On her blog, Sarah Hoyt discusses the continued expansion of trigger warnings in fan fiction, but not because the readers demand it:
Image from According to Hoyt
… I’ve noticed a creep up of trigger warnings in fanfic. Some of these would be incomprehensible to non-Jane-Austen fans and are actually not so much trigger warnings as sub-genre warnings. There are subgenres some fans (sometimes I’m some fans) hate, like “Lizzy is not a Bennet” or “Bingley is evil” or … whatever. That’s fine. It saves me the trouble of reading a fanfic that’s going to annoy me. Unless I’m in the mood to be annoyed, in which case I will read it so I can grit my teeth and mentally yell at the writer. (Bingley is evil is a problem because it usually turns into a revenge-fest on EVERYONE. Everyone is evil. Etc. I don’t think there’s ever a time I want to read that. You find yourself wanting to take a shower for the soul. With a wire scrub brush.)
We make fun of trigger warnings, often, but it’s a real measure of how stupid things have gotten. When I’m having to read a trigger warning for say “kissing without consent.” or “violence against children” (Okay, you’ll think that last makes perfect sense, until you find out it’s because a kid gets slapped once in the novel) or “verbal violence” or –
And you start wondering, on the serious, if the ideal novel for these people has no plot at all, just people sitting around having a nice meal and talking.
This is disturbing, because the whole point of a novel is to make you feel emotions and experience things you either can’t in your real life, or which wouldn’t be safe to experience in your real life, followed by resolution and catharsis. That’s what a novel offers you. The opportunity to be the someone else far away experiencing “Adventure” (which as we all know is really a series of unpleasant events.)
Anyway, I’ve slowly come to the conclusion all this demand for warnings and screeching about offense isn’t by real readers.
No, seriously. Real readers know that no one can insulate them against all surprises in a book (or blog) and that in fact the point of reading is to get out of your head and experience different things, different events, different emotions and different points of view. You might disagree vehemently with them (I actually do with most of the really old science fiction. Really, scientists in charge? Who thinks that’s even safe? Oh, yeah, the Soviet Union. But even they didn’t DO IT. They just paid lip service. They might have killed a lot more people if they’d done it, at that.) but that forces you to think about why you disagree and how you’d do it differently. If you’re of a certain frame of mind, you [might] end up becoming a novelist and writing your response to what you disagree with. Though if you are worth spit, even then, your “response” will be less of a response and more of this whole new thing it became, with the response buried somewhere inside it. And if you’re not of that frame of mind, you’ll still end up a more considered and self-reflective thinker than you were before. For one, while you might think that the other POV is stupid, if you read a whole novel with it, you’ll be aware that thought went into it, and might even have to confront that the worst stupid takes a lot of thought and self deception.
Anyway, the point is, I don’t think the offense-monsters read. Because the whole point of their screeching is to shut down the thinking and prevent ANYONE ELSE from being exposed to the material, and maybe thinking.
That’s not what they say, of course. They say “I’m offended”. And “I’m hurt”. And “You’re mean because you offended me”.
But what they really mean is “this you cannot think” “This you cannot see” and “this you cannot read” and “this you cannot write”. And “this you cannot say”.
They have, you see, completely surrendered their very core to the herd. They have given up their right to think and feel and be, in favor of belonging completely to the herd. (They used to have a term for this and said it as though it were praiseworthy: “mind-kill”.) So being exposed to contrary things hurts, and they have no defense, because they have taught themselves not to think and/or reason through things.
The pain they feel at the slightest hint of disagreement is true. It is also a symptom of what they have done to themselves, and has nothing to do with being mentally or emotionally healthy.
Just like the pain of withdrawal of a chronic alcoholic denied alcohol is real, and continued and too fast withdrawal might kill him, however continuing to feed his drinking habit will also kill him, faster.
To give them trigger warnings, apologize for any offense and handle them with kid gloves is not only bad for them but bad for society in general.
