to think trigger warnings are pointless?

[AgnestaVipers]

I have just come across this meta-analysis of the research on the effectiveness of trigger warnings.

twitter.com/paytonjjones/status/1563950340944560128?t=wiSabn0PLlY2d2NEo2TSDQ&s=19

TL;DR: they don't work.

I have been astonished lately that trigger warnings are put on things like books on English Literature degree courses.

Has anyone ever found them useful?

In the same spirit, I am going to accuse you of projection.

Imagine if I cared about those things as well?

I think it depends what the warnings says. I imagine the vague "catch all" warning that come on before tv shows "some viewers may find some scenes distressing" are useless because they don't say what the distressing thing might be or when it will happen.

Warnings like "contains scenes of sexual assault/severe cruelty to children" etc. I can imagine would be useful in some cases.

I don't really see the issue with putting warnings on books for English literature students - most books are studied because they are well written and depict social issues of the time so its a reasonable deduction that unexpectedly coming across a realistic and emotive depiction of something might be very upsetting to someone who has experienced similar issues, whether its rape, racism, war etc. I did eng lit and the reading list was such that you could skip some books per topic and focus on others, so can't really see the issue with giving students advance warning so they can make an informed decision.

I am a bit bemused at the idea of a teenage rape victim getting a "heads up" that "book a contains violent sexual assault so you might want to read books b and c and base your essay on those" being "wrong" and "snowflakey" tbh?

I don't pay much attention to them, personally. In my head, they're not much different to what we might call 'content context' that has been around for ages; 15/18 certificates on films, for example, or the parental advisory sticker (remember those on CDs? Showing my age here...)

@AgnestaVipers
The thing about how people used to deal with things without TWs is sort of false.
For one- people were upset by them, thats why decades ago we got age ratings and descriptors like foul language and sexual content- because they knew they might upset people and were letting people choose what they wanted to see. So realistically these warnings have been around since before the 60s.
People were upset and asked for warnings, just because sometimes it can be taken 'too far', does not mean the concept or the majority of uses are incorrect, or pointless. Where do you think the warnings came from if not from people in the past asking for them? They are not new.

But also media has never been as realistic as it is now, even 15 years ago things were still limited. The sorts of shows and films that were being made were different as well. Espcially before the 60s before those warnings existed.

Violence in films was cloaked and eluded to rather than shown graphically. Like when Nancy was murdered in Oliver, you dont really see it happen, shes in the dark and there is a wall in the way.
The darkness is spoken about and showed softly- he stage slaps her and shouts, as art it works- I can empathise with her, I feel what she's going through and I can imagine what happens to her the rest of the time- it does not however, look real. It looks like a play, and not a great one.

The media that is made now is more graphic, more violent and so much more realistic. I'm not saying I forget that its not real, it just looks the same now as it does in real life and that just is harder to deal with. Media art is good now- they are very good at making assaults and injuries look real, so much more than it ever has been. So along with harder topics and more explicit staging, it also looks real.

@SpiritedSneeze , you're quite right - people have always been upset by stuff. I expect that's why Mary Whitehouse held such sway for a time! And yes, we now have trigger warnings because people asked for them. What I am wondering aloud about is whether that it has gone to a point that it is meaningless. Clearly there are people on here who feel TWs have a lot of value. That said, really angry people have come onto this thread to tell me off for even thinking about the issue, when presumably they should have read the thread title and stayed away?

And I completely agree about the ultra-realism of violence in the media. I personally can't handle gruesome violence, which is why I have avoided certain genres of film and TV shows that friends have raved about. I just can't bear it. I occasionally find it pops up in books unexpectedly, and this is unpleasant. But as people have pointed out, I am not suffering from PTSD so have survived the experience relatively unscathed.

@AgnestaVipers
Thank you, I'm glad I made sense.

In relation to people being angry on the thread, I do understand what you mean and I am really not having a go at you, it's just when it's coming from someone who does not need the adjustment, it can feel a bit patronising. Like if a right handed person made a thread, saying stuff like
"Aibu to think left handed scissors are pointless?
Its annoying that more left handed stuff keeps turning up, like can openers and I even saw a left handed spiral notebook and folders for students, its gone too far. The world is set up to be right handed and we can't keep letting young people make left handedness their whole identity. If they are feeling vulnerable about their left handedness- they should adapt products themselves, before trying to use scissors in public".

And linked to articles and books where people say how there is no need for left handed products because everyone uses the right handed ones anyway, even if it hurts their hands. And maybe they are doing that anyway to revel in the difficulty of being left handed.

Except if left handedness was the worst thing in your life- the cause of significant pain, humiliation and shame and the reason you have been in therapy for 10 years.
You are made to constantly see people discussing how left handed products are for snowflakes and young people and are silly because some people have decided that its just as important to make left handed mugs so people can now see the picture printed on them.

And then told maybe they shouldn't talk about left handed products as a left handed person if they are going to get angry about it.

I just can't see why anyone would care. Some people will choose not engage with a thread/show/whatever if it's a subject they don't want to hear about. That's helpful for them and in no way harms anyone else.

On the whole they’re pointless.
No, they are useless.

They literally save lives. There are people alive today who would be dead without them.

But fuck raped children, right? If something doesn't benefit you personally, no one should have it.

What about those woke snowflakes who insist on using wheelchairs? Just get some resilience and walk!! Statistically most people don't even need wheelchairs, so clearly on the whole wheelchairs are pointless.

It's honestly disgusting the amount of survivors who are sharing extremely personal stories of horrendous personal suffering, and the OP and the rest of the anti-woke gang are either stonewalling them or being goady and attacking them.
I wonder what the agenda is in trying to provoke people into sharing rape stories, and into seemingly trying to actively goad and attack survivors. Some people really get off on upsetting women and disabled people.

There are men who actively make a hobby of invading support groups for women who have survived sexual violence because they get off sexually on upsetting women who have been raped.

There are people who actively invade groups for disabled people and actively target disabled people and really enjoy hurting and trying to goad and try to wind up disabled people.

Some people's instinct towards seeing an injured animal on the side of the road is to give it a good kicking. They simply relish in inflicting pain.

Over a book or a play? I honestly find this baffling.

Really? You find it "baffling" why a minor who recently escaped an abusive incestuous home who's living alone in a bedsit without any support would self-harm when forced to read a book about incest over and over? Oh and there is nothing on the book jacket of that particular book that indicates that it's about a man raping his daughters. Do you not realise that reading a book for school or uni means that you don't have the option to put the book down, you have to read it over and over in depth?

And that it is there to challenge or make us think

Why do raped children need to be challenged?

But I am wondering how people coped before trigger warnings.

They died, Agnesta. People with severe mental illness living in the past were either locked up in mental institutes, or they lived their lives housebound, or they died. Most of them died. Google average life expectancy for people with mental illness in the past.

I also find myself wondering whether the preponderance of trigger warnings are partly to do with a culture now where people seek out or dwell upon the ways in which they might be fragile. Their 'trauma' (another grossly over-used word) has become part of their personality.

What the actual fuck is wrong with you? Go do a degree in psychology then come back with your ableist, ignorant, victim-blaming nonsense about how people who have been diagnosed with PTSD are just snowflakes using their fragility as a personality.

Oh and insisting on putting the word trauma in quotes is beyond the pale cunty.

@JemimaPuddlegoose

I'm so sorry for what you went through xxx

@PostmortemNow

You are clearly just posting that to goad and be nasty.

What is the point?

Do you even HAVE a personality or is it just whatever happens to be antagonistic and annoying to others? Because that is clearly your goal.

It baffles me. It really does.

@SpiritedSneeze "Aibu to think left handed scissors are pointless?

If they were pointless, they'd be safer I guess. 😀

But seriously, I think where the analogy falls down is that left-handedness isn't a disability. It doesn't matter whether someone is left-handed, and it doesn't negatively affect people's lives. Whereas PTSD does - hopefully temporarily - disable people (assuming we take mental health as seriously as physical health.)

Perceiving oneself as fragile or vulnerable in a way that is cosseting or that stops one from healing, or that devalues the genuine trauma of others - I think that's what I am focussing on.

@JemimaPuddlegoose , you are just shouting and if I tried to address anything you wrote you'd accuse me of victim blaming. So I won't bother.

You really do have the wrong username.

It's honestly disgusting the amount of survivors who are sharing extremely personal stories of horrendous personal suffering, and the OP and the rest of the anti-woke gang are either stonewalling them or being goady and attacking them.

I do feel I should point out, though, that this hasn't actually happened in any way.

I think there is a difference between fora like this, where the title often bears little relation to the content, and where people are detailing and discussing their own experiences and views, and a university course. English Literature, like it or not, is pretty much based on trauma of one sort or another, and on the characters’ reactions to it. So are most, maybe all, western literatures. I don’t know a great deal about non-western cultures. Certainly the Japanese Novels, I have read didn’t shy away from distress. History is full of dark and unpleasant events, but you can’t make a balanced picture or draw any conclusions from it if you are just going to erase them.

I find the trigger warning for sex and violence on TV shows very useful ,it generally means drag the remote out from where it is lurking under the cushion so you can fast forward through the grizzly bits. Contains adult humour = don’t bother, you won’t enjoy it.

But this is entertainment,,or at least attempted entertainment. I was terribly upset by Jude the Obscure when I read it as part of the prep for an essay on Hardy , but if I hadn’t read. It, how could I have hoped to understand what Hardy was about? Romeo and Juliet is tragic, but a nice anodyne story about two lovers ignoring their families feud and living happily ever after wouldn’t have much moral impact. Art is different. If we bowdlerise it , it loses a lot of its point.

Sagealicious

While we're talking about academic studies, there are studies showing that rape survivors and survivors of major violent crime, as well as people with serious illness like cancer, often experience hostility, stigma and rejection.

Go to any forum or conference for people who have survived any serious crime or illness (or for disabled people), you'll often see people talking about how merely existing as a person with cancer, or existing as a wheelchair user, or a existing as a rape survivor, incites total strangers to anger and hostility.

It has its roots in evolutionary biology: people perceived as weak are considered a threat to the rest of the tribe and as unfairly getting a free ride since they can't fight or hunt and need others to care for them.

Fortunately most people are capable of not acting like cavemen.

It literally has.

Oh wait I forgot, you refuse to engage with actual survivors.

In what way am I meant to engage here? I have acknowledged that people on this thread find TWs helpful. I have made clear that I think PTSD exists and that people do feel traumatised by events.

What exactly do you think I should have done, besides that?

And, frankly, if you are finding the thread so distressing, why not stop engaging with it?

Again, this somewhat proves the findings in the analysis I linked. People click even when they know they may not like the content.

Art is different. If we bowdlerise it , it loses a lot of its point.

No one is talking about censorship or bowdlerisation. People make choices every single day what art they choose to consume, and every single commercial art form spends huge amounts of money in things like publicity and market research to decide on cover art and book jacket blurbs, with the sole intention of reaching the audience demographic who are most likely to choose that particular item.

Giving someone a tiny bit of extra info about content doesn't affect, change or impact the actual book or piece of art in any way. It simply doesn't.

The suggestion that films are mere "entertainment" and thus unimportant while books are "art" and sacred to being cheapened by content warnings is just bizarre. How does a Barbara Cartland or Dan Brown novel stack up against an arthouse film or a documentary film about Rwanda?

Giving major trauma survivors a choice of what art to consume is not remotely bowdlerising things.

but if I hadn’t read. It, how could I have hoped to understand what Hardy was about?

There are far more books in the world than any of us can possible read. Nobody needs to read any one specific book. I read at least 100 books a year, but I'm sure there are plenty of books you've read that I have not read, and vice versa. Because people have different tastes.

I read King Lear, Macbeth, An Evil Cradling, and tons of non-fiction books covering everything from the Wars of the Roses to the Belgian Congo atrocities while a student during the same time period I didn't want to read the incest book.

Why should I be forced to read a book about a father raping his daughters, when there are so many other wonderful and important books in the world?

The point is no one is forcing anyone to do anything. Including reading this thread.

And, frankly, if you are finding the thread so distressing, why not stop engaging with it?

I don't find it distressing.

I'm pissed off because I think people are acting like goady arseholes.

You do understand that there's a difference between being triggered (in the medical sense) and being pissed off, don't you?

Sorry but you don't get to start a thread about people with PTSD then dictate that people who actually have PTSD shouldn't post, just because we prove your ableist goady posts wrong.

But by advocating against content warnings, you are basically saying that it's fine that I was forced as a very vulnerable teenager to read a book about incest that resulted in me having an episode of psychosis and self-harming, without having any way to know upfront that it was about incest.

A TW would have saved me from that.

I don't see how anyone could find that objectionable since it literally does not affect them in any way.

@JemimaPuddlegoose

I don't understand why anyone would think that either. A trigger warning is not censure. It is not stopping people from taking enjoyment out of the book/play/online discussion. It just gives them information that may help them make a clear and valid choice in their own life. Something that everyone should be able to do. If someone has trauma (and some trauma is life-long), and there was no trigger warning then they are more at risk of avoiding MORE things. For instance when I was first diagnosed with c-ptsd I avoided the cinema because I wasn't sure how I would act in public, if I didn't know what potential triggers were in the movie this worry would have increased significantly.

Now I can review the movie or whatever it is I want to do and look out for trigger warnings if necessary. It is helpful, It makes me more able to make clear choices on my history/mental health and circumstances. Trauma is part of my life and my personality because that is how trauma works. It is not part of my personality because of trigger warnings. In fact one of the reasons I like TWs in general is because I want to avoid situations where my history comes into discussion. My life is personal to me.

@SpiritedSneeze

I bloody loved your left hand scissors analogy. I thought it was very relevant.