the cat's coffin

@wraithandthemuse

1,559 posts

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dispatchesfromtheclasswar

robot and wolf

the watcher 👁‍🗨

i think the normalization of laying out your own sexual trauma as a pre-amble to a (typically anti-kink) argument is a really dangerous discussion format that we should not be legitimizing. even beyond the fact that experiencing trauma in no way makes you a kinder, smarter, or better person, the demand that we re-open wounds and bare our vulnerabilities as "victim credentials" to (usually hostile) strangers is a bad bad bad fucking expectation to legitimize. i understand the desire to elevate survivors' voices and this absolutely has a place re: conversations about remedial justice and survivor resources. but the idea that one's understanding of systems of sexual violence can only be confirmed by falling victim to them and later willingly offering that trauma to others is equal parts fallacious and dangerous, and it further insults those of us whose advocacy and understanding come from years of study, research, and work, not from our victimization at the hands of another person. i understand it's the impulse to fire back when reactionaries open and end cap every argument with a gratuitous statement of trauma qualifications but you Cannot be ceding ground on this -- not just for reasons of intellectual integrity, but also because your fellow survivors deserve the right to advocate for our lives and communities without being expected to first divulge voyeuristic personal trauma narratives