Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

i've had PTSD. triggers are things like ... smells, or if a day looks like a certain day because it's reminiscent of some traumatic time in life, or gestures or the way people hold themselves, tone of voice, etc. books never gave me any sort-of problem, i mean, you're in complete control over a book! not so much when it's a stranger and you're out in public.

i just get the feeling the people pushing this policy don't really understand the issue or even what they're doing at all. why not publicize PTSD and lead it into seeking support services? that would actually be helpful and useful for people. if i were in college and people made this trigger warning hooplah it probably wouldn't have even registered with me.

if, on the other hand, these social justice types communicated a compassionate, educational message about the issue with the aim of teaching people how to get help and support, that would actually have been helpful. this is about helping people ... right?

in all the chatter about this i've seen resistance coming from teachers themselves (self described anyway).

among professors there's an inevitable and general 'goddam kids' mentality esp. with regard to reading assignments. i think there's an institutional suspicion of anything that might allow students to get out of reading something *and still* be able to get credit for the course

that's probably the crux of 'conservative' (aside from blanket hostility to feminism or people in subject positions as a whole) is that it's being described as an opt-out from work.

xp to sharivari: well, i think a widespread if ill-defined conception is that minorities experience stress levels and symptoms akin to ptsd in virtue of their routine life experiences (the claim derald wing sue makes, tracing it back to chester pierce's work on black americans), so that the accommodations aren't intended to serve only exceptional cases but to serve equity more broadly for all minorities in higher ed. likewise with feminist approaches to 'climate'.

can you link to someone making a strong argument for that claim? (that minorities experience symptoms comparable to ptsd)

This is about finding a considerate way to accommodate a tiny minority who, for whatever reason, do have actual PTSD.

it seems like the easiest way to do this would be for someone to create an open listing of the possibly emotionally disturbing content of commonly discussed books and films, and then put the onus on the small portion of students who might benefit from a trigger warning to check it out themselves rather than requiring professors/departments to do it. on the rare occasion that a student is assigned Things Fall Apart and then checks the content listings and thinks they might be disturbed by it, then I'm sure the professor would be more than willing to come up with an alternate reading.

oh nm, i see that it's that microaggression thing. another thing i'm in love w/ xp

Do you think Wing Sue and those fighting the same corner are aiming to get works dealing with racism, sexism and colonialism taken off the curriculum just in case or trying to facilitate an understanding that people might react badly even if they haven't been in directly comparable situations and should be treated compassionately?

it seems like the easiest way to do this would be for someone to create an open listing of the possibly emotionally disturbing content of commonly discussed books and films, and then put the onus on the small portion of students who might benefit from a trigger warning to check it out themselves rather than requiring professors/departments to do it. on the rare occasion that a student is assigned Things Fall Apart and then checks the content listings and thinks they might be disturbed by it, then I'm sure the professor would be more than willing to come up with an alternate reading.

Yep, that sounds fairly reasonable - but the professors are probably still going to need guidelines on what is expected of them in that situation.

yeah mordy, you can hunt down derald wing sue's 'microaggressions in everyday life' if you do the stealing e-books thing

here's a reference to a recent study working toward the same end

http://www.voice-online.co.uk/article/new-study-links-post-traumatic-stress-disorder-racism

And professors are teaching the same books year on year, rather than the student studying once, and the professor knows the works better than anyone.

something something the establishment of pathological pervasive psychodrama to the level of daily social interaction

It's all a bit "It's political correctness gone mad" to me.

among professors there's an inevitable and general 'goddam kids' mentality esp. with regard to reading assignments. i think there's an institutional suspicion of anything that might allow students to get out of reading something *and still* be able to get credit for the course

These guys are the ones posting on Facebook – the orneriest bunch. I have to resist doing the same.

oh damn, this isn't about mental health, it's about striking out against heteronormative cisgendered ableist terrorists and just using PTSD as a hook. no wonder they aren't talking about counseling.

i've clowned myself in more ways than one in this thread

idk, i studied History at A-Level and Law at university. There was a situation in which a girl who had lost family in the Holocaust had an extreme panic attack while we were being shown a documentary about the death camps and asked to be excused - which the teacher agreed to without any question. Similarly, there were huge sections of my degree that had a focus on gender violence, accidental death / dismemberment and war crimes. There was an understanding that if you didn't feel you could participate, you didn't have to. The idea that literature can be as powerful as fact in bringing up horrible reactions in people doesn't strike me as absurd. It also doesn't mean that you don't still teach it within a framework of understanding.

Oberlin College has published an official document on triggers, advising faculty members to remove triggering material when it doesn't "directly" contribute to learning goals

is this going to be like redacting documents?

I'm wondering if there's a way to do this without falling into the trap of University Admin Doing A Heavy-Handed Thing in a Tone-Deaf Way for ostensibly laudable reasons.

As a student of a major American public university in from '94-00, I walked into the Admin already trying grand gestures and missing wildly.

What about asking at the beginning of the first semester if anyone would like to talk in private about PTSD and triggering material so that the teacher can bear that in mind? Responding to the needs of individual students is what teachers should do. It's the blanket application of TWs that feels problematic because it could lead to certain texts being avoided. But idk, maybe that's stigmatising. I can see why a student might not want to start university by talking to a teacher they don't yet know about a rape or eating disorder. The only justification for blanket TWs I can see is if they've very very limited, eg the film showing a graphic rape scene.

these aren't comparable but i had to have numerous conversations w/ professors about my crohn's disease throughout college when it flared up and forced me to miss classes. it was embarrassing telling them that i had a bowel disorder, esp when i had to explain exactly what it entailed, but i figured that since i was the dude with CD i should be the one to handle it personally w/ the professors as it came up as an issue.

My university uses "learning goals" too. For everything.

senior year of high school was when my PTSD was at its worst. in psychology class we were watching Sybil and the teacher warned us that the ending had graphic scenes and we were free to excuse ourselves. i chose to do that since it related to what i was dealing with, but damn it made me feel weird as hell, and people with any brains in 'em could figure out i probably had issues with that shit.

trigger warnings do seem a little stigmatizing in a way, particularly since i feel like i'm taking a big leap in even discussing this stuff openly, so that's why i prefer people being taught coping skills over trying to carve out a special class for them and enact and enforce a university policy like this. but i honestly get the feeling this debate has more to do with identity politics than PTSD, unfortunately.

i don't think this is about censorship exactly, and most normal college instructors are standardly aware enough of how to handle individual student issues pertaining to course participation, and sensitive enough to try to deal appropriately with them when off-book (say, not foreseen in syllabus policy) issues arise.

i think it's more likely about internecine power struggles within the university (and marginally involving interested parties outside the university, or without direct authority in the discussions, like students, for whom the trend has been toward greater and greater assertion of, i guess you could call it, the right to options).

do ppl who self-harm really feel a compulsion to self-harm just by hearing about someone else doing it?

idk we seem to be veering off track here.

is there anything inherent in trigger warnings that leads to censorship? if not, isn't it just a version the sticker on a dvd box?

Well, that's a whole nother problem. Much like the Parental Advisory Explicit Lyrics stickers on early 90s CD cases, which allowed savvy consumers to buy albums with a whole lotta s words and F words, there's the danger of this attracting a creepy kind of student who specifically scans course syllabi for rape, violence, and imperialism.

Just kidding, but you know there's gonna be at least one dude.

mordy, i don't know about the evidence but i think it's kind of a werther effect deal? of course in online communities the danger involves being alone and isolated, which makes you all the more vulnerable to being adversely influenced/affected, given the issues around self-harm.

i think it's more likely about internecine power struggles within the university (and marginally involving interested parties outside the university, or without direct authority in the discussions, like students, for whom the trend has been toward greater and greater assertion of, i guess you could call it, the right to options).

i dont think this point can be overstated right now.

i wonder if the end game for this is either a) a total backlash and subsequent ridicule of the concept or b) an MPAA style ratings system for courses and book (and also "voluntarily" adopted)

if not, isn't it just a version the sticker on a dvd box?

it's like a version of the sticker on a dvd box where each individual store that sells dvds has to come up with their own film rating system and policies and then print out the sticker and put it on the dvd box

i think a broader point (for me as a wannabe english prof) is that literature courses tend to be electives for non-majors. if you are a literature major and are at risk for being triggered then perhaps another major would be more suitable. if you are not a literature major then maybe non-literature electives are more appropriate. but then can we say that a history course, a sociology course, can be triggering? and why or why not?

well, that line wouldn't fly in philosophy, because it would be regarded as exclusionary right where adapting one's pedagogy would better serve the discipline's universal aspirations.

also u can't teach contemporary continental w/out teaching trauma

if a history course isn't triggering you're obviously doing it wrong

i don't really have a problem with warning labels if that's all these are, altho i guess it does make the student-teacher experience into that much more of a customer-shopkeeper one, which, overall, is the wrong one. but that's what happens when you charge that fucking much.

it's funny though some vestigial "universal aspirations" is, i think, a small part of why some lit profs bristle at this idea. it's to forfeit, perhaps once and for all, that literature has some universal/humanist vocation.

and like i said, i think for the parties behind institutionalizing the practice, it's an equity issue, trying to make sure as few people as possible are prevented from enjoying the benefits of a university education through the institution's failure to adequately adapt to their needs

it is a shame that it only complicates the humanities. trigger warnings on econ classes imo. tie that shit up in so much red tape.

trying to make sure as few people as possible are prevented from enjoying the benefits of a university education through the institution's failure to adequately adapt to their needs

yeah for sure. maybe i should copy and paste that adorno quote again, haha.

seen on an academic blog, seems diagnostically useful

Try to imagine Foucault obediently inserting trigger warnings in a syllabus.

'but foucault was kind of a dick'

Foucault didn't heed trigger warnings did he

all books should carry a trigger warning for illiteracy-shaming

trying to make sure as few people as possible are prevented from enjoying the benefits of a university education through the institution's failure to adequately adapt to their needs

see, here's my issue with this debate. PTSD isn't like being in a wheelchair where you need ramps to go places. it's a treatable condition. a person doesn't need trigger warnings and special treatment to get the benefit of a good education. i figured out how to cope and got my English degree. did the same thing with law school. ended up making a decent place for myself in the world, and it's just gettin started, etc.

talking about needing a policy makes it seem like it's necessary when it's really not at all and totally mischaracterizes the issue which only further stigmatizes it. which makes me think that the people pushing this agenda don't understand what the hell they're talking about. they may understand the concept of ableism, but not trauma.

Applying them one-size-fits-all is taking the ethos of student affairs (where I work btw) and applying it to academics. It's a consequence of how universities have changed in the last 50 years to accommodating the needs of students. Every day I see the schism between colleagues whose background is education or administration and faculty with whom they barely interact, therefore they tend to regard students, implicitly, as clients.

applying them = applying the

is there anything inherent in trigger warnings that leads to censorship? if not, isn't it just a version the sticker on a dvd box?

― james lipton and his francs (darraghmac), Monday, May 19, 2014 1:51 PM (1 hour ago)

yes. unequivocally yes. trigger warnings do not alert us to potentially unpleasant content, content we might wish to avoid for reasons of taste. they alert us to potentially damaging content, content that might actually hurt us. mordy noted this upthread. the idea of "triggering" is tied to the idea of legitimate harm and threat, that people with PTSD need to be actively protected from the things that trigger them, that they in fact have a trumping right to be protected from such things. while no one's talking about truly censoring anything at the moment, this view of triggering gives the triggered enormous discourse-limiting power. it's not government censorship, no, but it can certainly have a chilling effect.

if the material is available to all those who choose to view in then I don't agree with you there.

"being triggered" doesn't damage anyone or anything, only a person can choose to do damage to themselves in regards to how they respond to unpleasant emotions. the worst part of trauma is our concept of what it means as opposed to what it actually did to us. there's totally a way out of it but it takes hard work and serious problem solving skills. that's what these people should be working on, not figuring out what color sticker they should put on a textbook.

i think contendo's got a good point, especially at the college stage where so many crucial intellectual judgments are being formed/re-formed. there are quite a few things i carried mistaken impressions of on past my college years just because they prevented me from ever really finding out in detail what they were all about. surely a rep for being emotionally harmful would have that kind of effect too.

idk there's gonna be a sizeable cohort setting out to collect the lot like it was pokemon iircc

i have to admit im a little surprised (gratified?) people put such stock into, like, "The Awakening" or "The Merchant of Venice" still having some affective power over 19 year olds.

in my experience getting kids to have literally any reaction to "literature" at all is quite a feat.