Need help with appropriate emotional reactions to Orlando

[Anakin McFly]

Mass shootings keep happening and I can't feel anything any more. The people who were killed in Orlando could have been my friends (and since the names of victims aren't all out yet, they still might be), but everything was just numb, probably as a coping method because the alternative is facing up to that debilitating despair and fear and anger and hopelessness and the homophobic hatred that took all those lives.

I mentioned this in a whastapp chat group because I needed to talk to someone. A friend (the only straight guy in that group of 16 and a super-enthusiastic LGBT ally) immediately called me out on it, criticising me for making this all about my feelings.

then I was an emotional wreck for the rest of the day. I know that making an actual thread about my feelings further proves his point, and I'm sorry for that. But I don't know where else to ask, and so I don't screw up again and hurt other people:

- How do you find space to talk about complicated psychological reactions in the wake of other people's tragedies without being insensitive and making it all about you? Is that even possible? What if the tragedy involved a community you're part of and feels very personal for that reason, and isn't something you can just respectfully grieve?

- Was my friend's criticism valid, or was this a case of him needing to check his privilege? (or both.) I'm a bit uncomfortable with how it's the lone straight cis guy who's so far been the main person posting about this and being really sad and outraged, while everyone else has been largely silent. (I mean, a lesbian friend just changed the topic by posting happy things about her holiday, a gay guy jumped in with comments, and now there are happy emoticons being exchanged in the group. It's awkward.)

- Is it morally acceptable to not want to think about this or hear about it because you don't want to deal with the pain? (Which is what got him angry with me.)

[aels]

Tell that straight guy to go fuck himself. For serious, no straight person should be policing the reactions of LGBT people to LGBT oppression and violence. He is not part of that community; you are. He will never fear being being a victim of violence due to his sexuality; you most likely do and have feared this. Someone started an article on Jezebel for the sole purpose of giving people a space to talk about how this tragedy is making them feel - you're absolutely allowed to work through your emotions regarding a terrible event and I think there are very few people with a heart and a brain who can hear of something like this and not have trouble getting their thoughts and feelings in order. What kind of LGBT ally silences people within that community to tell them that they're doing it wrong?

[Blade Azaezel]

There was a homosexual journalist on Sky news trying to point out this was a specific attack on the LGBT community, whilst the other 2 presenters sat there saying "this was a terrorist attack against people having fun, it could just as easily have been anyone, stop trying to own this tragedy". People are fucking stupid...by which I mean the 2 presenters. #alllivesmatter

[Anakin McFly]

<3

He's one of those straight guys who has more LGBT friends than the average LGBT person and has probably spent more time in a gay bar than I ever have (never been in one). So in that sense it might have hit closer to home for him in some ways than it did for me, identity notwithstanding. He's way more in touch with ~the gay lifestyle~ than I am. I don't even know how privilege works sometimes. I'm a lot safer and more sheltered than most of my LGBT peers because I keep a very low profile and have no social life or love life, partly due to that fear. I currently ghostwrite for LGBT activists because I want to help change things without daring to put my name out there.

I guess some of the insensitivity was how I said every few weeks there's another killing spree in the US and I'm done with all that and I'm just going to sit in a happy sheltered bubble and not think about people being gunned down until it's something that directly affects people I know. Which isn't the best thing to say in the wake of a tragedy that just happened, and I regret that. But there's too much tragedy in the world and I'm angry and fed up with humanity and want to turn everything off and escape to space.

He's apologized for snapping at me, though. The worst things about him are also the best. Sometimes he's the only person who's cares, or the only person who stood up for me when others said transphobic things, so I can't even be too angry about this.

@Blade - oh yeah, I read about that one.

[aels]

Oh, I grok that 'just fucking done' feeling. In the past fortnight, there's been the gang-rape of a Brazilian teenager, an Italian woman set on fire by her ex, Brock Turner, all the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard stuff, and I've heard of at least three women being killed by their current or former partners and I've been like 'Byeeeee, call me when we've dismantled the patriarchyyyyyy!' I don't think it's at all uncommon - or evidence of callousness/thoughtlessness/whatever - to get emotionally burnt out by tragedy, particularly when it taps into your own fears. Please don't think your reaction is something wrong. You're good people.

[thesalmonofdoubt]

Oh, I grok that 'just fucking done' feeling. In the past fortnight, there's been the gang-rape of a Brazilian teenager, an Italian woman set on fire by her ex, Brock Turner, all the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard stuff, and I've heard of at least three women being killed by their current or former partners and I've been like 'Byeeeee, call me when we've dismantled the patriarchyyyyyy!' I don't think it's at all uncommon - or evidence of callousness/thoughtlessness/whatever - to get emotionally burnt out by tragedy, particularly when it taps into your own fears. Please don't think your reaction is something wrong. You're good people.

^ I'm going with this really.

Your reaction to this is your own and if that means you have reached the point where all the hideousness has reached a point where it's beating you down, then you are just as entitled to tune out for the sake of your own well being as anyone else is entitled to tune in.

Everyone has different ways of coping with stuff based on their own day to day tolerance's.. I don't think that you expressing that this is where you are at is making it all about you.. I can see that if you were saying something like "I wish they would just stop reporting this stuff" that it may come off this way given there are good, sound reasons to not stop reporting this stuff that go beyond your reaction to the news. But, I don't think that is what you were saying.

[Anakin McFly]

Thanks. <3

Some guy here made a comment on an anti-gay Facebook group talking about how he'd like permission to "open fire" on the yearly LGBT event so that he could "see these £@€$^*s die for their causes." That got picked up and people started doxxing the hell out of him. There are a lot of angry gay people right now. He's in the news, police are investigating and his employers were contacted. I'm normally against doxxing and getting people fired; then I saw what that creep posted about his harassment of a lesbian couple:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid ... =3&theater

and now I don't really care.

Later he claimed that his comment was taken “out of context" and he intended to open fire “in debate". "I did not mean physical bullets nor physical death".

lol really.

EDIT: my friend said he just went to a gay bar for the first time yesterday - they were holding vigil or something for Orlando. So starting today he *has* spent more time in a gay bar than I have.

[Anakin McFly]

Another thing is - some part of me actually felt relief, that they died being shot, which is one of the kindest ways to die from a hate crime. Every so often I hear of trans women who were set on fire or run over repeatedly by a truck or got their dick cut off and stuffed in their mouth or disfigured or (hopefully just a rumour) skinned alive, plus that one trans man in Japan who had his home broken into and his face cut off, and I get extremely terrified and don't want to live on this planet any more. I didn't feel that same sickening existential terror at Orlando. Nothing near it. If I ever have to be murdered, I can only hope it would be so quick, and among friends.

[aels]

Later he claimed that his comment was taken “out of context" and he intended to open fire “in debate". "I did not mean physical bullets nor physical death".

lol really.

Ah, happy memories of when GI said that hoping people ended up on the wrong end of a drug-dealer's AK-47 was not the same as wanting people to be shot.

[Anakin McFly]

argh I'm still feeling guilty. I'll be meeting that friend later with others and suddenly I'm afraid of accidentally saying the wrong thing or something insensitive. He's been more upset about this shooting than most of my LGBT friends, and it's genuine as far as I can tell, not put on for a show, but it also makes me uncomfortable because then I think I'm not being sad enough and that's messed up because this isn't some competition. Or that he's somehow more part of the LGBT community than I am, which somehow feels true, and I'm really lonely right now and afraid I'm not welcome or that I'm just pretending to be sadder than I am so people won't think badly of me. I really need happy thoughts right now, and the guilt is thwarting them and making me feel bad whenever I think of anything positive. I hate this.

[OpiateOfTheMasses]

I don't think there is an "appropriate" response. There are certainly inappropriate responses, but the only appropriate ones are whatever helps you and helps others.

There's enough shit going on without adding to it by having to worry over the details as to how you should or shouldn't behave. If you feel people are "competitively grieving" then ignore them - they're self-centred and doing things for the wrong reasons - don't pander to them. Focus on yourself and the people you care about.

My two cents anyway.

[Anakin McFly]

Thanks, everyone. I'm doing better now. I just had a good chat with a mutual friend who's a lesbian (and a counsellor) and she said the same, that people process things differently, and there's nothing wrong with how I'm reacting. She said that the ability to grieve openly and vocally about this is also partly straight privilege, because for many LGBT people it's too personal and hurts too much and we need to shut it off because it gets overwhelming; she also mentioned how she'd been thinking of taking that straight friend aside and talking to him about this, because while she appreciates his solidarity and how much he cares, his constant posting about it can be insensitive in not understanding how scared and helpless hearing about this makes many of us feel, and how we'd rather talk about things that will take our minds off it. Another lesbian friend I was chatting to had a similar reaction as I did, saying it was why she wasn't attending any of the candlelight vigils - it's all too much and she just wanted to go home and sleep. So I feel less alone now.