Fight the Law and the Law Always Wins

So I thought Dean Spade was pretty great.  Spade’s ideas around the importance of political mobilization of queer and trans oppressions to actually save lives while refusing politics of inclusion completely reframes neoliberalism for me. In a neoliberalist society, the problem of the impossible trans person living in the set of circumstances can not be solved unless society exceeds recognition and inclusion.  Spade speaks of the commitment that social justice only trickles up, not down.  Therefore, we must centre experiences around the most vulnerable and reframe the “distribution of life chances,” or redistribute biopolitics and life politics (Foucauldian).  Furthermore if we rely on formal legal equality, that what the law says about a certain group is the sum total its goals, what are we actually accomplishing? “Regulate me, it feels good,” Spade says, critiquing the false sense of security found from two lesbians or two gay men being included legally in a marital relationship.  Instead of focusing on the reasons why, structurally, we have such vulnerable groups, we are hell bent on just adding more into these systems to make them more inclusive and work for more people than before.  Dean urges the need to focus on ideas of regulation and norms and how inclusion often only strengthens the norms as they articulate “some kind of new found justice and equality.”  Boom, I can’t even begin to think about how one attacks.  Legal processes are laid out.  There are a series of steps to follow and it can be met with tangible evidence of accomplishment or success, if only a false sense of it.  But what does it look like when we just go out and change laws?  We’ve been changing laws for years and questionably, do not see sweeping periods of change.  

I think it is important to situate what Spade is saying outside the context of our immediate world.  I think of Emma Goldman: “If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.”  An extremely profound statement in the midst of decades of first wave feminists fighting for equal recognition in law, Goldman believes equal rights to life to manifest not in woman suffrage, but in revolutionizing sexual love and intimacy.  Fighting for suffrage in the domain of the man then acts as a distraction, a scam, to occupy women with while social conventions continue on as they were.  Similar to the ways in which inclusive legislation only works to strengthen norms for Spade, but in a much different context, with many different influences.

In a 2013 article title “Marriage Will Never Set Us Free” (I’ve included the link to the article below) Spade asks: What’s the deal? Is same-sex marriage advocacy a progressive cause? Is it in line with Left political projects of racial and economic justice, decolonization, and feminist liberation?” Followed by:

“Nope. Same-sex marriage advocacy has accomplished an amazing feat-- it has made being anti-homophobic synonymous with        

being pro-marriage. It has drowned out centuries of critical thinking and activism against the racialized, colonial, and patriarchal processes of state regulation of family and gender through marriage.”  

Through our cyclical celebration of changing laws, I never really stopped to think of what was being lost in the process.

http://www.organizingupgrade.com/index.php/modules-menu/beyond-capitalism/item/1002-marriage-will-never-set-us-free

Visibility and Validation

This week I would like to take the opportunity to use my blog to reflect on not only the discussion of trigger warnings from this week but on my personal learning trajectory from the beginning of year up until this point. More specifically, I want to engage with my previous pre-conceived notions, and perhaps biases, about this course and issues of sexual assault on a broader socio-cultural scale that have been dismantled (and rightly so). 

I think that one of the greatest things I will take away from this class is that there are no explicitly correct solutions or answers and that trauma is experienced and “dealt” with in vastly different ways. In the past, I suppose I had been quite ignorant in participating in events such as Take Back the Night or Slut Walk without really thinking about what they meant critically and who they were leaving out paradoxically under this huge umbrella of individuals against sexual violence. What may be right for some may not be right for others and it is important to always take into account that broader theoretical and systemic perspectives/movements should always also be accompanied by the real individual feelings of survivors. Furthermore, theoretical and systemic perspectives should try not to overshadow individual lived experiences. (However, I do understand that this poses very practical roadblocks as we discussed about Take Back the Night. How is it possible to create visibility for everyone?)

“But to conceal the causes of hurt can make others the cause of their hurt… We have to work and struggle not so much to feel hurt, but to notice what causes hurt, which means unlearning what we have learnt not to notice.” (Ahmed) 

The quote above has helped me work through some of the struggles that I have been facing with this weeks readings. I think that, to an extent, trigger warnings can act as signifiers of validation or “approval” of the triggers in question. In group discussion today, we touched on the ways in which defining the term “trigger” may create potential challenges for those that trigger warnings are meant to “protect” in the first place. Whenever we try to bring certain issues into visibility, there are always going to be others that are left in the dark. As Ahmed states, “structures can bruise some bodies whilst not appearing to affect others.” I think that is particularly important to acknowledge that everyone and anyone can be triggered by stimulus that does not fit into the neat box of what a trigger “should” look like. For example,  someone might be triggered by the particular smell of a room, but it is very unlikely that that trigger will ever get a formal warning. 

This leads us to think about the validation of feeling. Who gets to decide how someone else feels, why they feel that way, and how they should direct their feelings. At the beginning of the term, we read Audre Lorde’s piece about anger and “angry black feminism.” She pushed the urgency of the ways in which anger should be transformed in order to be generative instead of remaining a static and “unproductive” emotion. 

However, I feel as though this argument could be wading in dangerous territory, specifically in regards to agency. As discussed last week, a great challenge that speak-outs face lies in the response that proceeds the actual act of speaking out in itself. Alcoff’s description of a recuperative response to disclosure is heavily problematized by what it does to the survivor’s agency. It allows another individual to impose meaning onto the survivor’s experience. It allows the “expert” to be the voice of authority in validating that experience. In a sense, this may be seen as a parallel to trigger warnings in the way that the people who choose to use them are, to an extent and perhaps unintentionally, selecting which “triggers” should be validated and consequently, which emotions are warranted. I believe that the bringing into visibility of some emotions through validation and not others speaks directly to the quote I had mentioned above. 

An outside source I want to bring into the conversation this week as an extension of this blog is called “In Which Rape Makes Me Angry” by S. E. Smith (http://disabledfeminists.com/2010/05/18/in-which-rape-makes-me-angry/). The author talks about visibility. I think that this truly ties in so much of what we have discussed this term from Cindy Gladue, to the Kindred House, to Weiss, Benedet and Grant, etc. There are too many bodies and experiences left outside of the conversation and, as Smith states, this results in a lot of anger. Smith even talks about an "entirely new and incendiary level of anger” (Smith) in regards to disabled women as victims of sexual violence. I personally feel as though the blogger is completely entitled to this emotion and entitled to proceeding with any course of action with that emotion, whether it be transformative or not. 

I am definitely interested to hear if anyone agrees or disagrees with the notion that emotions, especially anger, must be transformed or worked around in order to be productive. Or if anyone thinks that emotions have to be productive at all.

Harvard Law Students: Not as bad as we think

When I first heard about the Harvard Law students refusing to learn about rape law, I was horrified — though, I never looked into it much further than ruminating on how angry I was. How could law students (the top ones, at that) refuse to learn about something so important? 

Upon looking deeper into this story, however, it appears that the story is much more complicated that it’s often presented. Instead of students merely refusing to study the material because it makes them uncomfortable, I think the infamous tale of the Harvard Law students tells a bigger story of how trigger warnings cannot possibly account for the myriad of traumas that could arise in a classroom, as Sara Ahmed discusses in “Feminist Hurt/Feminism Hurts.” A more structural change to how we think about oppression in the academy, I believe, is more fruitful to bettering the experience of survivors of sexual assault than trigger warnings could ever aspire to. 

The Harvard Crimson, the university’s student newspaper, wrote an extensive series on how sexism manifests itself in Harvard Law School, from the Socratic method applied in classes, to the overwhelmingly male faculty. In short, women participate less and perform worse than males in Harvard Law, even though they are just as “qualified” in terms of capacity when they are admitted. A Buzzfeed article draws upon student experience to reveal how this culture influenced a distinct movement towards requesting trigger warnings in rape law classes, and an outright refusal of learning the material:

 "Some hate when professors insist on using the Socratic method, a common law school teaching practice in which students are    cold-called and mercilessly questioned, because a rape survivor might have to argue an accused rapist’s case. Others don’t understand why professors engage with students who make insensitive remarks about victims such as 'What if she looked older than 12?' or 'Is it still rape if it wasn’t consensual but he really thought it was?' instead of shutting them down."

Jeannie Suk, a Harvard Law professor, fanned the flames to this discussion in her New Yorker article, where she states that “some students have even suggested that rape law should not be taught because of its potential to cause distress.” Most interpretations I’ve read make this statements out to mean that the content of the classes is inherently “distressing,” hence feeding into the greater moral panic of hyper-sensitive college students demanding special treatment. However, given the above accounts of Harvard Law students, I think it would be fair to counter Suk’s argument: perhaps these students don’t object to rape law being taught, but the way it’s being taught, and students, generally, are not given the tools or power to be able to nuance this conversation. It’s easier, I think, to ask “can you not teach this?” instead of asking “can you overthrow the oppressive and sexist scaffolding upon which you were founded?”

I do not think that trigger warnings are the answer for making campuses a safer space. Students who walk campus and risk walking into their perpetrators daily and survivors, in the most intimate and public spaces of their lives, are reminded of their trauma. A trigger warning will not save survivors from that. In our class discussion today, my group discussed how regardless of what a professor may put on their syllabus, it is moot unless you approach the subject in a particular way. A professor can put a trigger warning for sexually violent content in his syllabus, but he can be insensitive in a myriad of other ways. How would the trigger warning help in that case? I appreciate the approach Ahmed mentions in her article, which requires a close reading of the "atmosphere" in the class to determine which kind of material to introduce, and finding alternative ways to introduce content when the atmosphere doesn't "allow" it. 

Ahmed says that by overlooking that structural causes of “bad feeling,” the bad feeling becomes rooted in other people. That is, people become the imagined origins of bad feeling, even though the root of bad feeling is something bigger than that person. Students'  suffering may be read, on the surface, as “stifling,” as Ahmed explains, but I believe it runs deeper. Being exposed to others’ trauma does not only stifle our ability to "move forward" in course content — it reveals that the world is not as equal that we’d like it to be, reveals we have privileges over others that we can’t control, and, sometimes, painfully, reveals the hurt within ourselves that we’ve tried to put behind us. And, in my experiences where students’ have revealed this pain, the classroom was only able to move deeper and pose the literature to greater critique — not void it of politics, or nuance, or discussion, like critiques of trigger warnings seem to suggest. Ahmed expands upon this idea in "Against Students," where she makes the poignant assertion: "The idea that being over-sensitive is what stops us from addressing difficult issues can be translated as: we can’t be racist because you are too sensitive to racism. we need to be too sensitive if we are to challenge what is not being addressed."

So, I see the perceived "sensitivity" of the Harvard Law students as something that speaks more strongly to a sore need to uproot the heteropatriarchial values of the academy — something that the students seem to cry out for, but nobody notices. To mirror Ahmed's language, it seems the academy is disturbed by their ability to not be oppressive, because the students are too sensitive to oppressionn. Thusly, to challenge what is not being addressed, these students may just need to be sensitive. 

Feminist Standpoint Theory

A few weeks ago we learned about feminist standpoint theory, which understands subjugated experiences to be a foundation for knowledge.  It assumes the vantage point of marginalized groups and oppressed individuals to challenge hegemonic power structures and normative ways of thinking, rooted in traditional ideas of rationality and enlightenment thought.  These experiences produce a distinct epistemology of knowledge that can only be produced from their unique “standpoint”. How do trigger warnings help create conversations around these experiences and include these perspectives (which are often dismissed, silenced, or recuperated)? How might they simultaneously work to further marginalize these bodies and exclude them from dominant discourse? 

In our group discussions today we talked about the pros and cons of trigger warnings. The group consensus was that trigger warnings generally create space for conversation and further engagement because they draw attention to systemic social problems instead of normalizing or naturalizing experiences of trauma. Of course, only certain experiences of trauma are recognized by trigger warnings, and what counts as “traumatic” or “triggering” is different for everyone, depending on who does the defining. Thus, trigger warnings can be understood as preparing the audience for their exposure to sensitive or offensive content, while at the same time participating in the construction of what it means for content to be “sensitive” or “offensive”. Trigger warnings provide suggestions for what the easily offended, hypersensitive, traumatized body should do: exclude themselves entirely or precede forward at their own risk. While the systemic social problem is often labeled and addressed, this also stands to put the “risk” back onto the individual. We provide few tools within actual trigger warnings themselves about what the body should do with trauma, offense, or pain, should they choose to engage with the content and experience these responses.

Despite this, perhaps trigger warnings are an attempt to take up a feminist standpoint theory framework. They start with the assumption that experiences of trauma actually exist and therefore need to be addressed, even through a simple warning. In labeling them, we bring them into the realm of existence. It validates that these experiences and perspectives are real and that we accept them as “true”. The extent to which these warnings accurately reflect the lived realities of actual survivors may be limited, but there could be exciting potential if we continue to create space for the inclusion of a collection of stories and experiences. This would mean recognizing both the individualized and systemic implications of an experience to move beyond warnings that demand only “some” people should take caution or risk if they are overly sensitive or easily offended. I’m not sure what this would look like exactly, but I think trigger warnings are productive in that they force us to reexamine what is absolute or “true” knowledge, which might open up space for us to think about other standpoints.  

The Use of Jokes as Raising Awareness?

In Wednesdays reading, Halberstam mentioned that, "humor is something that feminists in particular, but radical politics in general, are accused of lacking" (Halberstram, 2014).
In today's discussion class, my group had a very insightful talk in regards to the usage of jokes when speaking out on sexual assault. I personally do not agree with Halberstam as I do not see the awareness of sexual assault through jokes affective since it demeans the actually matter. I see jokes as diverting the issue from a space where language could be created to raise awareness and understanding to a space where people can laugh, have a good time and overlook the issue. 

Yet, throughout our discussion, we did mention how some survivor's may use the coping mechanism of humour as a way to enlighten their trauma. This reminded me of an article  that I previously read,  where a comedian was conveying her sexual assault experience through humour, and the audience and her friend would laugh at the story, even though it is a severe issue. Her friend then confessed how guilty she felt afterwards and the survivor responded with, 

"But I gave you permission to laugh!" ..."She explained that by telling the joke, she felt she was controlling how people reacted to her experience while simultaneously negotiating her own feelings about the incident. She found it therapeutic" (Stapp, 2013). 
So this makes me question, is it only survivors who are allowed to use humour in regards to sexual assault? If they do, then is it still addressing the problem or is it just a form of self-care? 

Further, changing the roles and having a perpetrator, or at least for this case, an "accused" perpetrator make jokes about sexual assault truly angers me as it reinforces the rape culture. Recently, Bill Cosby, a well-known actor who is accused of multiple counts of sexual assault had a stand-up show in London, Ontario where he was offered a drink by an audience member. "Cosby reportedly replied, "I already have one," pointing to a bottle of water next to him on stage, and added, "You have to be careful about drinking around me" (Nessif, 2015). This resulted in cheering and laughter from the audience, which demonstrates the devaluation of sexual assault as the audience supported a perpetrator and laughed at the unlawful actions he committed. 

Indefinitely, I believe there to be a grey line between who can and who cannot make jokes about sexual assault. I do not wish to impede in someone's healing process, but the majority of the time, humour is used in settings where perpetrators can rectify their thoughts and actions. This leads me to continue to be certain of my personal opinion in which I do not believe humour should be utilized in crucial issues like sexual assault as it further encourages the rape culture. Yet, I do believe in various forms of self-care so who am I to tell a survivor to not use humour because of my personal opinions? Ugh, I just am left with so many contradicting feelings and thoughts that cannot seem to measure up to a conscious  decision. 

Do trigger warnings have a place in academia? What about the larger societal context?

I think that, like most of the class, this week has made me very conflicted about trigger warnings.  I have been left with more questions than answers as I ponder a few different questions:

Who are trigger warnings designed for? What do they actually do? Which bodies are given priority with them? Who has the authority to decide what things are "triggering" - who decides what someone gets to be triggered by? Is there a hierarchy of "triggers" - is an article mentioning abuse more valid as a trigger than a school bus? What experiences are worth being protected from - whose bodies are then worth being protected?

As I said – more questions than answers. For this discussion, I want to really focus in on what we’ve been talking about all week: How do trigger warnings work to silence or encourage discussion and debate (in academia for this blog post) and then how does neoliberalism fit into all of it?

In the classroom, there are arguments on both sides – some think trigger warnings are more likely to stifle conversation, while others think they are more likely to engage with students. One of the arguments I found most compelling was included in “The Ethics of Trigger Warnings in the Classroom,” a blog post by Stacey Gogeun. Gogeun quoted Kate Manne who wrote an interesting piece on why she uses trigger warnings in her classroom which you can find here. Manne states that the use of trigger warnings “signals to everyone else – i.e., the students who have no need whatsoever to opt out of the discussion – that this is a morally serious subject which we are going to approach in a morally serious way, remembering that what we are talking about real lives, real bodies, and real social practices.” She argues that trigger warnings work to make valid the fact that academic study has implications within lived experience.
On the flip side, some argue that trigger warnings are coddling minds in academic settings by creating a culture where difficult subjects are not talked about, The Atlantic wrote a large piece on this. While the so-called coddling of the mind has not been my experience in academia, I can see why some may think that could happen. My own personal experience has much more been that we address difficult topics with a sensitivity that discussing them may be hard for some, and leave space for people to have reactions and feel what they need to.

In “Taking Offense: Trigger Warnings & the Neoliberal Politics ofEndangerment” by Lisa Duggan, as well as “You Are Triggering me! The Neo-Liberal Rhetoric of Harm, Danger and Trauma” by Jack Halberstam, we can clearly see that neoliberalism works with trigger warnings by having a “rhetoric of individual pain [that] obscures the violent sources of social inequity” (Halberstam). They seem to argue that neoliberalism centres our individual feelings around an issue, and makes it so political issues are psychologized and turned into individual issues. Do you agree that the neoliberal politics of trigger warnings work to ensure that structural issues are pushed onto a solely individual level?
Are trigger warnings really centred around feelings? I'd also be curious if people think that certain kinds of triggers are privileged over others, and what determines who decides what is triggering for people - and following from this, does neoliberal rhetoric decide what is worth a trigger warning and what is not? Does neoliberalism value certain kinds of trauma over others? To think about this, I have looked up lists of "common triggers" that people believe should be used; one such list is here. 

Blue Ocean Floor

Another post with the feelings. Do forgive the rambling as we go down the rabbit hole and all that jazz.

On our first day of class we discussed why we were taking the course, and I mentioned that I was interested in learning new things to take back to my friends and colleagues still in policing. In another blog post, I mentioned that frustration with internal politics was part of the reason I left my job in the first place. Both of those things are true, though not entirely. One of the main reasons I took this course -- possibly the main reason -- was to address internally the case I could not leave behind. That case, the case that I still hear in my sleep, the case that nearly led me to jump off a bridge at one point, is without question the biggest reason I left my job. To no one's surprise, it's a rape case.

I basically signed a NDA when I left my work, and I take it seriously -- the stories I carry with me are not my stories to tell. They belong to the survivors, the victims, the families. Unless subpoenaed, I am legally forbidden to discuss my baggage -- if I break this contract, I could potentially be convicted of a federal crime. 

When I left my work, I was no longer entitled to a psychiatrist with the security clearance to access the cases I had worked on, meaning, for all intents and purposes, I could not seek psychiatric help as I would not have the ability to actually describe in any detail the reasons I was seeking the help in the first place. And though I know I could still access services to help me, they require me to return to my former place of work -- something I have not done once in the four years since I walked out the doors; I don't even go to Kingsway Mall because it's too close. Essentially, I've been grappling with my PTSD alone, and I hoped that taking this course would give me some semblance of healing or closure that I couldn't get on my own.

To say that it's been a mixed bag would be an understatement.

In the context of trigger warnings, I didn't really require any; I knew what I was getting into. I knew the bulk of my issues stemmed around cases containing sexual assault, and I knew that they caused my most visceral responses. I felt that addressing these things head on, that engaging with them in an academic forum which took on various avenues of thought, might allow me to find a distance from what I had experienced. In some cases it worked. In others it backfired spectacularly. I've missed more class than I care to admit strictly because, after engaging with the readings, I didn't know whether I would be able to get through the class without bursting into tears or throwing a table -- possibly both at the same time just for funsies. And, like I say, I've been hesitant to discuss any of these actual visceral responses in class for two major reasons: one, I am not a direct survivor of sexual assault and so it is not my place to try to co-opt the experience of actual survivors; and two, I legally can't say anything even if I wanted to. The classes I have attended, I tried to engage with humour. Dark humour is a fall back for every first responder I've ever met -- we have to laugh at what we deal with, or we'll break down into pieces.

Right now, trigger warnings wouldn't really help me one way or the other. They do still serve a purpose for others, and I support their usage in most cases, even while acknowledging that they are but a band-aid in the grand scheme of traumatic experience. They allow for the creation of distance for those who need it, and that can be a life-saver.

But during the readings this week I came across this quote, which I've been mulling over for basically the duration of this entire week: We might need to attend to bad feelings not in order to overcome them, but to learn by how we are affected by what comes near, which means achieving a different relationship to all our wanted and unwanted feelings as a political as well as life resource.

I have been hiding from feelings for four years. Five in December. And for basically the entire duration of that time, I've been actively beating myself up for not being able to overcome second-hand trauma. But perhaps overcome is not the word I should have been trying to achieve. Perhaps creating a working relationship with it is the best I can hope for. I really can't say.

Mostly, I just wanted to say that today, when I was supposed to be in class, I went to my former workplace and spoke with my former supervisor to get the name of a cleared psychiatrist. I haven't called them yet, but I have their business card. I have the possibility. And that small card kind of feels like healing.

Hypersensitivity to Hypersensitivity

I would like to start with story if I could.  A few months ago, I was conducting one of my daily Facebook browses just before the federal intellectual.  As I scrolled down the page, I got caught on an article that had been shared regarding trans folk receiving voting cards with the wrong name and gender marked on them.  Caring more about this than the person’s lengthy status to accompany the article, I clicked on the article.  It was as I expected- did not go into much detail, touched on that it had happened to many transgender people in the Calgary area, they were extremely angry about it, and there was also a statement from someone in the community who touched on the long federal level process that is required to have a name and/or gender change, insinuating the difficulty of mis-gendering someone on their voter card.  Let it be noted here I have no intentions of minimizing a much larger issue by skimming over the details.  I closed the article and proceeded to read the status attached to the article.  The white, cis-gendered middle class person who had shared the article began as such: “Why are we still talking about this shit?!?”  They continued to call society “hypersensitive” because people are crying “victim” at anything.  The person then proceeded to tell Facebook that they’ve had their name misspelt many times on their voter card, as they know many other people who have as well; therefore, it’s something that happens all the time.  

This left me reeling for a number of reasons. Great job equating someone else’s problem to “shit,” person.  Not only does saying someone is crying “victim” at anything appropriate a traumatic experience that does not belong to you, it also helps to enforce a dangerous hierarchy of victimhood- regulated systemically.  Possibly, my favorite part of the entire article was their closing sentiments: “Why can’t we spread love instead of all this hate?  You can string me up for this but it is something that angers me.”  The former statement proved to be even more false than the latter because in the person’s attempt to spread love, they actually only exacerbated a structurally enforced system of oppression. But largely, the umbrella issue for me was the calling of society, particularly the people in the article, “hypersensitive.”  My belief is that as soon as you call any group or individual “hypersensitive” you are taking their experiences, which you neither know anything about nor have ever experienced, and saying they are not as bad, or that bad. 

To expand upon this, I’ve thought a lot about trigger warnings this week. And I’ve decided this issue of hypersensitivity to be a lot more structurally rooted than I thought before. The world we live in has grown to the point where we are no longer able to choose what we are exposed to.  It’s not hyper-sensitivity, it’s hyper-exposure.  This opens doors to a ready made, constant feed of possible triggers- some with warnings and others without.  However, the conflicting discourse surrounding trigger warnings involves a hypersensitivity to hypersensitivity of sorts.  I spent a lot of time this week reorganizing everything I thought I had already decided about trigger warnings and hypersensitivity.  We are just arriving at a place where we can talk about structural oppressions, why would anyone want to dismantle this before it has even taken off?

Trigger warnings and what to do about them

This week's readings on trigger warnings have been strange for me. This is in part because I don't know entirely how to engage with blogs in an academic setting, but it's also because I find the whole conversation somewhat perplexing. Many of the authors spoke of trigger warnings as though they were impairing or impeding the sharing of knowledge. Many, too, used such fallacies as "the slippery slope argument" to make their points, or spoke in ways that were patronizing or condescending to their counterparts. Much of the conversation, from what we read, seems to be based on a misunderstanding of the basic concept of trigger warnings. If we consider the ways that trigger warnings have been used and intended to be used, it is clear that their roots are in the protection of individuals from re-experiencing past trauma, which should be of dire importance to feminists. Rather than restricting content, as these bloggers argue, trigger warnings thus serve as a means by which people can keep themselves safe. This is of particular importance when it comes to policing who can and can not be a feminist, as the blogger The Factual Feminist does. In insisting that feminists are not fragile, she erases the reality of ongoing trauma, and subsequent fragility, experienced by many feminists, and discounts their contributions to feminism. This seems to me like one more instance of a long history of privileged women attempting to dictate what feminists, and thus feminism, look like, thereby negating the experiences and contributions of more marginalized women. Moreover, this discounts the experiences of trauma and pain in a way which is potentially very harmful, in order to make feminism more palatable, which is in no way okay.

However, this is not to say that the trigger warning argument is one which is straightforward, but rather, that the complexities of trigger warnings are not what many of the anti-trigger warning bloggers make them out to be. Triggers are in themselves tenuous and complex, and are not always as easily identifiable as their warnings make them out to be. Moreover, the experiential nature of triggers renders them necessarily subjective, and so the vast diversity of trauma and triggers becomes blurred and flattened by category of trigger warnings. In abolishing trigger warnings we cause people unnecessary and avoidable harm, while perpetuating myths about "good" feminists, and on a larger scale, "good" bodies. However, in including trigger warnings, we risk catering to what Halberstam calls, "sad feelings," or worse, excusing privileged people from engaging in meaningful political discourse because it makes them uncomfortable. In either case, those who are ignored or erased are those most in need of care. Thus, we can see how the argument of neoliberalism plays out in the controversy surrounding trigger warnings, in that triggers become individualized and responsiblized in such a way that obscures the institutional factors of harm. We should enable people to avoid harm whenever possible, and trigger warnings and the awareness they incite can certainly help. However, this is not enough. Perhaps instead of arguing about whether we ought to remove or rely on trigger warnings, we should instead focus on continuing to utilize them in conjuncture with larger critical discourse, and consideration as to the institutional causes of trauma.

The Continuum of Triggers

          “Hurt itself becomes framed as censoring: as requiring the removal of some offending thing.” While I remain undecided on the argument of trigger warnings, I strongly believe that a reasonable issue with them is who they are truly in place for: those who wish to keep themselves at arms reach from “an emotional breakdown.” One thing that Ahmed points out when she speaks of the women that were upset about their experiences with triggering topics is the fact that neither of them wanted the removal of the materials, just that they needed to be dealt with in a respectful manner.  I believe that this quote, and also what we spoke about today in our small groups, is relevant in the context of the “angry black woman” that Audre Lorde speaks of in her article, “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism.” In this sense, the survivor is labeled as the hyper-emotional woman, and the trigger warning is in place for those around her to avoid her feelings of traumatization. Whether we are speaking in the context of a Sociology course on Colonialism, or an English course on the effects of sexual assault, there will always be someone who is portrayed as the “bad guy” (most often a white males), who really do not like to be made to feel guilty about their ancestors or others within a society that share their race/gender. This sense of guilt has no room in a place of discussion, as Lorde states “I have no creative use for guilt, yours or my own. Guilt is only another way of avoiding informed action.”

            Guilt however, is not only reason that certain individuals may feel apprehensive about not adding trigger warnings in class discussions, because lets be honest, who wants to witness yet another emotional breakdown of a woman. When it is a known fact that the majority of survivors of sexual assault are women, the wrongful assumption can be made that women will not be able to handle triggering topics in a classroom. What we talked about today, however, is that these trigger warnings add to the hierarchy of victims, again classifying what the appropriate response to instances of trauma should be, medicalizing the issue. This listing of triggers, therefore, excludes anything out of the “ordinary.”As Duggan points out in her Blog, “the only PTSD-like symptom [she] developed during [her] journey through childhood was the propensity to have a panic attack when [she] heard a barking dog. It is very very difficult to avoid the sound of barking dogs.”

We currently live in a society where everyone is offended by everything; yet, being offended by something is seen as an overreaction, where the individual is “taking it too personally.” This itself is problematic, due to the fact that there is no happy medium on the topic of trigger warnings. If everything is offensive, then we are in great need of trigger warnings. But if we need to toughen up, then why have them at all? When we only focus on the two extremities on the continuum of trigger warnings, the middle ground of allowing individuals the sensitivity that they need to deal with their trauma, while also allowing for a discussion on a controversial topic, is completely ignored.

I'm Being Triggered.

I have been back and forth about how I feel about trigger warnings. I still have not found a concrete answer. I do value them sometimes, I think that it is kind and thoughtful to let people know that there might be content in the video or post that is violent. Calling them trigger warnings is where I am conflicted. There is no way to now what will trigger someone, as we discussed in class.

The video that we watched in class about the two girls discussing the power bill was amusing but it was not an accurate portrayal of what being triggered is like. It is like the floor falls out beneath you and you can not breath and you are taken right back to that place where your trauma occurred. No one can prepare for it or predict it will happen. What we all have to do is be compassionate to those around us. To think before we speak. To acknowledge that people around us have not had the same experiences as we have. To not say that one trauma is more extreme than another and that one trigger is not more serious than another. Kindness and thoughtfulness is really what I am asking for.

I really like in Lisa Duggan's On Trauma and Trigger Warnings, in Three Parts, she addresses her own trigger is a barking dog and states that she has had to find a way to deal with the panic attacks. She knows that triggers are real and how they impact a persons daily life. This being said she is also critical of how they might be being used to protect instead of address. Lisa gives the example of anti-gay Christian students using the defense of trigger warnings to get out of broadening their mind with engaging in queer material. This is a great example of how 'trigger warnings' are being taken advantage of. If people continue to use them as a way to leave the room when they feel a bit uncomfortable then people will not overcome that feeling of discomfort and become a more accepting and informed individual.

I think that the conversation around trigger warning and the misuse of them tie back to the stigma around mental illness. There are still some psychologists that do not believe Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a real disorder. Since there is still so much fear and ignorance around mental illness, the idea that a person could be 'set off' into a psychotic rage over a video or article is dismissed. We know a psychotic rage is not what would happen but to the larger population they have no idea.

Confused About Trigger Warnings

Our discussion about trigger warnings this week was insightful and interesting. I had previously thought a fair amount about trigger warnings because they have become a way for people opposing feminism to point to how sensitive and over dramatic feminists are. I believe this stems from a deep ignorance and misunderstanding about what trigger warnings are. I do generally support trigger warnings because it's just a small way to give someone a heads up that something could bring up a hurtful experience.
However, I have considered that there can be some downsides to trigger warnings. In no way is the following an end all for the idea of trigger warnings just a critical thought. "But to conceal the cause of hurt can make others the cause of their hurt" (Ahmed). This quote reflects a misgivings I have about trigger warnings. While, trigger warnings do not necessarily end the discussion, the people who are getting the benefit for trigger warnings are also the ones who have the most stake in the topic and will be able to give valuable information and the topic. In no way should someone be forced to talk about the circumstance that warranted a trigger warning but that person could have a good opportunity to educate others about their experience. I realize that this falls into neoliberalism and putting the responsibility of education on the individual and more specifically the individual who has had the most hurt done to them. But if institutions choose not to educate the "masses" then it does fall on the shoulders of the marginalized to push and insist on change. I still have trouble putting all that responsibility on the people who have been marginalized the most but I feel doubtful the dominant group will ever change their ways without some serious force.
"We have to work and struggle not so much to feel hurt, but to notice what causes hurt, which means unlearning what we have learnt not to notice" (Ahmed). This quote is why trigger warnings are important and useful. Trigger warnings point to 'unlearning what we have learnt not to notice.' By the presence of trigger warnings and people taking note of trigger warnings those that are not impacted may begin to realize that something in that content needs to be taken seriously for what effect it may have on people or what effect is has had.
Many people are critical about trigger warnings but if they are helping someone and not hurting those being critical of them then they are probably not as bad as people say.

Who doesn't like trigger warnings?

Much of the debate surrounding trigger warnings centres on the different perceptions of what they are, and the role they should play. Critiques view them as a tool for censorship, one that simultaneously coddles an over-sensitive generation and blocks them from engaging with important ideas. Many advocates argue that trigger warning are not an excuse to avoid topics, but rather a signal that the material contains subject-matter that is often associated with post-traumatic stress disorder and the reader should take care to prepare themselves in whatever ways they need to, in order to maintain a feeling of safety and ensure their mental health. Consequently providing a space to open up dialogue rather than restrict it.

Another source of contention relates to the definition of trigger itself. Is a trigger something that makes the audience member uncomfortable? Or rather is it the technical term for a psychological process in which the reader/viewer is taken back to a traumatic experience. If it is the latter, is it reasonable to provide trigger warnings, when something as mundane as a smell, tone of voice or random physical object can have the same effects as a explicit scene featuring sexual violence? Despite these questions, I do not believe that the solution to the trigger warning debate lies solely in a lexicon of clearly defined terms. Rather I think the debate is a reflection of how we treat survivors in general: the tendency to diminish experiences, to unconsciously allow only a certain type of healing within a certain time frame and to expect survivors of sexual assault to pull themselves up from their bootstraps and find a way to move one.

Therefore a key question to ask is: who is critiquing trigger warnings and why? In most cases, and in the readings we have done, it does not seem to be a criticism spurred on by survivors of sexual assault. In my mind, the fact that trigger warnings were initially created and made popular through blogs seeking to create spaces to speak about feminism in accessible ways, lends them a certain level of credibility as it reflects a bottom-up movement that has been increasingly adopted by educational institutions. This does not mean, however, that we should not be aware of the implications of adopting them in formal spaces.

List making and hierarchies of experiences

I feel like trigger warning create a safe space by naming and marking out unsafe things. What does it mean for one to be hurt by something that hasn’t been marked out, and is still in that safe space? If ‘all possible triggers’ in the content are named, I believe this has implications for the value of hurt that may be felt in relation to unnamed triggers. And to me, this has serious links to society’s ideas of what the ideal victim looks like.

I think the skit shown in class about the electricity bill is on point here. The things that are named, like associations with animals, were depicted as so specific and abstract to the context that they became ridiculous. On my Facebook feed, a couple of my friends were having a chat about love. One poster (in jest): “you’re triggering me!!” If in academia and the feminist blogosphere trigger warnings have become the source of a moral panic, in pop culture they’ve become a bit of a joke. There’s an idea that something so specific and seemingly random can’t truly be a trigger for anyone.

This week has left me utterly confused about trigger warnings, particularly as a neoliberal critique can be made both against and in favour of their use. What I’m left with is an alright feeling about trigger warnings in the right form.  Emotions can be put to good use, and by feeling them we are pushed to address and learn where they’re coming from. However I don’t think trigger warnings should attempt to name all possible triggers – everyone’s experience is unique and the list would never end. More to the point, I think the habit of list making has led to the above perception of the (lack of) utility of trigger warnings. I think what is most productive would be to alert the audience to a theme, and then create a safe space for any hurt to come out and dealt with. If someone is ready, their confrontation of their emotions and hurt should be encouraged. 

Valid emotions and Trigger warnings

Amongst the blog posts and classroom discussions I have noticed that Trigger warnings (TW) have become the opener to a number of issues. Most interestingly there has always been some form of discussion regarding censorship (most obviously), privilege, and validation of feelings. Amongst these topics a reoccurring topic in class discussions has been the way emotions (in this case negative emotions) are perceived as hindrance to learning and discussions. That an emotional response cannot be seen as forwarding our own intellectual development but instead as an obstacle for both the individual and those around them.

In their blog post Sara Ahmed openly claims that feminism was/is based in hurt feelings, in an emotional response to the injustice and inequality surrounding individuals. Similarly, as part of class discussion a few weeks ago, we were posed with the question: Do movements (e.g. Black Lives matter) need to be empowered by emotions? This question has plagued me throughout our course as we continue to encounter material that often creates emotional responses. Even within the context of our classroom, a space open to emotional and critical discussion of sexual assault, it is difficult to navigate between these lines. When is it appropriate to react emotionally in class?

In the video “What’s the deal with classroom Trigger warnings?” TW were depicted as discussion-openers not a form of censorship. But in Ahmed’s article it is not TW themselves that are the cause of censorship in classrooms but the emotions elicited. It is emotions which plague the objective rational University establishment. As has been said in class multiple times, TW openly question the knowledge, content, information we are taught as both natural and integral to a university education. Content that is graphic is seen to be a necessary component to higher learning. Yet this argument holds no weight for me. If professors and instructors do not openly acknowledge the graphic nature of the content they teach, how are they teaching students to destabilize naturalized notions of violence, racism, sexism etc?

Without repeating class discussion I think it is more productive to consider the TW debate from the perspective of emotions and which emotions are granted validity in the classroom. Ahemd points to the ways most individuals can be hurt and bring hurt into a room. It is this emotion that brings many to feminism, and I would argue to other forms of activism. TWs, in my mind, are not so much a debate on putting warning labels on content but on how individuals (in an academic setting at least) should be able to react objectively without emotion. That our education system relies on critical yet emotionless analysis is a large indicator of its faults. Therefore by reframing the debate I believe that TWs are helpful tools to create discussions which destabilize our notions of rationality without emotion as somehow proper. 

The Process of Learning and Triggering Language

In the “Ethics of Trigger Warnings in the Classroom” blog post, I found myself thinking a lot about what students might say during a discussion, rather than the class material itself. A quote from Brittney Cooper states:

“When students of color who have endured racism have to hear racially insensitive comments from other students who are in the process of learning, the classroom is unsafe. The classroom is unsafe for trans students who are often referred to by the wrong gender pronoun by both students and teachers. The classroom is unsafe for rape survivors who encounter students in the process of learning why getting drunk at a party does not mean a woman deserves to be raped.”

I agree that there is no such thing as a safe space, for the very reason that there is no way to truly control what others do or say within a space, nor do I think this level of policing is necessary or helpful. I’ve cringed in classrooms as students have misspoken, sometimes saying something unintentionally problematic, or sometimes making flat out offensive remarks. I’ve also been the person saying what I thought was a well-thought out opinion in class, only to be called out on whatever privilege or internalized prejudice allowed me to think something through in a closed-minded way. The thing is, although these situations are unavoidably awkward and uncomfortable, being on the receiving end of a call out has been where I’ve done some of my best learning, and I like to think that’s true for others as well.

Now, I understand that this opinion comes from a privileged place – I’ve never been triggered in the classroom, or even deeply hurt. I understand that not everyone can say that, and I don’t want to advocate for everyone making blatantly racist remarks, or throwing around transphobic slurs. But I do want to focus on Cooper’s emphasis on these problematic remarks coming from students who are “in the process of learning.” Both inside and outside of the classroom, I’ve witnessed a lot of different reactions to someone saying something unintentionally offensive, and I don’t think any reaction is flat out wrong, per se. I have been on the receiving end of justified anger when I’ve made a misstep, and it has helped me become more self-reflexive, and to either research things well before I come out with a strong opinion, or to just shut up and listen when it's necessary. That being said, intersectional feminism is important to me, so I want to learn as much as possible about how I can unlearn oppressive beliefs and language. For people who are less invested in this, I wonder if being shot down for making a mistake might discourage them from wanting to do better next time. Sometimes, I wonder if knowing the right way to speak about locations of oppression, and always being up to date about what words have become problematic, might be a privilege itself.

I guess what I’m struggling with is how we can foster a classroom setting that allows for students to mess up and learn from it, without completely shutting down conversations. However, I don’t want to make these learning processes more important than the safety of those who have lived through constant microaggressions and straight up violence, and are understandably fed up with having to teach people “How Not to Be an Asshole 101.” I also don’t want us to just stop calling people out because I really do believe that’s an essential part of learning. Am I privileging prejudice with my concern?