Should I Pull the Trigger, Baby or Not?
Trigger warnings and other stuff
This was the most challenging article I’ve written in the past six months. I’m conflicted about trigger warnings, but trigger warnings aren’t going away. In fact, there’s an entire website dedicated to them: Book Trigger Warnings. There are tons of books here, many classics flagged for containing triggers. If you’re leading a life, it’s going to contain triggers, and if it’s a good book, it’s probably going to have them too, but the point, I guess—is that people want to know about them in advance.
However, my issue with trigger warnings is that I don’t believe they’re effective. Perhaps, use a rating system like they do with movies, or come up with a line or two that covers the potential challenging themes and place it in the book description, using it to flag your ideal reader.
When I first started writing, I quickly discovered that words are powerful. I hired an editor to look at Truth Moon in its early stages. Imagine my surprise when I received a nasty email telling me my subject matter was inappropriate and she couldn’t read such a story or edit it. In my defense, the editor had nothing in her profile that said she didn’t read specific romance genres. She later confessed to not reading the project description I sent in advance. I realized then that when I work with people; I need to be very clear about what my book contains or, better yet, work with like-minded people.
I experienced another incident with a Beta reader a year later. I had a trigger warning on the manuscript. Still, after reading three pages, the reader returned to the book, saying it made her relive her date/rape because the stalking scene was too vividly written.
Triggers in books are themes that create a response from the reader, potentially causing a psychological reaction from the reader. It’s hard to determine what can trigger because everyone is different, depending on who is reading the book, but clearly, my books contains triggers. Because of this, I need a trigger warning. I would suggest you look at your own book. Most likely, rape, sexual assault/harassment, physical/emotional abuse, graphic descriptions of death, and sex are all considered triggering. How specific you wish to get in your trigger warning is up to you and/or your publisher. Some authors consider too detailed a trigger warning, a spoiler. However, other authors and readers believe you can’t be specific enough.
If you provide a trigger warning, how and where should we put these trigger warnings? Most people put them on the book’s inside cover; this is where my publisher is putting mine. Readers who don’t need a warning can skip it, and those who think they might need a warning can read it.
Ten years ago, you could get away with not doing a trigger warning. Today’s audience is different, especially if your readers are younger. I’m not criticizing, but I noted a change during my last two years as a college professor. I started seeing students with more anxiety issues than in previous years. As a department chair, I noticed students complaining about their professors before even discussing it with the professor personally. People seemed to take offense and want to make an issue out of something instead of talking to each other and solving a problem. The year before I retired, professors were told at a faculty meeting that our syllabus for the class now had to contain a disclaimer, a content warning, to allow students to prepare emotionally for the content so the student could decide to forgo interacting with the content at all. Notice a trend here?
The content warning read: “Our classroom provides an open space for the critical and civil exchange of ideas. Some readings and other content in this course will include topics that some students may find offensive and/or traumatizing. I’ll aim to forewarn students about potentially disturbing content and I ask all students to help to create an atmosphere of mutual respect and sensitivity.”
The administration felt that certain course content could affect students’ well-being and academic performance, who have experienced corresponding traumas in their own lives. Such students might not yet be ready to confront a personal trauma in an educational context. Hot-button topics included sexual abuse, self-harm, violence, eating disorders, religion, politics, and discrimination. And since students are now viewed as clients, just as someone purchasing a book is, the syllabus needs a trigger warning, too.
As an art professor, I had a problem with this as art and art history often touch on all the above. Many faculty members felt that trigger warnings insulate students from the world with which academics think they need to engage. What better way to confront a past trauma than through an academic context? Content warnings establish a precedent of making instructors or universities legally responsible for protecting students from emotional trauma. It is also impossible to expect all the topics that could trigger a student. How do I know what each student will display in each critique that may trigger another student or me?
My skepticism about trigger warnings:
There is no proof they are beneficial. “Because trigger warnings involve assumptions about emotional reactions, particularly with respect to P.T.S.D., psychology researchers have begun to study whether trigger warnings are in fact beneficial. The results of around a dozen psychological studies, published between 2018 and 2021, are remarkably consistent, and they differ from conventional wisdom: they find that trigger warnings do not seem to lessen negative reactions to disturbing material in students, trauma survivors, or those diagnosed with P.T.S.D. Indeed, some studies suggest the opposite may be true. Those who received trigger warnings reported greater anxiety in response to disturbing literary passages than those who did not.” — What if Trigger Warnings Don’t Work, The New Yorker? These studies are relative to syllabus course content, not to books. Still, it might be interesting to consider whether having trigger warnings on books might also cause anxiety.
Trigger warnings keep people from engaging in books that may help them. Since one of the core tenets of therapy is facing your fears, not avoiding them, avoiding a book seems like a bad idea, not a good one. Seeing characters face their fear is transforming and uplifting and might help those suffering from anxiety. The reason I write my books is to help me solve my internal struggles and assist others.
Trolls or others with an agenda use the trigger warning to target books. My original thought that a trigger warning would keep people from reading the book because the book wasn’t a good fit, was blown out of the water when I started reading book reviews. Some people view the trigger warnings to target books they feel are not in the PC camp they belong to. All the books in question had trigger warnings, and these readers read them anyway. I hope it led to some sales for the authors who took the hits. One writer, Eve Vaughn, said during a workshop that every one star review she got where someone complained about the violence, the sex, and bad things that happened, increased her sales. I can’t comment on that, but I found it fascinating.
What is your opinion of trigger warnings? Do you like them? Do you think there’s a better way to handle them? Have you read one that you really liked? How did we get by without them before? Please leave a comment.
This is a repost. I will return with a post on January 9, 2024. Have a great holiday!