I (maybe) agree directionally but I’m again irritated by the lack of nuance here (“100%”).
There are good reasons to think that an experience is worse when it’s not socially condoned. People aren’t just afraid and disturbed about “what happened” – they’re also afraid about “what could’ve happened.” Traumatic experiences are often from near-misses (you didn’t die, but something went wrong and you better avoid it in the future!). If the experience is contextualized as “elders do this by tradition; it’s meant to benefit you” – that seems less concerning than if you have something done to you by someone who is blatantly ignoring your personhood (and engaging in criminal behavior). In the latter instance, you don’t know what comes next – the person doing it to you has demonstrated that they don’t don’t feel the same way about other people (this is disturbing in itself, possibly for hardcoded evolutionary reasons around fear/apprehension of bad agents; it also has implications like “since they have no concern for you, nor for the law, they might murder you if they suspect you could tell someone”).
Just because something’s considered normal doesn’t mean it can’t traumatize some people. (For instance, it’s common among rationalists to express the view that school can be traumatizing – “small t trauma,” admittedly.) And activities do differ in their risk-to-traumatize. (See my other comments on this post.)
I (maybe) agree directionally but I’m again irritated by the lack of nuance here (“100%”).
There are good reasons to think that an experience is worse when it’s not socially condoned. People aren’t just afraid and disturbed about “what happened” – they’re also afraid about “what could’ve happened.” Traumatic experiences are often from near-misses (you didn’t die, but something went wrong and you better avoid it in the future!). If the experience is contextualized as “elders do this by tradition; it’s meant to benefit you” – that seems less concerning than if you have something done to you by someone who is blatantly ignoring your personhood (and engaging in criminal behavior). In the latter instance, you don’t know what comes next – the person doing it to you has demonstrated that they don’t don’t feel the same way about other people (this is disturbing in itself, possibly for hardcoded evolutionary reasons around fear/apprehension of bad agents; it also has implications like “since they have no concern for you, nor for the law, they might murder you if they suspect you could tell someone”).
Just because something’s considered normal doesn’t mean it can’t traumatize some people. (For instance, it’s common among rationalists to express the view that school can be traumatizing – “small t trauma,” admittedly.) And activities do differ in their risk-to-traumatize. (See my other comments on this post.)
Those are good points and you are right about my lack of nuance. Thanks