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Um, so you’d like to have a respectful chat about sj movements after rather summarily calling their behaviour “utterly unhelpful and frankly immature” and saying, “there’s no reasoning with it.” That’s not really getting off to a good start, mate.

There’s this thing that’s become really prevalent in pop discourse at the moment…and that’s the utter dismissal of someone’s perspective prior to even engaging in conversation. And yes, certainly, there are folks on any side of a debate that do this. However, I’ve noticed that it is very often the case that this dismissal and trivialising of a perspective is directed to sj folks. And that this dismissal and trivialising hurts just a bit more for sj folks. I mean, I’m routinely confronted with folks in the real world who trivialise and dismiss part of my identity and folks who dismiss me because of part of my identity. So then when someone comes in and dismisses my political and ideological perspective out of hand, it hurts quite a bit.

I mean, your direct reply to my comment was “If this is truly the case…” There’s that really big “if,” that doubt in your mind that I am telling the truth in what I say. You begin by doubting whether I’ll even be honest with you. — Your comment above basically says, ‘Yeah the sj movement might stem from some real problems, but they’re immature and best to be ignored.’ This is a problem…you’re basically saying you agree that queer folk or women or whoever really are marginalised, you just don’t like how some queer folk or women or whoever are talking about their own marginalisation. So you dismiss it. You trivialise it.

Doesn’t exactly make me feel open to talking to you. I’m not saying I won’t…I’m saying, your comments make me wary.

(Also, apologies my comment is so long…I tend to ramble).

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At the same time there no lasting damage. I dealt with it. I processed it.

It’s something that would slip through your lists. I don’t think that you are wrong to include trigger warnings. On the other hand I don’t want to live in a world where I have an obligation to provide trigger warnings and otherwise can’t freely express myself.

What’s completely missing from your argument is references to practical research about the effects of trigger warnings. Is there none? If so why? The people advocated the policy aren’t interested in evidence that it works? Gender science folks don’t have enough funding to finance the research?

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I never said anything about automatic trigger recognition. Only about a database of existing triggers in media, which you call a “workaround”. (If that’s the word you want to use, then trigger warnings are a workaround in the first place.)

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I’ve not read anything else you’ve written, so I don’t know exactly what critiques you have of social justice movements…but maybe give us a bit more credit? We’re not all blindly screaming our politics at each other all the time…

I’d argue most of us are open to new ways of thinking…that’s part of why we got involved in social justice in the first place. And far from being a homogeneous whole…social justice folks often butt heads (sometimes more angrily than others, I’ll admit)…but it’s not as though any disagreement gets you barred. And I’d argue that the more radical amongst us are usually pushed to it by having their more moderate and open-minded conversations dismissed and trivialised.

I dunno…if you have the time or the inclination, feel free to e-mail me and I’d love to chat about your perspective on social justice movements and whatnot. I quite like having respectful chats with folks I don’t completely agree with…which are tough to find these days.

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This sentence assumes a lot about the hypothetical audience that is worth making explicit. (I infer from context that you’re speaking in the hypothetical first person, here, and are making assumptions rather than reporting your own experience. If I’m wrong about that, I apologize; I don’t mean to dismiss that experience, though I also don’t think it’s typical.)

First, it assumes that the reader’s response to depictions of sexual abuse in a work is to avoid the work altogether. If it is instead to approach the work with a greater-than-usual level of caution (e.g. reading it at home rather than on the commuter rail), you aren’t prevented from consuming it.

Second, it assumes that the trigger warning/content note/ingredient list on the work is the only available source of information. If there are other sources of information (e.g. wikipedia articles, trusted friends, etc.) then you can seek out more details once you’ve been warned that there’s something problematic here. (In this spirit, when my theater group thinks a play has difficult content we say so and encourage potential audience members to contact us if they have any questions about it.)

All that said, I agree with your conclusion that specific warnings are better than general ones… not because of anything having to do with censorship or even PTSD, but just because I’m generally in favor of labeling things to allow informed consumer choice, and more specific labels provide more information.

The question is at what level they’re worth the effort involved in producing them (which of course depends on how streamlined we make that process).

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