{"id":28723,"date":"2015-04-27T01:00:36","date_gmt":"2015-04-27T05:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=28723"},"modified":"2015-04-21T21:24:20","modified_gmt":"2015-04-22T01:24:20","slug":"qotd-where-to-use-trigger-warnings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/04\/27\/qotd-where-to-use-trigger-warnings\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Where to use trigger warnings"},"content":{"rendered":"

The strongest argument against trigger warnings that I have heard is that they allow us to politicize ever more things. Colleges run by people on the left can slap big yellow stickers on books that promote conservative ideas, saying \u201cTHIS BOOK IS RACIST AND CLASSIST\u201d, and then act outraged if anyone requests a trigger warning that sounds conservative \u2013 like a veteran who wants one on books that vilify or mock soldiers, or a religious person who wants one on blasphemy. Then everyone has to have a big fight, the fight makes everyone worse off than either possible resolution, and it ends with somebody feeling persecuted and upset. In other words, it\u2019s an intellectual gang sign<\/a> saying \u201cLook! We can demonstrate our mastery of this area by only allowing our symbols; your kind are second-class citizens!\u201d<\/p>\n

On the other hand, this is terribly easy to fix. Put trigger warnings on books, but put them on the bullshytte page. You know, the one near the front where they have the ISBN number and the city where the publishers\u2019 head office is and something about the Library of Congress you\u2019ve never read through even though it\u2019s been in literally every book you\u2019ve ever seen. Put it there, on a small non-colorful sticker. Call it a \u201ccontent note\u201d or something, so no one gets the satisfaction of hearing their pet word \u201ctrigger warning\u201d. Put a generally agreed list of things \u2013 no sense letting every single college have its own acrimonious debate about it. The few people who actually get easily triggered will with some exertion avoid the universal human urge to flip past the bullshytte page and spend a few seconds checking if their trigger is in there. No one else will even notice.<\/p>\n

Or if it\u2019s about a syllabus, put it on the last page of the syllabus, in size 8 font, after the list of recommended reading for the class. As a former student and former teacher, I know no one reads the syllabus. You have to be really devoted to avoiding your trigger. Which is exactly the sort of person who should be able to have a trigger warning while everyone else goes ahead with their lives in a non-political way. <\/p>\n

Scott Alexander, “The Wonderful Thing About Triggers”, Slate Star Codex<\/em><\/a>, 2014-05-30.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The strongest argument against trigger warnings that I have heard is that they allow us to politicize ever more things. Colleges run by people on the left can slap big yellow stickers on books that promote conservative ideas, saying \u201cTHIS BOOK IS RACIST AND CLASSIST\u201d, and then act outraged if anyone requests a trigger warning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,28,53,41],"tags":[459,460,1025],"class_list":["post-28723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-media","category-politics","category-quotations","tag-censorship","tag-textbooks","tag-triggerwarnings"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7th","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28723"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28724,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28723\/revisions\/28724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}