Trigger Warnings
Seth Godwynn
A new subject buzzing around the internet is the proposed use of ‘trigger warnings’. Books are facing the very real possibility that they might have to put these on them, in case people are offended by the content.
Make no mistake about it, the creeping shadow of censorship is being cast on your work. This isn’t the first step, but it’s a dangerous one. Allow me to explain.
First of all, the phrase ‘trigger warning’ is nonsensical, the kind of meaningless political double-speak we were warned about in the novel, 1984, and countless times since. When political correctness demands a new name for something, you should always be warned and wary.
What is a trigger? In literal terms, it’s something that releases a reaction from something else. In terms of a firearm, the most common use of the concept, it’s a mechanical device that is pulled to release the reaction inside the weapon that ultimately fires a bullet.
In psychological terms, the word trigger has been in use for some time in cases of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Certain sounds or images can easily cause severe anxiety attacks specific to the individual. This is a serious issue. Getting offended by an idea you don’t like is not a serious issue, and to hijack the trigger concept is to overstate just how offended the person really is by several orders of magnitude.
What we’re really talking about is having content in your book that could upset someone who reads it. Well… Is that really a bad thing? Isn’t that the point of stories, to teach lessons, to promote positive changes, to freely exchange ideas? Perhaps some people are actually against all that?
There are people who are unfortunate enough to have to deal with all manner of issues. Some people don’t have the full use of their bodies, some don’t have full use of their brains. Let’s take the example of someone who doesn’t have the ability to walk. They will likely end up with a wheelchair, and you would hope one would be given to them for free so that they can have reasonable access to the world around them. Now, what we don’t do is have teams of people carrying them around. We’re smart enough to know that the handicaps other people have shouldn’t hold back the entire population.
What we do instead is make reasonable adjustments so that we’re not making their lives any more difficult than it needs to be. In this case, we have as a society created a medical profession that can help as far as possible with getting them close to a normal life.
But this is far more insidious. We’re facing a small, but vocal, minority who feel that literature and art should bend to accommodate the needs of a very tiny few, when it should never have been required to bend at all.
We already make more than reasonable allowances with content. It’s human nature to avoid going too far with our descriptions. You don’t read many novels where the descriptions of human acts revolt you to such a degree that you are unable to read further.
We are generally self-monitoring and most of it works. On top of that, our publishers flag the content, warning the audience what to expect. We also add a blurb and have genres, informing the buying public about the material they’re considering.
What they’re asking for now, is additional warnings that won’t actually make sense, if we’re smart enough to actually think about it.
Cigarette manufacturers put pictures of cancerous tumours on their boxes; sales increased. We changed the ratings of movies, and people just found ways around them. These measures are known never to actually work at stopping the content reaching the buying public, at least the ones we’re using these measures to protect.
So why would we want them anyway?
The suggestion proposes that some people have such serious mental health issues that the terrible trauma might be triggered if they hear about things that might remind them of it. Well, for the most part, that’s nonsense. One of the most common debilitating mental conditions is depression, and it wouldn’t be possible to write a book without at least one character feeling less then emotionally stellar. Another is post-traumatic shock syndrome: are we talking about putting warnings on books about war that warn of war related content, or do we just assume anybody suffering PTSD would avoid books about war if it was likely to cause them issues? Didn’t certain countries try that with bags of peanuts and the whole world laughed at them? Did we learn nothing?
Do we really expect our novels to have lengthy warnings on the back for an incredibly small minority of people? To be clear, we’re not just talking about people who can’t deal with reading about an event. We’re talking about people who are also so completely out of touch with reality that they’re unable even to exist in the real world, by understanding their own weaknesses. We’re talking about encouraging and enshrining victimhood.
You see, as well as having emotional problems that would destroy their mental equilibrium, they’re also so helpless that they’re unable to regulate that for themselves, and need the whole rest of society to do it for them. I suggest that people like this don’t even exist. Are we really expected to believe that some people enjoy literature, but reading a few lines might destroy them, but they just read anyway and expect other people to have dealt with all that for them?
This is like me demanding that the sun shines less brightly because I don’t want to be burnt.
There’s an old fable about a king who demands that the entire roads of his country are covered with leather, since the stones are hurting his feet. A wise man eventually advises him to wear that leather on his own feet, thus inventing the shoe.
It isn’t our job as writers to look after the shortcoming of each and every member of our audience. It’s our job to express our truth so that our words, and the journey’s we describe might add to the good in the world.
We’re already told what we can and can’t say. We’re told what to think, we’re told who is good and who is evil. But now they’re taking the first step towards telling us what we can and can’t include in our work.
This won’t stop with a warning on the cover, history teaches us that. If we allow that step, they’ll be back with more demands. We have almost no freedom left and it’s up to us where we draw the line.
It’s way beyond time that we all stood together and told these people that they’ve gone far enough. The content of our work is not theirs to modify. It’s ours to express, and it’s not negotiable.
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