The Coddling Of The American Mind (Trigger Warning Article In The Atlantic...)

Some things affect me WAY more now than they did when I was 24 or 14 or whatever.

Also, can I please repeat, that "Being Triggered" is not the same thing as "Being upset by something".

Seriously, do you get flashbacks, panic attacks, do you end up in scary repetitive thoughtworms that can last for hours or even days that make any kind of concentration impossible?

If you feel upset, if you feel disturbed, or even "outraged" or angered by something, please. stop. conflating. that. with what PTSD reactions involve. OK? Thanks.

I'm surprised that Trigger Warnings have become such a hot topic when there's no evidence that they're being imposed or forcing texts off the curriculum. I was bothered by the breadth of the Oberlin draft guidelines a few months ago but they were dropped and most colleges seem to be using them voluntarily as a courtesy without any ill effects. It feels like a paper tiger.

re: microaggressions, I like the word because I just think it's a pretty word, and it's imo also a pretty useful framework for describing the experiences of people who experience them all day every day, but just tactically I think people generally hate being called "rude" and thinking of themselves as rude, and the word oughta get more play. if I'm right, that people don't like being called rude, it's a little weird, because esp. Americans have really embraced this "did I offend you? WELL I'M JUST SPEAKING MY MIND" thing that's so horrible and gross, but I think "rude" in the US anyway still carries some stigma (probably rooted in garbage classism but stick with me here) that could be exploited for a little while

I think that's a pretty important part of understanding the vocabulary and nuance of this whole sphere -- many people just lack the cognizance or emotional experience to recognize the difference between disagreement and lingering emotional trauma.

I might just have some occasionally lousy coworkers, though.

JCLC otm about "rude" though, I'm definitely in favor of bringing it back

And I just wanted to add:

On a personal level, I dropped out of high school due to mental health issues. I got an equivalency diploma, and made several attempts at going to University, but ended up dropping out every time, again due to mental health issues.

I have no idea if trigger warnings in classes would have enabled me to stay in school and complete that education. But if I seem really passionate about *anything* that enables people, especially women, with mental health issues to stay at school, and finish their education - an option which was denied me - I am going to be really personally passionate about defending that thing.

Americans have really embraced this "did I offend you? WELL I'M JUST SPEAKING MY MIND" thing that's so horrible and gross, but I think "rude" in the US anyway still carries some stigma (probably rooted in garbage classism but stick with me here) that could be exploited for a little while

yeah but a bold canadian band tried to empower us with this word & ILX just laughed... shameful

as cheesy as it is, that web browser extension that replaces the phrase "political correctness" with "treating people with respect" is kind of eye-opening when it comes to framing what should be a simple idea in a heterogeneous society

Re: calling people out on rudeness (or anything), again, I refer to child-rearing (and I think basic psychology); you get much better responses by saying "you did a rude thing / that action was rude" than by saying "you are rude". Actions and reactions can be tempered and changed easily. Intrinsic sense of self much less so, and being told your intrinsic self is bad just isn't good at all.

Thanks for the reply Dröhn Rock. I definitely see what you are saying and it has made me reconsider my opinion somewhat, however you seem to be assuming a homogeneity of both traumatic events and individual responses to them that I am not entirely comfortable with. Its a fraught discussion because neither people, events nor people's reaction to those events are predictable, and what might be good for one person might not be good for another. I appreciate the response though and its definitely food for thought.

however you seem to be assuming a homogeneity of both traumatic events and individual responses to them that I am not entirely comfortable with

No, really, I'm not. I've been pretty specific over and over again, "this is my, specific, individual experience" (do I really need to qualify every time that other people's experiences may vary, *every* time?)

So I think the assumption is actually yours, rather than implicit in what I've been saying.

But this is the problem, when you have a thread of dozens of people ~discussing an issue~ and only one person who has experienced that issue talking about it from the inside. Other people start assuming that one person speaking their experience on that issue is somehow speaking for all. Wow, oh boy, do I ever not want that responsibility. I am just trying to provide one perspective which had been missing from this debate here.

as cheesy as it is, that web browser extension that replaces the phrase "political correctness" with "treating people with respect" is kind of eye-opening when it comes to framing what should be a simple idea in a heterogeneous society

― μpright mammal (mh), Thursday, October 8, 2015 3:10 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I agree with the sentiment behind this (and the Stewart Lee video), however I think the problem is that in practice a heterogeneous society is going to include lots of people whose speech or behaviour doesn't meet the highest standards of treating people with respect/political correctness, for reasons ranging from lack of access to education or lack of cultural context to general social awkwardness and anxiety or differences in cognitive functioning, and if statements or attitudes which don't meet those standards are treated as deliberate acts of aggression then people who may just not know any better and who themselves may be marginalized in one way or another may struggle to deal with the situations that arise.

Which is not to say that a high standard of respect isn't a worthwhile goal, I just feel like the question of tone in these things is hugely important and I suspect often misjudged.

Also, tangentially, I think what bugs people a lot about the term "microaggressions" is the "micro" part. Because it says right in the name that this is a very small thing, so the instantaneous response is, "That's nothing! What are you complaining about?" Perhaps a better term is needed.

― the top man in the language department (誤訳侮辱), Thursday, October 8, 2015 8:56 AM (55 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha, i was just thinking how good a term "microaggressions" is because the point is that it's the cumulative effect of the same ones over and over again, that in and of themselves are too small to take offence to in person, or if they didn't happen all the time wouldn't have much effect

i mean, it's toned-down language - instead of treating a minor rudeness with (eg) possibly unintentional, possibly racial undertones as A Racist Incident, it's people pointing out that if it happens repeatedly it feels weightier and more racist than any single incident would

― lex pretend, Thursday, October 8, 2015 9:05 AM (46 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

re: microaggressions, I like the word because I just think it's a pretty word, and it's imo also a pretty useful framework for describing the experiences of people who experience them all day every day

― tremendous crime wave and killing wave (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Thursday, October 8, 2015 9:57 AM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yea i actually really like the term "microaggressions." lex very otm here about the cumulative effect of these very "small" things over a lifetime. i heard the term for the first time a few years ago and it totally resonated with me. i had a lot of white friends growing up -- very close friends, even -- say minor shit to me all the time that was "in jest" but grossly racist (calling my dad "chief" bc he has brown skin, saying my curly black hair was like "public hair", joking around calling me a "dirty peruvian" or a "mexican" even though i am not mexican) that didn't constitute "oppression" in the strong sense of say, police brutality or housing discrimination or whatever but over and over the cumulative effect of this minor things said jokingly by friends of mine over my childhood sent very clear messages to me about what white folks think about brown people and about how i really fit in (or not) into the very white community i grew up in. (aside, i had a lot of shit that i hadn't yet figured out as basically the only hispanic kid in my community and at this point in my life i can say that i wouldn't tolerate that bullshit anymore and wouldn't continue being friends with people who said that shit to me, but at the time it was a little more complicated, i truly wanted to be accepted by these people even though i never really could be).

Re: "did I offend you? WELL I'M JUST SPEAKING MY MIND." Sweet merciful jeebus do I hate that attitude of "obviously you just can't handle my raw REALness."

Whether it's used as cover for mild challops about a piece of pop culture, or for incontrovertibly hateful spew, it's manipulative in the extreme. It instantly positions any objection, however reasonable, as wussiness.

I was in college twenty-mumble years ago. Everything I thought and did was so cringe-inducingly immature that I am not going to hold today's youth to a higher standard than I would have wanted myself held to.

At the same time, I encountered a lot of ideas that made me uncomfortable. Interestingly, one of those ideas was to take other peoples' perspectives seriously, even those who were not well-off white dudes! This required a generous helping of "shut up and listen." Another idea was thoughtfully craft my tone and messages with the intended audience in mind so as to communicate with that audience more effectively. Including people with different life experiences than my own. Further including voices that have been historically underrepresented and/or silenced (perhaps especially those voices).

Thus, for me, learning to empathize with people and learning to think/speak/write effectively were inextricably linked. Neglecting the first would have sabotaged the second. As a result I'm grateful for posts like branwell's here.

But this is the problem, when you have a thread of dozens of people ~discussing an issue~ and only one person who has experienced that issue talking about it from the inside. Other people start assuming that one person speaking their experience on that issue is somehow speaking for all. Wow, oh boy, do I ever not want that responsibility. I am just trying to provide one perspective which had been missing from this debate here.

― Dröhn Rock (Branwell with an N), Thursday, October 8, 2015 3:30 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

What I was trying to suggest is that while you might be the only person in this thread who has experienced your specific set of circumstances, there might be others who have experienced traumatic events and who have a different perspective on whether trigger warnings would have been helpful in how they dealt with it. Which is not an attempt to diminsh the value of your own perspective at all.

THANK YOU CAPTAIN OBVIOUS! That idea had literally ~never~ crossed my mind! So glad you pointed it out to me.

Branwell over and out.

I have definitely dealt with a person or two who most definitely had some strong traumatic events in their past who was not aware they were triggering post-traumatic stress in others by talking about certain people and events.

But, you know, family is often difficult

The way Alfred, Lord Sotosyn described trigger warnings, in the context of a classroom, seemed pretty reasonable.

I will say that the name could be a little less violent...for people who don't like to evoke the imagery of guns.

Trigger warning:

http://www.horsenation.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/trigger-alive2.jpg

i actually think the use of the term trigger warning in that atlantic piece is kind of a red herring. but it's a buzzword and i guess that's why its there. really my interest was in the psychology of safeness and well-being and *kids today - are they more sensitive than in the past?*. but the more i think about it the more i think that they are probably not all that different than i was at that age. though my own defense mechanism way back when was to hide alone in my room and curl up with music in the dark and want to die in a hole. i have no idea what i would have been like with the internet.

in retrospect, i should have put this on the baby making board. don't know if people still go there though. just for a general discussion of kid/teen psych. since i am raising two future firebombing warriors.

for the record i am all for calling people out on their shit and people feeling safe and not feeling uncomfortable and i think it's probably really easy to give someone a top-notch rigorous education and even challenge their assumptions without ever upsetting them. maybe bore them a little. but a little boredom is good for kids.

Yes, it's good training for the soul-crushing boredom they will experience in post-collegiate life.

exactly!

tbf some of us find a way to be upset (although not traumatized! hopefully!) about just about anything

could use a little bit of that laid back firebombing warrior nature of the seward boys

oh man that was not meant as any sort of passive dig! I meant me. I've got my issues w/anxiety under control, though. all life was anxiety-causing when I was in college.

What is it about modern life that requires a hardened outer shell? Sitting in front of a computer all day answering emails? Obeying traffic laws on the way to/from work? Shopping for groceries? Going to the bank? Is there any instance here where a heightened sensitivity would not result in a better and safer experience for all?

the lurking horror of mortality?

it's not so much about having a hardened shell - though that really depends on where you live - and i think everyone is all for heightened sensitivity - i just like the idea of kids being open and engaged with people who are not like them or who have differing views/opinions. even the wrong views/opinions. i am all for curiosity. (where i live there is a lot of shielding...)

the multiple ways I can communicate with other humans, all within grasp in my office, each with different expectations and capabilities when it comes to nuance, tone, and communication style

there are a lot of parents where i live who don't want to let their kids walk around the main street here. in greenfield, massachusetts. not exactly the mean streets. and, thus, some kids around here become scared of the street. which is a shame. and why i like having a store on main street that my kids have grown up in kinda. it's not exactly the united nations around here, but the street attracts a varied populace. or varied for around here.

was talking to a friend of my father-in-law. very new age. very holistic and all that. lives somewhere in the hills around here. i mentioned greenfield and she said: oh, i HATE greenfield. and i was like why? and she paused and said...there are no GOOD people there!

and i tried not to scream, so i just laughed. this is who i don't want my kids to be when they grow up. this person - outwardly earth mother-y and beaming - is a major parenting fail. and i don't think they will be like that. they see me talking to a lot of different people who are not like them. or who don't appear to be. and new york city is their favorite place to be. just like it was for me when i was a kid. just say no to cloistering!

sure but idk what this has to do with trigger warnings?

scott started the thread and if he wants to talk about his kids I am game

trigger warning: skot rambles, deal with it.

Can't speak for scott (or anybody) but I see a clear line from a proposition like:

"Being an educated person includes includes being exposed to different ideas, which you may find challenging and upsetting"

(some form of which is sometimes forwarded in the anti-trigger warning, "CODDLING GONE MAD" articles) to a proposition like:

"Being an educated person includes includes being exposed to different ideas, INCLUDING the idea that it's just plain decent to be considerate toward people who may need/want a trigger warning (or whatever other form of respectful consideration they may need/want)."

Neurodiversity and diversity-of-experience being among the kinds of diversity that help make the world interesting and are worth communicating about to kids.

(okay, i rambled, but the kid thing IS tangential to the atlantic thing. you could run the same article in psychology today with the headline: Are we raising our kids to be TOO sensitive? if there still is a psychology today magazine. haven't seen one in years.)

It's an app now. "Are we raising our kids to be TOO sensitive? Point your phone at your kid, and we'll tell you!"

Maybe the parent asking that question are too sensitive to the sensitivity of their kids.

there are a lot of parents where i live who don't want to let their kids walk around the main street here.

these people are so annoying

but let's take it to the judging other people's parenting thread if necessary...

There's a fine line imo between "are we raising our kids to be TOO sensitive?" and "suck it up, buttercup." In my day we were beaten regularly with barbed wire then sent off to work in the mill at age six, etc. etc.

Messages that valorize perseverance and suck-it-upitude, when twisted just a few notches further, can easily sound like victim-blaming. Parents often have to work both sides of that street: you want to foster resilience, but you also want to acknowledge and appreciate sensitivity.

http://www.globaltimes.cn/Portals/0/attachment/2011/481f8458-269b-4fbe-8bef-629261ebc681.jpeg

AND WE LIKED IT

in our house we slept ten to a bed!

you had a bed!?

(a joke i think i originally heard on All In The Family when i was a kid...)

ftr the "creepy liberalism" of that other thread's title is the kind of liberalism that's disdainful of trigger warnings

Yes, it's good training for the soul-crushing boredom they will experience in post-collegiate life.

― forbidden fruitarian (Ye Mad Puffin), Thursday, October 8, 2015 11:18 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is how i excuse myself whenever i give a boring lecture.

fwiw i think a big problem is that the "conversation" around trigger warnings is often framed in reference to the most obviously egregious misuses of that concept -- and people mistakenly assume those are representative. the key word is "warning"--ideally, the concept doesn't expressly forbid the broaching of certain topics or themes but merely suggests that people should be given some kind of notification in advance.

i think that, in a lot of ways, this is good common-sense practice. without ever having heard the phrase "trigger warning," when i started teaching and was about to raise a sensitive subject or show a film clip that was unusually violent or upsetting in some way, i'd let people know.

however it gives me pause when this sort of thing becomes institutionalized, not least because the nature of many higher-ed administrations is to aggressively expand the scope of any and every thing that they worry might upset students (and by extension, their parents). that /does/ have a lot to do with some phenomena that seem to me to growing and which might be encompassed by the word "coddling." students at my (big state) university are offered an ever-increasing number of amenities that would have been rare when i was in school... and would have been unthinkable when my mom was in school. these include a lot of reasonable accomodations and services, and a lot of stuff that is... a little less so. there's actually kind of an "arms race" among colleges in terms of offering services and amenities to students, which necessarily inflates tuition rates. it's in that context that the concept and practice of "trigger warnings" can suffer institutional abuse. but at heart it's not a bad idea at all, so long as it isn't construed to exclude discussion of certain subjects.

The only decent piece I've seen Freddie deBoer write in recent months warns college students not to seek redress with administrators; this empowers the people who already have too much power.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/magazine/why-we-should-fear-university-inc.html

I'll reiterate that I went to two Scottish Universities (one very conservative) in the 90s, for English and then Philosophy, and we absolutely got heads up before certain content. For example, we were told that Beloved involved a whole lot of unpleasant stuff, and we were told that we would be discussing abortion. It had no effect on my freedom of speech.

ok, short-ish inadequate responses here because i can't keep up with rolling clusterfucks like i could when i was a kid, and i'll try to tone down the hostility as much as i can (macro-aggression is way more my scene; micro-aggression sounds like something you do on your cell phone):

if we're going to have the discussion on which side is the bigger asshole, i claim victory and retreat. i own my asshole nature.

"i react negatively even though the stuff they're demanding (mainly tolerance and respect) is quite reasonable

how on earth is this anyone's problem but yours though? maybe you're not saying it is, but don't you see why people would be impatient with that kind of attitude? why do old people always feel so entitled to a "get off my lawn" attitude?

― lex pretend, Thursday, October 8, 2015 8:51 AM (5 hours ago)"

it's a problem because old white male assholes more or less like me (though not, necessarily, me personally, hell, i don't even have a lawn) run this world. look, my capacity for personal insight is somewhat limited. i don't know why people like me are how we are. i can work to overcome my instinctive reactions, but i'm always going to have those instinctive reactions, humans are always going to make gut decisions based on instinct rather than on logic and reason. i'd love it if we lived in a just world, despite the fact that the world's blatant injustice redounds to my benefit most of the time, but fuck if i know how to get from here to there.

actually if i had a lawn i think i would probably let kids step on it. because my grandfather did have a lawn, and he would let the kids on it and none of the other people on the block did, and as a result he had nothing but dirt for most of his life. on the other hand maybe i'm not as good a person as my grandfather was. not really sure.

andrew, i'm sorry i am not current on the latest memes, but reading about memes gives me sciatica. i know i can google anything i want and get a distorted and inaccurate view of what the internet thinks it is along with some pictures of the dos equis guy.

as for if the youth had power, yes, people with power can demand stuff of me, and then i will pretend to comply to their face and then spend the rest of my time trying to sabotage whatever it was they demanded i do. because that's apparently what it means to be a professional adult. i just don't think demands are an effective form of communication.

branwell, i will do my best to take your congratulations as a compliment. i'm honored that you have concluded that i am the not-crazy sort of asshole. i'm not sure i agree with your conclusion, mind you, either the assumption that nobody and nothing is repeatedly hitting me in the face or the assumption that i am somehow capable of ignoring it and blissfully soaring over it all with zen aplomb.

i don't get to choose how i feel, but i do have some very small level of control over what i do about it. after spending some years yelling at people to quit hitting me in the face and getting, largely, a reaction of "wtf are you talking about, i wasn't hitting you in the face", i gave up on doing that.

sorry for going all hippie and shit, but i just want us to be able to talk to each other, even though i'm an asshole and you have ptsd or whatever. and what i see on the internet these days is a pretty profound lack of serious communication. if you want me to apologize for being an asshole, i'll gladly do it, but you know, i'm still going to be an asshole afterwards.