atomiser: 08/01/2016

Sunday, August 28, 2016

Blub! Dept. - Triggered!

I've just about finished reading an excellent book about oxycodone and Mexican black tar heroin, and it also touches on something I've noted from being involved in the 'zine world', especially these last few years - the glorification of infantilism known as "Trigger Warnings": "Keeping kids cooped up seems to me connected to the idea that we can avoid pain, avoid danger. It doesn't surprise me to hear that in universities, students, raised indoors on screens, apparently lived in some crystalline terror of any kind of emotional anguish. A 2015 story in the Atlantic called "The Coddling of the American Mind" reported on the phenomenon of college students - kids who grew up in the era of hyper-protection from physical pain - demanding to be protected as well from painful ideas. They were demanding professors provide "trigger warnings" in advance of ideas that might provoke a strong emotional content - for example, a novel that describes racial violence. This new campus ethos, the authors wrote, "presumes an extraordinary fragility of the collegiate psyche, and therefore elevates the goal of protecting students from psychological harm. The ultimate aim, it seems, is to turn campuses into 'safe spaces' where young adults are shielded from words and ideas that make some uncomfortable." - from the Author's Afterword in the 2016 edition of 'Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic' by Sam Quinones [2016]

More on "Trigger Warnings"... But wait! Even the word "trigger" might trigger somebody! Like it does for the 99% fat-free milksops over at Everyday Feminism [If I didn't know better, I would swear it's a parody!]: "Editor’s Note: ...Everyday Feminism definitely believes in giving people a heads up about material that might provoke our reader’s trauma. However, we use the phrase “content warning” instead of “trigger warning,” as the word “trigger” relies on and evokes violent weaponry imagery. This could be re-traumatizing for folks who have suffered military, police, and other forms of violence. So, while warnings are so necessary and the points in this article are right on, we strongly encourage the term “content warning” instead of “trigger warning.”"