Are people abusing the concept of a trigger?

[JimB]

Just out of curiosity, do you only have close friends and family added and good privacy settings, or can/do hundreds upon hundreds see what you post?

I don't use services like Facebook or Twitter or that, so maybe what I do doesn't count as being on social media. I use public forums like these. The results have obviously depended on the community in question, but even on this site, where people are gleeful about their hate, I've been met with mostly positive responses.

That actually seems kinda reasonable...

Thank you.

 

[Something Amyss]

good thing that was totally called for.

I apologise. It was definitely wrong of me to call you on your exact actions. I will refrain from the truth in the future.

Well, I won't. But I will consider your feelings first. Even if it is kind of hypocritical to make accusations like that at me, and then complain that it wasn't called for when done to you.

Next time, maybe practice what you preach.

As someone who worked in a psychiatry[....]

You need to talk about the things. You absolutely need to.

As someone who has worked in psychiatry, surely you are aware that there is no such thing as a "one size fits all" solution.

 

[Redd the Sock]

sinp

Sorry if I wasn't clear. If someone is in immediate danger, yes, don't do anything to provoke them. 20 minutes later however it's important to try and understand why they got to that point, and get them help through the trauma, the mental illness, even he shitty parts of life that got them thinking drastic action was a good idea because if that wound doesn't heal, and they get the idea that if they're in a bad enough place the whole world will change to protect them, they'll just be back on the ledge sooner or later.

 

[Something Amyss]

Yes... It's awesome -_-

The more you try to remind yourself it's irrational, the harder it seems to be to get past it...

And it's not even in any way consistent or predictable. All the little stresses and nonsense in the rest of your life can wear you down to the point that what you would otherwise be perfectly fine talking about suddenly just... Hits you out of nowhere... >_<

Yeah, it's fun knowing that something in a situation you face every day could set you off for no (apparent) good reason one day. Possibly simply because you've been worn down, or possibly just one element sufficient to give you that gut check, and then your brain checks out.

 

[Popido]

This PC behavior will only lead to bloodbath.

What is the progression of events and/or timeline you imagine that begins with trigger warning and ends in a bloodbath? That is, how do we get from where we're standing to where you predict?

If you bully people hard enough, treat them unfairly and give them no escape, they'll snap. PC is about setting restrictions. If we restrict everything willynilly, more and more people will feel that they're treated unfairly. The closer we get to the boiling point, the higher the chances for violent break out increases.

 

[Silence]

As someone who has worked in psychiatry, surely you are aware that there is no such thing as a "one size fits all" solution.

You are right, I find myself generalize too much all the time, even though one of my basic understandings of human nature is that you should never generalize.
I did not mean you have to force someone talking about stuff, but, as someone else wrote on this site, you need to know about things before you deny talking about them at all. Like I also said, in some cases trigger warnings are important (I actually would like to have it a different way - just an abstract which says "this text deals with stuff", not necessarily using the term "trigger warning" extensively).

 

[JimB]

This PC behavior will only lead to bloodbath.

What is the progression of events and/or timeline you imagine that begins with trigger warning and ends in a bloodbath? That is, how do we get from where we're standing to where you predict?

If you bully people hard enough, treat them unfairly and give them no escape, they'll snap.

While I appreciate you answering me, Popido, I need a little more specificity from you, please. I genuinely do not understand how "I have been traumatized by this, and ask that you please respect my trauma" is a form of bullying or is in any way unfair. To whom is it unfair, and how? What is it costing those people that is disproportionate or unjust?

PC is about setting restrictions.

I...guess, but so is the law. Does it become unfair bullying from which there is no escape?

 

[Something Amyss]

While I appreciate you answering me, Popido, I need a little more specificity from you, please. I genuinely do not understand how "I have been traumatized by this, and ask that you please respect my trauma" is a form of bullying or is in any way unfair. To whom is it unfair, and how? What is it costing those people that is disproportionate or unjust?

You know, over the last few months, I've started to get the feeling that "asking me to consider someone else" IS the idea a good chunk of people have when it comes to "bullying."

I...guess, but so is the law.

Oh shit, the prophecy is fulfilled! The slippery slope has been slipped! First we had folks asking for consideration, and now there's a whole legal system?

Disclaimer: that probably sounded a lot funnier in my head.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

While I appreciate you answering me, Popido, I need a little more specificity from you, please. I genuinely do not understand how "I have been traumatized by this, and ask that you please respect my trauma" is a form of bullying or is in any way unfair. To whom is it unfair, and how? What is it costing those people that is disproportionate or unjust?

You know, over the last few months, I've started to get the feeling that "asking me to consider someone else" IS the idea a good chunk of people have when it comes to "bullying."

And censorship.

And probably a whole slew of other shit that used to fall under the heading of "not being a selfish fuckhead".

 

[Something Amyss]

And censorship.

And probably a whole slew of other shit that used to fall under the heading of "not being a selfish fuckhead".

Pretty much. Actually, I'm surprised at how many people I've seen get offended over someone else being offended. It's like, have some self awareness and maybe some empathy.

 

[IceForce]

Of course you have every right to say your offended, I just don't see why any rational person would take such a statement seriously. Stephen Fry put this concept to words best:

What an ironic thing for you to post.

Remind me, who was it that got horribly and inexplicably offended at being called "dead"? I can't quite remember.
Gosh, it's on the tip of my tongue.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

good thing that was totally called for.

I apologise. It was definitely wrong of me to call you on your exact actions. I will refrain from the truth in the future.

Well, I won't. But I will consider your feelings first. Even if it is kind of hypocritical to make accusations like that at me, and then complain that it wasn't called for when done to you.

call me on my exact actions? did I "rant on things I don't understand"? that's an awful lot of assumptions you've made when I simply asked you to play nice with tippy when he was being genuine with you. the smug attitude wasn't necessary.

Well, I won't. But I will consider your feelings first. Even if it is kind of hypocritical to make accusations like that at me, and then complain that it wasn't called for when done to you.

where was I a hypocrite?

Next time, maybe practice what you preach.

and what did I preach that I didn't practice?

 

[renegade7]

I think "triggered" is basically a wishy-washy way of saying "upset".

And I have to say this. A proper liberal education (and by "liberal" I do not mean politically liberal but rather in the sense of the liberal arts, ie, the humanities, literature, social studies, natural sciences, etc.) SHOULD upset you. The point of liberal studies is to expose you to those things in the world you would not likely encounter otherwise. Sometimes that's because the subject is esoteric, like cell biology. Other times it's because the subject is taboo, and that can be due to the fact that certain subjects are upsetting and do require one to really re-think their image of society.

You SHOULD be upset that as many as 1 in 4 women and as many as 1 in 8 men will be victims of sexual violence. You SHOULD be upset that in most cases, those incidents won't even be investigated either because of cultural toxicity ("men don't get raped" or "she brought it on herself because of her outfit/because she was drunk/ etc") or because investigators simply do not have the ability to investigate such claims at all. You SHOULD be upset that there are politicians who want to make women pay for their own rape investigations, try to contrive definitions of rape such that they fit in with their particular social agenda (ie Todd Akin's gaffe), or that some legislatures do not even define rape as something that can happen to a man. You SHOULD be upset that there are institutions, even here in our "enlightened" society, and even entire cultures and governments that not only condone rape but encourage it as a means to maintain social order or who view women as second-class citizens that ought to be the property of a man. You SHOULD be disturbed by female genital mutilation and what it implies for male circumcision. You SHOULD be disturbed that "virginity testing", despite being utterly pseudoscientific, is not only a massive industry in some places but that failing to pass the "virginity test" can get you anything from reduced social status to death by stoning.

You are not going to solve those problems unless you understand them. You cannot understand them without confronting them. A number of ideologues consistently try to simplify those problems down to the point at which they easily align with people's pre-existing conceptions, such as presenting the fact that rape still exists because of the direct influence of some malicious "patriarchy", or on the opposite end of the tumblr-MRA spectrum, claim that "rape" is just something cried by feminists with an ax to grind, resulting in an endless and completely counterproductive round of the "Who's got it Worse?" Olympics.

It's very easy to pick a side and make it a simple matter of good guys and bad guys. It's comfortable when the world can be easily divided between heroes and villains. It's easy to think you live in a world where rape doesn't happen to innocent people or to treat it as a vague "other" that only happens to people in the news and characters on crime dramas, or to not think of it as anything more than the "1 in 4 women" statistic, or that it only happens to women because of the direct influence of "the patriarchy".

Understanding these things will not be a comfortable experience. But if you say that "it's uncomfortable so I don't want to think about it" you are not helping a cause, you are choosing to remain ignorant and taking society further away from any sort of solutions. If your goal is ignorance, you do not belong in college. Go back home and leave the seat open for someone who actually wants to learn.

 

[Something Amyss]

Yeh that seems about roight actually. I don't like the Escapist much right now either, the amount of SJW and feminism threads have been spiralling out of controls for so damn long. *sigh* I'm not cut out for these threads, I can't joke around without people taking me super seriously. But these buzzword/super srs threads are like 90% of what this site is and I get bored when I don't have much to post. I'll just go back to just leaving these threads be again, they just aren't fun y'know?

A decent rule of thumb is to look at the content of such a thread first. When you see people responding on the topic of "triggers" in the exact way they've been responding, consider that your light-hearted jest, which looks rather like the exact sort of ranty thing others are ranting about, might not be taken as such. It's a "know your audience" sort of principle.

I do get the concept of what a trigger is, I just can't fully believe the sheer volume of people crying it legitimately. Looking around a bit maybe there's a lot of The Boy Who Cried Trigger going on a lot? Cuz I always thought it was only used by people looking for maximum attention whoring and easy mode argument cop outs. I'm not insulting anyone who legit has a real problem just to clarify.

There are people crying wolf. The issue is that people have become dismissive of the concept overall, which is sort of repeated a lot in this thread and I've seen worse on less moderated sites.

But one of the primary issues is, at least with "the boy who cried wolf," the lesson is about ruining your own credibility. The issue in this instance is that one person cries wolf and another is discounted. I've already mentioned my feelings on self-diagnoses and using real conditions as excuses on the internet (aspergers is used for both, for example), but that doesn't mean everyone you meet who speaks of these things is full of it. Also, we can't actually tell the difference between someone with a real condition, someone who has self-diagnosed themselves, and someone who is just using it as an excuse to be a jackass.

I do suffer from PTSD. I actually hate using the term because of a different association. I associate it with combat veterans, and I don't tend to think of my experiences as being "equal" to that. I avoid a lot of the terminology, even though the "flashbacks" I suffer are indistinguishable from a soldier's except in terms of actual content. And I'm not particularly enamoured with the concept of a "trigger warning" in the first place. Not personally, anyway.

But the idea, as someone described better than I would, is not particularly to shut down conversation but rather to give people who have suffered through these things and might have PTSD, or another anxiety disorder, a chance to choose how to deal with this. And people do deal with things differently. Avoidance is generally unhealthy, but it's very often a bad idea for people to just be immersed in the situations that cause panic (though I'm told there are therapies that work that way, I don't know if they help anyone). But people do react differently and can take different levels of...well, anything. It's not even just trauma-related anxiety.

The concept of a trigger warning and some use--even on Tumblr--is/can be merited. It gets overused. There are people who cry wolf, people who don't understand what it's like to really be in such a situation, and oh yeah. There's another party worth mentioning. There are supporters who can either be legitimately zealous or be the so-called "Social Justice Warriors" and both can end up trampling on the folks they're "helping." Of course, you can't readily tell the legit from the jerks there, either, and people have every bit as much a tendency to lump everyone into the "jerk" category rather than give the benefit of the doubt, or evaluate based on circumstances. Because if snark is the primary language of the internet, cynicism is a close runner-up.

And honestly, a lot of people seem to balk at the concept of "not being a dick." A trigger warning, or even just a content warning at all, only requires a slight bit of forethought, yet there are people balking at it in any context.

 

[nameless023]

I have two opinions on this whole "trigger" business. On one hand I think that triggers are a good idea when used properly for the proper audience. I once read someone say that triggers are the "contains peanuts" of artistic content (be it literature, photography, video, etc) and it made a lot of sense. People react differently to different things and if you tell me that this guy/girl is going to have bad memories and/or have an actual negative reaction because of content that makes them remember some kind of abuse they experienced (or any other valid example) then I will agree trigger warnings are valid.

On the other hand, the internet has the tendency of exaggerating and abusing everything to the point where it gets dumbed down and turned into a joke. Just take a look at the picture of the pomegranate tw on the first page and you'll see how it has gone from "this makes me think of a terrible experience I had, please tag it so I dont have to think about it again" to "oMG hoW dAre you!!1! i dont like this, tag it so I dont have to see it. asswipe". everybody hides in their own comfort zones and they get offended if anyone dares to burst that bubble simply because they dont cater to their extremely specific special needs.

Tumblr is specially bad for this, everybody is so sensitive in there. I could go there and post "I ate a banana once and it made me sick, please tag any banana related posts under 'banana tw' so I don't get nauseous again" and I'm sure I would see a few morons actually tagging their posts and being "supportive" of such stupidity.

And I'm no expert on the matter but, I doubt pretending a specific bad thing doesnt exist and hiding behind trigger warnings is particularly healthy, regardless of its validity. I'd guess actually facing what triggers you (idk, reading a book that mentions/is related to/is about the topic or something) would help that person to overcome whatever fear they have (for valid triggers) or simply make them grow up (for fake triggers).

 

[Jake Martinez]

It's amazing to me that certain people live with so much privilege that they believe they can dictate the terms of what unpleasant life experiences they will have.

And here I was assuming that often life was unfair, or cruel, or just down right nasty, and a test of someones character was how they dealt with this fact. How stupid of me. All I needed to do was create a list of things that I didn't want to see/hear/read/think about and problem solved!

 

[J Tyran]

My tinfoil hat must be wearing out but I find it damn convenient that tuition of rape law is decreasing when many of the more radical feminists want rape law to be thrown out and the simple accusation to hold weight instead of evidence and a fair trial.

I just love these kind of coincidences.

 

[JimB]

I once read someone say that triggers are the "contains peanuts" of artistic content (be it literature, photography, video, etc) and it made a lot of sense.

Oh, that's good. That's really good. I like that.

Many of the more radical feminists want rape law to be thrown out and the simple accusation to hold weight instead of evidence and a fair trial.

I would like a citation for that assertion, please.

 

[J Tyran]

Many of the more radical feminists want rape law to be thrown out and the simple accusation to hold weight instead of evidence and a fair trial.

I would like a citation for that assertion, please.

Never read anything by Amanda Marcotte then? Like the blogs where she called people "rape loving scum" for defending the young men accused of gang rape when the Duke lacrosse case fell to pieces (the DNA of the accused didn't match the physical evidence and the story was completely divorced from the statements of independent witnesses) and she was part of a cyber "lynch mob".

She supported them being harassed and persecuted too as well as the trial by media, actions which can impact on the chances of suspects getting a fair trial.

Then there was her more recent outbursts over the UVA gang rape accusation which once again flew in complete defiance of eyewitness statements, she deleted all the comments and blogs for the Duke lacrosse case but there are loads of other sources for it.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/06/21/feminism_and_amanda_marcotte_106038.html

Then there is Zerlina "we should automattically beleive rape accusations" Maxwell.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/06/no-matter-what-jackie-said-we-should-automatically-believe-rape-claims/

That one speaks for itself, instead of believing neither side and getting to the truth people should always believe the accuser first. Which is in complete contradiction to the idea of innocent until proven guilty.

 

[JimB]

Never read anything by Amanda Marcotte then?

No, I have not. Further, you originally said many feminists are espousing these beliefs, whereas, while I don't know her and guess I probably ought not to assume, Amanda Marcotte strikes me as one person.

Then there is Zerlina "We should automatically believe rape accusations" Maxwell.

That is not quite what the article you linked says. It says belief should be the default until an investigation is conducted, and that she is describing a moral proscription rather than a legal one. I do not think she is saying what you seem to believe she's saying.