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

i mean i don't want to diminish the ambient stress that comes from being a member of an abused/despised/discriminated-against minority--that's very real. but i'm not sure that, outside of a particular incident or incident of violent, abuse, etc., that really adds up to the sort of "trauma" that demands a trigger warning.

apologies if i am completely misreading you.

i mentioned those specifically b/c afaict most of these anti-tw articles seem to be specifically about e.g. victims of rape, racialized violence, homophobic violence, and transphobic violence asking for trigger warnings for these subjects. i said "racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, etc" b/c it seemed more sensitive than saying "lynching, rape, and murder"

and ppl who suffer from ptsd due to racism are actually much more numerous in the u.s. than soldiers suffering from ptsd

"triggers" as a concept are also not confined to ptsd; mental health professionals also talk about triggers in relation to anxiety, addiction, self-harm, eating disorders, etc.

anyway i typed this before your x-posts and it's been said before on this or the other thread but i think it's important so: trigger warnings are not about avoiding talking about a person's issues, they're about allowing a person to control their exposure to material that might harm them. being randomly bombarded with triggering material will make you more sensitive to it and also make you constantly hypervigilant and anxious; being able to engage with triggering material only when you choose, when you know that you can handle it, will let you gradually become desensitized to the trigger

also god many people's experience of ambient "any kind of '-phobia'" is constantly being aware of the threat of actual physical violence against them and yes that can be harmful to a person's mental health

"triggers" as a concept are also not confined to ptsd; mental health professionals also talk about triggers in relation to anxiety, addiction, self-harm, eating disorders, etc.

― 1staethyr, Thursday, October 22, 2015 10:55 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

but i guess this is where folks start to have problems with the application of the TW concept. anxiety is pervasive; its arguably a basic condition of contemporary life. surely some experience greater anxiety than others, due to all manner of factors, but where do we draw the line between "normal" levels of anxiety and those that might demand some kind of special handling? i'm not asking that question in a leading fashion -- i'm not saying the line can't or shouldn't be drawn. but i feel like your description of conditions that might demand a TW is troublingly expansive...

xpost

i mean it almost seems as though you are advocating TW for material that might be "triggering" or troubling to:

- any women
- any member of racial or ethnic minorities
- anyone who identifies as LGBT
- etc.

generalized anxiety disorder is in fact a medical diagnosis

One of the few places outside the academy I've regularly seen trigger warnings is in books about self-harm, and suicide. And when you're not well with regards to that stuff there's nothing worse than a TV show unexpectedly depicting it - it's like getting punched in the stomach; sickening, dizzying.

There seems to be an element to this that is about language. The Right seems to have a disgust with certain kinds of 'jargon', which manifests in it's 'anti-PC' stance. When people react to 'triggered', 'BLM', 'man-splaining', 'privilege', 'LBQT' etc. etc. (to pick a bunch of recentish bugbears for the Right, for better or worse) it sometimes seems that it's the fact that these things have been named that is offensive, rather than the idea themselves. The reaction is something like being 'outside' a fashion (because, of course, the Right has plenty of their own magic words)

Lots of psycologists on this thread, which is great because it eliminates the need for any support for the assertions about treatment and diagnosis.

(Less snarky version: using the language of pathology and psychology to score easy political wins is kinda fucked up. There is a difference between asking for proof of a general assertion and denying someone's particular self-identity, and denying that difference is a common tactic in these sorts of debates.)

also common

'you are for this so you are bad'
'you are against this so you are bad'

Lit teachers are also not trained psychologists, so asking them to locate every potential trigger trigger in a text (beyond the obvious) is going to be thorny. Also cases like in the article, where there was disagreement between prof and students about whether a sex scene was consensual, where the instructor may not think something is triggering while a student thinks it is.

Probably the answer is a website that lists the potential triggers for the most widely taught texts that profs can direct students to on syllabus

Perhaps something crowd sourced people with PTSD could make themselves?

when you write a syllabus at most schools you include a little section on disabilities and usually that section informs the student that it is their responsibility to inform the professor of their disability and how reasonable accommodation might be achieved.

I think this is the way forward for trigger warnings because it doesn't leave it up to the professor to figure out ahead of time what *may* be triggering to some generalized and anonymous victim of trauma out there. it allows a particular student to begin a dialogue with a particular professor and, in the best scenario, allows them to work together to find a way through that meets the objectives of the class. there's also common sense, in that a war veteran suffering from ptsd cannot sensibly expect to take a class on war literature if they are liable to be triggered by it.

yes it places onus on the student but from my point of view it's the professor's class and the student is the one who needs to make concessions to enter it (hence my talk about receptivity above).

required classes make this a tougher problem but then I've advocated for getting rid of those.

apropos to chachi/1staethyr

http://www.wired.com/2015/10/how-black-lives-matter-uses-social-media-to-fight-the-power/

(Less snarky version: using the language of pathology and psychology to score easy political wins is kinda fucked up. There is a difference between asking for proof of a general assertion and denying someone's particular self-identity, and denying that difference is a common tactic in these sorts of debates.)

i can't quite figure out who this is aimed it, or which arguments it's opposed to.

I think this is the way forward for trigger warnings because it doesn't leave it up to the professor to figure out ahead of time what *may* be triggering to some generalized and anonymous victim of trauma out there. it allows a particular student to begin a dialogue with a particular professor

students may not be super-excited about having to tell all their professors about their past personal traumas but idk

and I don't want to hear about a student's trauma unless I can help it. Usually our disability services intervenes.

yeah there are FERPA laws about what we can and can't demand that students tell us

all disability accommodations are cleared through a disability center. we get to know what accommodations they need, but typically don't know the specific nature of the disability unless the student volunteers that info (which they often do).

it's not ideal but it's also not a situation where they have to go into great detail other than "X is triggering to me, do you think any material on your syllabus may be a problem for me?" I dont see how disability services can determine this better than the prof teaching the class.

This is better than allowing the professor to determine what may or may not be triggering--and thus making the professor liable in some sense for failing to account for certain triggers that they may or may not be aware of! Again, im starting from the assumption that the classroom is the teacher/professor's space and the student is the one who is--in a manner of speaking--the guest of the teacher/professor, which im sure not all would agree with.

having ready-made trigger warnings, or even a universal trigger database, strikes me as eliding the very personal/singular nature of trauma. it's not as if we can identify triggering materials across lines race/gender/class/history or whatever contextual matrix you want to use. applying TWs in the manner of a kind of universal liberal functionalism is, as they say, ~problematic~ because it's imposing ahead of time what kinds of trauma are admissible and which aren't. and if that sort of thing really what is at issue then what we are discussing isn't necessarily personal trauma and psychological distress so much as a kind of community defining exercise in which certain kinds of speech or representations of certain things are not allowed. then we're back to students dictating to professors what the content of their education should be.

it's imposing ahead of time what kinds of trauma are admissible and which aren't.

right... that was my concern about the posts above, which seemed to create what seems to be a privileged category of (sorry for using this term) politically-correct trauma having to do with minority status, when in reality traumas come in a lot of different forms.

posts above by 1staethyr

to put a finer point on: if the desire is for a pre-set mold of trigger warnings to applied to texts then the whole notion of trigger warnings becomes by definition something that has to be wrangled over politically and determined by a community. which may or may not serve particular victims of trauma.

i think ryan is onto something.

Salon picks up that blog post that Milton linked to a week ago and they add the word CODDLED to the headline.

http://www.salon.com/2015/10/28/i_wanted_to_be_a_supporter_of_survivors_on_campus_and_a_good_teacher_i_didnt_realize_just_how_impossible_this_would_be/

I can't be the only person who enjoys misreading this threadline as "TRIGGER WARNING: Article In The Atlantic"

Shit is blowing up at Yale because of a faculty member's email about Halloween costumes

her original email does sound pretty dumm

from the students et al's open letter

After receiving responses from students and alumni through both social media and email, you responded to critics of your email with a link to the Atlantic Magazine article, “The Coddling of the American Mind.”

haha that's terrible.

i was less sympathetic to the students until i realized these people are being protested for and were acting as master and associate master of a house -- so they're not being protested for any sort of academic capacity where they can say it is all about challenging minds and ideas or whatever, but because they are supposed to have an additional job of actually looking out for students and representing them, and they are clearly being terrible at it.

I was reading quickly but I didn't see anything in the Post article or the open letter that called for a resignation.

Or in the Youtube clips that I watched. All I saw was people exercising free speech and expressing offence.

Oh, OK, a student yells "you should step down" (as house master, not professor) in the third video clip.

LOL college. Attacking someone for standing up for freedom of expression rather than attacking those (if there were any?) who wore offensive costumes is NAGL. These kids have no idea how safe a space they are living in.

"Being protested for"

Wtf

the christakis email ticks every concern-troll box that it's possible to tick, she is obviously a horrible person

"in my vast experience working with children" etc is completely irrelevant but she can't help rattling on about it, why because just can't help talking about herself in this post-midnight email

Why does the guy have to apologize for an email his wife sent?

c'mon that's mansplaining 101

Ha, was wondering that myself, Treeship.

They're asking b/c apparently he endorsed and defended it, and he's master of the house and she's assistant master or something.

I don't think the students are right to want these people to lose their jobs. Also, they aren't right in thinking the "residential" part of the residential college experience has nothing to do with fostering a sometimes uncomfortable community of diverse perspectives where rigorous debate is encouraged. Imo, this atmosphere is something that, in college, is meant to exist beyond the classroom.

This woman wasn't saying racist costumes were good, but that it wasn't the college's place to proscribe expression that seems taboo or shocking. Taboo-breaking offensive speech is often ignorant and worse than worthless -- harmful even -- but occassionaly it can be valuable. As a baby boomer and (i'm assuming) a progressive of the old mold, she seems to want to err on the side of more controversy, more debate, more discomfort, rather than more safety. This is a generational divide, honestly, and I think students and administrators need to fight it out more to come to some sort of understanding or consensus. Calling for people to step down is such a bullshit power move.

As is demanding apologies. That administrator is probably sincerely concerned about what it would mean for the college to police people's expression outside the classroom in the way these activists want. She shouldn't apologize for thinking this, or for having concerns that are different from the protesters. She is a person, and they are people, and they have different ideas about how the institution should be run and they should argue about it in good faith.

"he's master of the house and she's assistant master or something

Proper system, that

I agree with a lot of what you're saying, Treeship, but does "students wanting these people to lose their jobs" actually amount to one or two people yelling "you should step down" in a heated moment? I don't see a call for a resignation or even a demand for an apology here. I also don't see proscription or censure in the Dean's original email: "we encourage Yale students to take the time to consider their costumes and the impact they might have" is not forbidding anything.

*amount to more than

"As a baby boomer and (i'm assuming) a progressive of the old mold, she seems to want to err on the side of more controversy, more debate, more discomfort, rather than more safety. "

Going to go out on a limb here and suggest not a lot of people dress in a way that Erika identifies as for Halloween.