i swear to god if i see one more academic oppose trigger warnings on the grounds of being anti-censorship…
like did you think about that at all? the point of the trigger warning is to warn people of potentially triggering content. if the intent were truly to “censor” content, trigger warnings would serve no purpose. the very existence of the trigger warning suggests that the content will remain part of the curriculum, and literally all trigger warning advocates want is the ability to prepare for it.
one of my friends, for example, knew the subject of lolita prior to reading it, and because she’s a csa survivor she took measures to protect her mental health while still engaging the material. she moved her therapy sessions from before class to after, did her reading in comforting environments, saved her free absences so she could take a day off if need be, and explained her situation to the professor so she could step into the hall periodically if the conversation became too draining. she still contributed to class discussion, did all the assignments, and read the book, but because she knew what was coming, she was able to do those things without compromising her mental health.*
don’t want trigger warnings to dictate how your students read/interpret the work? well students with triggers will probably focus on that shit anyway, but as for the rest, it’s so easy to put a note on your syllabus directing students to a back page with trigger warnings so they can choose whether or not to check.
tl;dr: trigger warnings don’t restrict academic freedom, they empower students who struggle with trauma and mental illness, and conflating trigger warnings with “censorship” suggests a serious misunderstanding of how trigger warnings work.
*ftr, my friend is very open about this subject, so i’m not spilling secrets
It always amazes me how many people seem not to understand the definition of “censorship”. A trigger warning is the opposite of censorship. Censorship is “you can’t include that content because someone objects.” A trigger warning is “you can include potentially sensitive or objectionable content because you warned everyone about it ahead of time.”
This ^^^