M. P.

Found this in the original post tags and I just... SIGH

Here’s the thing, anon. Squick isn’t just ‘I don’t like this’, it’s ‘I think this is gross and it makes me deeply uncomfortable but I pass no judgement on those who enjoy it, because I acknowledge that everyone is different and those same people may have the same visceral reaction some of the things I enjoy’ and was originally made popular in the kink community.

So yeah, if you want to say that every time you come across a trope or whatever you find icky then go ahead, say that every time.

Squicks are things I find personally gross but may not be gross to someone else. They don’t upset me or provoke my PTSD, they simply do not pop my corn. Example: Omegaverse. I don’t like it, it makes me uncomfortable and I’m not going to read it, but if you like it, you do you.

Triggers are things which directly provoke my PTSD. This means that my triggers may seem completely normal and innocuous to someone else, because my triggers are so personal and intrinsically linked to a specific event in my life. My reactions to these triggers can include panic attacks and flashbacks to this traumatic event. Sometimes being triggered can affect me for several hours or even days.

If we encourage everyone to lump things that just make them slightly uncomfortable or simply aren’t to their taste in under the word “trigger”, it actually dilutes the meaning of the word. It makes it harder for us all to, for the most part, collectively agree on and understand what exactly is being described when the word gets used.

And that destruction of shared precise definitions is a problem! It is really useful to have the communal language to be able to clearly and quickly delineate between “this grosses me out, no thanks” and “this is going to set off a trauma episode, rattle my brain, and probably throw off the rest of my day/week as a result” while also maintaining your privacy, and to know that you will be understood in what you are saying. Not having it is actually detrimental to the effort of making our communities safe and navigable for people living with trauma. Which is a goal that is much more important to me, personally, than the idea of not being “cutesy” (a word which in this case which sounds a lot like it’s being used as a euphemism for “cringe”).

It’s an old as fuck internet term that usually means you’re an Old.

It is the opposite of tumblr judginess

Gaslighting is a very powerful word pertaining to abuse, not something that happens when arguing with a friend or acquaintance. It is actual psychological manipulation.

Its not synonymous with blame shifting

Stop cheapening words with this much power behind them when you dont know the extent of them.

Your asshole ex blames you for the breakup when in reality it was his cheating? Thats not gaslighting. Thats BLAME SHIFTING.

Stop taking important words away from trauma survivors. For people who have been in therapy for abuse, these words are harsh and painful to see suddenly thrown around on the internet.

if i spend the rest of my life playing video games, rewatching LOST for the 100th time, waking up at 5pm and sleeping at 9am, collecting stuffed animals and only caring about my OCs, that’s okay. as long as it makes me happy, then its okay.

it doesn’t matter if somebody else would look at that and think its sad and/or pathetic. it doesn’t matter if somebody else thinks i should be doing something different. it doesn’t matter if my idea of happiness is ‘unusual’. as long as its making me happy, that is all that matters.

and ultimately, i don’t even have to entertain other people’s opinions on how i choose to live my life. if anything, their judgement on my life only speaks of how empty their life is. because if they were happy with their life, they wouldn’t care what i was doing with mine.

Radical abolitionist John Brown.

Grab at straws all you want to justify your radicalism, for thousands of years before Brown came around and prior to industrialization, as well as prior to an increased scientific understanding of human intelligence, slavery was regarded as the way of the world. The people in the overwhelmingly prevailing context of the time were not supportive of abolition. Whether any of us like it, that’s the way it is.

Slavery becoming “normal” wasn’t a thing until the cotton boom and everyone else in the world shamed America for the practice because it was dying out anywhere from a decades years prior to John Brown in every other major power country. Uk abolished slavery (in the colonies) in 1833. France abolished slavery multiple times from 1794-1848. (Bonaparte repealed the 1st decree) Portugal abolished slavery in 1761. Spain abolished slavery in 1811.