Week 7 - Trenton Guarienti

Trenton Guarienti
Section A02
Week 7

Why Trigger Warnings are Necessary and You've Been Using them for Years

Trigger warnings aren't as "The Coddling of the American Mind" makes them out to be. The article paints them as a method of avoiding certain topics because they might make someone "uncomfortable", claiming they are used as a way to avoid exposure to potentially disturbing content that might help recovery. This fails on one crucial point, however, in that in order for exposure to help mental progress, the individual must be open to the exposure and on their terms where they feel safe and in control, slowly allowing the to build up a tolerance. That is what trigger warnings accomplish. By informing one about content that they might be exposed to, it in turn allows them to prepare themself for whatever content might be coming up, or if they aren't ready for that step in recovery, to allow them to step away when things become too much. People who have undergone trauma that causes triggers know their limits very well, far better than a third party can determine. There are absolutely circumstances where the concept of a trigger warning has caused an issue in the classroom about free speech, but in the long run it is far more advantageous to provide a simple "this content will be included in this lecture, if you feel yourself beginning to panic, get sick, or the content is simply too much, feel free to excuse yourself" than to turn the need for these warnings back on the victims in a situation that blames them for this psychological response rather than supporting recovery. Professors have been doing this for years and years before the trigger warning fad became a thing, with prefaces to the class about particularly disturbing content in a lecture or warnings at the beginning of the class. It is only as our society as a whole began to realize that minor things can become triggers as well (some examples I have seen firsthand are people who are set into a panic state by a particular smell, a door being closed too hard, or a turn of phrase), thus creating a culture that needs more attention to recovery than previously thought, and the resistance to change that prevents people from adapting to these new conditions.

Regardless of whether you think trigger warnings are necessary or not, it is just common decency to provide people with accommodations for internal issues, and we shouldn't be the one to judge for others what can and cannot be triggering content.

Lukianoff , Greg, and Jonathan Haidt. “The Coddling of the American Mind.” The Atlantic, Atlantic
     Media Company, 31 July 2017.
Seltzer, Sarah. “Teaching Trigger Warnings: What Pundits Don’t Understand About the Year’s Most
     Controversial Higher-Ed Debate.” Flavorwire.com, Flavorpill Media, 27 May 2015.