Sorry if my tags are bad. It's what I could come up with.
How do you feel about Trigger Warnings, Hubski? I'm of the opinion - not. As in, let's not do this whole trigger warning thing. But I am open to both sides of the discussion. I suspect there may be people on Hubski who are more articulate and experienced on this subject than I.
If people want to use them, go ahead. There isn't going to be any kind of policy on my part.
In my personal opinion, they are terrible. I suppose one of the most traumatic moments of my life was my father breaking his neck in front of me when I was 14. Probably worse than him dying next to me 20 years later. But fuck anyone that thinks that a trigger warning for 'physical trauma' or 'bodily harm' or whatever else is going to meaningfully relate to my experience, or the interaction that I have with the content they labeled. Seeing something like that hurt like hell, scarred me deeply, and I would have it no other way. No one has experienced that particular trauma as I have, even someone else that experienced a very similar event; they don't share the context, so they don't have a clue as to how it might affect me, and why and when. To assume so is to grant a mantel of self-import that has no basis. That which causes pain may not be beautiful, but the growth and healing that occurs after it can be. IMO every trigger warning is applied in ignorance.
But yeah, people can feel free to use them. :)
Wow I'm pretty shocked by the comments in this thread. I always like to think of hubski as a very feminist space, but nearly everything in this wasteland below is pure aggression.
Trigger warnings have always elicited rage for some reason on the internet. I understand people not wanting to use them, but I also don't understand people's absolute refusal to allow other people to use them to their own liking. Obviously something is going to trigger someone for reasons you can't predict, but these complaints always seem to come from people that are outside disadvantaged groups. If someone's going to talk about rape or domestic violence, and you were recently a victim of such, there's a chance you may not want to hear about it at that time. Why is it so bad that the presenter may want to put that information forward prior to the audience taking the information in?
Regardless, that's the lesser issue I'm having right now with this thread. When there are comments bashing serious, academic, sociological terms like rape culture, patriarchy, and privilege, it shows a lack of education at best or a sign of willful ignorance at worst. Equating terms of long standing institutional oppression with 'whiny internet kids' is dishonest. It's like equating economic class warfare to 'thug entitled kids'. It's plays into the concepts at hand and contributes to attempting to silence the people who need a voice the most.
- Wow I'm pretty shocked by the comments in this thread. I always like to think of hubski as a very feminist space, but nearly everything in this wasteland below is pure aggression.
Is there anything particularly anti-feminist on here? If anything there is an anti-censorship bent, if you view trigger warnings as a form of censorship (which I do). Lots of things are offensive to lots of people, but merely discussing any given topic shouldn't come with a warning (excepting a NSFW warning). I think we're reading the comments here with a different interpretation.
I'm reading people bashing rape culture terms. I'm reading people asking for changes in institutions being mocked as whiny. I'm reading people bashing an idea that doesn't censor anything. No content is being changed, it's simply telling you what the content is.
People like you or I have no real need for trigger warning because we don't have deeply traumatic experiences intrinsically tied to systems that are embedded in our culture. Many times people may be linking to text from, for example, a rapist, describing why or how he rapes. Many people have anxiety disorders from their own rapes. I know many people like this. Trigger warnings are simply for the peace of mind of the reader, not for people who "can't handle seeing realities of the world" (an argument I see often, thankfully not parroted here), but for people who legitimately have mental struggles they're coping with such as anxiety, depression, anorexia, bulimia, where reading certain things have a very real chance of triggering them.
All fair points. The internet being the cesspool it is, I think it's sometimes hard to distinguish between legit concerns and hyper sensitivity. I don't think anyone on here was mocking victims, but rather mocking the name calling that disagreements often spiral into.
Edit: But let's keep in mind also that being insensitive (especially inadvertently) isn't anti-feminist. I try to be very in tune with equality, but I've been insensitive many times, often by mistake or ignorance.
What I personally find somewhat disconcerting about your comments thus far, is that you claim to be taking issue, while not directly addressing people and opting instead to speak in generalities, which is a big part of the issue in question.
If you are referring to comments that I made and the exchange I had with b_b, then I'd have to agree with what he said in reply to the comment I'm responding to.
However, from a social-psychological standpoint, my problem with this kind of language is that it avoids conflict and thus avoids deepening an understanding of the issue and while it seeks to protect, may actually shelter and promote the hypersensitivity b_b mentions.
- Trigger warnings are simply for the peace of mind of the reader, not for people who "can't handle seeing realities of the world" (an argument I see often, thankfully not parroted here), but for people who legitimately have mental struggles they're coping with such as anxiety, depression, anorexia, bulimia, where reading certain things have a very real chance of triggering them.
Do they actually function in that way though? I can imagine that identifying particular articles as having trigger warnings might actually work in the opposite way. For example, tell someone not to look at something-- they'll often look at it. Furthermore, why don't I see articles with trigger warnings for veterans? PTSD can be triggered by a variety of things, not just stuff in articles. If trigger warnings are as effective in print as you seem to be suggesting, then surely labeling other things with trigger warnings is therefore pragmatic, no?
But how would this operate? Would we then have to painstakingly discover all of the potential triggers for anyone who ever suffered from mental difficulties related to trauma? How would we label the sound of a rumbling truck, a particular smell or a feeling?
I speak in generalities because this is endemic of social issues and debates far beyond the realm of just this particular thread. I do not name names because while they have relevance to this particular conversation, the things you state are platitudes that are all over the internet and political conversations.
I reject the notion that simply having respect for people's mental well-being breeds hypersensitivity. It reeks of the American's right's shaky platform of "bootstraps" and comes precariously close to MRAs crying out that people are hypersensitive each time their sexist language gets called out (not the case here, to clarify). It's not hypersensitive when, as a gender, or a race, or a generally disadvantaged group--in this case people coping with illness--ask for a simple thing that can improve their lives, help them get well more easily, and has a net neutral impact on the presenter.
Yes. It does work that way. Quite often. I know a great many people that have them work that way and, as they are functioning, real human beings, they make the personal choice to read or not read, and having in mind what they may see does help them.
I have also seen TW's for PTSD. I know veterans personally who have sought help for their PTSD and in the process they brought up their finding of trigger warnings and, while it would not be helpful for him, it would be for some of his friends (he mostly had sleep triggers, while friends of his couldn't watch war movies).
Of course you can't find every trigger. That's not the intention, but we as people do our best to help make life easier for people. This is an especially simple thing to do that can be greatly helpful to people, yet people oppose anyway. I'm sure I can pull parallels to a great number of historical cases of that because it's just human nature.
- I speak in generalities because this is endemic of social issues and debates far beyond the realm of just this particular thread. I do not name names because while they have relevance to this particular conversation, the things you state are platitudes that are all over the internet and political conversations.
I do not think that "platitudes" is the word you're looking for. I do think that this has been an opportunity for you personally to shed light on an issue you find to be important by giving people something concrete to latch on to, for example texts that you've found to be particularly enlightening.
Go ahead and generalize, but I don't think that waving a moralistic stick will help people to understand your point of view. People can only work with what they've experienced themselves, so while your anecdotal examples might well be true, I (and other readers of this thread) can't access those experiences to see why you've responded to this thread in this way.
The term "rape culture" can't be seen as something that's not inflammatory, nor something that is not implicitly accusatory. There's more than one side to this thing and right now I don't get the sense that you're acknowledging that.
Internet fueled social justice gets trivialized because it's often taken too far, too fast. I'm all for equality, representation and empathy, but whenever I see the term "rape culture" or the word "privilege" used on the internet, I immediately think that whatever is going to be talked about will be done so in the whiniest, dumbest way possible. I'll admit that that is unfair, but that bias didn't come out of nothing.
I've used both the terms "rape culture" and "privilege" before, hopefully in a responsible context, because I do understand the merit of what they represent. However, the trivialization that comes with their increased usage is a very real thing that I don't think gets taken into account by people who use "social justice language" all the time. If the whole idea is to give some semblance of understanding or a voice to people who feel or are victimized, it can quickly nullify the entire intent if it becomes so ubiquitous and trivial to use such a strong word as rape so often and expect the same weight to be carried.
Yeah, I agree. Sure, I can imagine scenarios where these terms can be useful for thoughtful discussion, but I'd also say that I get the impression that a lot of the social justice stuff I've seen comes from people who are very sheltered, perhaps because they are very young. As annoying as it is now, I can only hope that these examples will be a source of embarrassment for those people for decades to come.
Another problem with this kind of language is its insular and exclusive language, as in, "everyone who doesn't use or acknowledge these terms are therefore part of the problem", which is demonstrably bullshit. I also think that it promotes the idea that people should be vigilant for opportunities to become outraged or offended, which really don't do much to solve anything, though it might make people feel good for doing so.
Thinking about the concept of trigger warnings got me thinking of a related opposite: curse words. Both are attempts to try to co-opt our brains' reflexive spontaneity- rather than deliberation or conscious effort- in absorbing information.
This spontaneity of information processing is why words themselves can be an assault of sorts, because our brains alone, if you think about it, cannot stop the invasive act of communication. Once read or heard, words immediately are interpreted and form into ideas in our heads, whether we wanted to absorb them or not. There is no perfect way of both understanding an offensive concept and filtering it out before it can be absorbed, because it MUST be absorbed and understood before it can be screened. The criteria we are left to rely on to guess whether or not upcoming words will be offensive or not is really only contextual information, which can't completely, perfectly, portend what's coming next.
And because our brains evolve the associations we have with words anyway (semantic change), trigger warnings are in an unending arms race in which they continuously try to maintain their intended purpose and meaning while losing it, like Steven Pinker's euphemism treadmill.
A particular trigger warning will progressively take on more and more of the meaning it was created to prevent in the mind of a person comprehending it on repeated exposures- until a new one is invented, at least.
I'm against them - for several reasons
The first is that it is hard to know what exactly will trigger a memory for people. It seems very.. I can't think of the exact word, but you have to be very arrogant or condescending or something to look at a piece of art and say "Somebody could be traumatised by this! I must make sure they don't see it!". It seems like getting offended on behalf of other people for the purpose of showing how morally superior they are, creating a controversy where there probably wasn't one.
The second is that the term get thrown around so much that it loses it's impact. I think if it was left for the really high-impact stuff, it might be OK. But people will always argue that their particular trigger is important and should be considered just as valid as other people's. When it gets to the level that was in the article, people protesting about a sculpture of a man in underwear, it becomes a joke. Do these same people also protest the big billboards of Dan Carter in his Jockeys?
The third is more of a philosophical reason. Are we really helping people by sheltering them from potentially upsetting situations? Again, I recognise the argument when it is a very high-impact sort of thing. But i think exposure to related situations over time is more beneficial and toughening - it's not like trigger warning are going to be everywhere, so you will still encounter them. A bit of common sense can let you know what not to look at in many cases.