... to think we can extend this list a lot? Surely almost every book and film could have a content warning for something?

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

The Times today reports that ^universities have started removing books from reading lists to protect students from “challenging” content and have applied trigger warnings to more than 1,000 texts, a Times investigation has found.
Ten universities, including three from the Russell Group, have withdrawn books from course study lists, or made them optional, in case they cause students harm. The texts include the 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead, which has been “removed permanently” from a course reading list at Essex University because of concerns about graphic depictions of slavery.^

There are many serious and obvious things to say about this, but they're all in the article. The aspect that engaged me is that it gives the list in full. I am certain we could help out the university sector by pointing out other potentially distressing books.

Here are some of the examples:

The Ancient Mariner, S. T. Coleridge University of Greenwich Content warning: Animal death, human death, supernatural possession

Persuasion, Jane Austen Aberdeen Portrays views of gender and class identity that are rooted in the context of early nineteenth-century England

The Waste Land, TS Eliot Aberdeen Contains references to death and war

The Iliad, Homer Highlands and Islands Violent close combat

Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens Royal Holloway Child abuse

Kidnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson Aberdeen Kidnapping [No! I'd never have guessed it would cover this subject]

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie Greenwich Contains murder [What! Shocked, I tell you, shocked]

And my favourite: The Bible York Shocking sexual violence

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/339af864-17ce-11ed-b1f4-627a202c7457 (Sorry, I don't have a share token for the article, but you can read it for nothing by signing up with your email address. That way you get to read a few free articles every month.)

So, what are your suggestions of content warnings for university students?

Here's mine:
The Very Hungry Caterpillar - contains description of an eating disorder and consequent physical discomfort

You should see what the Brothers Grimm originally published. The evil stepsisters hacking off their heels in an effort to fit into the glass slipper...

Most books that get censored are censored because they're too "woke", not the opposite.

Historically it's right wing and far right wing influences who censor and burn books, but where's the outrage over that amongst all the mockery of "woke snowflakes"?

Books about the Holocaust were banned from Tennessee schools last year, ostensibly due to them containing swear words but it's hard not to see a very direct link between banning Holocaust books and announcements (eg the one in Texas which came just three months before the Holocaust book was banned) that schools "must teach both sides of the Holocaust" in the interest of "fairness".

It's not woke eft wing snowflakes trying to push Holocaust denial in schools, and that's far more serious than letting girls who have been raped opt out from reading Tess of the d'Urbervilles.

but why should a teenage girl who's been raped and is suicidal be forced to read graphic depictions of rape?

but people aren't disputing that. People are saying that, yes, course tutors could let them have advance warning. But that students are perfectly capable of looking up the book on trigger warning sites?

twitter.com/tpgcolson/status/1557277139413630976 - much fun as this thread is, it doesn't look like many books were banned anyway - the Times article is something of a stretch - only TWO books seem to have been removed from reading lists.

Furthermore, while I'm sure everyone's having a lot of fun thinking up absurd trigger warnings, I know a kid with PTSD, and the last time he was 'triggered', he beat the shit out of a kid who happened to be standing nearby. So in the light of scenarios like that, perhaps universities would prefer there to be too many trigger warnings than not enough....🤔

And while I'm at it, does everyone up in arms here get similarly worked up about the little list of content warnings that pop up at the start of any non-PG programs on the telly? I genuinely can't see much difference between that and what the universities are doing? It's just about making an informed choice surely?

No difference between wanting to watch a tv show in your own home (where you may have children and teens present) and adults who've signed up for an English Literature degree?

Spectacular missing of the point. Books should not be banned. One book being banned by a university is an outrage! It is newsworthy. Even if something else is also newsworthy at the same time.

Books should not be banned

It's not been 'banned' ffs. What do you think that word means?

Do you think there's some kind of universal "trigger warning site"? Because that doesn't exist. I just googled, and almost all of them are just for movies and TV shows, and it's hard to find genuine factual TW sites as many of the ones on google are Christian fundamentalist sites that exist to point out where movies breach Christian teachings.

I was only able to find two trigger warning site specifically for books and both of them only had a limited number of books listed, none of the books I had as set texts were listed at all!

I even googled the title of one of my past set texts + trigger warning and it didn't bring up anything except Amazon reviews.

"Perfectly capable" - but why should a student have to spend hours googling every single book title and going through Amazon reviews and scouring blogs for every single book just in case any of the books contain rape scenes (never mind that many students don't want or their teachers don't want them to read spoilers and plot summaries ahead of time) when a teacher handing out a sheet is so much simpler and easier?

Giving out a sheet and openly discussing trigger warnings also reassure students that they're allowed to opt-out of reading things like graphic rape scenes, because students from abused and traumatic backgrounds often struggle with asserting themselves. Can you imagine being 18 years old and having to approach say a 50year old male professor you'd never met before, and not only having to disclose extremely personal things about your mental health and the fact you were raped to him, but also make a demand changes to his curriculum? Many adults would struggle with that!

We're going on a BEAR HUNT??? And this is marketed to young children??

I agree.

But in reality the vast majority of books are banned by people with a right wing agenda trying to censor books that discuss things like gender or racial issues.

Consistently the most banned and challenged books are books about race and racism, often by black writers. It's certainly not liberal wokesters trying to get black authors banned.

There's far more outrage over concepts like trigger warning, than about school boards banning Holocaust books and demanding that teachers teach both sides of the Holocaust.

Well I feel like a bit of a twat for taking seriously to be honest. I do know better too. I think I was too excited for an opportunity to talk about Beloved to think straight.

The moral of the story is everybody should read Beloved.

Most universities do this. They’re not banning or pulling the books - just when I get my syllabus round or an email about a new book it might say ‘this book contains xyz, please contact the department if this raises any issues etc.’ Some of the books we study contain graphic scenes, sometimes of rape/murder etc. And people then know they’ll expect it. Those books aren’t then ‘banned.’

And also, removing a book from a course isn’t really ‘banning’ it. They’re not throwing every copy out of the uni library and burning it. Every year the books on my uni list change slightly, whether to reflect a change in topic, because a better/more appropriate book for that course was thought of, just for a change etc. It’s not banning the book to study a different one!

I was only able to find two trigger warning site specifically for books and both of them only had a limited number of books listed, none of the books I had as set texts were listed at all!

i mentioned the possiblity of such a site early on and then pp mentioned someone looking it up and i assumed these sites already existed. My bad.

Perhaps publishers/writers should think about doing that

One step away from censorship. If students can't cope with reading challenging literature like Dickens or Shakespeare or Eliot they should not be at university. What's next? Medical students needn't view diseased patients in case they blub? Trainee vicars needn't read the Old Testament in case they are shocked by drunkenness and incest?

They can cope with it. Dickens and Shakespeare and Eliot are all included on almost every single English Lit course. The only difference is that they say ‘by the way, we’re doing Titus Andronicus next month - it does include graphic violence and mutilation, plus murders and rape. So those topics may be discussed in seminar.’

I am both totally unsurprised by this and totally unsurprised that the frothers of mumsnet didn't find this out before they started frothing

Elizabeth David - French Provincial Cooking - extreme animal cruelty: lobstercide, crayfish torture, butchery, theft of eggs from hen

What this example also illustrates, is that 'trigger warning' can be abused by universities and other institutions as a means to steer morality and dictate on right vs. wrong. There seems to be no room for debate about what people are being warned about.

e.g. taking away eggs from hens must be condemnable if it's deemed to be bad enough to require a warning. too.

The wording of the 'warning' can be extremely loaded and biased too.

e.g. eating eggs is akin to 'theft'

It's a total load of nonsense! I'm saying that as a graduate in English Language from a Russell Group uni.

They'll all be having the vapours over anything written by D H Lawrence!!

Me too @Phineyj - in fact I bought the book secondhand a while ago so I could reread it. Fabulous book but very bleak indeed in parts. University students are surely old enough not to need their literature censoring? Seems crazy. In fact I think some primary school teachers need more censoring on what they get their class to read/watch. My year 4 kids were both exposed to John Boynes The Boy in the Striped Pajamas film even though they'd never studied any aspect of the Holocaust at that point. It was their teacher's favourite book/film or something. Also heard year 6 TA encouraging a girl to read Malorie Blackmans Noughts and Crosses novel - arguable she was a tad young to deal with some of the content in that (fabulous) book...

This really boils my piss. They should ban the telephone directory, it contains the names of people, some of whom are statistically bound to be cunts. Whilst we're at it, if I were in charge then every heavy duty film/documentary on telly would end with the following announcement "if you have been affected by any issues raised, then get a fucking grip".

That's not my...... series of books; Unwanted touching.

The ‘Mr Men and Miss’ books. No mention AT ALL of non binary or Cis. Imagine how harmful this could be to a trans toddler?!!

Don't worry MumsnetHQ have made sure the nonsense and frothing carries on by putting it on their Facebook page.

Heaven forbid we should censor newspaper stories that are just untrue

Slow 👏