I finished reading Bad Feminist, a collection of essays by Roxane Gay, and while I mostly supported a fair share of her arguments, I disagreed strongly with the argument she made in “The Illusion of Safety/The Safety of Illusion.” In this essay, she argues against the use of trigger warnings, and does so in a way that leaves me with the belief she is unaware of the history of trigger warnings and the reasons people rely on them.
Trigger warnings are a concept extremely dear to me, and to read an essay arguing against their use in such an undeveloped manner leaves me with a burning desire to defend them. Thus, this post is a defense of trigger warnings and their use, and hopefully a thought-provoking read for those who only know of trigger warnings as the shields of sensitive liberal snowflakes.
Warning:
Potential exposure to doctrine challenging your firmly-held notions ahead
What you just read is not a trigger warning. Yes, it is a cautionary disclaimer that the forthcoming information may conflict with your deeply held ideals. But this affront to personal beliefs is not the same as a triggering of traumatic memories that flood your brain and drown everything else from your consciousness.
In the strictest sense, trigger warnings are advisory disclaimers prefacing material that might provoke extremely painful and/or emotionally distressing memories. This does not mean a warning that lets readers know a certain political group will be disparaged in the following section and they might take offense if they identify as that group. This means a warning before a graphically detailed description of the front line of a war zone, where the horrific descriptions can evoke traumatizing memories in veterans who personally lived through that carnage.
Triggers and PTSD
The concept of triggers, or material that can provoke the recall of traumatic experiences, formed in the 1960s, with the rise of the anti-Vietnam protests. It is then people started earnestly studying what would become known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), or a mental health condition whereby a person experiences uncontrollable flashbacks, nightmares and severe anxiety over traumatic incident(s) they had in the past.
Negative effects of war had been noted since the 1800s (e.g., Napoleonic War doctors described a vent du boulet syndrome, where subjects were frightened by a cannonball’s wind of passage) but the military was extremely reticent to fully acknowledge the scope of the psychological trauma until anti-war proponents organized and reported their own evaluations. The term PTSD first appeared in the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III) published in 1980, and in 2005, the DSM-5 expanded the definition to include the response to the trauma of “sexual assault … [and] recurring exposure that could apply to police officers or first responders.” Top right: DSM-III, the first edition where the term PTSD appeared Bottom right: DSM-5, where the term PTSD was expanded to include sexual assault |
The beginning of trigger warnings
Various versions of the term ‘trigger warning’ began appearing on feminist message boards in the late 1990s (for those who don’t know, message boards are a website, or a section of a website, that is used for public discussion of a specific topic and on which users can submit or read messages). Andi Zeisler, the co-founder and editorial/creative director of the feminist publication Bitch magazine, said she often saw the phrase appear on a Ms. Magazine's community forum:
The politicization of 'trigger warnings'
The volatile discussion of trigger warnings gained traction in 2014 when a number of students and faculty members at several American universities debated whether this online technique of alerting readers to potentially distressing material should be used in college courses as well. As with many topics that enrapture mainstream media, the concept of trigger warnings (and its sibling, safe spaces) became a battleground marked by political lines, with many conservatives categorizing these concepts as the lexicon of liberal special snowflakes who are too coddled to handle the difficulties of the everyday world. With the way the term has been diluted, the conservatives are right; ‘trigger warning’ is essentially a sticker to signal the author as ‘politically correct’ in today’s world. However, that is in the bastardized sense of the term. True ‘trigger warnings’ rarely use the term ‘trigger warning,’ and instead have short one-liners that begin with ‘warning’ or ‘caution’ in bold at the start of the article. Trigger warnings, in the original sense, are not meant to build walls that keep offensive information out; trigger warnings are meant to provide help in handling emotionally distressing material.
Left: Examples of incorrectly-used trigger warnings (notice they give no information on what the reader should prepare for) | Right: Example of a trigger warning used properly (notice the bold 'Warning' is followed by a brief description) |
This brings us to Gay. In her essay, Gay explains that trigger warnings give readers a choice: “steel yourself and continue reading, or protect yourself and look away.” This is an accurate statement of how people might engage with the warning. Unfortunately, Gay proceeds to ignore the first half of that statement for the rest of the essay and instead focuses solely on the second half.
Gay approaches trigger warnings from the perspective of the conservative definition, that trigger warnings are desired by people with “the need to be protected from” material that is offensive, painful, and/or emotionally distressing to them. She makes trigger warnings sound like a wall that keeps all the traumatic material out, a knight sent to protect a lady from the ogres readying to attack. Gay shows great ire toward those who include trigger warnings in their writing, claiming “writers cannot protect their readers from themselves” and trying to do so only helps “people to avoid learning how to deal with triggers.” Her greatest disdain for trigger warnings emerges though when she speaks of her “truth”:
The larger part I object to, though, is Gay’s focus on ‘protection’ as the reason people desire trigger warnings and neglecting the entire point of “steel yourself and continue reading.” As Gay mentioned in the opening of her essay, dealing with PTSD gets better over the years until, with the presentation of an unexpected trigger, a strong, visceral reaction makes you realize it hasn’t. Professional resources, like therapy, can help people learn to deal with and respond to their triggers.
But there is no absolute cure.
When you have PTSD, it is something you will live with the rest of your life. But by engaging constructively with your triggers in carefully introduced situations that aren’t unexpectedly thrust upon you, it allows you to begin developing ways to cope with them. And that is what trigger warnings are all about.
Trigger warnings aren’t walls or knights meant to protect you from your memories; trigger warnings are access ramps that allow you to approach the terrifying rollercoaster of emotions before getting on the ride. At any time you are free to turn away from the experience you can clearly see waiting in front of you, but if you are willing to take the risk, you can board that coaster and see how you handle it. The first time you approach, you might need to turn away, and the first time you ride, you might vomit all over the floor. But having that access ramp to lead you knowingly into the experience makes it exponentially easier to engage than if you were simply dropped unaware into the ride.
I agree trigger warnings should not be plastered on everything that could possibly be considered offensive. Everything can be offensive to someone. But providing a small note to a reader in front of material that includes an incident that has been shown through research to have high likelihoods of causing PTSD (e.g., battlefield front line experiences, rape) is only courteous to people with PTSD trying to overcome their memories.
English feminist columnist Laurie Penny succinctly expresses this:
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On a last note, for those who argue the title of an article should be enough warning, this can’t always be the case. An article titled “Police Apprehend Rapist” could be about the actual apprehension, or it could include a detailed description of the assault that occurred. While an article’s title can give an initial acknowledgement of the subject matter that will be discussed, a one-line trigger warning letting the reader know just how detailed the article intends to go is necessary for people with PTSD.