Thoughts on triggers and warnings

[sqbr]

Recently in fandom there's been a big argument about warnings on posts. The best summary, imo, is Warnings Wank In Bandom on Unfunny Business, but if you haven't encountered the idea of people being triggered by descriptions of sexual assault I recommend Triggers and Trauma and Sexual Assault, Triggering, and Warnings: An Essay(Warning: Very explicit discussion of sexual assault and the nature, anatomy, cause & effect of triggers. Is itself triggery.).

This post is a collection of thoughts on the issue, not all restricted to fanfic.

I don't have any triggers myself. There are topics which tend to upset me, and certain kinds of fiction which make me feel bad, but that's not the same thing. What I do have is friends with triggers. I've read enough descriptions of what a trigger is like to NOT want to do that to anyone (especially not anyone I care about), and I've been very politely informed that I've inadvertently caused one enough (ie at least once) to be VERY careful, though still not always careful enough.

And for me this has nothing to do with "community norms". For example, I put this under a cut, not out of peer pressure, not because I thought anyone would yell at me, but because I didn't want to cause my friends or anyone else extra pain. (I didn't add "Warning: About triggers, may cause triggers" because I can't see that being helpful. I'm open to correction on this though) You can never totally avoid hurting some people sometimes, but we can all do our best and try and learn from our mistakes.

People talk about how movies and tv etc don't have warnings but, well..why shouldn't they? Maybe the fact they don't is a sign of the way that mainstream media is less responsive to the feelings of it's viewers than fanfic fandom. EDIT: Sorry, I expressed that badly. I agree that there are lots of things that act like warnings (reviews and trailers etc). But even if there wasn't that wouldn't necessarily make it ok for us not to warn anyway: "as good as mainstream culture" is a pretty crappy standard to hold yourself to when it comes to stuff like accessibility.

Also I've seen a few people imply that it's appropriative to talk about this in terms of privilege etc but I really don't think it is. As a disabled person, I see this as an accessibility problem, and people being privileged prats about it are being ableist(*). Not all the people it affects are actually disabled, but afaict(**) the relationship between triggering and related psychological problems like PTSD and suicidal depression etc is similar to the relationship between "having problems with stairs" and related physical problems like quadriplegia: on the whole the more hurdles and prejudice that person faces in everyday life the worse they will be affected by the accessibility problem, so contributing to that problem unnecessarily or refusing to acknowledge it is thoughtless and ableist.

I have seen some people saying "This is EXACTLY like racism/RaceFail" etc which is appropriative imo. There are some striking similarities in the way people defend their privilege, but some pretty important differences too. I guess the problem is that fandom doesn't have the language to deal with disability as it's own separate thing (Yet. I say optimistically. Though I imagine the only way we'll get there is via DisabilityFail :/)

I think the thing that annoys me the most from (EDIT: some of) the less Totally Failtastic commenters is that sometimes they make reasonable points but it's clear that even if they're willing to warn sometimes they still see the feelings of people who get triggered as important but secondary to their own convenience, and will for example make no particular effort to denounce the extreme anti-warning people while simultaneously complaining about being lumped in with them. EDIT: Not everyone who has criticisms of some of the ways warnings are currently implemented is doing this, and some of those criticisms are imo valid.

So I won't stand for that here: If you don't want people to assume that you're a prat who doesn't care about the feelings of people with triggers, make it clear that you do (and not by concern trolling).

EDIT: Reading some more I think that while I haven't seen anyone being pro-warnings with the same intense nastiness as some of the anti-warnings people, there is still some unfortunate over-generalising and not-listening. Right. More, on warnings. is the best post I've seen on this so far, though I think a small minority of people ARE being malicious. Also an important point I've seen made is that painting anyone who's not 100% unambiguously pro warnings as "anti survivors of sexual assault" is unfair to survivors who are NOT triggered and/or use BDSM etc as a way of working through their issues etc.

(*)Of course other disabled people (especially those with a more relevant disability) are welcome to disagree.
(**)And I don't know a lot about these sorts of psychological issues, so my apologies if I'm spouting crap. Also I realise a lot of people use "psychological problems" as code for "reasons I can dismiss you as irrational and inhuman" but that is the opposite of my intention. AND that I still don't have a major grip on what does and does not count as a disability (and I both wouldn't want to apply the term to someone who doesn't identify as disabled and wouldn't want to tell a disabled person that they "don't count")

Comments

[sami]

There's an excellent explanation of the basic psychology here, in Adjacent Posts On My Reading Page News.

Also, it's worth noting that mainstream TV/film have *ratings* that are reasonably meaningful; I can make pretty safe calls on that, as a rule. (With the exception of the time I got triggered unexpectedly watching The Dark Knight, because it turns out car crashes could, then, trigger me somewhat. But that's a very different thing, and I've since had treatment for my accident-related PTSD.)

[tree]

what i've seen of people bringing up racefail has been related to "didn't we just learn how not to treat people in these ways" and "gee, a couple of those people who were so vocal about racefail are SO NOT getting it now and are, in fact, employing many of the same tactics they have fought so hard against."

"People talk about how movies and tv etc don't have warnings but, well..why shouldn't they? Maybe the fact they don't is a sign of the way that mainstream media is less responsive to the feelings of it's viewers than fanfic fandom."

i have to disagree with that, and i've seen others do so elsewhere. films and tv have trailers, they have ratings and, at least here in australia, the ratings have reasons; they have genres and reviews. books also have genres, as well as blurbs and reviews. i suspect it would take effort to not be at least superficially aware of the basic content of most commercial releases.

fan creations are another matter as their dissemination is predicated entirely upon the goodwill of the creator. a summary may or may not exist and may or may not actually tell you anything about the fic's contents. an NC-17/mature rating may refer to explicit consensual sex or rape or violence or any number of permutations.

and that's just one of the reasons why the cries of 'free speech' and 'artistic integrity' are so ridiculous. it's okay if you (general) have to disclose because it's the law; but if a bunch of people are asking you to do it because your content might hurt them, that's totally impinging upon your rights. i fail to understand this logic.

mass media warnings

[aquaeri]

I agree mass media sort of has warnings, and fanfic can and probably should do better. My personal problem is with visual media (movies, TV shows) that regard sex as "worse" than violence and the level of rating tends to be mostly about the violence level. Whereas no-one wants to make stuff with perfectly harmless, part-of-the-plot sex because that would require a high rating, so they might as well stick lots of violence and swearing in as well. (I'm Scandinavian, and we tend to have rather the opposite attitude - is the behaviour shown criminal or not?)

So I don't just want ratings, but ratings attached to categories - this movie has R-level violence, while this movie has R-rated sex, but the violence is PG (which is an incredibly rare movie in English).

And I do think this ties into patriarchy etc - what the "mainstream" thinks is acceptable at different ratings levels seems to be more a mainstream male point of view than a female one. And certainly a heterosexual one, and white as far as I can tell.

And then, if I'm dreaming, I wouldn't mind warnings/ratings to do with racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, fatphobia, etc. So I could decide if I had the stomach for those things ahead of time.

[ex_peasant441]

You seem to be saying that we have a moral imperative to support people with triggers and that anything other than actively saying we support them is wrong.

The problem with that is it closes the debate down in the same way that the racism debate has been closed down. It puts people on the anti-warnings side under huge social pressure and hence makes it very difficult for them to say anything calmly at all. Now that is an excellent way to 'win' an argument if all you want to do is impose your own standard as the socially imposed norm, but it is not the way to win an argument in real terms. Imposing a social etiquette is not the same as getting people to actually welcome a stance that they disagree with, it is simply slapping a plaster over a still festering wound - and sooner or later the puss will build back up and leak out. We see this happen time and time again with racism on LJ - the FOC and their allies have indeed gained control of the discussion, very successfully so, but since there are huge swathes of fandom who have not been convinced by their actual arguments, things fester under the surface, it's just very very difficult to talk about them.

I actually find what is happening with the warnings debate quite heartening. It did indeed start out with similarities to the race debates - with an emotional appeal, provoking very emotional responses and rapidly degenerating into some quite appalling name calling and bad behaviour from both sides. But then something rather unusual seems to have happened. The initial posters seem to have got emotionally exhausted quite quickly, and withdrawn from the discussion, but new posters have stepped up and are engaging in what is actually a very civilised and non-emotional debate. And the result is I am actually really learning things about why the anti-warners hold the opinions that they do. I won't say that I have been swayed to their side yet, but I certainly have a much better understanding of their opinion and am less likely to just dismiss it out of hand.

However, I do feel strongly that one of the reasons why this dispassionate debate has become possible is precisely because people on the pro-warnings side are not all claiming it as a moral imperative to agree with them. When I made my own post I very carefully worded it not as 'this is what I think you ought to do' but as 'this is what I do - take it or leave it' because I felt the former was a way to close the debate down while the latter was a way to leave it as a discussion, a topic for consideration rather than something to feel worried about.

Not that my post actually garnered many comments, but I can see evidence in other people's oblique mentions that they read it and have digested its intent, and it certainly didn't attract wank which was my main fear when I posted.

I'm not saying that one should never come out and say that one supports a disadvantaged set of people, but sometimes it is better left unsaid.