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One thing about trauma is that different people are affected differently. When my wife was preparing to deploy for Iraq, the Army training included a simulation of an overturned vehicle. Beforehand people were asked if they had been in an overturned car accident before. This can be traumatizing to some, and could be excused if wanted. She had been in such an accident, but wasn't traumatized by it and with through the simulator.

So just because the author of this piece can deal with trauma doesn't mean that all people could deal with trauma the same way.

But I don't see the direct connection from microagressions as being a form of trauma. Eg, from http://www.extension.umn.edu/family/cyfc/our-programs/erevie... :

> Wing Sue and his colleagues identify three types of microaggressions

> 1. A microinsult is characterized by communications that convey rudeness and insensitivity and demean a person’s racial heritage or identity (for example, eye rolling during a discussion about an individual’s racial identity).

> 2. Microinvalidations are communications that exclude, negate or nullify the psychological thoughts, feelings, or experiential reality of a person of color. An example is a white person stating to a person of color that they “don’t see color”, which denies that person’s racial and ethnic experiences. Another example is a non-Native person asking someone of AIAN culture whether or not he or she is a “real Indian”. This demands an explanation that few others are required to deliver.

> 3. A microassault is an explicit racial derogation characterized primarily by a verbal or nonverbal attack meant to hurt the intended victim. This can happen through name-calling, avoidant behavior, or purposeful discriminatory actions. Microassaults against AIAN people also appear in the form of advertisements that depict white models in Native clothing, associations between AIAN people and aggressive sports teams, and messages that connect AIAN people with alcohol use. Microassaults are typically more conscious and deliberate than other forms of microaggression.

Even though that quote is from a document that connects microagressions to historical trauma, it says that microagressions are a form of violence, not trauma.

Giving someone a papercut is a form of violence. Do it enough times and it can lead to trauma, but a papercut isn't in and of itself particularly traumatic.

To give an example from an entirely different context - a book from 1970 concerning Swedish culture, especially as it applies to Americans of Swedish descent:

> Being taught from childhood to observe the rule of modesty, yes, self-effacement, a Swede is deprived of initiative and confidence from the start. And this lack has made its mark on most Swedes of earlier generations. It can be traced to Americans of Swedish descent up to this time. They will know the phrase, det är ingenting ["that is nothing"], which reflects the concept that praise must be minimized. However lovely she thinks her dress is, a Swedish woman of an earlier vintage would invariably reply to a compliment: "Åh, den här gamla trasan!" (Oh, this old rag), or something equally disparaging.

Being told once that an idea of yours is nothing? Survivable. Being told that from a baby? That changes your life. And not really in a good way.

I get the feeling that the feelings behind this essay are more akin to Bob Newhart's character in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-Tej0297wk . Or quoting GFK_of_xmaspast, "what an asshole."

> So just because the author of this piece can deal with trauma doesn't mean that all people could deal with trauma the same way.

There are standard treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder, and all of them are focused on strengthening the individual's ability to cope with symptoms. Altering their environment to avoid the occurrence of symptoms is not a valid treatment. In fact, its considered a symptom of PTSD (and several other mental health issues) which has its own specific treatment called exposure therapy. This treatment exposes the patient to what triggers anxiety and stress in a controlled fashion.

You, and many trauma activists, take a different view of the mental health profession on the nature and treatment of trauma that seems to reflect political and social goals of the movement rather than the well-being of the victims. As much as I agree with those goals, I have ethical problems with exploiting victims of trauma for political ends.

Let's suppose everyone at work calls me a peon. "Hey peon, get this for me." "Hey peon, make me some coffee." "Hey peon, sudo make me a sandwich." Hey peon, get rid of these compiler warnings." People replace my door tag with "Peon Dalke". People sneak in and change my screen saver to "Peon's machine". And so on.

Assume also that I don't particularly like being called peon, but the entire office thinks it's funny, and funny when I protest.

Should I get treatment to be able to better handle being called peon? Or should I change the workplace culture, perhaps by getting the owner involved, so people stop calling me names? Or should I quit? (The only way it could be POST-traumatic is for the so-called trauma to stop.)

It sounds like you're suggesting that it's due to my inability to handle name-calling, and I should seek mental health treatment to accept being called names all the time.

If so, you have an odd view on life.

Otherwise, I don't know what you're talking about.

There's a danger in humorlessness in that it often insinuates itself into one's identity through piousness and victimhood. Fear of a blow can weaken and damage us far more than the blow itself.

Now, mental health treatment doesn't have to mean clinical care. Sometimes it's being encouraged to get more familiar with your coworkers, or just helping them get to know you better. Teasing is often just that, trying to include a person or express comfort with them, and when someone reacts badly or isn't honest about things, blowing up or bottling up, those are usually indications of poor expression or self control, which could be more serious and compromising issues.

So yes, if the person is unable to bring themself to confront their peers, clearly relay their wishes, and broker an understanding, they may need some help (ie- treatment) to realize that they can, should, and how. Mental health, like physical health, is something we have to work at to maintain and improve our entire lives. Saying all of our thoughts and emotions are reasonable and perfect by default because why else would they be any other way is about as sensible as the idea that morbid obesity is healthy and natural because why else would our bodies be able to be that way other than by design?

We have choices, we have volition, but do we have the motivation?

"Humorlessness"? Are you one of those people who think that the targets of harassment have to just laugh it off?

Have you read about Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services?

> On several occasions, Oncale was forcibly subjected to sex-related, humiliating actions against him by Lyons, Pippen and Johnson in the presence of the rest of the crew. Pippen and Lyons also physically assulted Oncale in a sexual manner, and Lyons threatened him with rape.

> Oncale’s complaints to supervisory personnel produced no remedial action; in fact, the company’s Safety Compliance Clerk, Valent Hohen, told Oncale that Lyons and Pippen “picked [on] him all the time too,” and called him a name suggesting homosexuality.

The original court decision held there was no EEOC violation here, as all participants were heterosexual males.

Was that humorlessness on Oncale's part? Surely no. At least, I don't find multiple and serious rape threats against me. Do you?

Should Oncale have worked harder to become more familiar with his coworkers? Was Oncale at fault for "poor expression or self control", which somehow justified this behavior? Surely no. Should Oncale have instead worked more on maintaining his personal mental health?

Going back to my scenario, "I" confronted my peers but nothing changed.

I curiously note that you seem to blame the victim, and require the victim of unwanted "humor" to be inordinately capable of people management. Why aren't the peers in my situation the ones who need mental health treatment?

Why do you think Oncale deserved being 'teased' with threats of rape?

You're the one who insists on framing injustice as ultimately a mental health issue. The logical outcome of that is mental health solutions, not social and political change.

The scenario you described is called injustice. If you go to the owner and say "This needs to stop because it stresses me out", you've betrayed the cause. You've traded justice for mental health as the issue we should care about.

I apologize, but I don't understand what you just wrote. I don't recognize how I am "framing injustice as ultimately a mental health issue".

I am a firm supporter of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and followup legislation. You can see through some of my earlier messages on HN. I have written may times about cases of injustice where there is no inkling of there being mental health issue. I mentioned Onacle v. Sundowner elsewhere in this thread, as a case where workplace "humor", isn't.

Even looking back only on what I wrote here, I see no way to draw the inference you just did. I wrote:

> It sounds like you're suggesting that it's due to my inability to handle name-calling, and I should seek mental health treatment to accept being called names all the time.

> If so, you have an odd view on life.

I meant it as a rejection of what you say I embrace. Telling targets of harassment that they need mental treatment is outright victim blaming. Could you explain how you drew your conclusion?

Unlike you, I do not believe that stress is always a mental health issue. I agree with the EEOC guidelines at http://www.eeoc.gov/policy/docs/psych.html :

> > 2. Are traits or behaviors in themselves mental impairments?

> No. Traits or behaviors are not, in themselves, mental impairments. For example, stress, in itself, is not automatically a mental impairment. Stress, however, may be shown to be related to a mental or physical impairment. Similarly, traits like irritability, chronic lateness, and poor judgment are not, in themselves, mental impairments, although they may be linked to mental impairments.13

In any case, I did not use the word "stress". I said only that I protest. Under EEOC guidelines for discrimination in the office, a clear statement made to supervisors, or made in such a way that supervisors should be aware of the complaint, is sufficient for EEOC law to apply. I wrote it that way because EEOC law doesn't require people to be offended, hurt, traumatized, or even the target or beneficiary of discrimination. (Judges hate to have to figure out how someone "really" feels.) I believe similar principles should apply to a broader range of situations, including the harassment scenario I proposed, even though it doesn't fall under EEOC law.

I fully understand that you are committed to the ideal of justice. My point is that reframing an issue of justice into an issue of mental health for the practical purposes of addressing the concrete impact of injustice nonetheless undermines the larger vision in the long term.

The original article is about the "new meaning of trauma", which contests the claim that trauma as the result of microaggressions is a serious and significant issue. You call the author an asshole and argue on the contrary that microaggressions are traumatic, so its clear that you believe its quite important that we view victims of injustice as sufferers of mental health problems. Or why call someone an asshole who says otherwise?

I call this framing injustice as ultimately a mental health issue, and I disagree with it. I believe the focus should be on the question of justice.

Apparently you do approve of treating it as a mental health issue. Probably because you believe it will motivate the removal of traumatizing triggers (i.e. racist and sexist words and actions). In other words, trauma is a convenient pretext for fighting bigotry. Trauma victims are a cause that everyone can get behind. It's more politically palatable.

I have several objections to this strategy. First, it's a betrayal. We shouldn't hide the cause of justice behind a politically acceptable pretext. Second, mental health treatments advocate controlled exposure to triggers, not their removal. Third, true psychological trauma occurs due to events of exceptional violence. If you believe that injustice is pervasive in society rather than exceptional, it wouldn't produce trauma by definition. The model you present, of many tiny papercuts adding up to trauma, runs counter to psychological models of the human brain. Many small mental stresses adds up to habituation—that's the theory behind exposure therapy. The concept of microaggressions in fact suggests that victims are less likely to be traumatized by racism and to view it as normal. That victims of microaggressions are nonetheless upset by them implies that they are not traumatized, but angry, and rightfully so.

Some cultures are more self-deprecating than others, which has some benefits, and some draw-backs. A lot of people would say that this kind of 'Law of Jante' attitude is a big reason why Scandinavian countries do so well in many measures of progress.

Are you really implying that this kind of attitude represents a violence or trauma to the child? Someone of the opposite belief might well say the same about highly individualized cultures. To take such a strong position, I would say, ironically given the subject of discussion, represents a kind of cultural chauvinism.

I quoted the author's views, which is that as a result "a Swede is deprived of initiative and confidence from the start." This sounds like a negative viewpoint. I will quote from the previous paragraphs of the book ("Of Swedish Ways" by Lilly Lorénzen, instructor in Swedish at the University of Minnesota and the American Swedish Institute, and 'builder of Swedish heritage in America'.)

> "I cannot remember that my father or mother at any time made any visible display of affection for me, and sometimes I ached inside for a little love," they say. ... But it was not only the want of expressed love that made the childhood pinched and meager. It was the deliberate thwarting of all efforts for self-expression, the deliberate holding down of tendencies to excel." ... As I grew up the allure of the mirror made me sneak a glance now and then, only to be reprimanded by mother. To look in the mirror was forbidden! "Du ser ingenting ut!" [You don't look like anything!] ... To be told over and over again that one's looks equal nothing would, and did, subdue any attempt to enhance one's negligible features. ... In mature years when I asked my mother what her idea was, she said: "I was so afraid that my girls were being vain so I had to squelch any tendencies in that direction." But childhood frustrations have a way of ... expression later on. Mine is a silk ribbon tucked in my hair!

This makes it pretty clear that the author disagrees with her Swedish cultural upbringing. I quoted the mother's response to show that you have a good point. But this can't really be at the heart of Jante Lagen, because it was that generation of Swedes worked to change the culture. If you know Swedish culture, this was before the Ni fråga, in the era where men were referred to often by job title, and people seldom talked to each other.

In modern Sweden parents do show affection for their children, and don't (at least not that I've heard) say that their children are nothings. It was proper in older Swedish culture to beat their children with a rod behind the woodshed. In 1979, Sweden became the first nation to ban corporal punishment of children.

So yes, in both the personal and historical context, these views were seen as negative and rejected. I therefore disagree with your conclusion that it's cultural chauvinism. These are people who disagreed with their own culture, and changed it.

Here's another quote from the same book:

> Could the American-born epithet, "the dumb Swede," have anything to do with the concept of perfection that every Swedish emigrant carried with him to the new country? ... Could it be that his laconic answers, his lack of ready banter, even after he had learned the language reasonably well, coined the phrase? There are those who maintain that fellow workers in camps and workshops initiated the expression, "the dumb Swede." Whatever the cause, the steadfast, silent Swede suffered under it, and many descendants have tales to tell of the resentment it fostered.

In modern parlance, being called a "dumb Swede" was a microagression, with negative emotional consequences.

Are you a cultural relativist who believes it is inappropriate to make any negative comments about someone else's culture? The modern Sweden, in the body of Margot Wallström, Sweden's foreign minister, disagrees with you. Saudi Arabia recalled their ambassador to Sweden after she criticized human rights in Saudi Arabia. Do you think she wrong to make those criticisms?

That is a pretty astonishing straw man. I have said it is a nonsense to talk of teaching what was referred to as 'modesty and self effacement' as being a violence and trauma, and your conclusion is that I am a cultural relativist who believes that Saudi Arabian attitudes shouldn't be criticized and that it's fine to beat children for punishment. Congratulations on that deduction!
I wrote "Being told once that an idea of yours is nothing? Survivable. Being told that from a baby? That changes your life. And not really in a good way."

From that you inferred I was a cultural chauvinist. Or was it the author? I can't tell. But I generally agree with author's negative views on those parts of the traditional Swedish upbringing, and prefer the modern ones more. In any case, given that Swedes actively worked to change their culture, they didn't like it either.

You broadened the conversation to be "other cultures". Yes, your shift from specific details about older Swedish culture to a generic "some cultures" diminishes the importance of observations, and yes, sounds very much like relativism.

The comment about the corporal punishment was in the context of changes to Swedish child-raising practices in the mid-20th century. I meant it only as an example of how the examples I quoted fit into the internal debates in Swedish culture.

Yes, I think that beating one's children is violence, and may lead to trauma. I'm much more sure of that than being able to make a full understanding of early 20th century Swedish culture to say the same about that situation. What I think is important is the evidence that small phrases, like "you are nothing" and "dumb Swede", can cause unappreciated emotional turmoil. As these examples predate the concept of "microagressions", there's no chance that these were induced by the modern zeitgeist.

The nice thing about straw men is they're so easy to knock down.