Whether I'm uncool: Disagreeing and finding common ground with J. Jack Halberstam
Lately, there has been a fair amount of buzz on the Internet against trigger warnings. The latest I’ve seen is from J. Jack Halberstam, a respected writer and professor of American studies and of ethnicity and gender studies at the University of Southern California. The thing is that being an expert doesn’t free your opinion of problems. Let’s talk about those. I am writing in consideration of some of the points in this post.
http://www.beaconbroadside.com/broadside/2014/07/you-are-triggering-me.html
1. But it really is funny/cool/awesome. You’re just being humorless, uncool, and generally unawesome.
Halberstam brings up Life of Brian, as something politically incorrect that is funny/cool/awesome and would never make the cut today. The way that censoring for commercial films today works is such a highly politicized process that I don’t know that it is a good example of trigger warnings causing a problem. Rating films in accordance with their partisan politics or sexual politics is a means of silencing particular narratives, or centering the chosen story that the censors wish to empower.
The way movies are filtered can be helpful in a general way to allow viewers, or even parents of viewers, to make informed decisions about how specific content meets their needs. In this way, movie ratings may be similar to trigger warnings. However, a significant difference is that a trigger warning is ethically and successfully used as a way to ensure that robust dialogue continues, albeit, without participation of triggered persons.
2. Some people had a fight and the outcomes were unclear. Some people liked that word; others didn’t.
Yes, I totally get that. Sometimes people fight and nobody wins. When it comes to words, there are definite dominant associations for which speakers are responsible. The word, “tranny” might be meaningful to some in a positive way, but there is no denying that it is a word that people have used to devalue and insult others. It has that history. When people ask for it not to be used, they have a legitimate basis for doing so. The people who reclaim words with ferocity have a legitimate position as well.
The real question, which Halberstam doesn’t pose, isn’t whether words should be used or not, but rather how it is that two groups of people, who find themselves describing each other as polar opposites can find common ground. He finds that organizing against reclaimed words is censorship. In this way, Halberstam closes down the dialogue instead of opening it wider. The history of the word is real. It isn’t changed just because someone tries to reclaim it. I say, “tries” because since the word is able to be found in current culture used as a weapon and a tool of devaluing, it cannot be said to be completely reclaimed, as could be said of some other word not in current use as a slur.
3. Trauma isn’t as common as people assert. People are being trained to act traumatized.
Trigger warnings serve a specific purpose: to allow people to avoid harm to themselves from specific kinds of content. When Halberstam speaks of trigger warnings being used too generally, he’s not making it up. We can’t label every unpleasant idea that people may encounter in content. What we can do and expect others to do is label according to community standards and according to particular content categories. For example, Geek Feminism proposes the following manageable list:
graphic descriptions of or extensive discussion of abuse, especially sexual abuse or torture
graphic descriptions of or extensive discussion of self-harming behaviour such as suicide, self-inflicted injuries or disordered eating
depictions, especially lengthy or psychologically realistic ones, of the mental state of someone suffering abuse or engaging in self-harming behaviour
discussion of eating-disordered behavior or body shaming
(http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Trigger_warning)
As to people acclimating to trauma in a way that isn’t true to their own experience, this may also happen. It’s not the best case, and it’s not a consequence of people using trigger warnings incorrectly. It’s something that happens when the conversation around trauma is incomplete.
Where Halberstam and I have common ground is that we both believe that accountability is missing from the conversation. A lot of Halberstam’s narrative in use against trigger warnings is unspecific. Is it too much for trigger warnings to be used at all? Probably not. Trigger warnings are meant to allow people to self-select themselves for conversations. This is a way in which two things are happening at once: people can care for themselves in settings that would otherwise cause them harm, while robust dialogue on challenging topics can occur simultaneously.
When the warnings are kept to a reasonable number, related to things that can cause post-traumatic stress disorder flashbacks or urges to self-harm, they can make a difference as to how and who can access community and advocate for change. (This is distinct from preventing people from feeling sad, which is probably not a reasonable standard.) This is not too much to ask. I believe that building specificity and reasonableness into the conversation for trigger warnings can make all the difference.
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