PRO: If your early world is intolerable, you create a world of your own.
May 10, 2015 12:38 PM Subscribe
The editors of Trigger Warning magazine discuss the merits and flaws of growing up with child abuse. (trigger warning)
This post was deleted for the following reason: This article is past ironic and into generally hostile sarcasm here, sorry. -- restless_nomad
Haha. There are some good points here and some terrible misguided points here.
This isn't bad:
Particularly if your parents are gifted with a high level of verbal intelligence, you will be forced to either lie down in a corner of the cage of your own head and die—or else you’ll learn to come up with rational responses to some quite sophisticated nonsense. As an adult, when people attack you unfairly, you’ll have the capacity to laugh them off easily. In fact, you’ll be amused and delighted when some nasty bitch thus shows her hand as disingenuous, deluded, or dumb.
People, man. At least if they're attacking you unfairly verbally, in the business world outside of Daredevil, they're probably not also attacking you unfairly with their fists. Small blessings.
posted by limeonaire at 1:17 PM on May 10, 2015
This isn't bad:
Particularly if your parents are gifted with a high level of verbal intelligence, you will be forced to either lie down in a corner of the cage of your own head and die—or else you’ll learn to come up with rational responses to some quite sophisticated nonsense. As an adult, when people attack you unfairly, you’ll have the capacity to laugh them off easily. In fact, you’ll be amused and delighted when some nasty bitch thus shows her hand as disingenuous, deluded, or dumb.
People, man. At least if they're attacking you unfairly verbally, in the business world outside of Daredevil, they're probably not also attacking you unfairly with their fists. Small blessings.
posted by limeonaire at 1:17 PM on May 10, 2015
Troll Warning, not Trigger Warning.
posted by colie at 1:22 PM on May 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by colie at 1:22 PM on May 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
"Trigger Warning magazine"? Am I trapped in a Family Guy cutaway gag?
posted by Pazzovizza at 1:35 PM on May 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Pazzovizza at 1:35 PM on May 10, 2015 [2 favorites]
Yeah. To put it gently, this piece is poorly constructed. These writers have some good points, but the whole article has the whiff of gangrene about it.
After clicking on that article about sexual harassment, I don't think I'm going to be giving Trigger Warning magazine any more of my clicking business.
posted by Countess Elena at 1:38 PM on May 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
After clicking on that article about sexual harassment, I don't think I'm going to be giving Trigger Warning magazine any more of my clicking business.
posted by Countess Elena at 1:38 PM on May 10, 2015 [1 favorite]
This is another one of those Poe's Law things, isn't it.
posted by strangely stunted trees at 1:40 PM on May 10, 2015
posted by strangely stunted trees at 1:40 PM on May 10, 2015
I guess the whole MO of this publication is to be purposefully edgy, maaaaaaaaan -- presumably mostly-ironic deployment of the term "P.C."/"political correctness"? check -- but it really made me feel like shit. I guess that's the point? In which case, Christ, what assholes.
Though our society loves a hero story that implies the opposite, child abuse is a ruthless destroyer of hearts and minds and lives; if you survive it, you don't tend to spend a lot of time marveling at what a strong person you are. Instead of crowing about how victims of abuse are naturally more empathetic or deep-thinking than people who grow up without getting the shit beaten out of them on a regular basis, a lot of us spend the entire rest of our lives trying to escape the notion that to be abused is to be bestowed with an inherently herculean and/or intractably damaged psyche. We just want to be normal.
When children are born or given to parents who hit them, isolate them, and hate them, there are two ways those children tend to internalize it: As something that happened for no reason at all, or as something that happened because the child is uniquely worthless and deserving of such terrible treatment. And either way, when that child grows up, it's expected that they will have the psychological fortitude required to take that complete and utter lack of justification and bury every last trace of it deep in their guts and blood and bones every day just to make sure it doesn't bust out at an inopportune moment and kill them. So things like this --
So on a significantly less belittling note: I am literally, right this second, raising a toast to all the brave kids who broke up with their toxic moms. You are all so wonderful and I am endlessly, heart-burstingly proud of you. Here is a song just for you.
posted by divined by radio at 1:40 PM on May 10, 2015 [3 favorites]
Though our society loves a hero story that implies the opposite, child abuse is a ruthless destroyer of hearts and minds and lives; if you survive it, you don't tend to spend a lot of time marveling at what a strong person you are. Instead of crowing about how victims of abuse are naturally more empathetic or deep-thinking than people who grow up without getting the shit beaten out of them on a regular basis, a lot of us spend the entire rest of our lives trying to escape the notion that to be abused is to be bestowed with an inherently herculean and/or intractably damaged psyche. We just want to be normal.
When children are born or given to parents who hit them, isolate them, and hate them, there are two ways those children tend to internalize it: As something that happened for no reason at all, or as something that happened because the child is uniquely worthless and deserving of such terrible treatment. And either way, when that child grows up, it's expected that they will have the psychological fortitude required to take that complete and utter lack of justification and bury every last trace of it deep in their guts and blood and bones every day just to make sure it doesn't bust out at an inopportune moment and kill them. So things like this --
IN CONCLUSION: Child abuse is what you make of it. Oh, you're going to have some dark nights of the soul, buddy boy, no matter how much you squirm and self-examine and babble away in therapy and acting classes. But as far as your relationships go, you can choose to give in to the garbage in your head, or you can use what you've learned to reach past the shit and grow toward the light of not being a dirtbag.-- pitch way beyond "dark" or "edgy" humor and straight into purposefully insulting, not to mention predictable and boring. Telling people who were abused as children that we are "choos[ing] to give in to the garbage in [our] head[s]" or failing to "reach past the shit" when we struggle mightily in our interpersonal relationships, even if you're just trying to troll an audience... Do they think people aren't already telling us that, unironically? Maybe other folks might find a sense of strength and power in being able to chuckle at ostensibly humorous pieces like this, but the blithe and dismissive attitude, even if it's intended as irony, makes the authors materially indistinguishable from every other prick (including my parents) who feels the need to feed me a 100% sincere variation on "Everything happens for a reason! Your childhood abuse was a gift in disguise! You just need to start seeing it as a learning experience!"
So on a significantly less belittling note: I am literally, right this second, raising a toast to all the brave kids who broke up with their toxic moms. You are all so wonderful and I am endlessly, heart-burstingly proud of you. Here is a song just for you.
posted by divined by radio at 1:40 PM on May 10, 2015 [3 favorites]
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posted by BrotherCaine at 12:54 PM on May 10, 2015