In the case of self-injury, these people really are on the edge emotionally and even hearing things like the number of stitches someone got or how many inches a cut was can really set them off.
A fair point. But still, we aren’t sure what form this protection would take. In this example, there were students who complained about the video - but there isn’t any mention of complaints about the discussion of the subject by those students. As I said before, I’m left to wonder if it was just the video itself that had some kind of particularly problematic part - or whether it’s video itself that was the problem. Insistence on protection, in that sense, does not indicate a demand on a ban. It may be that there is a widespread use of potentially triggering media in such course. And if it is focused on that particular area, it’s not something that all mention of must completely be removed.
Seems so!
Perhaps we should be asking that, per your cite; the Harvard professor whom you’ve repeatedly quoted seems to have no issue at all referring to trauma being suffered by students. Should you be questioning this professor’s ability to judge the level of harm being suffered, here?
You need not assume that traumas have multiplied a thousand-fold; perhaps all that’s happening is a recognition that didn’t exist before.
Training isn’t about raising consciousness, its about covering the employers ass. I suspect regardless of how training is done that it seldom raises consciousness in that sort of setting. It may let abusers know “we take the letter of the law seriously enough to spend time and money having you sit through this, that probably means your ass is grass if you do it.” Which is adequate.
Fairly often with certain subjects. As I said, I was diagnosed with PSTD after sexual harassment - that’s pretty much the definition of having an unadvisable physical effect when triggered.
Sexual abuse, physical abuse, death of a child, having been a survivor of war - those are pretty traumatic events and it isn’t uncommon to have a physical reaction to a reminder of them.
The problem is that on the internet you really don’t control your audience - so you don’t know if your post about rape will go viral and you’ll end up causing a lot of visceral reactions among survivors - so its best to be conscientious and post. And when you think about the number of people in society who have been exposed to violent and/or traumatic experiences, when your audience measures in the hundreds, you aren’t unlikely to have one person whose day was NOT made brighter by having the death of a child sprung on them, reminding them of their own loss.
I have to say that following the hanging suicide of a friend, the first time I saw a hanging body (in a closet, no less) in a movie that I wasn’t expecting really gave me one hell of a jolt. I deal better now but man that was something. So probably graphic descriptions of rape to a rape victim or war scenes to a veteran would be far more shocking.
Here’s an interesting op-ed piece from the NY Times that seems relevant to this discussion: Opinion | In College and Hiding From Scary Ideas - The New York Times
So, if someone tells you that a trigger warning will be of great value to them…and if it really isn’t terribly difficult for you to add a trigger warning or to read one someone else has put in place…
Why on earth would you not want to use trigger warnings or to put up with the minuscule inconvenience of reading one?
How hard is it to take someone’s word for something? It’s just basic respect.
I don’t get how certain team mascots are offensive (how come Redskins is offensive but Celtics and Spartans are not). But I’ll believe it when people tell me it is. It doesn’t hurt me to change a mascot (confuses me, but that’s not the same thing). So I’ll support them that want to change an offensive mascot.
I’ll ask for clarification but I’m not gonna question someone’s basic experiences.
This is what is so pernicious about trigger warnings, the idea that information can be harmful. Once you declare information objectively harmful, it is a very small step to banning that information. After all who could object to banning something that is going to hurt victims of trauma? This is what Oxford college did when it cancelled a debate about abortion because of concerns of student’s mental safety. What actual trauma victims need is therapy so that they can live a normal life, not to be treated as toddlers like the Brown University students who were provided a safe space playroom with coloring books, and play-doh during a debate on campus.
I do believe… yes, there is a tiny wisp of straw the next field over you could use.
Sorry but … what? Did that actually happen?
The standard NFW that happened which means it did test suggests to me it may have.
I await YHFGTBKM verification.
I do not mind the existence of Trigger Warnings.
I am not fond of cultures in which it has become imperative that one post Trigger Warnings. And in which others will reply to your post like so if you didn’t and they thought you should have:
[QUOTE=Admin]
Please add trigger warning to your post alerting that it invalidates others’ experiences, reflects a privileged perspective, and makes use of misogynistic phrases or it will be deleted. Please consider your privilege and examine your behavior if you wish to continue posting in here
[/quote]
Along with the Trigger Warning has come the accusation of attempting to be the Tone Police: that any complaint that someone else in the group accusing one of racist / sexist / otherwise-privileged behavior has, itself, taken on offensive characteristics by the nasty way in which it is being expressed, is a dismissable complaint. Because it dares to complain about the tone in which somone spoke out against their oppression.
Apparently so. It is described in the op-ed I linked above.
Some other quotes from that op-ed that I think are spot on:
The writer also mentions the tendency to self-infantilize. I have certainly noticed this tendency among my students. It goes far beyond the extended adolescence of previous generations of college students.
Bollocks.
I can go outside right now and buy all sorts of products that warn as to the content. Food and drink, medicine, media, vehicles, clothes, furniture - there’s practically nothing I could buy that wouldn’t have a warning label of some sort.
And yet - I can buy them. Because warnings are useful, incredibly common tools for an advisory purpose, and certainly do not activate a slippery slope to “bannings!”. It is a big step between “this thing we need to be wary of” and “this thing cannot be bought, spoken of, referred to, or mentioned in any way”.
So when I asked for cites for your previous claims, your response was to… send out a big batch of more claims without cites? There seems to be a certain irony in declaiming about the danger posed by not allowing the spread of information while ensuring you keep shtum about information that would seem to be very important to your argument. No, I’m sorry, but if you want people to agree with the censorship you want in place you’re going to have to do better than that.
But aren’t you here saying that you’d prefer people to post otherwise than as they have? What’s the difference between your post here and the posts you quote wanting you (I presume they were in response to you?) to change how you post?
Depends on the company. I know of one company which gets into trouble all the time about their work for the government - their business ethics online class has examples about how their competitors screwed up. I know about another company who got into trouble because of some person doing something unauthorized - they used that example in their class. (Can’t say more until I retire.)
Some men will benefit from having their faces rubbed in their incorrect perceptions. That will never happen in an on-line course. But your cynicism is mostly justified.
[QUOTE=AHunter3]
Along with the Trigger Warning has come the accusation of attempting to be the Tone Police: that any complaint that someone else in the group accusing one of racist / sexist / otherwise-privileged behavior has, itself, taken on offensive characteristics by the nasty way in which it is being expressed, is a dismissable complaint. Because it dares to complain about the tone in which somone spoke out against their oppression.
e.g, Why Tone Policing is Bullshit
[/quote]
I’ve gotta say that blog post you linked to is a masterpiece of sheer stupidity even by internet standards. Thanks for sharing it.
Are we sure that Jezebel isn’t actually a parody? Is it really possible for anyone to be that crazy?
There are plenty of things that are dangerous to the users and those are mostly tolerated but things that are dangerous to the innocent bystanders are in danger of being banned. Peanuts are banned from many schools not because of the harm to the peanut butter eaters but to the innocent bystander who may be allergic. (Cite) Likewise smoking is banned in many places not because of the harm to the smoker but to those who are around the smoker. (Cite) Lots of people didn’t like smoking before but it was not banned in public places until harm to others was alleged.
Claiming that free speech causes harm to innocent bystanders is the first step toward censorship. That is the goal of those who want trigger warning everywhere. They have tried to ban a statue (cite), succeeded in cancelling an abortion debate (cite), tried to cancel another debate (cite), had a student kicked out of a class (cite), tried to ban flags from a campus (cite), and tried to make trigger warnings mandatory for syllabi (cite) (cite). There is already an atmosphere of fear on campus (cite) (cite)
(Cite)
For me, at least, the term itself is the main problem.
I can see how a ‘content note’, which someone mentioned upthread, could come in very useful. If you have a personal reason for not wanting to read about cancer, or cat deaths, or something, then it would be nice to know they’re in something before you start reading. If the material is optional, you can just skip it; if it’s compulsory, you know to brace yourself before you dive in.
But ‘trigger warning’ implies to me that the content might, you know, trigger something - something serious. Like a PTSD flashback, or self-harm. ‘Feelings of discomfort or sadness’ are not in that same category. I don’t like the growing tendency to claim that all feelings must be given exactly the same weight, so that ‘That story made me all sad about my cat who died when I was ten :-(’ must be treated with the same seriousness as ‘That story gave me a full-on combat flashback and left me sweating and vomiting and shaking all over’. And I don’t like the way the phrase ‘trigger warning’, when it’s used widely, plays to that claim.
It’s a lot like the ingredients list on food. If I don’t like coconut, it’s nice to know from the ingredients list that it’s in there, so I can buy a different kind of ice cream or whatever, or brace myself to eat it if I’ve got no choice. But to have the carton stamped with ‘ALLERGY WARNING: COCONUT!!!’ for my sake - that would vastly over-weight my dislike of coconut, imply it’s much more important than it is, and trivialise real food allergies in a pretty obnoxious way.
Yes. Very much so. You’ll see “content warnings,” but not “trigger warnings,” except in places where actual PTSD triggers are an issue (like with rape). The rest of the time, they are just jokes.
It’s not like the SDMB is ever on the pulse of these sorts of things. We mostly do post mortems.