[eyelidlessness]

Their less traumatic experience is valid. I never said it wasn’t. I self edited and rewrote before commenting so many times trying not to misstep here that my more emphatic direct validation apparently didn’t make it in but I’m emphatically glad they haven’t been so traumatized.

That it’s equally valid doesn’t necessarily mean it’s equally important. My experience is less important speaking to how traumatic police encounters are, than experiences of people who’ve experienced worse trauma. It’s just as valid that I don’t share their trauma too.

The world doesn’t owe me anything. It’s a rock hurtling through space that has an unusual concentration of life on it. No one here owes me any consideration at all, “foam padding” or otherwise. But I don’t owe anyone a failure to advocate for myself, either. And I don’t owe anyone a failure to articulate when I think an attitude or argument is harmful or selfish, nor a failure to try to appeal to their better intentions.

[sokoloff]

I shared my less intense experience because it better matched the experience of the subject of the article. They were detained, cuffed, investigated, and released. It was inconvenient.

Your much more severe interaction which included bludgeoning is totally valid but not a direct analog to her (and my) much less severe interaction.

I’m sorry if my words caused you harm. (That’s meant genuinely, as tone cannot be conveyed in text reliably.)