The Container Is the Problem:

Contextualizing “Trauma Porn”

There’s a phrase I’ve been sitting with: trauma porn.

Trauma: defined by the American Psychological Association as an overwhelming experience that causes lasting psychological harm.

Porn: defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as material that exploits its subject for sensational effect.

TRAUMA PORN: the repeated, decontextualized depiction of suffering designed more to provoke consumption than to provoke care.

It’s often used as a critique, to call out stories or images that sensationalize suffering—particularly of Black, Indigenous, and other historically oppressed people. But somewhere along the way, the term itself has gotten flattened. Weaponized. Misused to silence rather than sharpen our understanding.

We’ve reached a point where even our own stories, our testimonies of survival, our truth, and resistance—get dismissed as trauma porn before t…