University literature courses containing material that could be triggering for rape and sexual assault survivors

I need to dig the article out, but apparently in the US law faculties are being encouraged to avoid talking about rape in some universities for this reason. Students who may one day practice criminal law or make policy absolutely need to discuss rape. This is very dangerous. It can't be invisibilised to save people's feelings. And I say this as a rape survivor.

I don't think I'd feel the focus should be on survivors needing to cope exactly, more that I think it's dangerous to hide rape & pretend it doesn't happen just to be 'nice' bc hiding rape let's rapists rape more, it hides victims & silences them, it hides how to get help, it hides survivors ensure reality. Anything that's ignorant about rape or glamorises rape needs challenged, but hiding that doesn't challenge anything

Agreed, Wobbly. I also have a literature degree and am a survivor of child abuse and multiple rapes. When I was a student (30 years ago), I occasionally found myself having to study material I found upsetting (a particular scene in a Pat Barker book springs to mind), but I dealt with the fallout from that tutorial by seeing the college counsellor afterwards, and talking it through with her. I think that was the best way to deal with it, because, as PPs have said, rape and sexual violence is referenced with tedious regularity on the TV, in books and films, and one needs to develop coping mechanisms.

I would never have asked to have the book dropped from the curriculum just because it upset me. If I had done, I would have removed the opportunity for my fellow students and I to discuss AS A GROUP what was - quite rightly - a tough, realistic scene in a book that dealt with rape alongside many other related subjects.

Also, I didn't use the tutorial as an opportunity to explore my own feelings about the book as a rape survivor (tempting as that was), because I didn't want to monopolise the class and make people who hadn't had the same experiences as me feel as though they had less right to their own response to the book. Not sure if I should have said anything about having been raped myself - but I guess that's a different question.

Ha! Literature degree!

I have a little degree and am a survivor of csa. It wasn't triggering imo. If anything was triggering I guess I would have spoken to my tutor or dsa to skip that class or something. I also studied gender & violence modules, psychology modules that covered the ptsd I was living with at the time & chose to work with abused children and adults. Pressumabley if other survivors find these things difficult they choose a different path, or work on it in therapy or something. Rape is everywhere in life, personally I find it harder when people pretend it's not, makes the problem bigger. If there is scenes glamorising sexual violence then it needs challenged at the time. Which should be everyone's job not just survivors