Trigger warnings

...
nytimes.com/2014/05/18/us/warning-the-literary-canon-could-make-students-squirm.html?_r=0
theguardian.com/books/2014/may/19/us-students-request-trigger-warnings-in-literature

can any murican confirm if any newly printed books of classic literature have any "trigger warnings" put into them?

It's not that bad yet

Burger here. That's not true.

I don't have a problem with literature making students uncomfortable. Art serves to imbue the audience with an array of emotions, discomfort being just one of the few.

My problem is that these students need to be warned of the oncoming discomfort, can't tolerate it, and will occasionally dismiss a work because of it.

that's one of the plagues of our modern world and why depression/anxiety/whatever is rising so dramatically.
self-control and emotional management is dead with society telling people that their poor self-management is a medical condition.

and when it comes to lit/art students getting triggered, they shouldn't even be pursuing the humanities/arts if they're little bitch boys/girls they belong in engineering or something devoid of any emotional content.

pity is for the weak who want to stay weak and hopefully they will not procreate.

I go to STEM, not preppy private uni, and my English classes have all had them so far

I go to a prestigious and very 'progressive' type university in the UK, but we don't have them. Maybe it's an American thing?

It's about time. I hate triggers. Triggers are literally ruining America. Hell, the president is a trigger.

I just wish someone had warned us about these triggers centuries ago.

>belong in engineering or something devoid of any emotional content
That might be so, but if we were to enlist these retards in civil engineering and other STEM fields, future generations would be just as inevitably fucked, just in a different way.

>Daphne
>She did not feel safe in class.
Is she afraid she's going to turn into a tree instead of getting raped? That isn't even the rapey parts of Ovid.

openculture.com/2014/03/publisher-places-a-politically-correct-warning-label-on-kants-critiques.html

>yfw it's true

>She did not feel safe in the class.

How are these people going to deal with the real world.

Yes I've experienced it first hand. I signed up for a class on satire. We read A Good Man is Hard to Find, with a trigger warning regarding murder and "racist overtones". Breakfast of Champions with a warning of "depiction of an anus". And finally A Clockwork Orange with "rape and sexual conduct". Several people opted out of these and asked to read other works, which the teacher (hardly a professor) agreed that they could do.
Strangely enough there was no warning for A Modest Proposal.

>Breakfast of Champions with a warning of "depiction of an anus".
Jesus what is this going to do to footnotes?
>And finally A Clockwork Orange with "rape and sexual conduct".
No warning about state torture? Nice.

>Strangely enough there was no warning for A Modest Proposal.

What part of eating 18th century Irish children is supposed to be triggering?

Dear lord satan I hope not

Sorry you guys had pussy teachers, most lit profs I've had encourage reading tough material and being exposed to problematic depictions

>Aristotle
>PHI professor points out that Aristotle is pretty sexist, likely as a result of how misogynistic Greek society was.
>But makes a bigger point about how that does not discredit his work and simply replacing "men" with "people" allows you to see his wisdom is still true.

Not bad.

All part of the plan.

The reaction to it is massive from the left tho.

This article had a huge influence because trigger warnings are so profoundly anti-intellectual, and because older leftist academics are not necessarily post-structuralist.

theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/

youtube.com/watch?v=u7APmRkatEU

youtube.com/watch?v=YoDh_gHDvkk

>replacing "men" with "people" allows you to see his wisdom is still true.

that's deep

Frankly I'm freaked out by cannibalism or anything regarding people being eaten. Just creeps me the fuck out. Hell, friends of mine showed me Attack on Titan when it came out and I remember being unable to sleep that night.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Dudley_and_Stephens

>The following day, with no prospect of rescue in sight, Dudley and Stephens silently signalled to each other that Parker would be killed. Killing Parker before his natural death would better preserve his blood to drink. Brooks, who had not been party to the earlier discussion, claimed to have signalled neither assent nor protest. Dudley always insisted that Brooks had assented. Dudley said a prayer and, with Stephens standing by to hold the youth's legs if he struggled, pushed his penknife into Parker's jugular vein, killing him.[7]
>In some of the varying and confused later accounts of the killing, Parker murmured, "What me?" as he was slain.[8] The three fed on Parker's body, with Dudley and Brooks consuming the most and Stephens very little. The crew even finally managed to catch some rainwater. Dudley later described the scene, "I can assure you I shall never forget the sight of my two unfortunate companions over that ghastly meal we all was like mad wolfs who should get the most and for men fathers of children to commit such a deed we could not have our right reason."[9] The crew sighted a sail on 29 July.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armin_Meiwes

>tfw you realize they were having a genuinely good time

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xv3I6mz0tBY

Oh boy it's another one of these threads
As much as you' all like it to be true that you've fortunately been kept safe from some authoritarian leftist trend that's happening everywhere else, it's worth pointing out that less than 15% of American professors say they've had them requested, and fewer than 1% say their institution requires them. Just another one of those things that's endless fodder for narrative/rage circlejerks despite basically not existing. See also : Voter fraud and career welfare queens

Based article.

Watch the video of the kids shouting the professor down. "This isn't an intellectual space, it's a home" is literally what one of them says.

Sometimes I get homesick for the US, then I see this shit and I'm not sad I left.

No. Only a few actually have a policy like that on the books.

I live in small town USA in northern new england, and this shit basically doesnt exist. its soccer moms, church, gun clubs and charity balls.

Source please.

The greatest challenge of the 21st century is going to be dispersing knowledge in a way that doesn't lead to infinite echo chambers.

I lecture undergrad English and, while I don't buy into the 'trigger warning' fad, I do add a section in my syllabi that discusses appropriate responses to unpleasant content in the texts we read. My policy is that you need to be aware that some content may be unpleasant (I never use the term "trigger") and some discussion may be also. You may leave a lecture if it presents emotional challenges, but you are still responsible to cover the material and submit assignments.

The real shitty thing is not the department, which mostly seem to doubt that "triggering" is a real thing, but the disability/accommodation services in the university. These assholes believe the students no matter what and have to authority to exempt the student from classes, assignments, and exams. I had to come up with multiple exams because these childish fucker apparently can't sit for 2.5 hours straight and get to write the final over two different days. Fuck they don't pay me enough to deal with these babies.

>nobody abuses the welfare system
You for real? I'm from the rural south, and the reason people here are the ones who complain about welfare queens is that it they're so common and out in the open.

Btw Maine just released the numbers on how quickly non-disabled welfare recipients joined the workforce when required to search for work to receive assistance. It's remarkable.

I'm from upstate New York, when I graduated 3 years ago it was just starting to pick up steam.

I think it's still largely confined to universities; I'd love to see how working is panning out for these guys... A few people like this still pop up on my Facebook occasionally, but they're all in grad school trying to become professors

Mate, that's a trigger warning.

I dont care where you study but it is almost definitely shit.

How did American academia get so bad? I heard that even at Yale professors have resigned because of what truculent neo-liberal students are doing. Why do they even let people like that in?

Be upset all you want but this is just some stupid advocacy group begging for people to give them what they want. It's more telling of our times that you just need a couple of people to be loud enough on the internet to get their way, sjw or not.

I think the kids aren't like that initially for the most part, but when you get some ugly dorks and tell them they go to Yale and are king of the world now they'll find some ugly dork way to flex their muscles.

Yea, in northern hillbilly country we have a lot as well. I think lack of opportunity just crushes the human spirit and people take handouts to say stay in their shitty little lives in their shitty little home towns.

The rich and upper middle class don't get to see this side of their poverty statistics; I think the debates would be much more interesting if they did.

That's why I left. There are things I love about home, but it's like everything is 10+ years behind the coastal cities, there are no good jobs, and people just have this pervasive loser attitude that I used to find sorta comforting and folksy but now makes me want to cry.

There's a pool of academic research that changes the definitions of words like "racism" and one is constantly bombarded with propaganda that makes all of the students simultaneously feel oppressed and like it's their duty to "right the wrongs of the past".

As a relevant anecdote, I almost argued with a black professor who was claiming people changing sides of the road when black people are walking on one side was "the spirit of Jim Crow". I've lived in Asia for 5 years, have been barred from entering places, stared at constantly, and have been on the receiving end of positive and negative stereotypes much more in your face than anything they've gone through.

I had a black professor that claimed urban food pricing was the result of racialist cabals keeping blacks in economic slavery.

lol did anyone tell you you were fat and not allowed eat there?

college is getting retarded to the point i may consider taking it off my resume unless the job specifically says "requires bachelors or higher" because the shit is for dummies, if ur smart u don't need some antique oriental son of a bitch quizzing u on if u memorized some shit anyone could google in 15 seconds if they ever actually needed to know it

>be american
>in lit class in college
>suddenly a neckbeard shoots up the school
>luckily we had trigger warnings

But it is absolutely not the ugly dorks. Look at the videos of this viral shit, it is invariably the okay looking swagfag chicks and hipsters who are up to their eye balls in the social life of the college. They're the most cliqued groups of people I have seen.

There's racism because you're American and not European (Americans are all slutty English teachers or soldiers, not like French gentlemen or British aristocracy) there's staff freaking out and stuttering even though you're speaking their own language to them, clubs and bars often want to see passports and may have limits on the number of Americans allowed into places, and people stare (some like you're up to something, others like you're from a tv show)

You really get to understand how the chinese kid feels in math class when you're constantly rejected for not being loud and stupid enough as a foreigner.

Human beings just do this to each other, it's in our nature. If the law more or less respect your dignity as a human being you should man the fuck up and learn how to deal with it.

interesting, please, post stories about your time teaching these guys

i only met one smart chinese person and he was from hong kong, the rest are just diligent calculators without an ounce of wisdom or creativity, which is why their economy has peaked at "iphone sweatshop" and has anemic growth

the main take away is u find out all the bullshit they teach u at middle-class ppl school about "noble immigrants" is a buncha shit...yeah, the guys who founded google are hardworking immigrants, and i'm sure the guy who cooked ur organic burrito at the foodtruck outside the student lounge works hard, but in between is a mass of plebs who are lazy and mediocre

>receiving end of positive and negative stereotypes
which were positive?

It fucking sickens me to see negros in your country taking this factional view of politics because it totally blinds them to [trigger warning] the real problems of global capital and economic disparity.

Eh there are smart ones, it's just the way they organize their thoughts and express themselves is far different. If you want some fun reading, look up kishotenketsu. I was more referring to American-born chinese above.

It's more that they are all stereotyped as being smart. So the smart ones feel like stereotypes and the dumb ones are looked at as defective. If you're a white person and you aren't a complete moron you get a similar impression.

An example of positive racism is business people taking you around and buying you shit so they can show you off as their foreign buddy. The token white guy. You can steal their women, which is satisfying in a certain way, but I can imagine tyree in the club having a similar think.

I think these are absolutely examples of inverted liberal racism. I will not defend out and out xenophobic racism but I think this liberal notion of "noble immigrants" and their "authentic culture" is a much more patronising, advanced form of racism.

The fact that "tolerance" is touted so often is the tell. The only time you have to tolerate someone is when you perceive them as problematic or alien. Its completely opposed to actual integration and will probably be the reason for the fall of the neoliberal left.

which country was this?

Korea.

>she did not feel safe
>safe

These people fail to grasp the central lie of the modern system, namely that absolute safety is necessarily an illusion. Apart from a truly "marginalized" gunman bursting thru the door, you are as safe as possible and the words of a long dead Roman cannot hurt you. Even if he WAS pro divine rape or whatever, the man is dead and his society crumbled. He cannot hurt anyone, only the reader can choose to feel hurt.

FFS I feel the best college triggering workshop would be a copy of Aurelius. You choose your reaction to stimuli, to do otherwise is to subordinate yourself to the caprices of others.

Moreover, the realization that nobody is truly "safe", ever, should be profound. Leads one to Nietzsche if you like, or Stoicism, any number of positions. Attempting to create a permanent womb is disgusting and frankly impossible

Amen

Wait are they actually treating white Americans different than say Europeans?

Immigrants are noble in so far as they maintain their dignity while they struggle to be respected. Civil rights era black folk seemed to have it, and when you meet middle class non-academic black people today they seem to have it too. Many of the Irish immigrants and their kids have it (it tapers off after a generation or two).

The ones you describe are victims who want to be respected because they're different. You can't be an outsider and be equal too. There is no dignity in free stuff; handing out special allowances to ethnic groups is like saying "you can't possibly do this yourself, so here let whitey help you out". The irish, polish, and Italians all became "white" by essentially giving up their cultures and languages, and Latinos are doing this now successfully the same way.

Yes. I used to dread being asked "where are you from" around Europeans because invariably the response would be "New York" "New York, wow city boy", "Paris" "PARIS!? I went there... I have a relation there... Do you know the louvre? Bonjour hahaha"

It got old pretty fast.

The best thing about these threads is invariably how intensely triggered you autists all are over trigger warnings. Nobody's stopping you from continuing to do whatever you want by just putting a content warning on a bit of course material. I can only believe your collective buttfluster is all smoke and mirrors for some issue you're conflating with this.

>Some people say they’ll let me have their girl just to be cool. That’s why I have to ask some of my supporters, “Who will really let me fuck their bitch when it comes down to it?” I haven’t taken anyone up on the offer yet…But in the future, I’ma do something like that, maybe in Europe, and bless them. The woman gets a piece of the Based God, and the guy gets that positive spirit. It’s like, “Based God fucked my bitch because I want that positive energy.” That’s love.
Based god

The warnings themselves aren't the problem. It's the people badgering professors around the issue and opting out of reading material like Ovid based on a heavily disputed theory of how mental trauma works.

The warnings are so you can opt out, not just to warn you it's coming.

Yes and no... I add it because I don't want to get fucked with by the disabilities services gestapo, so in that sense it is a trigger warning, but I don't (so far as I'm able) let any of my students out of readings or assignments. Fuck right off from my lecture if you're bothered, but if you miss something that's later on the exam it's not my problem. It's paying lip service to the delicate flowers of the class, but not giving anyone a free ride.

Let me also clarify that I put it in the syllabus, but I don't give trigger warnings at anytime after.

10/10

Well, if I cared specifically about trigger warnings, I'd tell you that they're actually arguably harmful toward sufferers of PTSD, as they encourage a selective avoidance toward triggers and thus only reinforce them; most psychologists will actually encourage exposure to these triggers. But it's not really the trigger warnings I care about, though; it's the fact that people feel like they need them. Most of the people who advocate for them aren't doing it for sufferers of PTSD. If they do pretend to care about PTSD, it's only very specific kinds of sufferers they care about. You won't see them putting 'trigger warnings' over footage of fireworks out of sympathy for Vietnam war veterans, for example. No, they care about something quite different entirely. What these people seem to be more interested in is in satisfying their narcissistic avoidance of any content that would make them feel upset or uneasy upon reading it. Even worse (and quite eye-openingly about the state of modern American education), many universities are complying with this narcissism. This is a problem as colleges claim to be about education; no one can be truly educated about the world while living in a tiny box.

There are some harmful things in the world, for sure. But a systematic avoidance of these things coupled with a complete unwillingness to understand them can only lead to them growing worse. The rebellious anger of those who tend to strongly desire trigger warnings paradoxically leads to a great apathy towards these problems, as one would expect; when one exaggerates a problem beyond what is realistic, they create a system of hopelessness toward the problems they were once so passionate about fixing.

As much as I agree with many of your respective points, I mostly wanted to get at the feeling that here (and in a lot of other places) a lot of the complaints about trigger warnings is more to do with people's complaints about challenges to the canon and literary culture.

Basically I think people get pissy at the idea of people talking about fem/queer/race shit in Homer, Milton etc., because it comes across as like others trying to take their things from them. While shitty students disingenuously being 'triggered' by coursework they can't be bothered to do is a shitty problem, and the current solution is frustrating and inelegant, I think having our best institutional representations of literary culture open to challenges like this is doing more good than harm.

As an aside, I'm glad I'm not a policy-maker here because I certainly don't have a better solution!!

I know this is vague and kind of unsatisfying as a response and I don't exactly have the words for a full, coherent statement of my argument here. But the impression I always get from similar treads on 'triggers', is it's basically a staging ground for many (not all) to advocate their reactionary, anti-progressive policies. The central paradox, I think, is having the capacity for censorship and challenges to institutions, is better for intellectual freedom of argument than blindly believing it to be self-evident.

Fem/queer/race readings of Homer, Milton, etc. aren't new at all though. The triggering stuff is new, and pretty much unrelated. You can easily have one without the other.

This. Post-Structural thought has been standard since the late 60s, where the west gained introspection after de-colonization and during Vietnam

This movement is something else entirely.

>Basically I think people get pissy at the idea of people talking about fem/queer/race shit in Homer, Milton etc., because it comes across as like others trying to take their things from them.
To be fair, most anyone reading classics should be pissed off at that because there's explicit fem/queer/race shit to be discussed in classics.

There's actually a lot of legit gender studies stuff that has come out of that, like anyone studying Aeschylus' Persians should know about conceptions of homosexuality and femininity as they were performed in classical Athens, or even just not expunging the gayness of warriors from classic texts like used be common practice for some courses.

What trigger warnings are doing is much like what the Victorians used do with bowdlerization or glosses for female students: it implies that certain students shouldn't be exposed to the text unexpurgated or unattended by psychological supports because of a weakness of constitution. Most texts for women who studied only Latin (because Greek would give them access to more depraved material) used be glossed to not fry their pretty little innocent brains either. It's a condescending inclusion just like allowing women to study Latin so they could read the kiddies' version of classics was. And like when we last did that, no self respecting scholar is going to deal with anyone who just spoke Latin, or who only read non-triggering works, because it marks you out as underinformed.