U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont / United States Congress / Wikimedia Commons

When you spend your life (or, at least a good chunk of your life) online, you become adjusted to cynicism. On the internet, sarcasm, depravity, and colloquialisms stolen from Black culture rule. The ‘takes’ — (a sharp & often controversial opinion on a trending topic) — grow edgier by the hour. In order to keep up, you need to inoculate yourself, to some degree or another, against outrage.

I’ve seen a lot of shit in my time on the internet. But never, in the years I’ve spent (voluntarily) doggy paddling through the toxic Twitter sludge, have I come upon a take quite so distasteful as “Bernie Sanders triggers me as a victim of sexual assault.”

I mean.

Obviously, there’s worse crap than *this* on the web, but takes must be assessed on the level at which they’re presented. I didn’t concern myself with the cretin who apparently wished to corral ‘8 women into saying that Bernie Sanders touched us’ — despite that being a nauseating admission — because that troll was a troll, and trolls are gonna troll.

But these, by all accounts, are real life women, living with the derangement that Bernie Sanders is “triggering” them. Not, it’s worth noting, Mike Bloomberg, a candidate mired with DOZENS of sexual harassment allegations. Not Joe Biden, whose interactions with women and girls are creepy, to say the least. Neither the man in the White House, who was accused of rape by his ex-wife, Ivana Trump.

No, Bernie Sanders triggers these women because… uh…

“Bernie Sanders triggers me as a victim of sexual assault” is a notion dripping in internet. It has become social media parlance to announce one’s traumas as way of introduction. “As a [fill in the blank]” has become shorthand has for “I have authority on this subject and it would crass for you to challenge me on it.”

As with all philosophies, it’s deeply nuanced — and troubling when taken at face value.

It starts with a grain of truth. Of course we should listen to victims of sexual assault. The entire #MeToo movement is wrapped around this notion. But weaponising trauma will always have limitations.

First off, it demands victims and survivors declare their traumas to begin with. In a debate between someone who has declared their pain (whether illness, assault, or otherwise), and someone who hasn’t, the person who declares becomes the irrefutable authority — never mind what the other person has experienced. This has played out hilariously when folks have blindly scolded someone for their ignorance on a subject, only for that someone to reveal they know about the issue with heartbreaking intimacy.

But its a cold kind of humour, and the implication is dour.

Secondly, no one, no matter their experience, is ever an irrefutable authority on anything. The world is multi-faceted, and contains many truths. Conversations about privileges and barriers can, very quickly, turn into games of Oppression Olympics, which often prioritize immediate markers of identity over more hidden challenges of class, illness, or trauma. The person who’s been through the most, is the person who wins the argument. This puts a weird, and certainly unhealthy, price on pain.

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders walking in the Independence Day parade with supporters in Ames, Iowa. / Gage Skidmore / Wikimeda Commons

And then there’s the concept of “triggering”. Rarely has a concept been more corrupted by the internet. Triggering means to “cause a strong emotional reaction of fear or worry because someone is made to remember something bad that has happened in the past.” It relates to post-traumatic stress disorder. It does not relate to offense.

Given the title of this piece, I anticipate criticism in the vein of you can’t tell people what does and does not trigger them. But that’s not true. In a social media landscape which places a currency, and a degree of impenetrability, on trauma, it is politically expedient for people to claim Sanders is traumatizing. But he simply isn’t.

An alleged rapist in the White House is traumatizing.

Having your family wiped out by Hitler is traumatizing.

A man running against a woman in a presidential election may be annoying, if you are supporting the woman, it may even remind you of traumatic sexist moments in your life, but — in and of itself — it is not traumatizing.

While we don’t know the identities of the women in the above interaction, they appear to be white (though we don’t know the identities of the women spoken of). But that’s of less importance than what we do know for sure from this screenshot: these women (and the women they speak of) can afford to go to therapy. I think this is where the bitter taste in my mouth originates.

I absolutely believe these women when they say they’ve been victims of abuse. But affording therapy implies a degree of financial freedom not available to a lot of working class people. I’ve previously outlined why I believe Sanders is the most feminist candidate, and I don’t wish to keep going over covered ground, but Medicare For All is a deeply feminist issue. It’s a woman’s issue — especially as it pertains to abortion. It’s a trans issue in that it covers gender confirmation service. But most of all, it’s a working class issue.

Bernie Sanders may annoy these people. Perhaps his presence reminds them of the deeply upsetting 2016 election. And that’s fair enough. But to claim his presence is traumatizing — especially as a political play — is disgusting. Even for Twitter.