i have conflicting feelings about "my body/identity is not a trigger warning" because on one hand, yeah. no one should have to hide who they are for the comfort of others. but on the other, i vividly remember seeing scars on someone's thighs and that sight made me spiral *hard* and ended up hurting myself over it.
you should not have to hide, but please be conscious of others
you see i get what you mean but as someone who does get triggered by certain visible things, it is on us to learn healthy coping mechanisms and learn to deal and minimize our triggers. because those people get to exist and we dont have a right to diminish that. once i started spiraling hard just because i saw someone who was skinny at an event, does that mean that person should have to hide their body? absolutely not. it's that thing of we are all different, therefore our needs will all be different. i don't know anything about that skinny person, but what if they were someone who due to a mental or physical illness was very insecure about their size and resorted to unhealthy coping mechanisms to change it, and that was a time where they were recovering and able to safely show their body for the first time in a long time? is it right for me to demand that they hide themselves and possibly trigger them and get them to relapse, just so i can avoid doing the same? it's not. it's wrong.
this also makes me think of those who's bodies are censored. conjoined twins, burn victims, amputees, those with facial differences-- those disabled people who are told that their existence is body horror and that they need to hide, cover up, put warnings on themselves. that is lookism, that is saneism, that is ableism, and that is oppression and discrimination. i hope we can agree that physically disabled people should not have to hide themselves to appease an able-bodied normative world and status quo that views them as inherently disturbing, disgust-worthy, freakish and wrong. why would that not apply to someone with scars from self-harm, especially considering that self-harm scars are often a visual result of (mental) disability?
i really do get where youre coming from, as someone who has also harmed themselves not just from the example, but also from other things that are just normal aspects of people's lives. but no one should have to be censored for who they are visually. others with visual differences also deserve to view others who are like them, because representation matters.
i mean, i know you said to be conscious of others, but what does that even mean? like, if you think certain visual aspects of yourself are "too bad," then you should know it's better to cover yourself? that can be triggering (and is ableist) within itself. i know that's not what you said and i don't mean to put words in your mouth, but that's the only way i could see that being interpreted (unless you meant something like, if you have open wounds don't show them without warning? but that's a given imo).
