I do wonder how much of the right wing turn against the rhetoric of “trauma” comes from its application giving medical credibility to the suffering of rape victims. - ThreadSky

moiradonegan.bsky.social • 5 days ago

I do wonder how much of the right wing turn against the rhetoric of “trauma” comes from its application giving medical credibility to the suffering of rape victims.

Reposted from Brooke Jarvis

ProPublica looked into science grants that Ted Cruz's team flagged as "radical" and "neo-Marxist" and, uh.

This would be good comedy if it didn't matter so much www.propublica.org/article/ted-...

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moiradonegan.bsky.social•5 days ago

I actually don’t think “trauma” does for rape victims what its advocates say it does: it pathologizes the rape victim’s response and moves her plight from the real of the political into an apolitical clinical vocabulary. But the right objects to any recognition that rape is wrong at all.

oldtiredangr.bsky.social•5 days ago

I don’t know if it’s necessarily a rape reference. I’m around teens who are very online. In that world, every bump in the road, every angry parent shouting, every school failure is “trauma”. There is a lot of pathologizing normal negative experiences.

cwlj.bsky.social•5 days ago

A good and interesting book exploring this claim is Paige Sweet's "The Politics of Surviving." It also has a sophisticated and sociological (as opposed to therapeutic) analysis of gaslighting that abuse victims face.

rozietoez.bsky.social•5 days ago

the Right likes being able to wield the moral outrage of a rape accusation, but abhors rape being seen as something other than a property crime against the man who claims ownership of the victim

pennyputtanesca.bsky.social•5 days ago

or abuse victims. They seem to just want to perpetuate cycles of abuse.

theultrasecret.bsky.social•5 days ago

This is very likely the case, further stigmatized, I think, by the discussion of generational trauma as it pertains to abuse (personal and systemic) and racist policies.

plumicorns.bsky.social•5 days ago

Yeah I may be attributing too much knowledge of public health principles here, but the term also comes up a LOT in those spaces in relation to institutional racism

yourfriendpiper.bsky.social•5 days ago

This and child abuse victims. We can’t even name how patriarchy’s authority harms us

petradeasis.bsky.social•5 days ago

From "Truth and Repair: How Trauma Survivors Envision Justice" by Judith Herman

https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2023/05/16/judith-herman-abuse-survivors

richardsolutions.bsky.social•5 days ago

I think this is completely it. It also usurps the language of sin for an actual way to track harm in human experience

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