Ferocious Monstere

photopaths:

I hate writing personal rants but I’ve really had enough:

I’m tired of men confusing basic codes of human politeness as interest: Hello, thank you and goodbye does not mean that I want you to sexually harass me.

I’m tired of men confusing no as yes: No means no. Otherwise, it would be…

themaninblackfled:

i-mpickingupthepieces:

267349:

Trigger warnings foster the idea that you don’t have to deal with your emotional scars and that in turn breeds people who cannot live life or deal with life.

Uhh… No, Trigger Warnings help people avoid material that emotionally scars them further and gives them panic attacks,…

I respectfully disagree, ladies and gentlemen and all others in between…

My name is Geoff and my brother, Michael, was killed at 15 by Spokane white supremacists  He was guilty of holding hands with a white girl in his same class. They had been close friends since kindergarten and had sheltered a kind-of innocent relationship between the two of themselves…

Local authorities found him abandoned in a field after having been dragged behind an abandoned and damaged pick-up truck. The fuckers ran over a partially buried sprinkler line and tore the ever-loving shit out of the bottom of that truck. They fled, leaving my brother tied to the chains, left him there like so much fucking trash…

The young lady he loved so dearly was the youngest sister of one of the perps. She hung herself the night of Mike’s funeral.NO fucking trigger warnings for her, just raw, raw agony. My mother  - who is white (we three kids were all adopted into a mixed-race home with a black father and a white mother) - disappeared into a shell of bleakness she never fully recovered from. My father blamed himself for moving his young family to Spokane, Washingon, thinking that he would raise us to be tough and aware of the fact that we would have to face uncertainty and righteous indignation our entire lives…My sister turned her rage into something so bizarre and other-worldly, it would take her nearly fifteen years to finally begin to attempt to piece back together her emotionless and frigid life…her hatred of white people led her to being suspended, expelled from numerous schools. She would pick fights while drinking, just for the chance to assault anyone she felt was guilty of the crime that killed her brother or were at the very least guilty of knowing those boys…

I was sixteen at the time this happened. Six years later and a newly promoted Petty Officer second class in the US Navy, I would receive news that the men responsible had, finally, been brought to justice.

It never hit the news. Never made national television rotations. Never drew book offers or movie titles…

I don’t give two shits about trigger warnings because I haven’t had one since that day. Life and all it’s horror happens whether we are aware or not, whether we participated or not, whether we bore witness or not… It affects us all whether we wanna see it or not. No amount of warnings, stickers, or colored bis of paper will ever undue or reduce the impact and severity of that crime upon the victim. Ever. Whether she was warned or not, a woman reading about rape who HAS been raped is not going to have a worse or better reaction to the story. It will affect her - as it would any decent human fucking being - because she has been there. She has FELT what this victim felt and she will ALWAYS remember how that feels. She has FEELINGS and is a decent human being and is touched deeply by the words upon the page she happens to be reading while waiting for her mango-banana fruit smoothie.

When my sister was raped at gunpoint behind a Seattle nightclub, there was no fucking trigger warning for her after enduring that assault… I watched that girl battle internally something so dark and monstrous, I was sure I would lose my sis…no trigger warnings through all the court hearings, the shoddy trial, retrials, the medical proddings, the sleazy attorney who lay open her deepest, most private affairs in order to discredit her to the jury of comfortably white Christian know-it-all Hack Samaritans. No trigger warnings when her obtuse and generally dismissive husband makes comments about raping opponents in his video games… No trigger warnings when she flips on the TV and walks right into a yet another story of a prominent Senator successfully denying sexually assaulting his female staff…No trigger warnings when well-meaning people offer her advice on how not to attract dangerous rapist men rather than admit that men and rape and men who rape are a dark, dark stain upon America as we speak…

My great-great grandparents or perhaps a generation back again were slaves. No fucking trigger warnings for that. Ever. Living in the South all this time, no trigger warnings have ever happened for them. No trigger warnings whenever someone hollers out Hey, Boy or calls my grandma Aunt Jamima, thinking it’s a term of endearment…no trigger warnings when the attacks begin, when the sun goes down in those dark, dark little ‘burgs where the saying still stands true - Don’t Let the Sun Go Down On Yo Black Ass…No trigger warnings for the black families whose experiences with Christianity were rape and forced servitude

I get stories about white kids dying, raped, murdered, killed every goddamn day. Crammed down my throat as if I’m somehow supposed to possibly give any number of flying fucks about the precious white children that are gunned down or blown up. Told to feel terrible for them. Told to feel outraged and horrified. Don’t hear that shit for inner city kids. Touch a white urban youth and a new law is signed into effect overnight. Kill a black youth, we probably had it coming due to poor upbringing, low education and drug dealing gone wrong. White shooters are quiet, intellectuals who were misunderstood geniuses suffering from illusions of gentle grandeur and had unfortunate living situations while growing up which led to their shooting up an old person’s home - they really couldn’t help it and society drove them to commit these deeds…black shooters are animals, predators, cold-hearted attackers in hoodies and packing Skittles, Uzis and bad rap. Latinos shooters are hoods, gang-bangers, drug-runners hopped up on PCP and car battery fluid, no doubt assassins from some shadowy, jungle-inhabiting exotic despot run by coke-addled infidels…

Where’s my trigger warnings on the daily news? Can I get a TW-Racial Prejudice/Profiling/Slut-Shaming/Gender-Bashing/Religious Jibberish every time anything remotely related to Fox News or the GOP or white culture appears in my immediate view? Can I? Gonna be expensive as all-get-out cuz the shit would be happening all de fuckin THYME!!! From the time I woke up in the morning til I shut my eyes at night, would be TW-RP/P/SS/GB/RJ and other such variants 24/7. My apartment building The city bus. People. The coffee shop. People. My college campus. People .. Navy Reserve units. The Navy Exchange. My symphony conductor. People. The news. TV. Radio. People. Tumblr. Reddit. Etc. Etc. Etc. I wouldn’t see SHIT but for all the TWs that would take up my rapidly dwindling field of vision…I would end up seeing nothing at all.

I do not understand trigger warnings. Seeing them triggers some deep-seated spark of wrath. Like … like what the FUCK? Who the fuck do you think you are, hmm? All special n all dat, all up in here sizzlin’ bacon n tryna sip on mah fuckin Koolaid, cryin’ cuz you gotsa widdle boo-boo and heaven fuckin forBID you come within seven fucking literal goddamn MILES of a reminder that shit just got REAL for fear that it will…O, I dunno, cause you to drop the little fuzzy pink globe of Happy-Happy Joy-Joy that you keep cradled in your bosom cuz if that happens, all sortsa bad shit gonna go down and blah-blah and Jesus and flying monkeys and houses and white girls clicking heels n shit and…no. You simply can NOT handle that shit today. SO how DARE i remind you that if you took off the rose-colored glasses that yo shit really do stank n dat sprayin some shit in the air only makes fuckin vanila-poop….No. Milk-drinkin slactavist wanna-be’s and poor-me bleeding hearts get trigger warnings because, at their cores, they are too inept to possibly believe that horrible shit happens to other people and value their personal feelings over listening to the horrors shared by others around them. My shit was so terrible that I cannot be there to support or even offer an ear to someone else who does not have the tools that I have or the privilege that I have in ignoring their plight. Like some society for those who need the validation of others around them in order to put validity and weight behind their own sheltered and shallow existences. I don’t need that. Black folk endure and continue to endure. NO TRIGGER WARNINGS EVER HAPPEN IN REAL LIFE. Since the majority of my life happens outside in the real world, I have little patience for internet trivialities. Hard shit happens and we endure, each of us, in whatever manner suits us the best at that particular time. Not always right or wrong. Not always noble or vindictive. It just IS what it IS. 

I patched together little African children in Somalia, Uganda, Chad, C.A.R. and more for nine and a half years. Nearly bled out twice on foreign desert floors. I fed AND bore direct witness to the callous appetites of War. No trigger warnings for the piles of hacked limbs, the stench of three day old bile, shit, gore, and blood…flies so thick, you could catch them by the dozens just by opening your mouth….which you couldn’t do even if you wanted to due to the stench of Death. Watched men and women of all manner of races and religions rage against each other and have helplessly attempted to patch together devastated bodies of friendlies and enemy combatants alike, children, the elderly, men and women…Failed to save friends and loved ones, buried acquaintances and unknowns. Seen familiar grinning faces disappear in sudden and severe mists of pinkish, gray and I carry all of these memories locked away in various cubby-holes in my Memory Warehouse…No Tee-Dubs for any of it nor for any of it since. I’d need TWs in my fucking head just to keep the good shit from the bad…and it would be far too simple to begin the unfortunate habit of ignoring those crates and boxes labelled “TW-something”…

I’ve not had trigger warnings at any time since. Not when I walk into Best Buy and see some war game images on a massive tv unit complete with helicopter rotor and mortar shelling effects on full-blast, so loud that it makes my heart slam against my chest, my mouth turn dry, and it takes everything in me not to suddenly leap to cover and scream at everyone around me to get the fuck down on the goddamn ground…

No. No trigger warnings. I just stand there, heart hammering a fucking demonic staccato beat while a cacophony of horror slithers all throughout my living being, unseen by all, even to the woman standing inches to my left, clutching my hand and peering at me with growing concern because i cannot fucking move…i am rooted to the floor and will remain so for another two point five minutes before I can propel myself back into the modern Time/Space plane and a few basic locomotive commands are issued and followed haltingly by numb and liquid-wooden limbs…

No trigger warnings when the neighbor’s hellion child leaps from the bushes with a replica EMR pellet rifle and nearly gets fucked off right there on the spot.because jesus fucking CHRIST kid what the FUCK were you thinking I coulda kill’d you just now you fucking son of a bitch you have no goddamn idea you little fucking fragile thing, you FUCK don’t ever do that ever the fuck again for the rest of your unimaginative little milk-drinking life…

No trigger warnings. You just stand there, glare at the bastard, yell something about respecting his elders and light a cigarette and hope the neighbor doesn’t notice your shaking hands, your sweaty face, the wide-eyed face, your trembling knees…

Nope. NO trigger warnings for when a god damn bomb goes off during a fucking race and you run to your family only to see your son lying there broken, bleeding, a rush of hustle, lights, commotion, smoke all around and none of it means a fucking thing as you kneel on the hot concrete, unaware of the screams of your tortured muscles, the screams of the wounded, the shocked, the commotion happening all around you and the young EMT whose attempts to pull you away are met with eyes hot with disbelieving rage and sorrow just doesn’t seem to understand that he’ll be okay, he’ll be alight if everyone would just stop crowding around, i just need to give him room, he just needs some water, he can’t be gone, O sweet Jesus Mary and Paul fucking Simon he can’t be gone…

Who the fuck are we that we have TWs? I’m not so privileged that I can choose to ignore or choose to NOT bear witness to the shit that goes on around me. Hell, we should have the world’s shit and bullshit piped into our eardrums on the DAILY until we get so sick and tired of hearing the bad news we end up actually trying to change it for the better…We should have our faces rubbed into the piss, the bile, the shit, the vomit and the filth of the world every fucking day, ESPECIALLY as Americans with our holier-than-thou attitudes, blind indifference and crippling ignorance…we cause, we empower the forces of evil that work in the Darkness. We use them every day yet refuse to fully gaze upon the fruits of our efforts. Wanna talk about rape without calling it what the fuck it really is - fucked up shit that gets you hung on a fuckin rope. No, we dither and dance about and never really ever take a good look at the body under the cloth. O, it’s there and we know it. But, we’re just gonna go ahead and not look at that

I NEED to be shocked every time I read a story, thinking it’s gonna be about fuzzy kittens saving children from burning tire factories or Green Peace volunteers weaving pubic hair safety nets to save drowning unicorn colts… I NEED to go into the story assuming I know the outcome, thinking I can already call out the perp/victim, foretell the ending only to have it smashed brutally against my face. I NEED to understand what goes through the victim’s mind. I WANT to understand the steps to healing and living life having undergone traumatic events. I NEED to feel that pain or at least have it translated into terms so that I CAN feel it…Because I have to. Because I don’t want to ever find myself so comfortable, so sheltered, so soft that I become that person I despise the most - those who simply refuse to deal. No such thing as “can’t deal with it today” days. Oh sure, maybe you got some pile of hipster photography with little pithy sayings about being weak and not strong and it’s okay to break and yadda-yadda… No. You deal. And I deal, just like you do. It’s not always the healthiest. Not always the most honorable or honest. But I deal. You deal. Battle through, one minute, one day at a time. Everyday. Have to. Can’t NOT deal. It’s a dream-state, a luxury that I do not possess and wouldn’t use even if I did posses it…Because there are too many of my friends who did not make it here today who deserve far more than me to stand here today. Too many of our friends who were ripped away from us and I will not take their passing in vain by dismissing or pretending shit was never real in the first place…

It hurts. Gods know, I know…it hurts. Hurts like a motherfucker, worse than a motherfucker on a good day and the pain is both unfathomable and indescribable on bad ones…Even though I like to think I dealt with and moved past my hatred of white people after my brother’s death, I know that it is a road I am still travelling, whether I am loathe to admit it or not…

I want to read about what happened to YOU and I want it to fucking bring me to tears.I want it to break my heart, stop my heart even and bring me to my knees with physical pain. Panic attack. Tears. Medical anomalies of epic and ungodly proportions… Why? 

Because this is precisely what you felt and because I wasn’t there for you. I wasn’t there to intervene. to prevent this and as a result, I MUST bear witness to your agony, your shame so that in the future, I will not let this happen again. We all do this so that these things do not happen in our communities. We have to start FEELING again, whether the pain is intense or acute. It’s how we grow. How we learn. 

I’ll get involved regardless of whether or not it triggers my reactions to experiences in Africa or the Mid East. I’ll read it and share it and announce it and participate in it regardless of how it makes me feel because it is the least I can do for those who have endured such things before me.

…

So, yeah, my disjointed thoughts on trigger warnings.

Believing in/using them doesn’t make you stupid, either. We just disagree. 

And that’s cool with me.

Cheers.