Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

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.

philosophical question, is 'derp' a reaction or not

counter argument to myself, maybe i'm an outlier, i taught myself how to read, taught myself humanistic ethics and morals via christianity when i was 7 to inoculate myself from some pretty nasty surroundings and actually practiced that shit throughout childhood, blah blah blah. everyone's got a different brain thing going on, i guess i'm not the only voice on this issue. but i still think it's a misguided and potentially harmful idea.

there's a push pull with literature as an elective slash some english as a mandatory slash the ideals of a liberal arts education transforming. i think this was covered upthread already, but.

like there's a notion that it is _important_ for students to experience other perspectives, and to be discomfited, and work through, so to speak, some heavy shit, so that they are inducted into a genuine adulthood with a wider field of vision. and this is supposed to make students uncomfortable, and challenge them, and confront them.

and then there is also the service university which is an expensive summer camp with a nice certificate at the end.

and this stuff is somewhere in between, because precisely it impacts what the "canon" is and what the mandatory lit curriculum shapes up like.

even in high school and jr. high like _tons_ of what we read were all coming of age war novels of some kind (which is actually really weird, and speaks to a great deal about when and why the curriculum was set!).

then you get to college and you're supposed to read all this stuff with emotions and settings and feelings and craft and just dive headlong into the sea of common experience of people of a certain class and social position and aesthetic sensibility and refinement and then you can learn to like things and develop taste (oh god) and you're told this is what grown people read. so if you opt out, what does that say about you? its a violent act. it believes in the power of the word more than the curriculum does, that's for sure!

that's the problem. they're teaching you this because it is supposed to be important. but simultaneously it's not important, it is claimed, in the sense that it can _matter_. and if it _is_ important, and _can_ matter, then you are allowed to say no to it.

its this false debate playacting as though humanities education actually resembles the captain my captain romanticism it occasionally aspires to.

(but that would be even worse, wouldn't it?)

the captain my captain romanticism

I don't get this phrase; as in the spirit of Whitman?

The spirit of Robin Williams, is how I took that.

Great posts Spectrum. The timing of this suggests it has a lot more to do with the current wave of social justice activism than it does with PTSD.

What I find strange is the echoes of the PMRC arguments 25 years ago. I remember most of the left being furious about the stickers and not buying the line that it was just informing people, not censorship, and they were right because the stickers led to records not being stocked in certain stores and the manufacture of clean versions, which are mild forms of censorship. At least the PMRC and MPAA are only concerned about under-18s. I'm uneasy with the idea that universities should be the first bodies to start labelling art for over-18s.

That's a crucial distinction, DL.

ive skimmed, has anybody waltzed in here to say tw: are basically viewer discretion is advised type shit and its rly not a big deal to do this?

ya

ok cool has anyone posted this yet> http://tressiemc.com/2014/03/05/the-trigger-warned-syllabus/

like there's a notion that it is _important_ for students to experience other perspectives, and to be discomfited, and work through, so to speak, some heavy shit, so that they are inducted into a genuine adulthood with a wider field of vision. and this is supposed to make students uncomfortable, and challenge them, and confront them.

But there's another notion endemic in most universities and colleges in the last 15 years that students enduring discomfiting pain must have services available, and professors are no less responsible than administrators for mitigating those painful experiences.