Posted by Tamar on March 12, 2006, at 17:51:28
In reply to Re: oh Gabbi ^^^^groan^^^^ ;-) » 10derHeart, posted by Tamar on March 11, 2006, at 20:48:14
I’ve read through most of this and I hope it’s OK if I stick my oar in.
I’ve been involved in the Babble community for about a year and in that time I’ve tried pretty hard to get my head around what it means to be civil and what it means to be supportive and sensitive. I’m not by nature a very civil person but I seem to have managed OK here so far… And learning to work within the civility rules has had a useful impact on my real life relationships. I’m getting better at biting my tongue instead of cursing at people… So I like the culture of safety.
I’m in favour of mandatory trigger warnings. I think it’s more than just a courtesy to other babblers. It seems meaningless to have a requirement to be sensitive to the feelings of others without a requirement to be aware of the consequences of posting triggering material.
I don’t know about others, but I really hate feeling triggered. I’d much rather feel put down or accused, but although there are measures to deal with posters who might post things that could lead me to feel put down or accused, there’s no insistence on warning me of triggering content. And I’m not triggered very often, but when it does happen it takes a piece out of my life. I can spend hours rocking back and forth, unable to communicate with people, unable to distract myself and unable to stop feeling and remembering the pain.
I’ve considered the idea of waiting for other people to insert trigger warnings before I read. However, I don’t think it’s an adequate solution.
TRIGGER FOLLOWS: DO NOT PROCEED UNLESS YOU’RE FEELING UP TO IT.
I remember a few weeks ago reading a very graphic account by a person who had witnessed his partner being sexually assaulted by her father. There was no trigger warning and when I opened the post I was profoundly disturbed. I have some experience of being on the receiving end of sexual violence, and I am learning to deal with the triggers. However, when the subject is suddenly brought into my mind without preparation, I have a very unpleasant and very physical reaction to it. It’s as if I can feel it happening to me all over again. My flesh crawls with the feeling of unwanted touch; I can feel the pain and the humiliation and the fear as if the attack were happening to me again. And at the same time as feeling old feelings, I find myself trying to ward off the new and appalling images from someone else’s life story. It seems to add another dimension to the physical sensation of horror. It takes me a long time to separate the new images from my own memories, and to regain a sense of safety. The post I mentioned above was later given a trigger warning by someone else, but I’d already spent a couple of hours feeling violated.I also don’t think voluntary trigger warnings are the answer. We have a voluntary system at the moment, and in my experience it’s not sufficient. I know that some triggering content will get through in any system, but if trigger warnings are voluntary then people don’t really have to think much about the content of their posts. We have to think about whether the content of our posts is civil; if we also had to think about whether the content was triggering, people would probably be more likely to remember to add the warning. I think the biggest difficulty with a voluntary system is that sometimes people simply don’t know what may trigger others, or perhaps they don’t understand why an account of something in their own life might lead to a disproportionate reaction in someone else. A voluntary system doesn’t address that. I also don’t quite see how a voluntary system is better for the community as a whole than a mandatory system. Would voluntary civility rules be better for the community as a whole?
I don’t think it’s reasonable to live in a world where we try to cut ourselves off from every potential trigger by avoiding certain people or places or contexts. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect people to wait until every new thread has a reply before deciding it’s safe to read. I think to require this is to ask too much of those of us who get triggered, and it’s also a lot to ask of the rest of the community. To be honest, if the whole Babble community is to take responsibility for trigger warnings, wouldn’t it be simpler for such warnings to be mandatory?
I know it may be hard to agree on what subjects should be accompanied by trigger warnings, and some issues are more obviously triggering than others. No system is perfect and those of us who are triggered may well still be triggered if there is a mandatory system, especially those of us who are triggered by less common triggers (in my case sl*gs). But I still think a mandatory system would make things a little bit safer.
I think if we are required to be sensitive to each other’s feelings in general, then it’s no giant leap to be sensitive to each other’s feelings about triggering content. The civility rules are part of what seems to me to be a wider culture of safety, and I believe mandatory trigger warnings would enhance the sense of safety and would be an improvement on the status quo.
Tamar
poster:Tamar
thread:614568
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20060225/msgs/619457.html