Complaining About Trigger Warnings is Sexist

Now that I have your attention with an overly general headline, let’s talk reality.

For quite some time in Western culture, women have been associated with emotions (nature, the body), and men with rationality (mind, culture). Unsurprisingly, rationality in U.S. society tends to be prioritized over emotions, and people who include their emotions in their arguments or conversations are seen as irrational, bad at argumentation, or just plain weak. I’m not going to get into arguing for the existence of this dichotomy in the Western mind, so check out some basic women’s or feminist studies if you’re cynical.

Simultaneous to this lovely set up, in the past few years we’ve been seeing a whole lot of hooplah about trigger warnings, college students, coddling, and how kids these days are so oversensitive. They’re accused of being too easily offended, of throwing away their freedoms in order to create a safe bubble. Safe spaces are mocked, kids are told they’ll fall apart in the “real world,” and talking heads bemoan the state of the youth.

These two issues are not unrelated. Academia has for quite some time been a bastion for white men, a place where “rationality” is said to rule, and where those whose emotions rule are not allowed. My time in college was a time in which objective inquiry was prized above all else. Emotions were to be eradicated. It is not an accident that this worship of the mind over the body is associated with a place that is traditionally male and has been vehemently guarded against female incursions. It’s also not an accident that the further you go into academics, the more likely you are to encounter horrific sexism, including out of control harassment in a number of graduate programs.

Many of the screeds I have read against the coddled college student use language that has typically been applied to women. Overly emotional. Coddled. Sheltered. Children. These are the same criticisms that were used to keep women from engaging in public dialogue for a long time. Of course women couldn’t vote/go to school/hold office: they think with their emotions. They have emotions, even strong emotions, even emotions that come from trauma and abuse. Of course there are some serious differences, as many of the people asking for trigger warnings are people with mental illnesses, and simply being a woman or having emotions (contrary to much of the history of psychology) is not the same as having a mental illness. But the fear of recognizing emotions and making space for them will always have gendered connotations. The disgust at people having emotions, speaking about their emotions, and asking for their emotions to be taken into account will always have gendered connotations.

When we talk about third and fourth wave feminism and the ways that we can embrace things that are traditionally viewed as feminine instead of simply saying that women can do all that men can do, this is what I think of. I think of the ways that the emotional labor women has done needs to be recognized. I think about the ways that we need to make emotional labor a societal endeavor that is taken on by everyone instead of hidden away to be performed by women in their homes. I think of the ways that new social connections and supports are denigrated, from trigger warnings to snapchat. These are the types of things that women have always done: we have warned each other about people and things that are dangerous, we have been the social glue, we have subtly found ways to guide conversation and topic away from spots that we know are sore. These tasks are becoming public through discussions about safe spaces and trigger warnings. Instead of simply creating our safe spaces in nail salons or other “feminine” places, we are speaking openly about the point and purpose of it, discussing the ways that emotions need to be tended in order to have a functional and healthy society.

And of course we are mocked for it. It is seen as unnecessary, weak, or damaging. More than that, it is seen as a threat. This makes more sense when you view it as the attempt to move emotional labor into the public sphere. Not only is it a demand for recognition of oppression and privilege, it is also a demand that everyone shares equally in creating places where people can be safe from those problems, or places where people who have been hurt, traumatized, or abused, can still participate.

For a long time that was hidden work. That was women’s work. And now it’s in the light. It’s ugly. It’s hard. And a lot of people don’t want to do it. So they whine about free speech and the breakdown of higher education so that they don’t have to face the fact that we are finally speaking openly about our emotional health and asking each other to step up to the plate and support each other.

I’m done idolizing the idea that we should all pretend we don’t have emotions or needs or scars. I’m done pretending that humans should prioritize rationality above all else if that means we don’t recognize our human nature as emotional, embodied creatures. I am over the idea that people in college are delicate flowers who haven’t dealt with real life. Trigger warnings and safe spaces were created to help people with PTSD and other mental illnesses. Those are real life. Those are the kinds of “feminine diseases” we ignored throughout all of history and still cannot figure out how to treat. If college students have found things that help them, then I’m all for it, and I’m sick to death of the horror over oh so weak emotions. I thought we had realized how unhelpful that narrative was with second wave feminism, but I guess we’re fighting the same battles.

So again: emotions are not weak. Asking for help isn’t weak. Particularly if you are someone whose brain is a little different, a little dangerous, it is necessary and vital to ask for help in caring for yourself. Emotions are important parts of human life and they cannot be ignored, even in situations in which it would be much easier if we could all just be perfectly rational beings. None of these things take away freedoms or coddle anyone. They create stronger, interconnected people who can function more healthily. I for one am for emotionally healthy people.

Yes Trigger Warnings Do Help Me: Here’s How

I’ve talked before about trigger warnings, what they are, why they’re useful. It might seem like I’ve covered every element of the discussion possible. But there’s something odd that I’ve seen in discussions of triggers: no one is willing to say that they are the ones helped by trigger warnings.

I have many friends with a wide variety of mental illnesses, and many of them talk often and openly about their support for trigger warnings, but more often than not I see people say “I personally don’t find them helpful but I support them anyway.” Despite reading nearly every article about trigger warnings that comes across my radar, I can’t recall a single article that said “trigger warnings make my life easier.”

So I’d like to offer the perspective of someone who does find trigger warnings exceedingly helpful.

When I see a trigger warning, it’s very rare that I actually avoid the content it labels. I do not find TWs helpful as a way to curate my life into a happy little bubble that doesn’t include anything difficult or upsetting. First, that’s impossible and I spend much of my life dealing with things that are triggering anyway. Second, the point of the TW is ideally to allow people with mental illnesses to participate more fully in difficult discussions.

What IS helpful about TWs is that they let me know what’s coming. When someone talks about weight loss or self harm out of the blue it feels like I’m being smacked. Worse than that, because of the edges of paranoia that come with my depression and anxiety, it feels personal. It always, always, always feels like they’re talking about me or attacking me in some fashion, intentionally bringing up the things that make me feel the worst.

Now I realize that this isn’t rational and it’s something that I am working on fighting on my own terms, but the presence of the TW is enough to give me the space to realize that they want to have a discussion and also that they care about my well being. The TW is what lets me take a second to engage the more rational parts of my mind and lets me be gentle with myself.

In DBT there’s something called Wise Mind. It’s the balance between emotions and reason. When you’re in Wise Mind, you’re aware of your values and goals, and also capable of paying close attention to the facts at hand. TWs give me the space to try to be in Wise Mind. It’s that moment of mindfulness that makes me pull away from the strong emotional reactions I would have otherwise.

Sometimes when I see a trigger warning I choose to continue reading but I’m highly aware that if I need to close the window or go away for a while. that’s ok. It puts me in the mindset of self care rather than my typical mindset that sees disengaging as a failure.

Trigger warnings very rarely tell me that I should opt out of a conversation. Instead, they tell me that I’ll be safe if I try to engage. To some extent they’re a signaling mechanism that lets me know people care about my mental well being. But more than that they’re a reminder to me that I should be considering my mental health and engaging the skills that I have. And it gives me a heads up of what skills I’ll need to use based on what kinds of content will be there. If it’s weight related, I just skip all numbers. If it’s self harm related, I usually engage some kind of anxiety relief or self soothing (with a fidget or game).

When I don’t have the warning it hits suddenly and I don’t have coping skills at hand. It’s easy to get overwhelmed. It’s easy to let myself slip quickly into an anxiety attack, or even to use symptoms. TWs help me protect myself.

So when I see a TW, I feel safer. I know that I am safer because I take a minute to check in with myself and prepare for what might be coming. And I’ve found that I am almost never full on triggered by something that I’ve had warning for. It makes my life much easier and more than that it saves me from a lot of pain. Serious, real pain. That’s why trigger warnings are helpful to me.

There’s Nothing Wrong With Being Sensitive

In the recent hooplah about political correctness and trigger warnings, a phrase that gets bandied about far too often is the claim that people are just “overly sensitive” these days. This is often met with (generally quite reasonable) assertions that outrage over racism, sexism, and other everyday cruelties is not simply being extremely sensitive but rather actively asserting boundaries. The problem with this approach is that it accepts the premise that being sensitive is bad.

Sure, there are downsides to being sensitive. It can make everyday life more difficult, and you might have to spend more time calming yourself if something stressful or unexpected happens. And yes, sometimes being overly sensitive can mean that you become anxious or upset over something that isn’t truly doing you any harm. But these things are true of just about anyone: sometimes we all make the wrong call about whether something warrants a strong reaction or not. That’s a human tendency that we can actually cultivate skills to overcome.

But there’s a difference between “reacting inappropriately” and being sensitive. One is a behavior and the other is simply a fact about how your emotions work. There are lots of people who don’t have a choice about being extremely sensitive. As someone with borderline personality disorder traits, I’m one of those people. I react quickly and strongly to things.

For some people, this would be a reason to discount the times when I react, to discount my arguments and my issues with others. But simply because I have strong emotions doesn’t mean that I’m incapable of thinking through issues and figuring out whether there is a logical and rational basis to my reaction. Indeed, including some of the strong emotion in my response also doesn’t discount it. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being sensitive.

Sometimes I cry over absolutely nothing. Usually I tell the person with me that I know it’s nothing and ask them to sit with me through it. That’s not a bad thing. There’s nothing wrong with having that strong reaction. And there are also positives to the extreme sensitivity. I’m pretty good at picking up on the emotions of others, which makes me far more likely to check in with someone and find out what they’re feeling. I also get really strong happy feelings when something good happens. And I’m also pretty in tune with the times that people violate my boundaries or do things that aren’t acceptable. That means I’m more likely to be able to let someone know when I need them to do something differently. That might look like me being a pansy, but in reality it’s extremely healthy and a skill that everyone probably needs to learn to one extent or another.

Sensitivity really just refers to how strong our emotions are. There’s never anything inherently wrong with feeling something. As I’ve mentioned before, the place that we have to be careful and responsible is in choosing how we should act because of our emotions. If the best you can come up with is that people these days feel too much, then you’re really grasping at straws for why they’re wrong. What should be up for argumentation are not people’s feelings, but rather their arguments and requests. If those don’t have logic or go too far and put too much burden on others, then it seems reasonable to argue against them. But when someone else gets upset over something you wouldn’t get upset over that doesn’t make them worse than you. It doesn’t even make them pitiable. In fact in some ways it makes them better at things, and in other ways it makes them worse at things.

There’s no need to promote the idea that you “allow” yourself to be hurt if you’re sensitive. There’s no need to idealize being cold and unflappable. Having emotions is totally acceptable and does not make one irrational. Even strong emotions can be good or neutral things. I refuse to be insulted when someone calls me sensitive. Yes, I am thank you very much. That is utterly irrelevant to my arguments.