Decidedly Undecided. I Think.

To be honest, the war on trigger warnings was unknown to me before this semester. Trigger warnings, single sentences used to caution readers, learners, watchers, etc. of potentially upsetting content, are being criticized, among other claims, as being unnecessary and a result of an oversensitive generation. Having read blogposts, critiques and watched videos which go both ways on this topic, I am decidedly undecided on my stance on this issue; I understand many of the points of view I’ve learnt about and cannot decide which is ‘correct’. For example, I can understand Jack Halberstam’s critique that trigger warnings bring with them a multitude of concerns, specifically that they require a decision to be made as to which subjects have the potential to trigger people and which do not; which subjects are valid triggers and which are not. On this topic, Halberstam asserts that “a rhetoric of harm and trauma” which is, according to him, a product of trigger warnings, “casts all social difference in terms of hurt feelings and … divides up politically allied subjects into hierarchies of woundedness.” Although his language is strong, his sentiment is reasonable: trauma is a difficult thing to categorize and perhaps attempting to do so can be damaging.

However, I also understand that it’s a logical fallacy (of relative privation, specifically) to suggest that acknowledging certain forms of trauma devalues other forms of trauma. For example, that people are outwardly mourning those hurt in the recent attacks in Paris does not suggest that other recent attacks in other countries mean less. Similarly, that topics such as sexual assault and racism regularly appear in trigger warnings doesn’t logically negate the validity of other upsetting topics, such as anxiety. If it can be accepted that trigger warnings don’t necessarily suggest that some forms of trauma are more significant than others, then what’s the harm in using them for their capacity as a safety measure? Like Julia Serano said in her critique of Halberstam’s blogpost, “activism can be messy and difficult but … the quarrels over language and feelings are ultimately worth the effort.” Because, if what results from trigger warnings is that some people will have warning that what they are about to read could be upsetting for them, then they are having a positive impact.

It seems to me that the most effective way to handle the difficulties that trigger warnings present is to be conscious that they have limitations; they may not be the best tool to protect every person from every type of trauma, but they can be useful for some and there’s value in that.