Can you quote the section? The page is not working well for me.
Yes, avoidance of the things that trigger you is bad. But the idea that letting people know ahead of time doesn’t square with what I know on the subject. Fears are reinforced when the person does not feel they are in control. This is why all treatments for anxiety push so hard to teach you that feeling anxiety is okay, that you are safe, and why they absolutely need consent. Otherwise, you run the risk of reinforcing the fear.
I mean, I can see a problem if PTSD sufferers consistently avoid content that has warnings, but that’s an issue even if you don’t have warnings. You need to deal with the underlying problem of avoidance.
Does anyone know the timeline of the use of the ‘trigger warnings’ phrase with respect to the more general subjects of trauma and rape?
I know for graphic descriptions of self-harm(cutting) the term was in use since at least 2004, probably earlier. Did it spread from there? My understanding is that folks would want to discuss that behavior, but the same set of people most interested in discussing it in general terms might be semi-involuntarily induced to act things out if they read detailed descriptions.
In that context the trigger warning phrase/‘spoilered’ and collapsed sections seems sensible and useful.
Listening to NPR yesterday, there was a warning, which made me think of RickJay and this thread. The correspondent came on and said (something close to)
“Occasionally we give you notice when the subject we are about to discuss maybe offensive or upsetting. So we warn you now that you may wish to turn your radio down for the next two minutes; that is, if you are one of those people who can not stand to hear the sound of knuckles cracking.”
What followed was a news report about a team who has finally nailed down exactly what causes the sound in knuckle cracking. And the whole thing was punctuated by an almost rythymic background of knuckles going Pop! Pop! Pop!
I tried to listen, because I’ve always been curious about that, but have no idea what they said. I was cringing so hard I couldn’t discern the words. In fact, I’m twitching a bit right now just thinking about it to type this.
I like to think I’m a considerate person. If I know something bothers someone I will take care to avoid bringing it up around that person. I think it’s a bit silly to have any expectation that the rest of us should walk on eggshells to avoid offending someone. As I said in a thread here at SDMB 14 years ago, the world doesn’t revolve around your tragedy. Or mine.
I’m not against warnings, but I will research a movie, book, or show to see if it contains anything I’m uncomfortable with. That’s why I never saw Old Yeller or Breaking Bad. People should be responsible for their own triggers, but other people should be clear in the thread title or throw in a TMI or something.
Even worse than murder, rape, child abuse, and torture is the insistence by writers of serious literature that a character come to terms with something, experience personal growth, or understand themselves better, all things I have managed to avoid doing in my sixty years.
But putting a single warning up-front isn’t walking on eggshells. Avoiding the entire topic would be. This is the opposite of that.
To chaika’s point, I think that warnings of this nature are most appreciated when you would have no reasonable expectation that the work would contain such a thing. Like, works of literature are going to have disturbing themes, and putting a warning up front might well spoil a main plot point of the story. So I can see not putting warnings up on her syllabi. On the other hand, I would not expect a news story to feature, say, a photo of a dead cat with an arrow through its head, so a warning that the story contains a graphic image of a dead animal is very much appreciated.
