I liked this article a lot! While I call myself a pretty hardcore Leftist rather than a progressive, and weirdly I’d say the radical left has less of a “hyper-sensitivity” issue than the Progressive Liberal community, I recognize this problem well and repeatedly have to navigate it all the time in my organizing and interpersonal relationships. This is an important read for people who take too little responsibility for their own feelings of safety upon themselves, and I think I understand why you wrote it in this way.

I do feel like this article didn’t spend enough time on the difference between sensitivity and responsibility. People who are highly sensitive are often less able to respond (response-able, responsible) to a situation that causes them to blur reality and potential threats due to their sensitivity. People who are less sensitive and can perhaps make assessments more rationally do not have any obligation to intervene, but they do have an ability to respond that a triggered person may not have. People who are systemically privileged, and do not face repeated systemic trauma, are often unaware of this privilege, and are thus not always able to respond in rational ways simply due to lack of understanding the implications of their actions. This is nobody’s duty; I don’t think duty actually exists. It’s everyone’s responsibility, in the sense of everyone has the ability to respond to it, to different extents and in different ways.