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Ahmed talks in The Feminist Killjoy Handbook and elsewhere about dinner tables and ruined dinners. This is from Living a Feminist Life (2016):

"Around the table, a family gathers. [...] We are having polite conversations, where only certain things can be brought up. Someone says something you consider problematic. At first you try not to say anything. But they keep saying something. So maybe you respond, carefully, perhaps. You say why you think what they have said is problematic. You might be speaking quietly, but you are beginning to feel wound up, recognizing with frustration that you are being wound up by someone who is winding you up. The feminist killjoy appears here: when she speaks, she seems wound up. I appear here. This is my history: wound up."