I don't understand people who get pissy over trigger warnings.

Princess Alice

Are there really people who have never said to a friend "hey, you might want to skip this scene" when they know something uncomfortable is coming up?

Because god damn, that's literally all it is.

Imipolex G

on the contrary, when something uncomfortable is coming up I want to see everyone's reaction to it.

"OMIGOD WHY"

lee4hmz

From what I can tell, the people that go on about this either misunderstand the purpose and conflate them with things like the Hays Code or the Comics Code, or they don't care because they're assholes "equal opportunitity offenders" and simply want to be hostile.

Salix Babylonika

what Lee said

Sredni Vashtar

Exactly.

There's also something to be said for how certain people word and use them, which can be ill-considered.

criminalscum

They see trigger warning use as a sneaky alternative to censorship, a way of making sure certain opinions and works are less likely to be heard.

Or at least that's my guess. Maybe we should find someone who actually is mad about trigger warnings.

Crystal

In my experience it's that trigger warnings are "unimportant," or in school, "not academic/worthless," with a heavy implicit of not stated outright "get the hell over it, you're going to see X in college."

Salix Babylonika

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Odradek

Mein Kampf and the Diary of Anne Frank. The Turner Diaries and The Invisible Man. The Bell Curve and City of Quartz. A pile of compost and a garden salad. I don't recognize the difference between any of these things. Some times folks will come up to me, and they say, "hey, hey, man, why are you chewing on a tire?" And I say, "as a person with teeth, I deliberately seek out things that are difficult to chew, like this old tire or bubblegum. Life is hard to swallow, things I put in my mouth should also be." As a completely insane person, I am disturbed by people with food allergies who are also not completely insane. There are going to be peanuts in the world, so you'd better be cramming peanuts into your mouth 24/7. And don't even think about shelling those nuts. Discretion is for liberal weenies and people with a functioning survival instinct.

Salix Babylonika

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Salix Babylonika

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Klinotaxis

People are doing that?

Odradek

https://newrepublic.com/article/121790/life-triggering-best-literature-should-be-too?utm_content=bufferea464&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Crystal

I am not quite sure what you mean? I don't see that in my post, or Odra's, lee's, Vash's... And it's not like anyone here, least to me anyway, is really trying to "win" anything so much as sharing experiences.

Salix Babylonika

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Klinotaxis

and i mean inkblot is just, like, trying to understand how someone opposed to trigger warnings sees them, not espousing that position. i have to agree, i mean, in the u chicago letter they're obviously not talking about trigger warnings as i understand them.

Crystal

Ah, my bad. Hope you feel better soon.

Salix Babylonika

I am really really tired so I am maybe interpresting something wrong and tbh I should not be posting at all right now probably

eriophora zia

I think there's some teeth to the idea that, especially in college, people shouldn't necessarily have too much opportunity to avoid uncomfortable subjects. I think the biggest worry is that classes will fully get rid of triggering content in an effort to pander - which I think is relatively unlikely, but is a fear that I understand. 

I think it's mostly rooted in misunderstanding, though. The main thing you'd want trigger warnings are for, say, a rape victim who might (understandably!) not want to take a class that goes into detail on rape... It's not a trigger warning for "this class discusses liberal economics BEWARE!!!!" or "BLACK PEOPLE ISSUES OMG!!!!!!!"

Trigger warnings are for people who have undergone seriously traumatic experiences and may need to know what the class will be talking about ahead of time to mentally and emotionally prepare themselves or to decide they aren't capable of taking that class without having a legitimate panic attack.