#(since stockholm was recognized first and is registered as a type of trauma bond)

[fandsart]

I actually have thoughts about this I've actually been meaning to talk about as a political person with special interests in both psychology and language.

[#i try not to judge but this and 'trauma bonding' have been driving me slightly insane]

I'm gonna talk about this too. These are terms prescribed to something which is also a wording to describe something else- or at least is a wording that works for other circumstances.

Now because gay panic is still a legal defense in a lot of states, that does complicate the sort of specifics of my issue with these problems, but since the wording can be easily avoided and simply changed to gay crisis and maintain understanding, then yeah, maybe just use the term gay crisis. But even then, I hate that I have to change my language to fit with an understanding that doesn't line up with the people who are against us. I have a similar reaction when people say that you cannot use the word queer because the initial use of the word to describe non cishet people was as a slur, and that is sometimes still is

And it does need to be thought out very specifically how to not word it as the way that has a different understanding. Can it not have two understandings? Especially when the phrase they picked would seem to imply a different meaning, that (again) I now have to talk around.

And maybe it's my probable autism, but I don't feel comfortable simplifying the experience of forming a bond with someone through shared trauma as simply "having shared trauma," and I hate having to word it as "having a bond with someone through shared trauma" which is unnecessarily long just because someone took a handful of words that applied to a different situation and said that this is what the term is meant to describe

And as someone who does share bonds with people over shared trauma, wording it backwards that way seems to diminish the impact of what it's like to have that, at least to me. And that shared trauma came from a place involving having had the clinical definition of a trauma bond with a mutual person

People picked these terms and it interferes with how we interact with language and I hate that. The term gay crisis can be used, but the set up of the words imply that the panic does come from the experience of being gay, AND as gay crises is such a prevalent experience to the culture the phrasing gay panic is so well understood by people who have experienced it.

The fact that some dickhead thought that a fear derived from someone else existing as a gay person was a reasonable excuse to murder them is disgusting and the fact that I have to talk around the dumb, inaccurate language they used to describe it infuriates me.

And with trauma bonding, I simply don't see why it can't take double meaning. As long as we make people aware that it does mean two different things and are aware that they way they use it in the shared trauma sense is not what the actual term refers to in a professional sense, I don't see why these things can't just be homonyms. Going through a traumatic event with someone can create a bond. It would be described as a trauma bond, were it not for an existing term

I'm honestly not entirely sure these terms weren't created independently of each other. It seems pretty clear that these are the most concise ways to convey these experiences. Like, the literal terms are less fitting as descriptions and that's why people are so less likely to know the initial contexts

These are a lot of my opinions on the matter, and that's why I continue to use the term trauma bond, but I understand anyone being uncomfortable using the term with that knowledge or seeing the term used in that context, but I've had a few people try to correct me on the meanings when I use them, but I already know. I guess I just think the english language isn't versatile enough. In general that is

Anyway I do think that people should be aware of what the technical terms mean so anyone who's reading this and is just too lazy to google for themselves, here are some source links

For trauma bonding

And for gay panic

begging the stranger things fandom to stop using the term "gay panic" when a character realizes they're not straight