I also think it’s a bit freeing for the speaker or writer. We generally speak openly only with friends and family, because we don’t know how our comments may offend or alarm or even injure. In the context of a wider audience, we might not feel as free to discuss controversial topics without some method of warning others. Providing a warning, just as with a spoiler warning or a NSFW double-click, allows people to speak without having to filter everything.
Putting a brief note about content at the beginning is “bending over backwards”?
I agree that we shouldn’t let people’s discomfort dictate the content of lectures. But there’s no reason we can’t both be considerate of reasonable requests and ignore the idiots who suggest we shouldn’t teach lawyers about the laws on rape because some of them might have trouble coping with a discussion of rape.
“Trigger warning” feels a little buzzwordy, but the general concept is not particularly novel, as has been pointed out. If you just take off the word “trigger” then what you’re left with is a warning, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
It probably gets overused/abused, but that doesn’t mean there’s no value in it. I mean, personally I hate reading news stories about dead kids. I appreciate it when people who post these types of stories add a disclaimer, “child death in this story” so I can skip it. Will I be “triggered” if I do view the story? No. Will anything terrible happen if I do read it? Not really. But it will bother me a lot and I would rather not read it. So the warning is nice.
I don’t see a whole lot of difference between “insist” and “demand”. The important point, though, is that law schools are limiting what they teach.
About a dozen new teachers of criminal law at multiple institutions have told me that they are not including rape law in their courses, arguing that it’s not worth the risk of complaints of discomfort by students. Even seasoned teachers of criminal law, at law schools across the country, have confided that they are seriously considering dropping rape law and other topics related to sex and gender violence. Both men and women teachers seem frightened of discussion, because they are afraid of injuring others or being injured themselves.
So the same type of thinking involving potential discomfort and “trauma” that drives the insistence on trigger warnings also has serious consequences.
If that’s happening, it’s counterproductive. If law professors are afraid to teach rape law, who in the next generation of prosecutors will be able to successfully handle those cases?
Isn’t it one of those kind of things that’s done more in parody than in earnest? I’ve never seen it done for real, but ten thousand times as parody (and that gets kinda old too).
warning: post contains reference to sexual harassment
Many years ago I was sexually harassed at work in a severe way - leaving me with a PSTD diagnoses.
Two years later the same company put us all in a room to give us sexual harassment training. I walked out and had a conversation with HR. “You don’t spring that shit on people.”
About five years after that I was working for a new company that- guess what - sprang sexual harassment training on us all in a room. I sat through it that time, then went to HR. “You don’t spring that on people. If you have someone in that room who has been harassed, or is being harassed - maybe by someone else in that room - or otherwise has been sexually abused you actually aren’t helping them” The HR person had an epiphany, they bought computer based training, and from then on you got the sexual harassment training in the comfort of your own PC.
I understand why in the 1990s they’d spring sexual harassment training on you, if they told you it was coming you’d get a rash of vacation days and half the company untrained.
Sometimes things are a little too earnest - like if the tongue in cheek reference above were serious. But it does make sense in some contexts.
Reported.
I’ve requested a mod add a trigger warning to the thread title. Surely a whole thread discussing triggers is going to bother some people.
You don’t have an opinion on the similarity of all those other words that I quoted? Or that I pointed out that the “insist” came after they’d been exposed, and so cannot be a matter of “demanding” not to be taught?
Really? A dozen, new teachers? An unknown number of seasoned teachers who are “seriously considering” dropping it? No, I don’t think that backs up your case. And look closer - this isn’t as a result of students demanding to not be taught certain things. This is teachers not wanting to deal with students being upset. And that’s a position best dealt with by… giving a fair warning about the material that’s about to come up. So that when learning material is important, any discomfort or trauma is lessened to whatever extent is possible.
Note too that this is also a useful thing to do for all those students who aren’t triggered by discussion of such things, or particular formats of that teaching (your cited article references complaints about a certain video, which leads me to wonder whether it might be that that video is especially problematic). If they’re studying criminal law with an intent to work in that area, sooner or later they probably are going to have to work with people who have been raped, or abused, or had close friends or family (or even perfect strangers nearby) murdered. Preparing those students by pointing out that they need to treat such people with care and with forewarning is a very useful tool that will aid them in their jobs. It honestly doesn’t occur to many people the depth of the trauma that can be triggered by things like this - look at your own use of questioning quote marks around “trauma”, or the number of people in this thread speaking about how *of course *the only reason people put trigger warnings in isn’t out of a desire to help but so that can outdo each other in social justice-ness. Trigger warnings are useful even for people that aren’t triggered, just like warning labels on food products are useful even for those of us who aren’t allergic to peanuts - it makes us realise that actually we might need to think about that if we’re dealing with other people.
It depends on what sort of sites you go to, I suppose. I see trigger warnings used quite earnestly in a lot of places, mostly in the progessive, feminist, and leftist blogosphere.
I’ve seen at least one blog that I was rather fond of, that had a very active commenting community, tear itself apart over…well, over a lot of issues. But one of them was the proper use of trigger warnings, with some people thinking they were ridiculous and infantilizing, and others wanting a very liberal use of trigger warnings.
Several things came out in the often heated discussions, before that community finally imploded.
One was that there are lots of things that could be triggering to different people, and it would be almost impossible to anticipate them all. For example, some people had issues with their weight, and/or with the way that society treats overweight people. Many felt that trigger warnings for “dieting” would be helpful to them. To other people, that seemed unreasonable and rather silly. Being sensitive when discussing things like rape or child abuse is understandable, and a perfectly reasonable thing to do. It may be a bit much to expect the same level of sensitivity if you happen to say something like “I skipped dessert today.”
That level of warning also resulted in some posts where the list of warnings did become almost comically long.
Another issue was that the term “trigger warning” itself can seem rather judge-y. In that same community, some people were using trigger warnings for discussions of things like BDSM, and other sorts of sexual roleplaying. People in the community who were into that, on the other hand, felt that using trigger warnings for that implied that BDSM was on the level of rape or abuse–something nasty to be avoided, rather than a legitimate variation of human sexuality. I’ve seen some sites use the term “Content Note” rather than “Trigger Warning,” for precisely that reason.
As others have said, warning the audience about potentially troubling material isn’t really all that new. I do feel that in many cases, particularly for things like rape imagery or particularly graphic violence, it’s only courteous to give people a heads-up. I don’t buy the notion that it stifles or censors discussion. Nobody is saying not to talk about Whatever. Just add a quick note that you’re going to be talking Whatever. It really isn’t that much of a burden, either to write such a warning, or to read it.
While it’s true that we probably can’t anticipate everything that might upset people, some things are pretty obvious, so why not give folks a heads-up?
Two problems with trigger warnings.
One is they infantilize adults. Video games, movies, albums, and TV shows have ratings and descriptions so that parents can decide whether or not they are appropriate for their children. Adults don’t need these things because we can decide for ourselves what to watch, listen to, and read. It assumes that certain people are to weak to handle certain things and it is up to others to keep those weak little lambs from experiencing anything upsetting.
Second, and more importantly it is a threat to free speech because having someone be triggered can be and is used to ban certain words and ideas. Thus unpopular ideas can no longer be expressed because to do them would trigger certain people. Thus people can censor ideas while pretending just to be sensitive to others. Thus you can ban a book because it would trigger certain people, ban a certain speaker, or kick someone out of class because something they said triggered a fellow student.
But all warning labels on media do is provide more information, not ban people from watching them - adults still make the decisions on what they want to watch. It can still be useful for determining the content of films, though - if, for example, I like horror films for scares but not for gore, through content warnings I can discover without ruining the plot whether those things are featured. If I find a film that looks interesting but I see that it’s a U, I can assume that it might well be quite childish in tone and not something I might enjoy. Giving someone the information that they need in order for them to make an informed decision is the opposite of infantilizing them.
Trigger *warnings *are just that; a warning. Not a ban. There’s no threat to free speech from saying “I’d like to talk about this - by the way, just so you’re aware, it’s going to cover topics A, B, and C - now, let’s start.”
You know what’s closer to censorship? Saying that people shouldn’t use trigger warnings because there’s a threat to free speech.
Which brings up the problem of what to replace the triggered material with - when you can’t put it on a PC. You had been through it, but maybe someone in the middle of it could benefit from seeing the options, even if it is uncomfortable. If a course involves a novel which some get triggered by, how do you replace the content with something safe? I gather that triggers allow people to avoid material, and are not just warnings.
And I agree springing something like this on people is stupid. Our on-line training is mandatory, and I haven’t noticed any opt-out provisions.
Ours was as well, but without being broadsided by it, and without anyone else around, clicking through it and watching it was far easier than “surprise, here, lets run through sexual harassment scenarios while you are surrounded by co-workers for which you have varying levels of trust.”
This. If you’re about to show or discuss something violent or troubling, it’s nice to warn people in advance that it’s coming.
When content is TMI, I appreciate a warning. I do not want to read gross things.
Given that, I extrapolate out and think “Hey, if I don’t want to read gross things, I bet there are other things other people don’t want to stumble across. I’ll try to be mindful.”
The end.
One of my online communities largely comprises domestic violence/sexual assault/child abuse survivors.
In that community I liberally apply trigger warnings. Most folks read the material anyway. I think the idea is not “you are too much of a baby to be able to handle this” but more like “take a deep breath before you open this” or “simply I recognize that this is hard for some folks.”
But I know that members of that community are necessarily sensitive.
I don’t put trigger warnings on posts for other communities unless it’s already tradition to do so. But at the same time, I don’t tend to post sensitive material to other groups.
I think most folks who are interested in reading about triggering issues are also the same folks who are triggered by that material.
Folks who are less likely to be triggered by material tend to be less likely to be interested in ti.
So, yeah. I think a trigger/content warning is a great thing to keep in mind. But so is your audience.
If a teacher is writing a syllabus and notices that the material is triggering, then the teacher ought to assume that triggerable folks are taking that class at a larger rate than other classes. So, trigger warning? Yeah. Trigger warning doesn’t get someone out of knowing the material. Just do what you need to do to prepare yourself.
I mean if you pop a ballon in a roomful of people you are a jerk if you don’t announce it first.
From the article linked to above: “Individual students often ask teachers not to include the law of rape on exams for fear that the material would cause them to perform less well. One teacher I know was recently asked by a student not to use the word ‘violate’ in class—as in ‘Does this conduct violate the law?’—because the word was triggering. Some students have even suggested that rape law should not be taught because of its potential to cause distress.”
This sort of thing takes the notion of warnings to the absurd extreme. Not only do they have the potential to silence discussion, they can have serious unintended consequences. Law students who don’t want to study laws about rape? Leaving aside the obvious notion that perhaps such students should have chosen a different profession to pursue, I can’t imagine it will be of any positive benefit if law professors bow to this sort of pressure and exclude study of this important area of law. I am reminded of an idiotic teacher of biology who chose not to include the study of evolution in his high school classes. Not because he had any problem with the idea of evolution, but simply because it was a controversial issue among a small but vocal group of parents. Idiot is probably too kind a word for him.
I’m as progressive and feminist and lefty as they come. But I can’t even imagine how a trigger warning would work in the classes I teach. Murder, rape, child abuse, torture? All present in the literature I teach. As are words like “violate.” Where to begin? I suppose a blanket warning might be as follows: “Literature is full of uncomfortable subjects. Be prepared.” But I don’t have any plans to include that or any other type of trigger warning on my syllabi.
I don’t mind the idea of quick content warning, in the vein of “some content may be of a disturbing [violent/sexual/etc] nature”. I’m not sure how much it has to do with real PTSD triggers though. As I understand it PTSD can trigger off some absurdly innocuous stuff, like seeing a shirt that looks like one you saw during the traumatic event.
There’s a divide between trigger warning and excessive trigger warnings. Warning that something is about sexual assault? Cool, whatever. It’s when we start to get into warnings about “animal death” and such that it gets dicier. I don’t mind warning that your post may upset people, but tying it to trigger warning seems a bit silly. Yes, reading about an animal dying could legitimately trigger someone, but so could the color yellow. In that vein, it seems kind of tacky to group things that could be potentially upsetting, but only merely upsetting, like “trigger warning: abuse of privilege” to sexual assault or other traumatic events.
Oddly, if people dropped the word “trigger” for everything other than extreme things like violence/assault I’d probably have no issue with it. Warning people is fine. But if language is going to evolve this way, eh, I can’t argue.
I want trigger warnings!
Put your big boy shorts/big girl panties on and deal with it cupcake.