Trigger Warnings

Ok, I'm sorry in advance for what may turn into a really ugly argument, but I really do need guidance....

These days, trigger warnings are everywhere on social media (and bleeding out into other media)

It's one thing to say "This video contains graphic violence" as an FYI, but since my Facebook is populated in large part by people who are either extreme SJW or people who agree and encourage extreme SJW behaviour, I see it so often.

Today, I was tagged in several of those "fun" posts where you take a ridiculous situation and plug people from your friends list into it for a few laughs. This particular one was ""You're in a mental hospital. Use the first 7 people on your chat list." Then a list of silly things like "______ is licking the windows", "__________ is running around naked", "_________ is the doctor", etc. It was meant to be stupid, get a few laughs, then vanish.

The people tagged (including myself) all had a giggle, but then someone posted in the thread that mental hospitals used to be horrific places of torture, and this post may be traumatic to those with mental illness. The OP then took down the joke and apologized for it.

And I see this happen all the time. Trigger warnings, safe spaces, microaggressions, trauma, stigma, victimizing, dehumanization, discrimination, oppression...it's making my head spin. And my job exposes me to mental illness every day (especially PTSD), because I manage disability claims for military/law enforcement.

I'm having a really hard time taking a lot of this seriously. I don't want to make a blanket statement like "This generation is overly sensitive" but it seems so prevalent, and I think it rather has the opposite effect of what is intended a lot of the time. I think that there are MAJOR improvements that need to be made in the way we treat certain groups in our society and I think we should be sensitive to the needs of others, but where should we be drawing the line?

This is a very difficult topic, and one which doesn't have a good answer. The best we can do is try to be sensitive to the people around us but try to see things for what they are.

In your example I personally feel like the person who complained was overly sensitive. Yes mental treatment facilities were horrible places at one time, some would argue that they aren't that much better now, but that doesn't mean that the Facebook thing was insulting that.

We also can't know everyone's triggers. It's impossible. Some people are triggered by things that are common place in the world. I feel for those people and I hope that they get the help they need to work past those triggers, but they can't expect the world to change for them. The people closest to them, maybe, but not the world.

In the end you have to make the call that's best for you and the situation.

Ok, here is my opinion (off the top of my head):

When a lack of balance is identified by a group of people (for example, let's say: women being treated as inferior to men before feminism), a movement is created. This movement attempts to correct the problem, but as a pendulum set in motion, it eventually gathers too much force and completely misses the center and goes towards the other extreme (in the case of this example, the infamous "feminazis").

We are currently living in a time at which the pendulum for political correctness has swung all the way from its former extreme (intolerant apathy) to its current extreme (entitled empathy), which is why you see feminists demanding to take down movie posters that depict gender violence (X-men movie), or why some people would have prefered that the Gorilla live and the child that fell down into its habitat at the zoo die.

I don't think there really is a right or wrong point of view in these cases, though. I think the answer is less about who is right and who is wrong, and more about how individuals and groups deal with the issues. In other words, we can debate all day long about whether a cartoonist should or shouldn't draw a satirical depiction of Mohammed, but we will not come to a concensus. What we can all agree with, though, is that the reaction by the "offended" party should always be civilized, and never degenerate into violence.

I would retract it, whatever it was, and do a follow up PM to the person explaining the intent and apologizing for hurt feelings.

Its only a funny post in a sea of funny posts, likely to be forgotten by everybody within a week...accept the person who had those memories thrust on them unexpectantly.

If you find people in general react this way to your posts regularly, you may consider examining your sense of humor. If it is one person in particular, you might want to check in on them, as a friend, a little more. They are still hurting and could use it.

Manu wrote: What we can all agree with, though, is that the reaction by the "offended" party should always be civilized, and never degenerate into violence.

I think we can all agree with that, but what I'm seeing far less than actual violence is "shaming." Someone says something that someone else doesn't like, that person is then accused of shaming some other group (women, minorities, LGBT, fat people, skinny people, etc) who is then criticized to the extent that THEY feel shame for saying it.

And that's what I'm concerned about and have trouble with. A few months ago, someone was making a statement and used the phrase "don't drink the Kool-aid" and people got LIVID about insulting the memories of the Jonestown victims and triggering people with reminders of violence, etc....The OP immediately apologized and retracted, but I kept pushing for the validity of the phrase and their ire turned to me.

It's the "Shame Wars" that I'm really having a hard time with. It's making people afraid to tell jokes, speak their mind, and sometimes, speak at all about a particular subject. I don't think it's no productive, but I don't know how to address it, or if I even should, since these kinds of people are so prevalent in my community.

Miss_Leah wrote: It's the "Shame Wars" that I'm really having a hard time with. It's making people afraid to tell jokes, speak their mind, and sometimes, speak at all about a particular subject. I don't think it's no productive, but I don't know how to address it, or if I even should, since these kinds of people are so prevalent in my community.

When I posted about violence, I was making an obvious reference to radical Islamic terrorism. But not all violence is physical, or as explicit. These shame wars you speak of, they are also a form of passive-aggressive violence, which -sadly - often works because they isolate a person and make them feel excluded from the "group" for their behavior. Only when social shaming is recognized as a legitimate form of violence will it begin to be addressed by the same people who currently practice it.

rugadd wrote: If you find people in general react this way to your posts regularly, you may consider examining your sense of humor. If it is one person in particular, you might want to check in on them, as a friend, a little more. They are still hurting and could use it.

No, I rarely, if ever, makes posts that elicit this kind of response. But I see it all over my social media from others, because people I know have posted about it.

I'm aware that many of the people who are behaving that that are in pain themselves, but does that give them a free pass to restrict what other people say by publicly shaming them?

Like Manu said, this sort of reaction is often a legitimate response to an identified insensitivity, and to an extent may well be necessary to call attention to the insensitivity. But it's often a question of degree. A few years ago, when one of my sons joined Facebook, we noticed that some of his friends were commenting on his posts with statements like "That's retarded" or "That's so gay." My son politely let them know why he was not okay with comments like that. He didn't set out to shame any of his friends, although of course he's not responsible for any shame they themselves may have felt when their insensitivity was pointed out to them. As I have felt ashamed of things I have said that inadvertently displayed my own unconscious insensitivity.

But yes, like you Leah, I am noticing this happening more and more myself, and it does feel as though more militant people are in fact setting out to shame others for their unconscious insensitivities. I think we can acknowledge the need to call attention to the insensitivity while decrying the way the message is delivered in the individual context. Just as the person who uses the insensitive comment / joke / whatever needs to have their attention drawn to why it is insensitive, perhaps the person calling her/him out needs also to have his/her own attention called to the insensitive manner in which they are choosing to accomplish that.

tl;dr: We should assume the best in people on both sides of any debate.

Atticus509 wrote:
tl;dr: We should assume the best in people on both sides of any debate.

Yes, all of this.

That's exactly what I'm trying to say. But how can this be breached with those militants? Or can it be breached at all? Generally when attention is drawn to their extreme behaviour, they cry out that their suffering (either real or imagined) isn't be properly acknowledged, or that they're being oppressed.

Miss_Leah wrote: But how can this be breached with those militants? Or can it be breached at all? Generally when attention is drawn to their extreme behaviour, they cry out that their suffering (either real or imagined) isn't be properly acknowledged, or that they're being oppressed.

While that may happen, I'm also not going to assume that the other person is going to react badly.

One of my favorite tricks in this kind of situation is personalizing it to me rather than to the other person. I might use an example of a time when I have gone off on someone for their callous remarks and only then realized that I was displaying the same degree of insensitivity as the person I was trying to correct.

That works both ways. To use Manu's example of the X-Men movie poster, it sparked quite a discussion in my household. I pointed out that I had not noticed the violence-against-women imagery that had some so enraged. On a crass level, Jennifer Lawrence and Oscar Isaac are big right now, so it makes sense for Fox to want to feature them in promo materials displaying high stakes and danger to the heroes. But deeper than that, while the character of Mystique happens to be a woman, she's also been portrayed in six movies and hundreds of comics to be one of the most capable and deadly mutants out there. So I wasn't going to call for a Fox exec's head because to me, the image, rather than being one of stereotypical violence against women, was more like a display of just how big bad a big bad Apocalypse is if he poses a threat to Mystique -- but I could see how someone not as familiar with the previous movies or the source material could view it the other way.