“In Defense of Trigger Warnings”
features the opinions of Kate Manne as they pertain to “trigger warnings”.
Manne argues that trigger warnings are beneficial and that they help students
with “relevant sensitivities” prepare for lectures and lessons that involve
those sensitivities. She says that a trigger warning, in her opinion, simply
means sending out an email ahead of time to warn students about potentially
“triggering” content in the upcoming lesson.
I do not completely oppose trigger
warnings, but I am certainly not a proponent of them. I believe that young
people need to be prepared for the real world, and I think that trigger
warnings have the exact opposite effect. Manne says that she might give a
trigger warning for “a description of active military combat.” That is, in my
opinion, completely ridiculous. I acknowledge and respect the fact that many
people do not support the armed forces or war, but those concepts are a part of
life. When these students graduate college, they aren’t going to receive
warnings every time military combat is going to be brought up. In order for
students to be prepared to enter the real world, they need to accept that these
concepts exist, and they need to move past it.
Manne also says she would issue a
trigger warning before a lesson detailing a sexual assault. This trigger
warning is more warranted. Sexual assault survivors are, rightfully, very
sensitive to material pertaining to sexual assault. That being said, the real
world still doesn’t give trigger warnings. Newspapers and news stations don’t
give trigger warnings before running stories on rape or sexual abuse. TV shows
and movies don’t give trigger warnings before depicting sexual assaults. If
students are going to be adequately prepared to face the real world, they have
to be able to get past these obstacles. As many people will point out, the
trigger warnings don’t appear to have adverse effects on anyone. People say
that the students who don’t need them can ignore them, and those who do need
them are content. I would argue that trigger warnings do have adverse effects,
but those effects will not become apparent until many years down the road.
The physical setting of the podcast
is Cornell University. Manne is a professor of Philosophy at Cornell so all of
the experiences that she shares center around her classroom at Cornell. Manne
talks about how she teaches many classes that involve content that may be
graphic for some students. For example, she says she teaches classes on gender
equality and feminism. Manne says that those courses mention rape and sexual
assault and could be traumatic for survivors of those atrocities. As a result,
the psychological context would be a state of fear, anxiety, and pain. The
students she wants to protect are scared and anxious about the topics that they
associate with negative and damaging experiences. The cultural context is
outlined by a society that is fighting for equal rights and fair treatment of
sexual assault survivors. Rape, especially on college campuses, is a hot topic
in the media and in the justice department. People are looking for solutions
and preventative measures, and that cultural context is what probably guided
Manne’s decision to issue trigger warnings to her students.
I don’t think that trigger warnings
should be banned, by any means. I do believe that they should be discouraged,
however. If a student takes offense from, or is triggered by, the content of a
class, they should not take that class. I propose that if a professor knows
that their subject involves potentially offensive topics, they should disclose
that at the beginning of the semester. That disclosure would serve as one large
and overarching trigger warning for the rest of the semester. At that point, if
a student has a problem with any of the content, it should be their personal
responsibility to decide whether they want to stay in the class or drop it.
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