
When I was nineteen years old, Elie Wiesel grabbed my ass (2017) - longerthoughts
https://medium.com/@jblistman/when-i-was-nineteen-years-old-elie-wiesel-grabbed-my-ass-10370829c4bd
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coldtea
When Elie Wiesel compatriots and family were 19 years old (and younger) they
had much much worse things happen to then.

Not that this excuses bad behavior, but on the grand scheme of things, to
miser about what was or wasn't some purposeful sexual gesture from a Holocaust
survivor decades later seems petty.

When I was 10 years old some dirty old man (apparently known around the
neighbourhood for such things) tried to touch my pee-pee. If it was some
important sexual incident, sure I'd be scarred. But for something like that,
besides some anxiety at the time, I could not care less then or today...

~~~
bradknowles
With respect, just because you were not traumatized by a particular type of
event, does not mean that someone else wasn’t traumatized by the same kind of
event.

And your lack of trauma over a type of event does not give you carte blanche
to trivialize the emotions and expressions of someone that was.

~~~
coldtea
> _does not mean that someone else wasn’t_

No, but it means things are not objectively traumatising, it's what we make of
them, and that people can over-react (and perhaps under-react).

> _And your lack of trauma over a type of event does not give you carte
> blanche to trivialize the emotions and expressions of someone that was._

Of course.

But the individual personal experience of something should not be sacred from
criticism, especially when it moves from personal to a more public accusation
or demand.

In other words: some people might feel (or claim they feel) traumatised over
whatever. We shouldn't as a society always take their claims at face value and
accept their subjective impact as necessary valid -- just because a subject
called it so. Emotions can be bogus too.

