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

You know I didn't even see this yesterday because of train/bus posting, but I'm just going to put this out here. Because when I say something like... "I find it difficult to participate in some threads because of baseline hostility, ad-hominem BS, deliberate misrepresentation of the intent behind my words and behaviour" for someone then to reply like this, and pretty much confirm everything I've just said:

Oh, come on - I've can't remember seeing you join any thread, on any subject, where something almost exactly like that wasn't your opening gambit. "I'm a trauma victim/Most of you are horrible/I don't know why I'm even here since most of you are going to be horrible/Here's what I think anyway/I don't really want to discuss it further." You do this every time. Eventually you post something productive, but there's always this ridiculous poor-me throat-clearing first.

― the top man in the language department (誤訳侮辱), Wednesday, 7 October 2015 12:23 (Yesterday) Permalink

Dude, how dare you speak to me like this. This post is unkind, uncharitable, totally un-empathetic, and indicates some fundamental-level failing of basic humanity.

Yes, sure, I am sometimes defensive or less than 100% enthusiastic or less than 100% super-chirpy-polite on threads about topics that are highly emotive. But when routinely faced with this kind of just nasty, malicious, *mean* little comments, do you *wonder* why I might feel defensive, or might reply to stuff like this, not with apologetic politeness, but with a plain and blunt "Wow, that was a shitty thing to say."

I do wonder if a lot of the specifically academic resistance to the idea of trigger warnings comes from the fact that it's such a grass-roots, bottom-up concept.

It's seen as something that comes from "the youth" and something that comes from "the internet" because those are the spaces where this stuff was hashed out. And because it's internet-y and youth-y that's going to provoke a kind of "ugh, it's awful" which has little to do with the actual content of the stuff but with defensive kneejerk fear of who's coming up with it. There's not an old white European philosopher dude spreading a Grand Paradigm Theory of Why This Should Exist at the top, it's a set of conventions and protocols and ways of proceeding that were hashed out in small groups and slowly coalesced from the bottom up.

Is this argument about free speech, about education, about... I dunno. I always saw it as being about consent. (Education comes into this, in terms of... does a student have the right to consent or withdraw consent to an education which they may find damaging?)

This is one personal perspective on using them, which people may find useful context as one example (or not!) followed by more general comments.

The first place I encountered it was not actually in feminist spaces, but way back in the mid 90s, in ~internet fandom~ spaces which were full of a mixture of women who were feminist, either through study or just experience. The first discussion I ever had about content warnings was in the editorial committee of a site I hosted that published amateur fiction, fan fiction, short stories. There was a warning of a "naughty zone" for materials of an adult nature (usually sexual) with an age limit on it. But some of the writers were getting into some quite... dark territory. Editors, and readers, and writers discussed the need for something beyond just "rated adult" in terms of expressing what it was getting into (was it just sex, or was there violence, non-con, drug use, etc.) I knew (I was!) some of the writers who were writing the "dark" stuff were people who were using writing as a form of therapy to cope with and come to terms with some pretty horrific and brutal stuff. But at the same time, there were groups of readers who were "wow, this is not OK with me. I came in here to read some fun smut and I just smacked in the face with some brutal flashbacks" and readers who were "wow, reading this really helps me to come to terms with / understanding stuff."

These conversations went on for years. Decades. It was sometimes people bringing arguments from feminist spaces to fandom spaces and sometimes it flowed the other way around. They intensified in the mid-00s as ~fandom~ as a whole moved over to platforms like LiveJournal, with its mixture of ~fandom communities~ and personal journalling and blurring of boundaries. Conventions varied from community to community, with stuff getting hashed out in discussion and debate. There was master links lists of "discussions people have had about warnings" which would accrue and get revised, but it was a hugely collaborative project of people finding out together what worked for them.

It was always an *alternative* to outright censorship. Instead of saying "there will be absolutely no rape or non-con stories on this site, verboten" the admins would say "you can write whatever you need to, under the condition that you give advance warning so people have a choice whether to go there or not." It produced more, varied writing, rather than pre-emptively excluding something ~problematic~. And once you'd established those ground rules, in the comments threads, in people's personal journals, people would open up and start sharing their own experiences. Amazingly, "You have the choice whether to participate in the Bad Stuff or not" lead to lots and lots of individual and group discussion of The Bad Stuff. "Why do you warn for this?" often functioned as a conversation starter: "This is A Thing" followed by "Oh, I didn't know that, and now I do" or "Wow, me too, I had no idea other people had experienced this, too, can we talk about it?"

Back to more general comments:

I think if you were part of the process of hashing this stuff out, it makes a much more instinctive gut-level kind of sense. If you are someone who grew up within those communities (my experience of kids is: I don't think they're idiots - or wise fools. They are people who are actively in the process of figuring stuff out, and can often be hugely helpful in terms of *teaching* you, when you are making up a collaborative process as you go along) then you've already seen it in action. If you are encountering this for the first time as a older college professor or a confused middle aged dude on the internet, it's like... WHERE DID THIS COME FROM?!? Everywhere. But mostly crazy kids and their internets. WHERE IS THE BOOK ON IT, WHERE ARE THE FOOTNOTES??!? There are none. It was built as a collaborative process. (Even what you are able to find out about it will be the result of your particular filter bubble.) I suspect that to Academics with a specific view of how learning advances, and who advances it, the idea of THE THING WITH NO CITATIONS is terrifying!

And again, I suspect also, a lot of the defensiveness about it comes from... some people are just resistant to the idea of accepting that certain kinds of trauma are *real*. It's one thing to accept that a shellshocked veteran coming home from a war with PTSD and flashbacks has been in a traumatic situation with long term mental and physical effects. But, very obviously, to some people, the idea that other forms of trauma - rape, sexual assault, racially motivated violence, being on the receiving end of sustained systematic bigotry-influenced abuse - can have long-lasting psychological effects? People who have never experienced these things have a hard time even seeing them, let alone understanding the effects of them, and this is when you get the "coddled" comments and the "poor-me, always playing the victim" bollocks from shitheads like our friend in the comment above, when someone asks for this stuff, or tries to talk about it.

This gets even more nebulous when you start talking about the other kinds of trigger warnings which don't get so much press. The trigger warnings for mental health stuff around issues involving impulsivity and control: many of the communities I was involved in recognised that things like Eating Disorders, self-harm (especially cutting), addictions, even suicide attempts have a trigger-like element to them. For someone who is at-risk for those behaviours, exposure to depictions or even discussion of those behaviours can provoke a trigger-like urge or compulsion in engage in them. So some spaces will ask people to warn for those things, too. But trying to ask for empathy and understanding and support for (these are horrible terms, but these are the stereotypes I often see these people *described* as) "attention-seeking teenage girls who cut themselves" or "coked-up anorexic model types" ... that is, for many people, an ask too far. Asking for protection and sensitivity for vulnerable people who are often dismissed or demonised - that is the *opposite* of coddling. Yet the resistance comes because of who's doing the asking.

This is an essay now, apologies for the length, and thanks for reading if you made it to the end.

Hi Dröhn Rock,

Just wanted to comment that I appreciate your post. Anything I've read about trigger warnings previously has left me vaguely suspicious of the idea and I am glad to get another perspective, I'll have to think about it more but at the very least its good to get some context about the history the idea. I haven't read any other posts by you but certainly it seems to me that the hostility that you've been met with here is completely uncalled for and as someone on the "other side" of the argument to you I still found it quite shocking, not to mention a little ironic given that many concerns about trigger warnings are based on an assumption that people should be exposed to different viewpoints in an unmediated way!

I'm not academically trained so apologies if I'm off on the terms I'm using, and I'm sure these are points you've heard raised before but I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on what I presume are common objections to trigger warnings, IE concerns about how wide the net should be cast, given how many possible traumas there are and how many situations might act as a reminder of these it seems like there is almost no cultural artifact which wouldn't be potentially problematic for at least one person's specific set of circumstances. I would be worried that the act of engaging with a book or film requires a certain amount of allowing an argument or nuanced portrait of a set of circumstances or whatever to unfold on its own terms. I feel like a lot would have been lost if every book I had ever read had been mediated in advance with information about its content. Perhaps this is a price worth paying, I don't know, but it also seems to me unrealistic, which brings me to my next concern.

I'm also unsure about how trigger warnings in colleges are supposed to interact with the "wider world". So while I can certainly see the value of trigger warnings in specific situations such as the online forums in which they developed, where you have a self selecting group who are likely to have suffered a particular trauma or experience, and may have different levels of readiness to deal with material which may act as a reminder of the trauma, but it seems to me that if trigger warnings are attached to generic college courses, it is merely kicking the can down the road for when people who might want or need these warnings are no longer in a campus environment, and that this might be counter productive in the long run. (this is how I would interpret the word "coddling" in the atlantic article.)

one thing i'm confused by is the lack of a trigger warning wiki

Branwell forever otm

although i wonder if maybe that's best explained by the fact that anyone who was a point of contact for one would find themselves the recipient of for-the-lols threats of violence

sorry xpost. yeah, branwell otm itt, also difficult listening hour upthread

couple other posters way out of line

its the ilx way

an assumption that people should be exposed to different viewpoints in an unmediated way!

IANAB, but there is overlapping layers of both "I don't have the same problem as someone who would be triggered, so I get to ignore their desires" (which is pretty clearly a dick move) and "I have the same problem, but I don't feel that I need a trigger warning (due to access to various resources of various types, which I have this long list of reasons why they don't mitigate), so I don't think anyone should"

What does the "B" stand for?

Berliner.

Branwell - no wish to speak over them, just adding what I've seen in similar discussions.

ok, long aimless ramble ahead.

i'm a middle aged white guy, and i do find myself involuntarily rolling my eyes at the youth, dismissing them as callow or whatever. at the same time i know this is an unfair cultural bias on my part. it's kind of sobering because i like to think of myself as having gotten wiser over the years, but when i run across something i wrote in college, you know, i wasn't some naif who didn't know what he was talking about, and accordingly there's no reason i should demean the young by assuming that about them. there are certainly things i know now that i didn't then. you know, you think procuring gainful employment as a 22 year old with a college degree is hard, try doing it as a 40 year old without one.

but they come up with all these new words for all the old concepts, like they invented them, and now i am middle-aged and am suspicious of anything that appears new, even if it isn't, and confused by such things. like, whenever someone tells me to check my privilege. do they mean like i should check my coat, at a restaurant? or should i check it like my watch, just to make sure it's still there? this jargon is insular and doesn't transfer over well to the middle-aged white dude wilco fan set.

the main thing that fatigues me is the stridency. youths demand things and anybody with eyes to see can tell that they don't have the power to demand anything, and i react negatively even though the stuff they're demanding (mainly tolerance and respect) is quite reasonable, and the only reason they don't ask nicely is because nobody listens to you when you ask nicely.

like, branwell, i like you and all, but when you go all j'accuse, i find myself overwhelmed with ennui. i've been on the internet for more than twenty years, and i've lost my capacity to react to outrage. i'm not saying that to de-legitimize your outrage. it's totally legit, you're gonna feel the way you feel, but i question as to what practical social purpose it serves. it's hard to have a sincere and meaningful discussion with a land mine.

Ahem 'aimless ramble'...

which reminded me of an extract from a book I read recently on stoicism...

But, over time, the demand for specific rights degraded into a generalized sense of entitlement, the demand for specific recognitions into a generalized demand for attention and the anger at specific injustice into a generalized feeling of grievance and resentment. The result is a culture of entitlement, attention-seeking and complaint....

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?

It's been very interesting watching a baby grow up and learn to do things over the last 10 and a half months, and it's made me think about the way we expect the battles we fought as adolescents not to need fighting again by the people who come up after us. And sure enough, some battles don't - they become entrenched in law or cultural responses or social mores, and that's great - but an awful lot of other battles, it seems to me, are way more microcosmic than that, and need fighting by each passing generation as much as babies need to learn to use spoons and not to roll off beds in case they hurt themselves. Every baby needs to experience these things, not just watch older kids and somehow know.

Which is to say, that old people need to appreciate that young people need to step on someone else's lawn sometimes, even if you've already learnt not to.

in my experience the young people who are most involved in cultures where trigger warnings etc are prominent are also the young people who are most involved in selfless activism for social housing, against police violence, and plenty of other things that often have no direct impact on them. i suppose viewing things from the outside and not bothering to engage could give a different impression

Addressing the issue of choice Branwell raises: it makes sense framed in that way, but (and this is not based on personal experience - I only took a few college courses, and never graduated, am certainly not an academic or an educator myself) I feel like the professorial POV may be some combination of "How are you going to learn anything if you're unwilling to be exposed to unpleasantness? Into every life a little rain must fall," etc., and...pride in their work? Like, they've gone to all this trouble to assemble a syllabus that they think will bring something of meaning and value to a large number of people, and then some kid comes in and says nope, they're not gonna listen because there's a single element of it that hurts their feelings? It's entirely possible that that could come off as extremely insulting to the professor. Granted, that may be seen as a reactionary POV, but if the student's feelings are being granted validity, the professor's must as well, yes?

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. Which is something that I notice in a lot of "radical" discourse - the use of terminology is in-group focused, with seemingly little thought given to how it will be heard/received by the people under discussion.

isn't all jargon insular?

youths demand things and anybody with eyes to see can tell that they don't have the power to demand anything, and i react negatively even though the stuff they're demanding (mainly tolerance and respect) is quite reasonable, and the only reason they don't ask nicely is because nobody listens to you when you ask nicely.

how is this any different than when you were twenty?

like, whenever someone tells me to check my privilege. do they mean like i should check my coat, at a restaurant? or should i check it like my watch, just to make sure it's still there?

Hey, Seinfeld made it after all!

this jargon is insular and doesn't transfer over well to the middle-aged white dude wilco fan set.

I was going to say hey, jargon generally is, new ideas need new words, but actually that's not even true, the first Google result for "check your privilege" is knowyourmeme.com, which gives a history and a link to the original Peggy McIntosh article*.

youths demand things and anybody with eyes to see can tell that they don't have the power to demand anything

Dude, if they had power...

*okay, the link it provides doesn't actually work, you have to Google the title, but such is life.

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

Also as a counter: I've been on the internet going on 30 years, and I'm going further left on this over time, and further delighted by younger generations. I am wondering that maybe this is shifting to the internet because it's one of the places that you can (CAN) get useful friction, we disagree and we have the time to do it and neither of us are going anywhere - previously an environment that you'd see at, well, college.

xp Ah that does make sense - I never understood that about the term util now, always seemed to be doing more harm than good.

some kid comes in and says nope, they're not gonna listen because there's a single element of it that hurts their feelings

"hurts their feelings" - again this language designed to minimise what's happening. i'm lucky enough not to have needed a trigger warning but it's not so hard to imagine that reading or seeing certain things could seriously affect someone's mental or even physical health. this already happens in society, post-watershed programmes come with sex/violence warnings, as do films, the news comes with "some viewers may find these images distressing" warnings.

ime people who want trigger warnings aren't refusing to consume or engage with certain types of culture at all (although if they do it's totally their prerogative), more that they would rather engage them when they're in a good head space or when they're mentally/physically prepared rather than being blindsided

seemingly little thought given to how it will be heard/received by the people under discussion.

psst - the discussion is regularly about the people who were the subject of the microaggression and how they're doing.

youths demand things and anybody with eyes to see can tell that they don't have the power to demand anything, and i react negatively even though the stuff they're demanding (mainly tolerance and respect) is quite reasonable, and the only reason they don't ask nicely is because nobody listens to you when you ask nicely.

Think I must have gone blind for this sentence. wtf?!

It feels like discussions on trigger warnings pretty quickly devolve into discussions about which side is being a bigger asshole. but if we assume good intentions all around I still don't see much discussion about how trigger warnings might or might not be a workable idea in terms of education in general, academic freedom in particular, and then even in terms of the legal system.

how does this idea work out in practice when it's exported from the communities in which it was developed?

it's not so hard to imagine

Actually, it can be hard for a lot of people to imagine that words on a page, or images on a screen, could seriously affect someone's mental or even (especially) physical health. I mean, when I was a kid, movies that were rated G could have nudity and rather surprising (for today) levels of violence in them. Think, too, of the driver's education films that used to be shown in schools, with graphic footage of real-life traffic fatalities intended to scare kids into driving safely. If you grew up as/when I did, seeing stuff like that, it can be difficult to imagine that people could possibly be upset by things that are on their face seemingly much less shocking/horrifying. Never mind the idea of being triggered by race-, gender- or sexuality-based language when, from the perspective of someone my age (born 1971, graduated high school 1990), things are quite clearly better for racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities than they've ever been.

Trust me, for people who remember how much worse things used to be, it's quite hard indeed at times to understand what young people think they've got to complain about.

We seem to return to misrepresentations of trigger warnings. The way I've seen them, they're no different than advisories for movies we watch: strong, graphic material is coming, etc. As I've said, I teach and advise at a major public university and, after initial balking Phil describes, I see them now as courtesies. Twelve years ago I used to show Blue Velvet in a lit class. It's inconceivable that I'd show it now without warning student about the violent rape that occurs in the middle (and I used to show it at 8 a.m. – another indignity).

Actually, it can be hard for a lot of people to imagine that words on a page, or images on a screen, could seriously affect someone's mental or even (especially) physical health. I mean, when I was a kid, movies that were rated G could have nudity and rather surprising (for today) levels of violence in them

but if you love literature and film, then the sense of empathy created by deep reading should help you imagine how a Blue Velvet or Native Son might shake someone.

I'm actually more affected by violence than I was when I was twenty-four.

Things can always get better.

My understanding of trigger warnings is as Alfred just surmised: not a ban on discussion, but a flag that potentially difficult / upsetting discussion is coming (or even necessary) so people can be ready for it. I can't understand why anyone would have a problem with that.

I'm going to try to hit a couple of direct questions here, but I'm at work and time is limited.

robin:

concerns about how wide the net should be cast, given how many possible traumas there are and how many situations might act as a reminder of these it seems like there is almost no cultural artifact which wouldn't be potentially problematic for at least one person's specific set of circumstances.

You're right. You cannot warn for every potential trauma. You can take this reducto ad absurbum and claim "but what about the one child who watched his parents pecked to death by penguins, do we have to put a trigger warning on everything containing Arctic seabirds?!?!?!?" Except, when you actually start to listen to people about what they want warnings on, they tend to fall into pretty recognisable patterns, many of which I've hit on above. Yes, it's true that trigger warnings would ideally reflect the specific concerns of the community they serve. Finding out what those specific needs are and how best to meet them, would be something I would assume would fall under the job of a Community Diversity Officer (like Bahar Mustafa, who has been targeted for removal) or the "diversity/inclusion/social justice" committee that Marcos mentions. Yes, it's impossible to come up with a *complete* list, but it's not hard to come up with guidelines that cover the basics at least.

it seems to me that if trigger warnings are attached to generic college courses, it is merely kicking the can down the road for when people who might want or need these warnings are no longer in a campus environment, and that this might be counter productive in the long run. (this is how I would interpret the word "coddling" in the atlantic article.

I am guessing that the desire to have them attached to college courses reflects, as I mentioned before, the idea (maybe college has changed substantially in the 20 years since I was around one!) that courses have required reading or watching material. Like I said, this is about consent. Triggering is a complex process, sometimes one has more tolerance for triggers, sometimes less, depending on stress levels, setting, and most critically... FOREWARNING. I am speaking only for myself here, but it's a common thing I've heard. "This contains triggers" does not mean "OMG I will never be able to read/watch this" - it usually means, I'm gonna take care of myself, make sure I am in a good place, psychologically prepared, forewarned, and have control over this situation, then I can engage with the triggery thing in a relaxed, calm environment. The absolute worst thing is having it sprung on you unprepared, blindsided, by surprise, in a noisy, tense environment, when I'm already feeling stressed. Putting a warning on something gives someone the ability to make that call.

As to "kicking the can down the road" - would it REALLY be such a terrible thing if it were? You keep talking as if Trigger Warnings are some exclusionary forcefield to hold someone in a bubble, rather than being a ~way of interacting with the world~ which values forewarning and choice and control. What if the can *did* get kicked down the road? What if people who grew up in an environment of understanding triggers went on to work in publishing, in television, in films? What if film ratings were useful things that, rather than saying "contains some adult themes" (what? people do their taxes and argue over whose turn it is the load the dishwasher?) they contained specific "contains consensual sex" or "contains scenes of non-consenting sex" or "contains racially abusive violence"? Would that really be an absolutely awful, terrible world? I know; "Life" does not come with trigger warnings, but I don't understand how a world where people can make informed choices about the media they consume and how that might affect their mental health and wellbeing is supposed to be a bad thing. How does this affect you, as a person that doesn't need them? How?

Rushomancy, I don't know what to say to you. I don't understand what you think you mean when you say "when you go all j'accuse" - you are going to have to be clearer and more specific than that - but really... you know, don't. Because I have reached my limit for this week.

Because the answer is mostly, I don't get some ~kick~ out of talking about this shit. I don't *enjoy* dragging up my personal trauma over and over and explaining it to people, in order to get people to treat me and people like me with a modicum of decency and humanity. (In truth, I find it *interesting* because it is relevant to my life and the issues I face.) But if having this conversation makes one or two people turn around and say "Actually, those Atlantic articles are kinda misrepresenting this; I have a more positive view towards this than I did before" then it is worth continuing to have them.

Man, I would *prefer* to just float in a happy zone where I never talk about anything but Florian Schneider and records I love. But when people keep metaphorically hitting you in the face over and over and over, the choice to act or not is like... you can learn how to duck and how to swallow your anger and eventually ignore being hit. Or you can keep standing up and shouting "STOP FUCKING HITTING ME IN THE FACE" until people stop hitting. But I don't get the choice to sit back and be jaded and do nothing because it isn't some vague sense of "outrage", it's not wanting to be hit repeatedly in the fucking face.

Congratulations on living a life where very few of these issues affect you. Congratulations that "ennui" is an option that is open to you. This is what "Privilege" means when people talk about it - it means you get the *option* to not care, and caring or not caring affects your life in no way.

Now I see that there are a million replies after Rushomancy but I have work to do.

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.