing-that-I-somehow-am-although-not-quite-so-much-like-is-usually-described is nearly
impossible for me anymore.
If as a culture we are going to address multiple systemic oppressions then I think we have to also
look at how Personal Responsibility places many oppressed populations in an untenable position:
that of single-handedly addressing and ameliorating the conditions of their oppression, quite
without the help of those benefitting from those conditions and certainly without bothering anyone
whose lives are not affected by those conditions.
I can be more concrete but since this is sort of a sideline issue except that you all brought up trauma
and when you do that sometimes it summons me although most often you wouldn’t know it I am
going to leave off here with this:
I am not sure we can have this both ways: either the wounded self gets taken up entirely in political
and cultural resistance, not to be told it is Our Problem when it appears something might need to be
done collectively about the collective woundedness that remains after the self is dismissed–because it
does remain–or we be sent on our way to individual psycho-therapy so that we can take personal
responsibility and not bother anyone else and not reenter society until we are “better” and able to
function like normal folk and let The Movement get on with its business. Which we would be part of.
But we’re broken and must go to the shop for a little while first.
Maybe you see the contradiction that I see here? Maybe not. I will have to try again later.
Ok I kept going. I should probably add then that I do not advocate censorship and have no power to
censor anything. Nor do I advocate the reification of personal freedom as primary over our
responsibility to each other. In the US that is a very unpopular opinion I realize.
Ok. That’s all. For now. Here. I think.
REPLY
adrianstephenson July 9, 2014 at 10:24 pm #
The piece has interesting points. But I think it also scapegoats millennials, the crowd probably most
into using trigger warnings and fighting these little battles over language. You’re looking at a bunch
of 15-25 year olds saying, “why are you so occupied with insults when you could fight the
neoliberal-capitalist-regime!” as if there aren’t 15-25 year olds doing that, and as if we all just came
perfectly formed out of this vacuum to transform the world order and decided to complain about
what someone said to us on the internet instead.
But what I would really like to say is: there is a valid place for trigger warnings and being concerned
about language. And it does help make us sensitive to the racist, sexist, heteronormative systems of
privilege and oppression you would like us to focus on. Taking time to develop humor and jokes that
aren’t racially or sexually charged, and calling out the problems they cause, is a ground-up way of
confronting large top-down systems. Using trigger warnings helps create safe space, and being
sensitive to requests for them validates peoples identities in powerful ways – it says to rape
survivors, abuse survivors, LGBT folks that have found themselves subject to slurs and harassment,
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people struggling with mental illness, whatever: you are a valid person and I recognize that you
exist. Instead of saying what I want to say and ignoring your existence, I’m going to acknowledge it
and create space where we can all talk together about it.
Do triggers sometimes get a little inane? Yes. Are millennials too busy looking at their cell phones
and feeling bad about themselves? Some of us probably are! But that doesn’t mean what we *do* do
doesn’t count as activism (the personal is political, after all), or that understanding and subverting
the politics of language isn’t a way to fight oppression.
REPLY
SD Holman July 10, 2014 at 2:08 am #
Thank you Jack for taking the time to write this smart, funny and interesting article.
I have been thinkin a lot about this stuff and I have felt censored by my fellow queers for not using
the right words.
Wasn’t/isn’t it post-structuralism’s fault really for making the use of the right language so
important? And it is; keeping in mind of course we are not static, that language and meaning
changes over time and in different ways in different communities, but that is another article – Where
we run into so much difficulty and heartache is when we use smart ideas as the stick to beat each
other with.
There is a lot of privilege, bullying and judgment that gets thrown around in our queer communities,
this is not news or new in marginalized communities; of course so much has been written on that-
when we feel so little power-we cant get to the guy who is throwing the baby’s in the water, so we
attack the ally right next to us because they ‘have’ so much more privilege than we do; as my late
beloved wife said ‘don’t become a leader we eat our own’. A sad state of affairs indeed. but keep up
the resistance, even if it feels like it changes nothing- because it keeps us human. Thank you for
continuing to do the work you do.
love, a Tranny fag butch dyke
REPLY
michaelnovick July 10, 2014 at 3:28 am #
I am in my late 60s and have been in “the movement” since the 60s and haven’t had much contact
with this whole train of thought although I do most of my political work with people 40 years or
more younger than I am. I will have to say, to me it sounds like the difference between anger and
resentment. Stuff you resent, you are actually holding on to, kind of nursing it like a drink,
maintaining an attachment to. Anger is a lot healthier; you express it, release it, use it to motivate
effective action, and move on. Saying something “triggers” you is giving away a whole lot of power
and autonomy to someone else, and denying your own responsibility for your own feelings. Every
oppositional movement always carries within it an incorporation of the values and beliefs of the
system it opposes; simultaneously that system always seeks to produce a kind of killed-virus version
of the opposition (bourgeois feminism, porkchop nationalism, assimilationist gays and lesbians, etc)
to inoculate people against the infectious real deal of revolution. People just have to learn not to
throw the baby out with the bathwater; to identify the systemic enemy and to engage in struggles
that will weaken it and strengthen the forces of liberation. Doing so will require, demand great
fortitude, self-sacrifice and the willingness to withstand and overcome serious trauma, repression
and loss. Learn a lesson from the CA prisoner hunger strikers, who have been subjected to torture
isolation for decades in many cases and have found and expressed a healing solidarity and humanity
in their resistance.
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61 of 77 2018-11-28, 2:25 p.m.

Laura July 10, 2014 at 3:31 am #
A misunderstanding, unfortunately. The point is not that we erode and divide communities with our
trauma, and it is not that we are ignoring the real enemies, but that we have discovered over years of
organizing with your ilk who our community really is, and who our enemies really are. What you
experience as a supposed loss of community is in fact the reality of class conflict – a class conflict in
which you are the exploiter class.
REPLY
Will Shetterly July 10, 2014 at 12:46 pm #
“we have discovered over years of organizing with your ilk who our community really is”
People who think in terms of “your ilk” seem to be more interested in fighting than uniting.
REPLY
laroquod July 10, 2014 at 11:36 am #
Obligatory pedantry: I think you meant ‘hypo-allergenic’ which describes substances which are less
likely to trigger allergies. ‘Hypo-allergic’ would designate a person is who not very allergic to
anything in the first place.
REPLY
d4m10n July 10, 2014 at 12:04 pm #
Reblogged this on Blue Ball Skeptics and commented:
Excellent middling-to-long form piece on the insurgent rhetoric of emotional trauma.
REPLY
seth edenbaum July 10, 2014 at 3:23 pm #
It’s always amused me how many people defend queer theory and queerness as being attacked by
the right without defending it explicitly as being of the left. Queerness isn’t a critique of class; it’s
defined as mocking bourgeois normalcy, and that fits in fine with conservatism of the Old Regime, as
if does with Reagan and neoliberal America. I remember an agent of a British oligarch say in passing
that after his meeting with my boss discussing million dollar deals he was off to a “die in” in
midtown. As Johann Hari pointed out years ago “With the exception of Jean-Marie Le Pen, all the
most high-profile fascists in Europe in the past thirty years have been gay.” Tell me about Tom of
Finland.
The demimonde is never radical; I’ve been around it long enough to know. The utopian collapsing of
art and life is a hallmark of both fashion and fascism, and Holly Golightly is an icon of anti-
humanism, of anti-political ‘sensitivity’ as opposed to democratic responsibility. The only person I’ve
ever heard refer to the tyrannicides, Harmodius and Aristogeiton as models of homosexual love and
honor was Robert Hughes, in 1981.
And if you really want to wonder how things have changed in popular cinema, never mind Life of
Brian, check the scenes on the beach in Morocco is Prick Up Your Ears”
http://blog.edenbaumstudio.com/2014/03/repeat-more-vivid-proof-not-mentioned.html
REPLY
wakingofthebear July 10, 2014 at 6:08 pm #
Congratulations on being Freshly Pressed, although you blog obviously doesn’t need the boost.
REPLY
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tealtomato July 10, 2014 at 6:10 pm #
Wow, fascinating article. Recently a staunch feminist, I find your perspective very interesting. My
opinion is that freedom is the best goal — including people’s freedom from their own sexism (racism,
homophobia, or any “ism” or “phobia”). Yours is one to consider, I’ll have to mull this over for
awhile. I agree that our fight should be more united. A human is never the enemy.
REPLY
adikpesolomon July 10, 2014 at 6:14 pm #
Reblogged this on adikpesolomon and commented:
Life is minded all time!
REPLY
appslotus July 10, 2014 at 6:23 pm #
Reblogged this on Apps Lotus's Blog.
REPLY
Chasing23 July 10, 2014 at 6:25 pm #
Great Name! Bully bloggers!
REPLY
moderndayruth July 10, 2014 at 6:41 pm #
A friend of mine shared your post on facebook recenly and i read it with great interest. Congrats on
being freshly pressed!
REPLY
J.W. McNabb July 10, 2014 at 7:49 pm #
Although I do not personally have much experience with the subject matter, I agree wholeheartedly
with the overall position you present here.
We have come to a point in our society when what is said is not what we mean, what we think is
constantly scrutinized, and what we feel is weighed and measured against what others say we
should feel. Many have lost their sense of self, and instead have molded who they are into what they
think people want them to be. And, your position on trigger words is spot on – it is quickly
becoming the equivalent to the young shepherd boy who cried wolf. The voices of those who are
truly yearning to be heard are being drowned out by the ones yelling at the top of their lungs
because they simply want more attention.
REPLY
allthoughtswork July 10, 2014 at 9:41 pm #
It can all be summed up in four little words: “It’s not my fault!”
That’s right–your sagging health, your dwindling finances, your waves of manic anxiety–these can
all be conveniently and cathartically pinned on some outside force. There’s always something OUT
THERE that supersedes your own strength, integrity, and personal evolution. Why grow when you
can sue?
Nobody argues whether the sun exists because that’s obvious. Well, our intrinsic value and freedom
is obvious, too, but we spend all day arguing about it with morons who don’t agree. If you really
wanna piss them off, ignore them and have a fantastic life, anyway. Drives ’em crazy and no lawyers.
REPLY
63 of 77 2018-11-28, 2:25 p.m.

Sarabi Nikolanna Eventide July 11, 2014 at 2:03 am #
Thank you so much for writing this. I’ve been having this debate with some friends for a while. They
want to censor my use of the word “nigga” which I consider a reclaimed word. People say all
variations are offensive, but I believe the -er version is the only truly offensive version, and even then
I don’t see the point in taking it out of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. That just ruins good
literature.
I’m actually planning on writing an article on this topic for my school’s newspaper. You’ve given me
some interesting things to think about. Now I need to find counterarguments so I can address them
as well. Again, thank you for being a breath of fresh air in our overly-sensitive world.
REPLY
Desire July 11, 2014 at 7:25 am #
WOW this was an epic read! Brilliant!
REPLY
creativeconfessions July 11, 2014 at 9:15 am #
Thank you very much for this well-reasoned, eloquent statement. I myself have suffered from being
triggered in the past thanks to my own personal series of traumatic events, but I discovered when
working as a part-time teacher at one point that a lot of people take the term “trigger” way too far.
Yes, many have faced traumatic experiences and situations and certain day-to-day occurrences may
give them excruciatingly painful flashbacks, but the term “trigger” has now become so loosely and
freely used that it has lost most of its initial meaning. I’ve been wanting to get my thoughts down
into a cohesive set of words for a while but I really couldn’t have said it better myself. This is
poignant. Thank you for sharing!
REPLY
thefanartist July 11, 2014 at 10:56 am #
Brilliant!
REPLY
Sherwin July 11, 2014 at 3:29 pm #
Please check with me before talking about trigger.
Thanks
Roy Rogers.
REPLY
BW July 11, 2014 at 6:39 pm #
I wonder how much of the substance in this is lost in people responding to the “bully”-ish tone of the
polemic (on a site called Bullybloggers – shock!). If I’m reading correctly the critique is targeting a
politics that centers self-preservation and security over the risky work of collective liberation.
Courage and resilience aren’t cis-masculinist principles, nor are they aren’t monopolized by
whiteness – just as vulnerability need not be the primary, let alone exclusive, mode of
blackness/femmeness/gender-nonconformity/wagelessness. Courage and resilience are vital not
only for surviving systems designed to contain and kill us, but more importantly for overcoming and
smashing them to bits so that we might thrive collectively. Yes, we are vulnerable and radically
unsafe, and those of us who act on our radical politics in ways that threaten hierarchies and material
structures should expect and prepare to face even greater risk. But we are and always have been
more than vulnerable, and we must be more if we want our lives to approach anything proximate to
dignity and well being instead of victimhood.
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When we identify queerness with possibility rather than location, I wonder how certain claims of
disability reveal themselves as cynical unwillingness and complicity in face of fear. But rather than
shame people in their resistance against risk, maybe we can follow Toni Cade Bambara’s example in
sharing stories and art that “make revolution irresistable”? Instead of determining whether one’s
traumas are authentic or whether one’s political authenticity and credibility requires verification
within in a hierarchy of traumatic experiences, we might benefit from sharing more stories about
people who have moved forward with determination after they’ve fallen, or about the persons
unknown who took tremendous risk, who were never caught and live among us. If some people feel
compelled to defend the safety of relative innocents or canonize the dead who have been entrapped
by the state due to their blackness/femmeness/gender-nonconformity/wagelessness, perhaps the
rest of us can commit more resources and imagination toward aiding and abetting those of us that
are guilty of wanting something more queer than the present state of things. Some of us call that
abolition.
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Therese Lu July 11, 2014 at 7:16 pm #
Thanks for sharing! Very insightful piece.
REPLY
lemurtide July 12, 2014 at 2:49 am #
Consider the fact that the author thinks the voluntary deployment of trigger warnings by a handful
of academics (an artificial “problem” affecting approximately 0% of the overall population) is more
pressing than his own furtherance of dismissive sexist argumentation in a culture which still
violently and institutionally abuses women…anyone seen the latest research on widespread non-
investigation of rape at universities?
At least someone knows how to think about phrases like the author’s “weepy…feminism.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/07/09/men-really-need-to-stop-
calling-women-crazy/
REPLY
imaxme July 12, 2014 at 3:12 am #
Reblogged this on Imax World Of Max's Blog.
REPLY
Brilliant, Jack: “…saying that you feel harmed by another queer person’s use of a reclaimed word
like ‘tranny’ and organizing against the use of that word is NOT social activism. It is censorship.” I
applaud your considered thinking on these difficult topics.
I have lived through and participated in most of the “eras” you describe. You forgot t mention the
part where some claim that my recognition of my bisexuality is considered false by others. I also
insist that most people are bisexual (biologically correct), and that anyone who has even a modicum
of attraction, in dreams or otherwise, to both or all genders is bi-, or omnisexual. I get a lot of hate
mail for that.
My pet peeve: applauding EVERYONE and exalting mediocrity in the process. Good on ya!
REPLY
Reblogged this on Sally Ember, Ed.D. and commented:
65 of 77 2018-11-28, 2:25 p.m.
Brilliant, Jack: “…saying that you feel harmed by another queer person’s use of a reclaimed word
like ‘tranny’ and organizing against the use of that word is NOT social activism. It is censorship.” I
applaud your considered thinking on these difficult topics.
I have lived through and participated in most of the “eras” you describe. You forgot t mention the
part where some claim that my recognition of my bisexuality is considered false by others. I also
insist that most people are bisexual (biologically correct), and that anyone who has even a modicum
of attraction, in dreams or otherwise, to both or all genders is bi-, or omnisexual. I get a lot of hate
mail for that.
My pet peeve: applauding EVERYONE and exalting mediocrity in the process. Good on ya!
REPLY
murph July 12, 2014 at 4:15 pm #
I offer my feedback not to contend with your assertions, which I mostly agree with, but hopefully to
spark some kind of useful dialectical engagement.
As a person who suffers from mild to intense post-traumatic stress disorder, I wholeheartedly believe
that the force of trauma is repeatedly mis-directed within communities of “resistance”. We are
generationally conditioned to direct the pure blinding rage of a trauma response either (a) inwards,
through actions of self-harm or (b) horizontally, through accusing others who basically, in terms of a
global analysis, have the same level of power as we do. Escalation of horizontal hostility is a
hallmark of trauma, and is used repeatedly by the state to dismantle and dissolve our movements.
What we really need is (c) to funnel the rage upwards in the power system, to direct it as a force at
those who would keep a system of global inequity in place.
As a person who spends a fuckton of time both managing my PTSD and pouring my life into anti-
capitalist organizing, I am daily left with the question: how do I actually use my trauma responses as
fuel for my work? Being “triggered”, having a trauma reaction, is one of the consistently most
physically and mentally intense things that happens to me. I become severely dissociated, can often
become actively suicidal, am overcome with a sense of learned helplessness and futility about
everything, am uncontrollably burning with rage, and often have to spend days managing these
symptoms to bring myself back to a baseline functional state. Trauma is pre-lingual, outside of the
logic of standard social exchange. I can’t go to an organizing meeting and be functional if I’m hella
triggered. I can barely control the rage so as to not harm myself or my comrades.
So my question to you: how do we shift the cultural patterning around trauma to de-escalate
horizontal hostility and use it as a weapon in the struggle? The critique your article offers, while spot
on in many ways, is almost substantively empty as long as it lacks an implementable framework for
action for those of us who, without one, collapse into a quivering sobbing mess. Repeatedly and
without end.
REPLY
Chris July 12, 2014 at 9:01 pm #
Reblogged this on I Fucking Hate Facebook and commented:
As much as I love my feminism, I think I have to agree…
REPLY
sonatano1 July 12, 2014 at 9:42 pm #
I really just barely understand what “triggering” is – I’ve never spent any time in these circles, so I
can’t say anything about how they operate. But I think your piece seemed very insightful. The
66 of 77 2018-11-28, 2:25 p.m.
context was much appreciated.
REPLY
Ali Kat July 13, 2014 at 2:27 am #
Fabulous article. In depth and very well written. Bravo !
REPLY
runaroundandfalldown July 13, 2014 at 5:34 pm #
I’m glad for the well thought out delivery of this essay. It’s an issue that I see constantly. A group
achieving social change by coloring themselves as victims for sympathy isn’t a healthy way to self-
represent. Regardless, of course, for whether the status of victim it is ‘earned,’ which trivializes the
term for that group’s members who have suffered.
Thanks for the smart reminder that being (or being recognized as) LGBT, female, or a person of color
is not the end-all of human suffering. And it shouldn’t be treated as such for an inclusive society!
REPLY
Nocturntable July 14, 2014 at 3:27 pm #
Reblogged this on nocturntable and commented:
There are no safe spaces. Make your own.
REPLY
Delphine July 15, 2014 at 10:57 am #
I found this a most illuminating read. Its logic reaches beyond the gender paradigm. I struggle with
the stultifying politically correct world that we live in in North America where communication has
become a bit like walking on raw rotten eggs – one unwitting wrong step and you stink.
Sometimes very simple truths can no longer be spoken, and astonishingly, politicians appear prone
to claiming victimhood as a credential in attempting to represent my social and economic interests. I
don’t think one needs to wallow in perpetual victimhood in order to develop strength and courage. I
think breaking free from it helps. And when breaking free victimizes someone else, where are we
then?
Take the perpetual conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians – each the victim of the other.
That mentality is not serving them in creating a way to live together, is it? We need to get over
ourselves and get on with the business of co-existing without becoming abusive about it. Thanks for
a great article, Jack.
REPLY
incompetentilluminati July 16, 2014 at 11:32 am #
I disagree with some of the ideas here, chiefly the ones about how we’re evolving into some kind of
weaker society within the LGBT movement. We’re not becoming more sensitive: we’ve always been
sensitive. We’ve just come into a society, suddenly, where we can talking about feelings without some
asshole yelling “faggot!” As for “triggers,” I understand that it can reach the point of ridiculousness,
but let’s try to see it differently. The truth is that the very idea of a “Safe Zone” is a farce. There are no
safe zones in our society, it does NOT always get better, and there are triggers everywhere. We have
to live in society to affect any kind of social change, and that means wading through the muck and a
good bit of hate.
But take triggers. For the first time, here are young people who have been subjected to abuse and
67 of 77 2018-11-28, 2:25 p.m.

rape (and who by no means “have it easy” simply because they’ve come from a new generation —
on this point, I disagree with you so hard I waggled my fist ruefully at the screen) that are confiding
in the general public about their vulnerability. It is an utterly stupid act because it’s not helping
anyone by trying to further censorship, but I find it tragic and a tad heartbreaking that suddenly
people see this as a weak generation, a brood of idiots and mental midgets who can’t take a punch
like their daddies and mommies. They’ve taken just as many punches, statistics about child abuse,
the prevalence of rape, and new studies into the damaging effects of such traumatic experiences,
especially on young minds are abound.
They’re just having trouble internalizing it and forming a hard outer shell. Let’s not convince
ourselves we’re tougher than they are because we cry on the inside.
REPLY
Chupa October 17, 2014 at 7:57 pm #
This is the best thing I have read in several years. Thank you very much for writing it.
REPLY
skyride November 8, 2014 at 3:06 pm #
Reblogged this on Life on the Margins and commented:
Reblogged from Bully Bloggers.
Thoughts on this, but to come later.
REPLY
camilletoh November 15, 2014 at 10:44 pm #
You lost me right near the beginning where, during the description of how “excessively politically
correct” your activist groups became in your younger days, you add in a few snide words about
perfume allergies.
What does that have to do with the topic?
People may choose whether or not they freak out when someone says “tranny” but they do not
choose to have physical illnesses. If a person risks an asthma attack or anaphylaxis or even a less
visible fragrance reaction like dizziness or headache, if they get exposed, yet they want to participate
in a group, why should they not ask their allies to take the easy, painless step of making the meetings
scent free? What would you have them do instead- hide at home and not be part of the community,
or silently endure exposure & then get sick and end up missing a couple days of work or even going
to the hospital? If a person like that asked their group to accommodate and they did, it seems
implied that you think those friends were being too soft.
Shall we ignore all physical disabilities as “too PC” – no more ramps for wheelchair users or captions
for the deaf? Will your tough love approach give people the backbone they need to shake their
allergy, mobility problems or bad hearing? Of course not. Disabilities accommodation is the only way
some of us have even half a chance of living a full life. It is not like the other examples you use- it is
not a case of people developing a self pitying attitude because they’ve been encouraged to whine.
I really don’t get why you had to take a swipe at physical disabilities. People can’t change their
disabilities no matter how insensitively you treat them. That perfume example should never have
been included in an article that’s essentially about communication. It is off topic, aside from
alienating disabled readers like me, who might otherwise have enjoyed the article.
REPLY
Tina November 23, 2014 at 7:29 pm #
Reblogged this on Learning in Public.
68 of 77 2018-11-28, 2:25 p.m.

REPLY
dudebro April 16, 2015 at 5:26 pm #
As a straight white male with only a tangential exposure to queer culture I found this article
enlightening.
REPLY
jutelo May 12, 2015 at 4:55 am #
Reblogged this on JN201: Print and Online Media.
REPLY
Carolyn Kitione May 13, 2015 at 7:13 am #
Reblogged this on Over the Rainbow.
REPLY
740TAO July 19, 2015 at 1:51 pm #
Reblogged this on LMGTFY.
REPLY
venuspluto67 July 20, 2015 at 8:04 am #
I think there should be trigger warnings for discussions of violence and rape because the effects of
those things on people who have been subjected to them are an overriding concern that trumps other
considerations. However, the culture of “trigger warnings” as it currently exists has degenerated into
yet another form of wallowing in the sort of self-pitying victimhood that has become so beloved of
the left in this country of late. This doesn’t make anybody a stronger person, rather it makes them
weak, pathetic, and unable to deal with the real world. This is just one of the plethora of valid
reasons that so many people outside the hallowed halls of academia hold political correctness in
utter contempt.
REPLY
qwertina April 30, 2016 at 7:45 pm #
Once upon a time, the appellation “queer” named an opposition to identity politics, a commitment to
coalition, a vision of alternative worlds. Now it has become a weak umbrella term for a confederation
of identitarian concerns” ironically, it also circled back into “q*r/q-slur”.
REPLY
Kim January 17, 2017 at 2:25 pm #
Wonderfully written article. Glad there are some brains left out there.
REPLY
david4445 February 11, 2018 at 1:45 pm #
Good points. I have issue with society automatically labeling this phenomenon ‘liberal.’ And now
‘neo-liberal’ which refers to an ideological economic shift in the Democratic Party under Bill Clinton.
It’s largely some development at universities that has nothing to do with politics. It’s how the
Culture War works, keeping us all distracted from economic and foreign policy issues, real politics.
Plenty of ‘liberals’ are sick of PC extremism. My attitude is, let the kids argue and sort it out but keep
it out of politics.
REPLY
69 of 77 2018-11-28, 2:25 p.m.

Trackbacks/Pingbacks
1. in response to Jack Halberstam’s “You are Triggering Me” | blog - July 5, 2014
[…] (term coined by my friend Michelle), and after i read jack halberstam’s article “You Are
Triggering Me: The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger, and Trauma,” i had a lot of […]
2. Response to Halberstam’s “You are triggering me!” | Don't Go Quietly Bi - July 5, 2014
[…] The original post I am responding to: https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/2014/07/05/you-
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3. trigger warning : sur la rhétorique néolibérale de la souffrance, du danger, et du traumatisme |

wandering queer - July 6, 2014
[…] https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/2014/07/05/you-are-triggering-me-the-neo-liberal-
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4. ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN | lex gill - July 6, 2014

[…] From Jack Halberstam, “You are triggering me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and
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[…] You Are Triggering me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and Trauma […]
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[…] Jack Halberstam wrote a thought provoking analysis of trigger warnings in the context of
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7. You Are Triggering me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and Trauma | Todd Lester -
July 6, 2014
[…] found this article interesting… and love the visual:) What do you think? In a round about way,
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8. Snarking back | Teile des Ganzen - July 6, 2014

[…] a link to the blog post called “You Are Triggering me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm,
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9. Finding the Fire to Go On | Dog Dharma's Blog - July 6, 2014

10. Why I No Longer Use Trigger Warnings | cet mohamed-moore - July 6, 2014
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11. You Are Triggering me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and Trauma | Bully Bloggers|
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[…] via You Are Triggering me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and Trauma | Bully
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12. The Ethic of Queer Toughness – en|Gender - July 7, 2014
[…] just read Jack Halberstam’s manifesto on queer toughness – “You’re Triggering Me! The Neo
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postings across a queer internet that is exhausted […]
13. Trigger warning: Trigger warnings (towards a different approach) | Rewriting The Rules - July 7,
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[…] Jack Halberstam: You are triggering me! The neo-Liberal rhetoric of harm, danger and trauma
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[…] down to compose this response to Jack Halberstam’s piece on trigger warnings, which is over
here, was a content note. A content note is a little flag at the start of a piece that says, “yo: […]
15. On Safety and Umbrage | Arlene Goldbard - July 7, 2014

[…] a bit of Jack Halberstam’s incisive blog about this phenomenon from Bully Bloggers, the blog site
he shares with three other academics (which means you have to wade through a bit of […]
16. Jack Halberstam’s Flying Circus: On postmodernism and the scapegoating of trans women - July 7,
2014
[…] With mainstream discussion around trigger warnings circling the drain of bad faith and broken
ethics, Jack Halberstam’s article on the matter was as inevitable as it is unhelpful. […]
17. Trans/plant/portation - July 7, 2014

[…] or wrote a readable deconstruction of language, politics, and identity. Instead, Halberstam
waded into the very tired “tranny” debate, and along the way, managed to become the next Dan
Savage, Tosh.0, Seth MacFarland of the LGBT […]
18. Jack Halberstam on Bully Bloggers | The Subversive Intellectual - July 7, 2014
[…] You Are Triggering me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, […]
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20. Jack Halberstam and the Disappointing Lack of “Pulling the Trigger” Puns in this Very Important
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[…] above were inspired by this, though lately I’ve been pondering cultural shifts, their frequent
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22. Are Trigger Warnings for White People? (Guest Post by Kristina Meshelski) | Daily Nous - July 9,
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[…] Kristina Meshelski, an assistant professor of philosophy at CSU Northridge, has kindly authored
the following guest post about the recent discussion of trigger warnings at Bully Bloggers by Jack
Halberstam (USC), “You Are Triggering Me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger, and
Trauma.” […]
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23. Wednesday Links! | Gerry Canavan - July 9, 2014
[…] Dialectics of the Trigger Warning […]
24. You Are Triggering me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and Trauma - TRPWL :TRPWL
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25. “Why I Yelled at the Kara Walker Exhibit” | Sub.ver.sive Intellect--uals - July 10, 2014
[…] reading through Halberstam’s Bully Bloggers piece, “You are Triggering Me! The Neo-liberal
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[…] discussion on Halberstam’s piece, here is Natalia Cecire’s rightful critique giving voice to
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27. Thought Dump: “You Are Triggering Me!” | The Politiconomist - July 11, 2014
[…] latest broadsiding of Social Justice that is making its way through my social circles is Jack
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28. Do Trigger Warnings Change Anything? - Queerly Foward - July 13, 2014
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[…] the internet after cleaning out and tidying the lab table, and my attention is drawn to “You’re
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32. Combat! blog makes remarks, inaudible to internet : COMBAT! - July 14, 2014
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[…] recente, ha posto una questione simile nel dibattito interno al femminismo; altrettanto di recente
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40. Nel giardino di Zam – di Federico Zappino e Olivia Fiorilli | Quaderni di San Precario - July 24,
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[…] recente, ha posto una questione simile nel dibattito interno al femminismo; altrettanto di recente
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Busi e Simona de […]
41. Dal giardino di ZAM — MilanoInMovimento - July 24, 2014

[…] recente, ha posto una questione simile nel dibattito interno al femminismo; altrettanto di
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Morini, Beatrice Busi e Simona […]
42. The GLAAD Board’s “Tranny” Trouble: How Its Trans Takeover Is Reshaping LGBT Politics /
Queerty - July 24, 2014
[…] with Kahrl and Boylan assert that suppressing words we don’t like gives them more power to
harm. Dr. Jack Halberstam, Professor of English and Director of The Center for Feminist Research at
Unive…, wrote an excellent analysis of this rhetoric of harm, danger, and trauma expressed by
Boylan and […]
43. This Ain’t The Help? OITNB’s White Savior Industrial Complex Christina Belcher / University of
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Southern California | Flow - August 31, 2014
[…] debate about “call out culture” originated with Jack Halberstam’s post on Bully Bloggers, You
Are Triggering me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and Trauma. Various writers have
responded to Halberstam. […]
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[…] debate about “call out culture” originated with Jack Halberstam’s post on Bully Bloggers, You
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responded to Halberstam. […]
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[…] a change of topic; pot, fan fiction, zombies, Twilight, Burning Man, The Grateful Dead, karaoke,
trigger warnings, FetLife, Kombucha, the person they are smitten with, […]
46. Sarah Irving - September 6, 2014

[…] happy with talking about my own situation in this kind of environment is, sort of, illustrated in
this excellent post by Jack Halberstam on the “neo-liberal rhetoric of harm, danger and trauma”. It
describes a political situation in […]
47. Community Solidarity And Personal Responsibility | Ecstatic Revolution - September 17, 2014
[…] THIS! I want to plaster this everywhere. Seriously, I want to hug Jack Halberstam for this
writing: https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/2014/07/05/you-are-triggering-me-the-neo-liberal-
rhetoric-of-ha… […]
48. The Beat, The Pulse, and The Call | Sound and Queery - September 25, 2014
[…] I’ve been reflecting on in a different way since moving to Austin. The first is the somewhat
recent post from Jack Halberstam on Bully Bloggers about trigger warnings, which, in the spirit of
generosity […]
49. Civility Disobedience | Bully Bloggers - October 13, 2014

[…] an earlier blog on this site, Jack Halberstam explored “how a neoliberal rhetoric of individual
pain obscures the violent […]
50. Tense Conversations | From the President - October 27, 2014

[…] Halberstam, Jack. “You Are Triggering Me! The Neo-liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and
Trauma.” Bully Bloggers. N.p., 5 July 2014. Web. 25 Sept. 2014.
<https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/2014/07/05/you-are-triggering-me-the-neo-liberal-rhetoric-
of-…. […]
51. Group Task 2 | #HashtagMC - November 18, 2014

[…] You are triggering me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and Trauma […]
52. What, Why, When, Where, and How?: 5 Common Questions About Trigger Warnings Answered —
Everyday Feminism - January 8, 2015
[…] Thousands and thousands of words have been written about whether we should add a handful
of words at the beginning of our blog posts, articles, and Facebook statuses. […]
53. Wie sinnvoll sind Trigger-Warnungen in Veranstaltungen der Gender und Queer Studies? |
feministische studien - January 29, 2015
[…] einem viel diskutierten Text hat Jack Halberstam auf dem queeren Blog Bully Bloggers die
74 of 77 2018-11-28, 2:25 p.m.
Notwendigkeit von Trigger-Warnungen in […]
54. 3620 Podcast | Annenberg School for Communication - February 2, 2015

[…] Jack Halberstam, “You are Triggering Me…” […]
55. SKOK’s Queer Art of (Political) Protest. | International Student Blog - March 6, 2015
[…] makes you question your assumptions about a variety of topics. From explaining his opposition
to trigger warnings (a increasingly common practice in classrooms in the U.S. at least, where
instructors forewarn […]
56. Arriving at the Milestone – Ph.D. from U of Chicago! | Yuan-Chen Li ‧ 李元貞 - May 25, 2015
[…] Monk and the Philosopher,” reading sincerely about the younger generation’s painful triggers in
this post-traumatic culture, and thought about the next project. Stay Connected! I will keep […]
57. Who Gets to Feel their Feels? On the power and politics of academic emotions | Clare Forstie -
May 29, 2015
[…] he participated in that culture. What do we actually do, in the classroom? Kipnis’ and, in an
earlier post about trigger warnings, Jack Halberstam’s arguments suggest that we should essentially
tell both students that […]
58. More like interSEXYnality, AMIRITE? | samquigley - May 31, 2015

[…] and then read this very good thing on trigger […]
59. Is That a “Read"? The Contentious Politics of Drag Performance | JSTOR Daily - June 8, 2015
[…] to the backlash has ensued, with prominent transgender critics like Justin Vivian Bond and Jack
Halberstam balking at activists’ excessive policing of language (also in the use of the word “tranny”
[…]
60. Série de l’été : Le Vendredi, on zone sur les Internets. Episode 1. | Le Lancer de Galaxie du
Dentifrice - July 3, 2015
[…] Le tweet de l’apocalypse (le 10è va vous étonner) Le lynchage, une vieille histoire n’est-ce pas.
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61. You Are Triggering me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and Trauma | Bully Bloggers|
existentialwight - July 6, 2015
rhetoric-of-har… […]
62. The Fashion Offensive. #1: FUCK OFF - CULTURE ON THE OFFENSIVE - August 2, 2015
[…] winds up policing the very group that it claims to speak for. Queer theorist Jack Halberstem
illustrates the problems of this new […]
63. Guest post: People uncritically generalizing their personal experience - August 5, 2015
[…] was just reminded of this excellent article from a year ago (looking at some of the theoretical
underpinnings/implications of the rise of use of […]
64. the trigger warning I'm putting in my syllabus | - August 19, 2015
[…] of academics and teachers think trigger warnings in college classrooms signal the decline of
deep, authentic inquiry into complex social issues. They believe trigger warnings are a symbol of the
Dumbing Down of the […]
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65. Trigger Warnings and the Adult Conversation About Them | Proof of Burden - August 20, 2015
[…] and academia. This does not include Laura Kipnis (Freud justifies sleeping with my students),
Jack Halberstadt (Freud justifies me ignoring intersectionality organizing), the authors of the
aforementioned […]
66. My trigger-warning dilemma - December 2, 2015

[…] in a particular way. Always young, mostly women. Very often a student attacking a professor,
always “aggrieved” or upset, often displaying signs of emotional instability or hysteria. These
trigger-victims almost […]
67. Why I No Longer Use Trigger Warnings - cet mohamed moore - December 15, 2015
[…] only this year that I’ve disavowed them as a rule. It took for Bryant Cross to share this post on
the Bully Bloggers’ site to enumerate […]
68. Somewhere in the Blogosphere: Digital Dieting and Emerging Identity – Heather's Blog - January
23, 2016
[…] yet this strange addiction on still wanting to know more. In other words, I started to suffer from
FOMO if I wasn’t online. Therefore, I needed to put some barriers in place to eliminate some of the
[…]
69. Can the Triggered Generation Speak? – Lisa Diedrich - August 26, 2016
[…] to the next. In general, then, I agree with one of Jack Halberstam’s main points in his blog “You
are Triggering Me!” and in the related presentation he gave at Stony Brook in fall 2014: that we can’t
predict what […]
70. The Real Danger of Trigger Warnings: A Survivor’s Perspective – Mary - September 23, 2016
[…] worry that trigger warnings are just excuses to avoid discomfort, hurt feelings or difficult
subjects. They worry such warnings suppress free speech in […]
71. Opposition To “Trigger Warnings” Reinforces The Status Quo | Conditionally Accepted - October
18, 2016
[…] we pause for a moment on the trigger warning debates? Even well-intentioned liberal
professors who have taken issue with these warnings are merely echoing the larger conservative […]
72. Civility Disobedience | AMST 286: Queer Activism and Radical Scholarship - October 26, 2016
[…] an earlier blog on this site, Jack Halberstam explored “how a neoliberal rhetoric of individual
pain obscures the violent […]
73. The Fashion Offensive: #1. FUCK OFF – Exploding Appendix - December 5, 2016
[…] winds up policing the very group that it claims to speak for. Queer theorist Jack
Halberstem illustrates the problems of this new […]
74. Thinking about Triggers, Thumbs, Sex, and Death | Film Quarterly - December 22, 2016
[…] Me, Triggering You: Making Up Is Hard to Do,” Bully Bloggers, July 15, 2014,
https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/2014/07/05/you-are-triggering-me-the-neo-liberal-rhetoric-
of-harm… and […]
75. Saint’s Row: Canonizing Provocateurs – TINTE - March 25, 2017

[…] nerves of our sometimes admittedly sensitive society. In our “culture of umbrage” (as I once saw
it phrased), pleasing everyone is increasingly impossible. Yet we are talking about a very specific
request […]
76 of 77 2018-11-28, 2:25 p.m.
76. Mapping The Concepts of Content Warnings: Three Themes, Two Causes, & A Possible Path
Forward | Grabber - April 4, 2017
[…] Accurate Information on Trigger Warnings). As Jack Halberstam has noted, it also presumes
a neoliberal focus on the damaged individual rather than the structures and systems that damage
[…]
77. My trigger-warning disaster: “9 1/2 Weeks,” “The Wire” and how coddled young radicals got
discomfort all wrong - From The Square - August 29, 2017
[…] but in an unfortunate and sometimes typical academic fashion, it can be snobbish and dismissive
(Jack Halberstam is also in this camp). Here lies the problem. Taking a tone like that just pisses
students off even […]
78. Trigger warnings and censorship at university – tbaJournal - September 13, 2017
[…] associated with those groups. As a consequence, valid concerns are swept aside. However, recent
blog posts and articles show that leftist and feminist groups themselves are beginning to challenge
how […]
79. Trigger warnings and safe spaces | tictoc11's Blog - January 12, 2018
[…] thinking the classroom requires. Others have called out trigger warnings as divisive, parsing, as
Jack Halberstam wrote, “politically allied subjects into hierarchies of […]
80. You Are Triggering me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and Trauma | Bully Bloggers –
My Blog - April 28, 2018
[…] You Are Triggering me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and Trauma | Bully Bloggers
[…]

CREATE A FREE WEBSITE OR BLOG AT WORDPRESS.COM.
77 of 77 2018-11-28, 2:25 p.m.

You Are Triggering Me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and Trauma - Jack Halberstam

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You Are Triggering me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Dang... https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/2014/07/05/you-are-triggeri...

You Are Triggering me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of

(https://bullybloggers.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/feminist_humor_fb.jpg)Debates among people

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In a post-affirmative action society, where even recent

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Tags: feminist humor (https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/tag/feminist-humor/), Halberstam

COMMENTS 369 Comments

369 Responses to “You Are Triggering me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric

Kat July 5, 2014 at 12:51 pm #

Will Shetterly July 7, 2014 at 12:17 am #

8 of 77 2018-11-28, 2:25 p.m.

hagsdemesne February 4, 2018 at 8:56 pm #

Koko July 7, 2014 at 2:19 pm #

Pratibha Parmar July 5, 2014 at 3:00 pm #

11 of 77 2018-11-28, 2:25 p.m.

12 of 77 2018-11-28, 2:25 p.m.

KNE July 6, 2014 at 1:42 am #

quendergeer July 6, 2014 at 2:54 am #

Lilee July 6, 2014 at 11:43 am #

Trigger Happy July 5, 2014 at 7:18 pm #

14 of 77 2018-11-28, 2:25 p.m.

Matt July 5, 2014 at 10:12 pm #

15 of 77 2018-11-28, 2:25 p.m.

will July 6, 2014 at 5:42 am #

Silver H. August 16, 2014 at 3:17 pm #

16 of 77 2018-11-28, 2:25 p.m.

indiyesreally July 7, 2014 at 11:15 pm #

Twitter induced Shell Shock

17 of 77 2018-11-28, 2:25 p.m.

This is not healthy or productive.

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One of those traumatized whiners July 6, 2014 at 5:49 pm #

elle July 10, 2014 at 3:42 am #

jamesworrad July 5, 2014 at 8:55 pm #

Major James Worrad (Mrs)

Alex July 11, 2014 at 11:26 am #

marcos July 5, 2014 at 9:02 pm #

ggrkl July 5, 2014 at 11:44 pm #

brynkelly July 5, 2014 at 9:15 pm #

3) #dontlucidturndownforwhat? as the kids say.

bullybloggers July 5, 2014 at 9:23 pm #

brynkelly July 5, 2014 at 9:45 pm #

marcos July 6, 2014 at 2:20 pm #

betafive July 8, 2014 at 12:31 am #

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betafive July 8, 2014 at 12:36 am #

24 of 77 2018-11-28, 2:25 p.m.

Angry at the claim to an identity, a request for space, an appeal to protection?

25 of 77 2018-11-28, 2:25 p.m.

Devin Ens July 6, 2014 at 3:13 am #

liamandthebees July 6, 2014 at 11:23 am #

26 of 77 2018-11-28, 2:25 p.m.

not the biologist July 6, 2014 at 1:28 pm #

Liberty Mahalakshmi July 6, 2014 at 2:04 pm #

liamandthebees July 6, 2014 at 3:21 pm #

Lilee July 6, 2014 at 6:17 pm #

marcos July 6, 2014 at 2:25 pm #

leatherargento September 14, 2014 at 6:50 pm #

betafive July 8, 2014 at 12:37 am #

JakeD July 14, 2014 at 8:55 pm #

Is this a fact?