[Author’s note: These are some brief thoughts in a much larger, and ongoing, discussion about the purpose and effects of trigger warnings. Later this week, I’ll try to add some links to other articles that have helped shaped the debate – feel free to recommend any that you’ve found useful or compelling] |
- There’s an argument I’ve been seeing in the press and on social media, objecting to the use of trigger warnings in an academic setting. I most often see it offered as the two-pronged idea that 1) offering trigger warnings infantilizes students by shielding them from sensitive material, and 2) that it will lead to students "faking" a trigger response in order to get out of doing homework. I find this idea, in its various iterations, deeply flawed.
First, as someone who negotiates a strong set of triggers, having these warnings has never led me to disengage from the material -- what it does is allow me to prepare for the way the material will affect me, so that I can function in class. The thing that makes me disengage is when I don't have any preparation and am blindsided by flashbacks in the middle of class, and at those times my silence is not a protest against the material’s inclusion, but simply the best way to separate my private experience of the trigger from the work that is happening in the classroom. (No, it's not possible to know everyone's trigger. But graphic description of sexual violence, for example, is pretty obvious as a likely one). I'm not an exception to the rule here. Even, in my own teaching, when I have had students that needed to pull back from discussion of triggering material, those students have usually taken the proactive (and, I'll add, brave) step of notifying me ahead of time and seeking out other means of making their voice heard. One student, for example, chose not to attend during the two days we were discussing a play about sexual violence (with my knowledge and blessing), but instead participated (with no urging from me) via our online class discussion board, posting some of the most thorough and thought provoking comments I'd seen on that board the whole semester. This student also notified me early in the semester that she would be missing those days, and made efforts not to accrue other absences so that she could take those two days off. The assumption that I and other trauma survivors are being coddled is part of a much larger toxic cultural narrative that paints us as weak and overly sensitive, rather than fully capable adults who must sometimes navigate a slightly different emotional terrain in order to participate in public life.
Second, as an instructor, I've certainly had my share of students who clearly don't do the reading (of any material, not trauma-specific material). It's usually only a few students each semester, though it is frustrating every time, both for me and for the other students. But, generally, the students skipping the reading never do so because I gave them an out. If they want to skip the reading, for whatever reason, they will do so, without looking to me for validation. When I've issued trigger warnings in my own class (which I do), I notice it has the opposite effect: students who otherwise struggle to complete the assignments become more invested in the material, and the entire class works harder, in part because the trigger warning (and the material it reflects) leads them to treat the text and our discussion with more care and attention.
I find the demand not to "give them an out" itself profoundly infantalizing, far more so than any trigger warning could ever be. It fundamentally assumes that students cannot be trusted, that students and teachers are automatically adversarial, and that they only way to get students to participate is to leave them absolutely no other options. It assumes getting students to do their homework is like getting a toddler to eat broccoli (my toddler, btw, fucking loves broccoli). I have serious problems with that viewpoint. Yes, some students will always slack, but you know what virtually guarantees that my students will act like children? Treating them that way.