the Lack in my follow-up

So, when last you left Your Heroine, she’d posted a thing about a McGowan-Engley podcast episode entitled “Euphemism.” If you haven’t read that thing, you should probably go do that now. And maybe even listen to said podcast episode, too. In fact, your best bet at maintaining serenity and sanity is probably just to skip Your Heroine’s scribal meanderings and go crawl straight into the original horses’ mouths. Not that I’m calling Todd and Ryan horses. I’ve never met either of them, but from photos and vids online, I’ve never gained an impression of anything remotely equine about either of them. YMMV, of course, but I think that says more about your need for zoomorphizing people than it does about the two humans in question.

I seem to have disgressed.

Anyway, after my previous post, I listened to more of the episode, and I have a few thoughts to share. They might lack coherence, and they will most certainly lack length. I would apologize profusely, but I suspect that the latter will be of relief to most of you.

I seem to be in self-deprecatory mode today. What a deal.

Something struck me further about Todd’s description of how euphemism blunts trauma. He brings an example from his own life: the struggle of watching his mother succumb to Alzheimer’s disease. (Having lost a great-aunt and a grandmother to this horrific disease, and watching a relatively young aunt degenerate under it year after year for nearly the past decade, I find this example both fitting and a little too apt.) Todd talks about the necessity of giving over his mother’s living situation into the hands of a “memory care facility.” This term is, of course, the euphemism: this is not a facility where memories are cared for. The memories themselves will unavoidably continue to disintegrate; there is neither preservation of them nor prevention of their inevitable dissolution.

A “memory care facility” is, then, a facility for caring for a person in their loss of memory. But we don’t call these institutions “loss of memory — care facility” — because that doesn’t blunt the trauma which people undergo when consigning the loved one to this type of professional care. The designation “memory care facility” is meant to make you feel better about making your person go live among strangers who are professionals in feeding, cleaning, and safeguarding adults with the minds of toddlers — and strangers who suffer the same illness and need the same care. If we called it what it really is, fewer people would put their loved ones there, and these facilities would make a lot less money.

That last part about the money is my thought; I don’t think Todd and Ryan talked about that aspect of it. And maybe I sound jaded — but over the years, in trying to figure out why humans choose one action over another, I’ve found that “follow the money” usually applies. (Upton Sinclair is in play here, as well, but that is another story that shall be ranted another time.)

NOTE: I have zero problem with consigning a loved one to a safe, aboveboard, professional care facility. There comes a point when the health and safety of that loved one depend on 24/7 professional care, and keeping them at home for as long as possible at all cost is not actually loving, but selfish.

One problem with blunting trauma, Todd points out, is that when we do things to soften these blows, all we’re doing is putting off dealing with it. And the longer and more deliberately we put off dealing with it, the longer we use euphemisms around it, the worse the trauma is going to hit us in the long run.

Harking back to my last post: in my own home, I have a definite say in how others in my home comport themselves. Not only do I have a say, I have direct influence. Not only do I have direct influence, I have an explicit responsibility for setting and maintaining certain boundaries. For example, I have a responsibility for making sure my offspring learns — via my example, via her dad’s example, and via natural consequences of her actions — not to stand on the dining room able and scream obscenities. When her friends or our friends are in our home, I carry a responsibility for setting that same boundary with them. (Please note that none of the three of us nor any guest of ours has ever even hinted at wanting to stand on the table and scream obscenities, much less attempted doing it.)

In the public sphere, though, in the commons, I do not have the responsibility for making sure other people don’t stand on tables and scream obscenities. They might do it; but it’s not my job to stop them. By refusing to listen and by walking away, I might be one of the people who allows them to experience the unpleasant consequences of their behavior — because, once again, we all make the rules of the commons together. And one of the rules generally goes something like: “if you stand on a table in public and scream obscenities, people are going to remove themselves from your presence and you will be alone, screaming at clouds or whatever.” Another general follow-up rule might be: “if you keep this up long enough, somebody’s going to get irritated enough to call on people with physical strength and/or weapons to remove you.”

On my blog, which is in many ways more a private arena than a public one, I have the right and the responsibility to make sure no one in comments is standing on my metaphorical tables and screaming obscenities at me or at other commenters.

On Mastodon, which is a public arena, I don’t have the right to tell someone not to stand on a fediverse table and scream obscenities. I do have the option of muting and/or blocking them — which allows them to experience the natural consequences of their behavior. If they keep it up long enough, somebody’s going to get irritated enough to call on an instance admin to toss the obscenities-shouting fedizen out of the instance.

Those are all extreme examples, but I think they get the point across.

Now. What if I, Courtney, find the word “fuck” offensive? (I don’t, because of reasons — but that’s yet another epistle for another time.)

If I find the word “fuck” offensive…if it causes me a deeply visceral, unpleasant emotional reaction…then I enjoy the right to ask people within my own home not to use that word. Because that’s my private sphere, and I am one of the persons in that private sphere who owns both the right and the responsibility for setting boundaries.

But even if I find the word “fuck” offensive…even if it causes me a deeply visceral, unpleasant emotional reaction…I still do not have the right to ask people on Mastodon not to use it, because Mastodon is a public space. It is part of the commons.

Can I politely ask someone in an exchange of “toots” (Mastodon posts) not to use that word when in conversation with me? Sure. But I can’t make them not use it, and I can’t ask anyone else to make them not use it. And even if I’m polite in my request, I have no recourse if my conversation partner decides I’m tiresome for asking and blocks me.

So, if I find the word “fuck” offensive, but people on Mastodon — a public space I want to continue engaging with — keep saying “fuck”…what can I do? Well, I can loudly and continually proclaim my aversion to the word and demand people stop using it. I can pin a relevant toot to the top of my profile and link to it every time I encounter the word “fuck” on this social media site. When scrolling through the feed of fellow fedizens I follow, if I see the word “fuck” in someone’s post, I can reply to them and ask them to use hide their post behind a content warning. If they refuse, I can harass them until they give in or block me. Or, if they refuse, I can block them.

All of these actions on my part are a violation of the commons — because apparently, I have some kind of trauma attached to the word “fuck,” and I am trying to make other people respond to it the same way I do.

I am trying to make other people replace the word “fuck” with euphemisms (either a substitute word or a content warning [WHICH IS A TYPE OF EUPHEMISM]) in order for my trauma to be blunted.

And every time I do this, whether the other person submits to my demand or not, I am holding my trauma ever farther at arm’s length instead of facing it. This only allows my trauma to deepen and become stronger, because — as Ryan points out in the Why Theory episode, my use of euphemisms creates in my mind and in my heart an alternate reality in which the ur-cause of my trauma was really not so bad. This alternate reality lets me tell myself the story that “yes it was AWFUL but now I can live with it on a daily basis because other people aren’t confronting me with it all the time.” Ultimately, I come to believe that I am in control. (The feeling that we have control is only ever an illusion.)

I’ll say it as bluntly as I know how: every time you demand that someone in the public stop saying something that triggers your trauma reaction, all you’re doing is fucking yourself up even further by creating for yourself an intellectual and emotional alternate reality.

Equally as bluntly: if someone says something that triggers your trauma response, then your responsibility is to go do the work of facing that trauma and learning to deal with it in a healthy manner.

What it boils down to is the same thing my mom told me about relationships when I was a kid: you cannot change the other person; you can only change yourself, or remove yourself from the relationship.

And finally as bluntly: some of you reading this are feeling offended by what I’m saying. And I want to be clear about what I’m NOT saying: I am NOT saying that all of us have blanket permission to say whatever we want to in public without experiencing negative consequences; I am NOT saying that it’s okay to use currently dehumanizing or historically dehumanizing language; I am NOT saying that you should be able to post images publicly that depict torture, war, cruelty, or a host of other images that people online frequently request be hidden behind a trigger warning.

What I am saying is that every time you feel a painful, visceral response to something you see or hear in the commons, then that is a signal for you to be doing the work of confronting your trauma. And if, instead of going out and doing the work, you demand euphemisms to cover over the thing that triggers you, then you are not alleviating your own pain. You are, instead, deepening your own trauma and guaranteeing that it’s going to last a much longer time than it would have. In effect, you’re slapping a compression bandage on a broken leg and telling yourself you’ll be able to walk again.

And yes, everything I’m saying requires an answer to the question: “is trauma healable?”

The only answer I can give is: I don’t believe that trauma is ever fully healable…because, when you get right down to the nitty-gritty of being human, that in itself is a trauma we can never get past…and that’s okay. That is existence in this universe. But I do believe that like that broken leg, trauma can be healed to the point where we can walk again. The evidence of the fracture won’t ever vanish into perfect wholeness…but we can heal to a point at which we are thriving again, even though we limp.

(Hint: we are all of us limping.)

What I do know for sure is that if you keep bowing to euphemism, it’s going to enable you to do nothing but deepen your own trauma…and, eventually, inflict it on others.

I didn’t mean to write quite this much on this particular aspect of it all, and I’ve wholly missed delving into another part of the Why Theory episode I wanted to walk about, so CELEBRATE WITH GLADNESS AND TRUMPETS Y’ALL BECAUSE THERE WILL BE A PART THREE heavens help us all.