Trigger warnings

[TheDisillusionedAnarchist]

I was wondering why there are trigger warnings on posts mentioning child deaths.

Are they there at the request of the OP? Or was there some kind of agreement among the bereaved parents of mumsnet that they wanted them? If so okay I guess I missed it.

I have to say if not I find it quite offensive. I find a lot of things 'triggering' on mumsnet not least threads about living babies but I don't get trigger warnings. I've seen them even when the thread title is quite clear. What are they for? Why are they there?

Oh ok

I can see exactly where you are coming from Thedissallusionedanarchist, it seems slightly offensive.

I think the policy is clarified now. If requested it is put on. I'm happy, seems reasonable to me.

I will report any threads I find triggering and others can do the same. Of course I'll avoid any in the obvious topics and those with clear titles as personally think trigger warnings on those threads ridiculous.

Glad you didn't mind sugar I was sorry to hear of the loss of your Daisy.

Oh no don't be sorry, I understand hence the trigger. As I said I never ever want to upset anyone, life is tough enough without me distressing other people. I wrote the thread because I wanted to talk about dd2 which is my way of dealing with things.

I can and will if it has an unclear title. I doubt I'm the only one to be triggered by feeding threads and a clear warning would help many.

If they aren't put on on request then it is a clearly discriminatory policy.

In general I think trigger warnings are a bit silly and even slightly patronising, largely because it is impossible to know what will trigger different individuals. The OP finds threads about live babies triggering; since I have a relative who died on a particular form of transport I might find any mention of that form of transport triggering. Of course no one wants to cause unnecessary grief to anyone but people watch TV, listen to the radio, read papers and magazines. And of course this site managed for years without them. I just think they're not very useful as they only seem to be used on threads dealing with certain things and the experiences that have made individuals suffer are innumerable. So potentially anything could be a trigger. But I guess if they help some people they're helpful.

I promise not to ask for a trigger warning for a thread in infant feeding though. Although personally I avoid that topic anyhow.

Sure but they have stated their policy is to generally add if someone feels that it needs one. Child death is a trigger topic for some, so is pregnancy or breastfeeding or babies for others. It will be helpful to have warnings on unclear titles.

Actually I think that if posters just wrote clearer thread titles and weren't jumped on for doing so we wouldn't have the need for "trigger warnings".

If someone writes in the news section about a baby death then it's pretty obvious what that's about and posters can choose to click or not. But I've seen countless instances of posters writing a clear thread title and then being jumped on by other posters for daring to actually state what a thread is about because it might be upsetting to someone.

This notion that you should write a vague title and then add "trigger warning" is pretty patronising actually. If you're planning to link to an article then it's not hard to write as part of the link that it contains upsetting content so people can choose to participate on the thread but not read the article, for instance. But the reality is that this is a public forum, and we have access to public media all the time, all of which contains headlines which open the door to distressing content. If the headline is clear enough, then the decision is clear enough.

So tbh I would say write clear thread titles and stop jumping on posters for daring to say what a thread is about.

Writing a thread title along the lines of "upsetting news story, (trigger warning)" does in fact give the message that certain topics should be hushed up and discussed behind closed doors.

Agreed I think they've told us their current policy but shall look forward to an update if changed

Thank you Wannabe, I agree. Everyone should write clear thread titles.

Oh dear I'm sorry mine wasnt clear

I think MNHQ tend to add a trigger warning if it's requested by a few/several/many posters, not just one.

I think if everyday parenting stuff is such a trigger for you then you may be better off stepping away from parenting websites for a while.

I feel awful now. I didn't mean to upset anyone

If only that was the case. It was a thread with a very clear title and then trigger warning added that bugged me enough to start this thread.

And everyday parenting stuff like child death obviously triggers enough posters to add trigger warnings to those posts. Perhaps they should step away from a parenting website if they can't handle the sadly common parenting experience of child death.

I would think that if someone was asking for triggers to be added enough threads that were causing them anxiety per day so that it was a problem for others, then it would maybe be appropriate for them to either block the majority of topics or stick to ones where they felt safe or simply to take a break and find another forum that was less likely to be causing issues. I don't have a problem with it per se and I don't expect that the OP is intending scanning the topics in order to make a nuisance of themselves. Perhaps if something is in an inappropriate/unexpected topic it would be easier for it to be moved rather than plastering it with "trigger"?

Tbh though I think that people would write clearer titles if posters didn't jump on them for doing so. I've seen posts along the lines of "child beaten to death by parents," with associated news story and comments attached, and the following 50 posts saying "awful thread title op. Have reported, how dare you write that title, yes it's upsetting but the thread title needs changing.".

And yet if the op posted "parents jailed," and then attached the same story with the same comments the next 50 posts would read "this is awful, but OP you could have put a warning in the thread title. Might want to report this to MN HQ to put a trigger warning on it,". Etc etc.