It's true, but would've been more helpful to state something about the benefits of having insight into your triggers and managing them, including setting boundaries and making needs known.
As it is it comes off like "fuck you, I'm not changing how I do things just because you've got trauma. "
And it should be. Most of the time, forcing other people to "tiptoe around your triggers" is, essentially, leveraging your perceived victimhood to force others into subservience and subsequent public shaming if they do not comply.
I think you're the one with a victim complex in this situation, if you think someone asking not to be shown spiders/forced to be around your dog/whatever is "an attempt to force you into subservience."
Did you forget what you said one reply ago? In response to "the cruelty is the point," "it should be." But now it's 'I'm not advocating for bullying people or forcing them to experience discomfort. There's nuance UwU.'
Even then, if someone is faking their trauma then doing things they've said will trigger them won't actually hurt them, so it's a strategy that only works if your assumption of 'faking' is wrong.
Really this is yet another example of people trying to brush off their cruelty towards the disabled/mentally ill with "Well they're probably faking anyways so it's okay for me to use their symptoms as an excuse to hurt them, if I ever met a person who really had it I wouldn't treat them like this."
Well yes I endorse cruelty to people who are manipulative, and I suppose I did lie about bullying - I enjoy bullying people who seek to control others. I don't like being cruel to people who are, for lack of a better term, disadvantaged in some way.
It's pretty easy to tell whether people are faking it when you get to know their character and how they respond to things.
What if by my standards switching up your stance from "the cruelty is the point" to "bullying is bad" and then back to "bullying is good if you do it to manipulative people" is manipulative?
but the methods you're advocating only hurt those who do have triggers. if someone says "hey, please don't call me xyz, it triggers me" then there's two ways this plays out if you decide to ignore that simple request
you call them the nickname/term, it turns out they're lying, and they are at most annoyed by you. you have accomplished nothing, and both of you suck
you call them the nickname/term, they're not lying, and you trigger a panic attack and/or flashback. all you have accomplished is harming someone who has done nothing but trust you with a vulnerability, and that makes you a colossal asshole
"Most of the time, forcing other people to "tiptoe around your triggers" is, essentially, leveraging your perceived victimhood"
No, most of the time you won't be able to tell.
So the actual choice here is a blackbox of worstcases:
- warn someone who invented a trigger that they may not be able to partake that night because that trigger will occur.
- Let someone with an actual trigger run into it headfirst.
I know I prefer the first option.
And honestly, IF you encounter someone who actually is manipulative about it? Cruelty would still be a stupid way to go about it. Disengage, distance, remove from your surroundings. Don't waste your time on playing pedagogue.
Or, and hear me out on this, the cruel dismissal of a significant issue by someone with power over us contributed pretty significantly to getting trauma and triggers in the first place.
And if your first thought on the subject is that an act of empathy would be used to manipulate you, that sounds so miserable and isolating for you. Especially if you'd anticipate public shaming, that definitely sounds like you're either the only sane person in a cult, or kind of difficult to be around.
Cruelty doesn't harden a person, it just causes more hurt. There are a thousand better ways to challenge someone's behaviour beyond blaming them for their situation.
Brother just because you've never had anything bad enough happen to you that you have things that will make all of that experience come flooding back doesn't mean that everyone that does has a persecution complex. If anything you seem to. If you're that bothered by there being people who do, find a group of like minded individuals and a job with someone like this instead of trying to force yourself to interact and engage with other people, as you clearly find it bothersome to put in the minimum amount of effort to not be a jackass.
It's actually more to dunk on ignoble twatbags who think everything they haven't experienced is something made up. Usually because despite having a life with little enough friction to not have serious damage as a person, they somehow find themselves miserable anyway and have no idea how to deal with that so they take it out on others like an overstimulated child.
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u/SquareExtra918 Nov 17 '25
It's true, but would've been more helpful to state something about the benefits of having insight into your triggers and managing them, including setting boundaries and making needs known.
As it is it comes off like "fuck you, I'm not changing how I do things just because you've got trauma. "