Your Mental Illness Is My Joke!
Humor is a very complicated and confusing thing. If I were to ever continue my university studies in linguistics, I think I would potentially pick a phenomenon somehow related to humor as a rhetorical device. It is used in countless different ways, in situations that are more or less applicable to a humorous conversation. These factors, too, are more or less defined by the parties involved in the discussion. This kind of subjectivity makes humor an impossible thing to define in an exact manner, because what someone else might deem as the joke of the century might be an incredibly offensive thing to say to someone else.
"But School Doesn't Count"
When we are talking about child abuse and childhood trauma, a term that gets brought up very frequently is "growing environment". Time and time again, it has been stated that the kind of growing environment a child has during their formative years has a huge effect on the kind of person they will become when they step into their adulthood. A safe growing environment provides a sense of security, instills trust in your parents and other seniors, feelings of being cared of and loved. Those experiences are important in the development of self-esteem and healthy self-image, as well as feeling like you can trust the people around you, and if something were to happen with them, you'd be equipped to defend yourself and get that sense of security back.
Stop Taking What's Ours
A big part of my trauma invalidation has consisted of other people exploiting the word meant to describe the abuse I went through and by extension making it almost impossible for me to be taken seriously as a victim. Because of how generally unknown the actual definition of the word is, it's very easy to just take it and use it however you want to. This is one of the reasons awareness and education on bullying is so important and should be a mandatory inclusion in the curriculum of basic education at the very least. Because when you don't know what a word means, it's very easy to misuse it, y'know?
A Word With No Definition
Language is a wonderful thing for a variety of reasons, but one of my favorite things about it has always been how we as people can utilize language outside of its original confinements. The creative potential language has is entirely comparable to that of a blank page and a pencil, or an empty canvas on a drawing software. Language is merely a tool that human beings have developed in time to communicate with each other, themselves, as well as in order to express themselves in ways exceeding the necessities of conversing. Literature is as much as of an art form as illustration or painting; in Finnish, we sometimes even call literature "sanataide", translating to "word art".
Bullying Is Not Your Kink
It is strange how often I see people equating bullying to degradation. The internet is fantastic for this kind of rhetoric, especially in the form of memes. While irony dominates the humor and jokes of the online world, I find it interesting and also beneficial to analyze this kind of rhetoric as something more than just that. Because humor in itself is a rhetorical device that's used to convey different messages and tones – some more truthful than others. And in the case of these bullying/degradation jokes, I believe that there is at least some truth to them. Let's explore that thought here!
One Word Fits All
I don't like to think of myself as one of those people who have arguments with people on the internet all the time. I don't enjoy arguing with anyone, and even debating is sometimes too much for me. I tend to stay away from heated conversation topics because my weak mind can't handle the pressure and stress of keyboard fighting. It is the main reason I have left various online communities in my time.
Spewing Out Slurs
Discrimination comes in various shapes and sizes, and I am no stranger to quite a few of them. Being a member of several marginalized communities, I have faced all kinds of bigotry in my time. Granted, I do want to make it clear that I have had it relatively easy when it comes to discrimination like homophobia, mainly because of my very loving and accepting family. In some ways, I have been lucky in these experiences, especially when compared to some of my loved ones. Though, that doesn't mean that I have been completely let out of the hook.
They Should Have Just...
As a literature major, I know that meta text is very often frowned upon, and it is commonly not considered an effective way of narrating nor making an impression on the reader. Especially text about the process of creating the text is very bad and should always be avoided. It very rarely offers any important insight or serves a significant role in the context of the text, so all writers are told to stay away from it.
You Cannot Take This Away From Me Anymore
"So, you said that you've experienced childhood trauma, right? It doesn't seem like it comes from your home, though, because as far as I've understood it, you're relatively close with your parents. So what do you mean when you say 'childhood trauma'?"
"Sometimes, Bullying Is Okay"
You're on Instagram, mindlessly scrolling down your Explore page without really focusing on anything you're seeing on the screen. Until, when one of those TikTok rip-off reels somehow succeeds at capturing your attention. You click the video open. There's a young teenager, filming themself with their phone. They're wearing some type of cosplay costume, they've done their makeup, they even have a wig on. The kid is smiling, they look really happy. They step away from the camera so that you can see the entire costume they're wearing. They twirl around, making the poor quality skirt fly in the air. The kid faces the camera again, puffs their cheeks and does a cat-like pose with their hands.