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from the this-article-may-trigger-strong-emotions dept.
There is a lot of talk on the net these days about microagressions, and it's good netiquette to post trigger warnings before discussing sensitive topics. What's good in online forums isn't necessarily appropriate in-person, especially on University campuses. The cover article for September's edition of The Atlantic magazine discusses the harm that students' requests for trigger warnings on course content and accusations of microagression are causing, stifling open conversation on campuses across America. The authors also suggest that these student behaviors are actively causing harm to the students.
Avoiding trigger topics, instead of assisting those who have suffered traumas, perpetuates and enhances the pathology of the phobias they hope not to trigger. The hunt for microagression creates in the students cognitive distortions that are usually treated with cognitive behavioral therapy. The authors are calling this "The Coddling of the American Mind", and suggest it will create a generation of graduates unable to cope with the world after graduation.
The authors also appeared on the Diane Rehm show, on a segment called "The New Political Correctness: Why Some Fear It's Ruining American Education". Far from trying to shut down the conversation about race relations, the authors are trying to re-open it.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ikanreed on Tuesday September 01 2015, @02:46PM
The whole debate around this centers on a false idea that trigger warnings are suddenly endemic to the academic experience. They aren't.
The preferred method of therapy for trigger-driven conditions is exposure therapy, where the patient is exposed to small versions of their phobias(or other triggers) in controlled conditions where they're expecting it. This whole "argument" such as it is is built around pretending that trigger warnings are some guarantee and protection from exposure.
Now never-mind the more pragmatic problems: that triggers for conditions are highly individualized and cannot be easily categorized into something that a professor could just trivially determine. The idea of opposing them on principle has jack shit to do with that, and everything to do with and war with imagined oversensitive or PC people or the same damn culture war the right wing has been engaged in since forever.
And you can even see that character in the title of the Diane Rehm piece.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by dyingtolive on Tuesday September 01 2015, @02:55PM
I've always been a strong believer in that we could all benefit from being made just a little more uncomfortable and offended than we are currently. For any value of 'currently'.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 2) by AnonymousCowardNoMore on Tuesday September 01 2015, @03:28PM
For any value of 'currently'.
Some people are currently, for example, being raped. Or living with the after-effects. I could not claim to understand fully but am convinced they don't need to be more uncomfortable nor offended. I like your sentiment but there is always a limit.
(Score: 3, Touché) by acp_sn on Tuesday September 01 2015, @03:35PM
Assaulting someone is not the same as offending someone.
Your willingness to use this hyperbole shows a lack of respect for actual victims of assault.
(Score: 2) by AnonymousCowardNoMore on Tuesday September 01 2015, @03:47PM
Assault is not the same as mere offense. But it is still offensive and it is still uncomfortable.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @06:06PM
So then you are a bit offended and a bit uncomfortable... So what?
Where does it say you should never be in any of these states? Grow up for goodness sake
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Wednesday September 02 2015, @07:30AM
Speaking of false equivalence, look at TFA. It goes from "students request trigger warnings" to "avoiding trigger topics". Clearly if they are requesting trigger warnings they want to discuss those things, so it really makes no sense to then assume that those topics are off limits.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Thursday September 03 2015, @02:24AM
Not having read TFA I'm inclined to agree, though I could easily see the sentiment being over-exerted as others are suggesting. Trigger warnings seem to me a courteous thing to do so that, if nothing else, people have a chance to emotionally brace themselves. Not unlike warning folks before showing surgery or other gory pictures that may trigger vomiting, fainting, etc. Perhaps though there could be benefit to not specifying *what* potential triggers are about to be displayed...
"What we're about to show/discuss/etc. may make some of you uncomfortable. If you are unusually sensitive you may want to brace yourself. [commence discussing topic]"
Sufferers could then get lots of practice bracing themselves, even though most of the time it would be for topics that wouldn't actually trigger them. Of course the question remains as to just how uncommon of a trigger we should be considerate of, I mean I vote against warning the fellow who's deathly afraid of butterflies, but that's a topic for another time.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by sjames on Tuesday September 01 2015, @03:52PM
On the other hand, it the subject cannot be mentioned in a general educational environment without the prof. getting fired, how will we educate the psychologists, medical personnel and councilors needed to help people after rape?
(Score: 2) by AnonymousCowardNoMore on Tuesday September 01 2015, @04:03PM
I wholeheartedly agree. I was merely pointing out—with an extreme example—that there must exist a point where you are so extremely uncomfortable that discomfort is no longer a good thing.
But then I suspect we all know that the "I'm offended" crowd doesn't actually exist to help victims.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday September 01 2015, @04:39PM
And, note the demographics of the supposed offenders are as predictable as the offendees.
Its basically a witch hunt. The Salem witch hunts ended up being run against old women, and weaponized microaggressions exist to be used against white men, different target but same outlook and goal. Sorta a leftie version of the McCarthy hearings.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by jmorris on Wednesday September 02 2015, @12:57AM
It is worse already. There are already cases of law schools that can't teach about the laws regarding rape because it might trigger a student. Future lawyers won't know what to do, good luck if you are accused of rape and need a defense lawyer. Of course the prosecutor will be equally clueless in the future so it might balance out... but of course none of that will matter because we are already at the point where the accusation is all that counts, especially on a campus.
And how about studying immigration law when the U.S. Code itself is outlawed in the classroom? You not only can't say 'illegal alien' but many schools now ban even the word 'alien' yet the code doesn't, it speaks of both resident and illegal ones.
But it isn't about hypersensitivity at all, that is simply the excuse; claim victim status and end the argument. These are SJWs and what do SJWs do? Everybody all together:
"THEY LIE!"
It is about one side wrapping the victim flag around themselves and doing the classic "Shut up, he explained." move. Try claiming to be triggered as member of an out of favor group and see how far you get. Try claiming that as a Jew you are kinda offended and triggered by the local Muslim Brotherhood gang with their Hitler related signs at the rallies. (Google it, yup they do that. Nobody sez nothin' lest they get expelled for Islamophobia.) Tell the administration the fat lesbian who screams in your face about patriarchy and other incomprehensible crap is a bit rude and if she keeps it up you just might have to take offense at it.... and unless you are black or homosexual you will get expelled for using a gendered pronoun. It is just politics and It only works in one direction, always toward the left.
(Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Tuesday September 01 2015, @05:10PM
am convinced they don't need to be more uncomfortable nor offended
They should get professional help, especially if it's a man. Men too often try to bottle traumatic experiences up or cover them up with substance abuse when they need to reach out for help. My usual recommendation is to seek a psychologist who practices ACT, which is an effective technique for dealing with phobias and triggers. In fact, managing triggers is one of the central strategies of ACT.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ikanreed on Tuesday September 01 2015, @03:30PM
And that's fine for a belief. But as something you want to be the default, you need to bring rigorous evidence to the table. There's medical evidence of the comparable harm of immersion therapy(unexpected uncontrolled exposure) compared to exposure therapy.
We can certainly talk about trying to turn treatment pathways into policy, and the problems that presents, but if you're going to overturn current medical science, you need to have evidence, not just firm belief.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2015, @07:11AM
Fuck you.
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Wednesday September 02 2015, @10:40AM
Thank you.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @02:56PM
The culture of safe-space infantilism in academia is not doing these students any mental health favors, nor is it preparing them for the space outside of college which definitely does not operate on these terms. Trigger warnings are not a cause of that, just a symptom. It's really the culling of any real or perceived risk in the school system that is causing this.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Francis on Tuesday September 01 2015, @03:04PM
The purpose of trigger warnings is to coddle the mind and prevent people from having open discussions of sensitive topics. It was never about anything practical as there's no way of predicting what's going to trigger something in somebody. And the obvious triggers are probably the ones that the sensitive individuals can easily get help with.
It's just another case of SJWs using emotion as a weapon against people that aren't doing anything wrong. Now, if they wanted to be fair-minded about it and would use it to help everybody, it would be a completely different problem. But, you don't hear much from them about things that might affect men disproportionately.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @03:34PM
Nice to see the SJW nutters are abusing the mod points again. I'd hate for anybody to think that they had a substantive viewpoint rather than behaving like primary school children.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday September 01 2015, @04:23PM
The original idea of "trigger warnings" was to help those with a diagnosed mental illness such as PTSD from having an experience that would "trigger" a mental health episode. This was probably a good move: You don't want somebody in class suddenly screaming about what Father O'Malley did to them when they were an altar boy or what happened during their tour in Iraq.
The problems are:
1. The meaning has been expanded to cover things that have no such associations and instead are merely challenging to the listener, and
2. It puts the responsibility on everybody who may come in contact with the affected person to avoid a particular topic of discussion.
My general view on the matter: For college classes, appropriate warnings about the material should be made in the course description, and courses with a lot of such warnings should not be required as part of a general course of study (specific majors, though, might reasonably require it: You aren't going to get through a psych/counseling program without discussing rape, because as a counselor you need to be able to handle somebody who comes to you saying they were raped). It's up to the student to choose a course of study that does not focus on those topics - to the best of my knowledge, nobody has gotten into severe PTSD over algorithmic complexity, multivariable calculus, or rhetoric and composition. And outside of class, there's absolutely nothing that can be done that would not be a severe imposition on everybody else's right to free speech.
Also, some people just aren't cut out for college. Which is fine: The world needs good welders, mechanics, plumbers, store clerks, chefs, and lots of other professions that don't or at least shouldn't require a college degree.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday September 01 2015, @04:48PM
You don't want somebody in class suddenly screaming about what Father O'Malley did to them when they were an altar boy or what happened during their tour in Iraq.
And that's the tragedy, given a problem lets gin up some engineering solutions, well, in the old days we blew a lot of time, money, and effort on trying to prevent bad stuff and spend money on mental health treatment and at least on paper tried to avoid empire building aggression, but the new solution is we'll continue getting your battle buddies leg blown off in front of you by an IED because daddy warbucks gotta make bank, but the good news is we have a new solution of having people not talk about it in class anymore.
nobody has gotten into severe PTSD over ... multivariable calculus
OH I saw a few basket cases by the end of some math weed out classes. And ochem. And intro to programming. And the EE "Ohms law for dummies" first semester I forget the exact name (linear analysis or intro to linear circuits or something)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday September 01 2015, @05:17PM
Yes, the creeping expansion of meaning, where things like rules and laws which should not be ambiguous -- however, people see fit to redefine things on the fly in an arbitrary manner.
Was just in San Francisco having this discussion with some Masshole female in a dive-bar, calmly but jovially explaining why political incorrectness is a necessary evil and the whole P.C. thing is getting out of hand, and that I was horrified how easily people would give up their freedom of speech. Needless to say, she didn't agree with me, and so the conversation escalated without becoming noisy or violent. She then accused me of "assaulting" her, because I had calmly bothered to disagree with her.
"Unfuckingbelievable," I told her with disgust on my face. At that point I had expected her to run out of the bar yelling "Raaape! Raaape!" But I told her, "You know, assault has a legal definition, so go tell the cops I 'assaulted' you and get into deep shit for not only wasting their time but filing a false police report. Go ahead, I don't give a fuck!" She huffed and puffed and walked out of the bar, leaving me to drink in peace.
That is how you get rid of chickenshits like that -- call their fucking bluff. And don't let Massholes into your state.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Hairyfeet on Tuesday September 01 2015, @07:12PM
I always point out to those in favor of "political correctness" that it is literally a communist term, it was a term come up with by mainstream communists for how Stalin used to have a ministry to "correct" political mistakes, such as making a person into a non person by erasing them from photos and documents. The truly sad part is to the SJWs? that sounds like a fine idea, just erase those that do not agree with you because freedom of speech to them means being free to support their views and tell them how progressive they are, opposing views shall not be tolerated. For a perfect example look at that "feminist activist" in Canada who pulled the fire alarm on the meeting of a MRM chapter and stood outside with a bullhorn screaming "rapist!" at the top of her lungs. No debate, discussion verbotten, just screams of "ist!" and blocking of free speech of the opposition.
This is what happens when you raise a bunch of spoiled children with years of Captain Planet style propaganda and first world guilt, then plug them into social media so they can group with like minded spoiled brats, you get "activists" that believe the entire planet should be altered to fit their myopic and frankly racist/sexist viewpoints. Its sad really, but when you play the "SJW or Stormfront" game or go spend an hour on Gamerghazi you see what these people are really like and its not pretty.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2015, @01:19PM
Not surprising that it is literally only used by fascist nutjobs pushing FUD. "Political correctness" is nothing but a meaningless scareword just like "communist", "socialist", and "SJW". Please prove me wrong by actually defining it.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Thursday September 03 2015, @02:34PM
Don't know how to Google? And folks wonder why I think ACs are worthless, they can't even Google or Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] just showing how totally worthless AC posts truly are.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @06:36PM
You've never gone through a third semester calc course, have you?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Tuesday September 01 2015, @07:05PM
2. It puts the responsibility on everybody who may come in contact with the affected person to avoid a particular topic of discussion.
And there's the rub. How can "everyone" possibly know who is affected by what particular boogieman?
The idea that entire fields of discussion should be avoided because some small percentage of people might find it uncomfortable is as silly as the idea that peanuts should be eradicated from the face of the earth because some small percentage of people have a peanut allergy.
We put warnings on food products, and call it a day.
Warnings on course descriptions are all that is needed, as you point out.
But I'd go further. Some discussions of sensitive matters is warranted in general courses of study.
Rape will be mentioned in normal every day life. Without warnings! Peanuts will be served in Kung Pao chicken. But unlike the restaurant menu, society comes with no warning labels.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @07:18PM
So the original meaning has expanded? I am not triggered by war footage but I did have a difficult and traumatic time with some of the local black youths when I was growing up. Perhaps these PC phrases should be more specific?
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Thursday September 03 2015, @10:38PM
>You don't want somebody in class suddenly screaming about what Father O'Malley did to them when they were an altar boy or what happened during their tour in Iraq.
I actually think that would enhance the learning experience of college by opening an avenue of conversation that would otherwise be ignored. It would be uncomfortable, perhaps, but extremely rewarding for everyone involved.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 1) by Pino P on Tuesday September 01 2015, @03:24PM
The preferred method of therapy for trigger-driven conditions is exposure therapy, where the patient is exposed to small versions of their phobias(or other triggers) in controlled conditions where they're expecting it.
This forms the basis for abreaction therapy [wikipedia.org] practices that replay the trigger in the patient's mind to work through it. This is how Dianetics took off, by bringing the benefits of abreaction to people who probably had undiagnosed PTSD.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday September 01 2015, @08:03PM
The whole debate around this centers on a false idea that trigger warnings are suddenly endemic to the academic experience. They aren't.
So where were trigger warnings ten years ago? I say to the contrary that this is a fad working itself out.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Wednesday September 02 2015, @01:24AM
I went to a very liberal and progressive college a bit over 10 years ago, and I didn't see a single trigger warning throughout my time there. They may have existed, but it wasn't something that I came across.
In fact, there was one time in particular when somebody scrawled the details of the Gwen Araujo murder on the sidewalk in front of one of the buildings that a trigger warning might reasonably been useful.