"“Trauma can be an opportunity,” says a student, “to enact restorative justice.” Then she gives a second answer: It can also be an opportunity “to take a stand against the revolting and pernicious 'Trauma Olympics.'” Sharp's narrator quickly mounts a defense. “I would encourage us all to consider,” she says, “the possibility that some things are worse than other things.” And then, thrusting the conversation into the absurd, she begins writing her personal ranking on the board: “Holocaust > pedophilia > violent rape > Gulag > legal refugee status > ephebophilia > kicking a child in the head > date-rape > mean mom > lack of breastfeeding/babyhood skin contact.”"
"Sharp's narrator has been raped - date-raped, she says - an experience she refers to frequently, but always vaguely, as “what happened to me when I was a seventeen-year-old virgin in Benjamin Leichter's parents' bedroom and the other related thing that happened to me several years later.” These events act as a great explainer - they have left her “frigid, incapable of orgasm-with-partner, violated, brought to her knees” - but also an unsatisfying one. She both is traumatized, talking at length about dissociation, for instance, and frustrated with how trauma has limited her."
"Having dropped out of her Ph.D. program and fled a serious boyfriend, she now teaches private school in the Northeast. Fueled by a questionably medicinal stimulant she refers to only as “methamphetamine's cousin,” she free-associates for her students on everything from Stalin (sexy, misunderstood) to Freud (not sexist) to the fact that her family “got Holocausted.” Stuck in a dr"
A teacher asks students about obstacles that later become opportunities. One student links trauma to restorative justice, while another warns against “Trauma Olympics.” The teacher responds by urging consideration that some harms are worse than others, then writes a personal ranking of atrocities and abuses on the board. The teacher describes being date-raped at seventeen and later experiencing related events, presenting them as explanations for sexual dysfunction, dissociation, and feeling violated. She has left a Ph.D. program, fled a serious boyfriend, and now teaches private school in the Northeast. Under the influence of a stimulant she calls “methamphetamine’s cousin,” she free-associates for students, mixing references to Stalin, Freud, and family history with provocative claims about harm and misunderstanding.
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