Life Is “Triggering.” the Best Literature Should Be, Too
newrepublic.com
newrepublic.com
Wow. That reads like something the Party in 1984 would use to justify its censorship:
"The Ministry of Truth works tirelessly to protect the oppressed from narratives of exclusion and oppression."
Is it really like this in American universities these days? I'm stunned.
Giving such people a way to prepare themselves for these types of events, or recuse themselves if absolutely necessary, shouldn't be considered the same as censorship.
Also there are implications for the professors and the future courses they'd choose to offer in this situation. Maybe we won't have courses on the Greek classics in a few years because the risk vs reward for the people electing to teach those courses.
As for us, folks who are not in an American college for whatever reason (graduated, not in the US, underaged, etc.), judging the American university from sensationalist articles from the media to be a hotbed for either overarching protectionism or flagrant rapey patriarchy is just jumping to conclusions on our part.
Later, in a slightly unrelated event, the university was successfully sued to remove the speech code from the code of conduct: https://www.thefire.org/cases/shippensburg-university-speech...
<strike>IIRC, that particular case was about religion-oriented groups on campus, where a Christian organization that didn't allow Muslim members was banned, even though there was also a Muslim organization that didn't allow Christians that was allowed to remain. I didn't particulary care for the idea that any group should be allowed to ban anyone from membership or attendance for any reason--I would have preferred to see all orgs made to accept all students--but the same speech code was at the heart of blocking the pro-war protests, so it seemed like a net good.</strike>
EDIT: sorry, it was about the "free-speech zones" the university had created for anyone not related to the anti-war protests. The particular area they chose was specifically out of site from the areas the anti-war rallies were held.
First, most universities are NOT censoring content or attaching warnings to texts. Period. This is obvious from the article.
Second, there's a difference between warnings and censorship. A few student groups are asking for warnings -- mostly about graphic accounts of rape in texts assigned in required courses -- not changes to the curriculum. Again, this is obvious and explicit in the article. And student groups can ask for whatever they want.
So, no. Even taking this article on face value, "this" (whatever this is) is not how "American universities "really are these days". And it's not even what student activists are asking for, by and large.
PS: Even if it were "this way", it's unclear to me what political movement such non-censorship is supporting. It's basically young rape victims asking to be warned when a lecture/reading is going to contain descriptions of rape. I'm not saying it's a good policy option, but excuse me if I roll my eyes when you compare it to a powerful tool of political oppression. Even the author of this opinion piece doesn't go that far. He basically just says "yeah there are jerks out there who are gonna make rape jokes, so you better grow a thick skin."
Is that really a reasonable request in a literature class? Does the same apply to any traumatic event and any field of study -- for example, if a medical student was robbed at knifepoint, should he be given advance warning about seeing blood or cut skin...?
The quoted passage specifically mentions "people of color or students from a low-income background" in addition to survivors. How is that meant to be interpreted? What kind of writing do poor students need to be protected against?
The first question you ask is already covered well in other discussion threads.
The second question I don't have an answer to. But that's the problem with trying to have productive conversations about a broad statement from a student group instead of discussing current and proposed concrete policies/policy proposals. In general, unless there's a concrete policy proposal on the table, we should tend to assume the best of people and avoid conjuring up Orwellian nightmares out of vague statements.
The article mangles two concepts:
1) Trigger Warnings
2) Safe Spaces
Both of these are being misused in some universities. Providing a warning to vulnerable people so that they can keep themself safe is fair enough. But some people point to the safe space policy and suggest that the trigger warning is not sufficient and that the material should not be taught.
> Is it really like this in American universities these days? I'm stunned.
Please remain stunned. Yes, there are actually teachers out there who care about how their students/audiences feel and experience as a result of choices made in the syllabus.
Please remain stunned for confusing, intentionally, a trigger warning with book burning.
That's the level of concern that our society places on potentially ruining the ending of a TV show. For some reason when we apply the same principle to being respectful to people who don't want to relive a trauma they themselves lived, it's ridiculous.
Part of the ridiculousness is that although it's relatively easy to know when you would be spoiling a show, anything can be a trigger. So it isn't even possible to supply a meaningfully comprehensive "trigger warning".
Except that we know the most common triggers are depictions of rape; depictions of child abuse; and depictions of war.
Your argument has the same flaws as the argument that we should give up on trying to understand the programs we write because "Rice's theorem".
Please note: This is a work in progress. If there are any triggers you feel are missing, please feel free to drop us an ask.
Swearing
Rape
Abuse (physical, mental, emotional, verbal, sexual)
Child abuse/pedophilia
Self-injurious behavior (self-harm, eating disorders, etc.)
Talk of drug use (legal, illegal or psychiatric)
Suicide
Descriptions/pictures of medical procedures (even if they don’t contain blood or gore)
Descriptions/pictures of violence or warfare (including instruments of violence, such as knives or guns)
Corpses, skulls or skeletons
Needles
Discussions of -isms, shaming, or hatred of any kind (racism, classism, hatred of cultures/ethnicities that differ from your own, sexism, hatred of sexualities or genders that differ from your own, anti-multiple, non-vanilla shaming, sex positive shaming, fat shaming/body image shaming, neuroatypical shaming)
Any time slurs are used (this includes words like “stupid” or “dumb”, which are still widely considered to be socially acceptable)
Trans* degendering, or anti-trans* views of bodies
Dismissal of lived oppressions, marginalization, illness or differences
Kidnapping (forceful deprivation of/disregard for personal autonomy)
Discussions of sex (even consensual)
Death or dying
Spiders
Insects
Snakes
Vomit
Pregnancy/childbirth
Blood
Serious injury
Trypophobia (Link is safe.)
Scarification
Nazi paraphernalia
Slimy things
Anything that might inspire intrusive thoughts in people with OCD
The more you need to warn against the less useful the warning becomes. Eventually you either have a massive list like a drug side-effect label that nobody reads or you have an extremely generic warning like the one above.
This post may contain swearing (depending on your choice of swear words) or inspire intrusive thoughts in people with OCD. Belgium.
Triggers are an excuse to avoid hearing, thinking or discussing uncomfortable ideas. Spoiler warnings are for people who want to savor the experience on their own time. Two preemptive warnings to bail out of a conversation, but for almost opposite reasons.
In this post Enlightenment era, the sharing and discussion of ideas is sacrosanct. Giving someone an Out rubs people the wrong way by violating such a fundamental principle. Discomfort is not an excuse.
So it's exactly the frivolity of TV that made society embrace the spoiler warning. But not without some "this is really stupid" consternation. Given some "everything else being equal" reasoning, and the fact anyone taking the warning will watch the show and be ready to talk about later, spoiler warnings became a thing.
It's very difficult to determine what trigger warnings should be used in a general case. Should pictures of dogs (especially German shepherds) carry a trigger warning because dogs are often used as attack animals by police and militaries, and can cause traumatic experiences in someone attacked by them? What about birds? I have an acquaintance who is deathly afraid of birds. How about warnings for people with ideophobia (the fear of ideas)? Or all the other things on http://phobialist.com/ or any other such list. Who decides what list of triggers is legitimate?
>> I am sorry about the student who couldn’t abide the mention of sexual assault, but she should be getting help for her triggering from a therapist, not from a professor.
Shouldn't the students with a trauma be going through therapy to overcome that trauma? I don't mean shoving depictions of rape onto them, unanounced, but "trigger warnings" are just ways to go around the real problem: That person hasn't overcome his trauma, and he is struggling with it in it's daily life.
That said, I'm not quite sure what the trigger warnings are supposed to accomplish. That is, I see the problem trigger warnings are trying to address – but I don't see how those warnings themselves accomplish much. Though they could just be the preferred strawman when arguing against a whole category of sensitivity advocacy.
I can't see how calling a content warning (not a bad thing) a "trigger warning" is helpful.
The nocebo effect is real. If an authority figure is implying that something is likely to be triggering, couldn't it cause people to be more likely to consider such material to be triggering? And repeated exposure to this might cause a serious condition to develop?
Let's not forget, there's virtually no research (at all) into "trigger warnings" by actual psychologists. And the research that does exist is pretty mixed (even leaning against using them).
I assumed that these "warnings" were to alert a reader who may be "triggered" to stop reading, lest they encounter their "trigger".
Is there some other intention?
Very few people need that level of support, but since all that's being asked for is a simple (for example) "Watch out, this contains graphic scenes of attempted suicide" it's a reasonable request.
The argument comes from two things:
1) People are policing content and preventing interesting content from being taught. Thus, anything with a trigger warning is seen as being not suitable for this campus and you're a monster for suggesting it should be taught here. That's obviously sub-optimal.
2) Avoiding something that causes you mental distress may not be the best way of overcoming that distress. I'm not recommending people just plough through distressing material (because that's unlikely to help them either) but having a warning and a bit of time to tackle the content in safe way is probably useful.
Safe from what? What is the fear here? There is feeling uncomfortable, there is trauma from being reminded of past events, I get all of that. But not feeling safe means you feel there is an imminent, present danger. What is that imminent danger?
The only thing that comes to mind is some fear that the classroom, now having read the scenes of rape and sexual assault together, would turn into a rape gang. I can't, for the life of me, imagine a scenario where the student would rationally feel unsafe in the classroom.
From unintentionally re-living a traumatic experience (a rape). PTSD is real and often effects rape victims. Warnings can help victims mentally prepare themselves before difficult discussions. E.g. some soldiers with PTSD can sometimes uncomfortably sit through fireworks displays, but will have a panic attack if a firework goes of unexpectedly.
> ...would turn into a rape gang. I can't, for the life of me, imagine a scenario where the student would rationally feel unsafe in the classroom.
Asking why someone with PTSD can't just not feel unsafe is like asking why someone with autism can't just act normal.
But if there is no real danger, in the physical world, that defines it as an irrational fear, a phobia. Are we going to put trigger warnings on anything involving dogs, water, heights, spiders, narrow spaces, open spaces, or clowns? Which phobias are the suffer's responsibility and which are societies?
We might, and should, choose to be considerate. But it should be in the realm of social norms and manners, not codified regulation and law.
Once we add a trigger warning, where do we go from there? It is one thing if the expectation is for the student to use the warning as an opportunity to brace themselves for the challenge and, if necessary, seek help in dealing with the material.
However, I think the fear of many who are skeptical of the warnings is that they would result in students being excused entirely from having to deal with any material that might trigger them. Over time this would actually diminish students' ability to deal with challenging material, which is the opposite of what students should be learning.
This already happens in lower-stakes contexts. For example, a friend of mine is a religious studies professor: he has religious students ask to be excused from learning about secular approaches, like the biblical documentary hypothesis, on the basis that it challenges their beliefs. His response, as it should be, is that being able to understand and apply something they don't believe in or even vehemently disagree with is part of what you are supposed to be learning.
Rape, Violence, or War are related to traumatic experiences. You might not find it so controversial if it they were visceral descriptions of Arachnophobia, Acrophobia or fear of drowning.
Religion or Politics, on the other hand, are related to controversial ideas.
Discussing controversial ideas should never be shielded: at best it leads to enlightenment and new points of view and opinions; at worse it is a waste of time (perhaps because some ideas are poorly fundamented). So for example, the visceral passages in those books might have been safely replaced by an explanation of the results (for the students who find it traumatic only) without much loss. Of course, ideally one would separate himself from the situation and not be affected, instead focusing on understanding objectively the social and historical context for the book, or maybe the prose, and so on; but it's completely understandable some may find those experiences too traumatic.
Quoting from the article: "However, the student said her professor focused on the beauty of the language and the splendor of the imagery when lecturing on the text. As a result, the student completely disengaged from the class discussion as a means of self-preservation. She did not feel safe in the class."
For this student, it seems like they aren't able to disengage from the triggering sections or treat the discussion as an academic exercise. Even with the replacement of visceral passages (an accommodation I think is quite reasonable for those students who need it), it seems like this student would still not be able to see anything but the rape.
This is certainly understandable, but being able to break something and examine it with different lenses is a key part of studying texts and an important life skill.
I found the arguments quite compelling that "liberal censorship" was largely a figment of imagination. (In large part because the people who are supposedly censoring have no coercive power and are themselves engaging in a argument they have a right to make.)
The audience did not agree with me, so obviously it wasn't a slam dunk.
You can't acknowledge that a course should have a warning about sexual assault themes and then say anyone affected needs therapy. If you have to give a warning, you are implicitly stating you agree that some people may be harmed. And the potential for real harm - not to mention the more basic problem of not being able to complete the course work - should be dealt with appropriately, not dismissed as unnecessary or stifling.
There is a balance that can be struck between caring about people and not baby-proofing the world. But to say people should just suck it up when they're hurt and take it as a character-building exercise is just an attempt to ignore the person's pain.
The best literature doesn't need triggering shock tactics. Certainly they can be a useful tool, but it's the writing that makes it useful, not the subject matter.
Finally, consider what actually happens to a person when they get triggered. Quick shallow breathing, the heart races, pupils dilate, adrenaline spikes, and a feeling of imminent death freezes you in place until your brain can cope with what's going on. Until you've experienced this for yourself, you should really reconsider your opinions about how you'd like to be treated in such situations, or whether you should be given a warning. You may not be able to fully comprehend the gravity of how this can affect an individual's life.
Here is a comment from an earlier discussion with cites to a couple of article covering the harmful to victims aspects of trigger warnings: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8801995
1. Weak people needing warnings of things they feel 'trigger' them.
Triggers exist. They are an artifact of PTSD, and are a very real phenomenon. However, just like "gluten sensitivity" and newer fads, 'trigger warnings' are the artifacts from new-age feminists and SJW (social justice warrior) types. They have no basis in medical fact, nor are many of them being actively treated for PTSD. It just happens to be the current cudgel one can smack others against the head to do their bidding.
2. Professor who dismisses said "feels".
Professors, and schools, are expected to be bastions of safety and security when exploring oneself. Or at least, that's the current understanding of one of the aspects of a university. Anyone who goes against that idea, including telling weak people they are wrong, is "evil". And the worst one can do is dismiss someone's "feels", mainly towards women, and some men.
The 'Other' way to read this is :
Patriarchy Professor tells PTSD feminist sufferer that Your Rape is Invalid
One must understand the other side, the view from the new wave feminists (16-30). It's an ugly, bleak, mild world similar to that of the fainting women of Victorian times. And it's one I have no respect for.
3. Degree that requires class that may or not pertain to said curriculum.
This view will be fought here at HN. This challenge is the fight over curriculum and what University degree is for. Is it for the well-roundedness of your education, or is it to be employable in a field that makes you more money?
If it is to be a better citizen, then absolutely the Classics should be included in every education. It is the foundation of the ancient Greeks and Romans that our society is based upon. Where our Senate came from is directly from the Roman Senate.
But, what if you attended college to obtain a better job and easier life? Then surely, Classics mean little. They do nothing to further your goals, nor do they put direct skills in your pocket for the next position you take. They might have auxiliary skills taught via Socratic dialectic, but most of these classes are for naught.
With a final nail in its coffin, school costs raising much higher than inflation, one must be money conscious. Those costs translate into less classes in your chosen major, and more time in school. And that leads to lost opportunity and extra uncancellable debt.
4. University for harboring political correctness to the extremes.
With the plight of the universities and un- and underreported rapes and assaults, they are showing to be astute to the ills of college life. With this, universities are convening kangaroo courts to find "guilty" all sorts of college crimes, like rape, even when there is no founding. This whole atmosphere feeds upon itself even more with higher and higher political correctness. And this is where the professor, even though believes he is justified in ignoring such 'trigger claims', may still be punished by loss of tenure or not given grants.
Does the Uni require a modicum of protection for its students, staff, and faculty? Of course! But one does not need to shield 'weak minds' from the hardness of life, and harsh words and powerful critiques. Instead, the idea of shielding assault has migrated downward to 'he said a bad word', ala kindergarten.
But what's with this classification of "weak" people?
"Anyone who goes against that idea, including telling weak people they are wrong, is "evil"."
"But one does not need to shield 'weak minds' from the hardness of life,"
Is this a paraphrase from the story, or are you actually claiming PTSD-afflicted people are 'weak', and that weak people should be ignored? Did I miss something?
The feminists and some liberals who use "trigger warning" do not have PTSD, or are not working with professionals to assist with psychological disorders that have triggers (like PTSD).
Instead, they have latched on this language from a legitimate disorder and are coopting it for making their world tame and easy. This is what I am calling weak: people who want the world around them to bring the hardness to that of a kindergartner.
Life is not all happiness and candy. Life also has hardships, disagreements and harsh criticism, and death. And these "kids" are demanding to be treated like children.
"Your argument is triggering me, so shut the fuck up with your criticism."
"Clapping is triggering me, so everyone do jazz hands."
"Ancient Greek works trigger me, so I can't participate in class."
I had one person tell me "You can't call me a bitch! That's a violation of my consent, and is triggering." Which, it's not, and, it's not. As uncouth and sexist as it may be, the use of the word is so widespread (and has so many uses in our modern American culture) that it can't be legitimately claimed that this word will cause an anxiety attack. And I certainly don't need (or care for) someone's consent when I am intentionally trying to insult them. There's lots of other examples of these phrases being misused or misunderstood, of course.
But these aren't the people we should be concerned with, or even talking about. The people we should be talking about are the few but very real people who really do suffer attacks and re-live traumas when certain subjects unexpectedly come up in daily life.
Do you have the money for them to get therapy? I don't know if you realize this, but trauma therapy is usually not free, nor widely available in every community. There are some not-for-profits that provide free counseling to specific groups, but they don't exist everywhere, and not everyone qualifies. It's a bit like homeless shelters: they're there to help, but they sure as hell don't "fix" people from being homeless.
And more importantly, therapy does not cure PTSD. You can't just go to a doctor, talk about your feelings and suddenly you're trauma-free. Regardless of any therapy taking place, there is still a potential for harm, and so we still need to actually care about not harming people whenever it is reasonable to do so. Sometimes it will be reasonable, and other times not. I think it's important to recognize we need to have a multi-colored approach to issues that negatively affect people's lives, rather than a black & white approach.
My wife has a trigger. I'm one of 2 who know about it. She was beaten by an old boyfriend years ago with a certain type of belt.
I found out about this because I was taking off the belt from my pants, and she suddenly got quiet and started to shake. Then I realized that she couldn't speak. She would do things, like "Go over there" and likewise. She was expecting me to hit her with the belt, and was nigh catatonic from it.
She was also "raped", when she was with a guy who I am friends with (before I was dating her). He didn't know about that belt thing. He takes his pants off, and she's triggered. She didn't want to have sex with him, but did so because of the belt. Was this rape, considering she took off her clothes and made herself compliant? Well, not really. But it wasn't consensual.
That's what I'm used to when they say they are triggered.
My hope is that the more these stories are told, the more they will be investigated as serious topics to consider for their potential to negatively affect people's lives. We don't have a good system to deal with them now, but hopefully someday soon we can.
Warnings are the same as censorship! Students should do exactly as I tell them to do, and have no right to ask me for any accommodations at all, no matter how trivially easy it is for me to include them.
Censorship! First Amendment rights! Big Brother!
/s
The author of the article seems to willfully miss the point. He pats himself on the back for reading Mein Kampf. What do you think would happen if a professor assigned Mein Kampf and then didn't talk about anti-Semitism? Would the author be telling the students to keep quiet?
The student in the example read the material. Despite being "triggered", the student came to class to discuss the material. She's probably thinking, "that was tough to get through; I hope we have a good discussion of the issues in the text." She gets to class and the professor spends most of the time talking about style rather than substance and then brushes her off after class. I'd be frustrated, too.
Silly me. Here I'd thought the best literature was for lifting us up out of the daily small traumas and dirt of our daily lives to show us something larger, finer, and more beautiful.
Silly me.
"Good" literature is obviously a matter of taste, ie: rather than a matter of what internet commenters or the New Republic like to say.