Wait, is that what I think it is?
No!
So this is going to be a new segment on various ideas, concepts that people seem to actually
get wrong, specifically things that seem to have its origin from college campuses or college
classrooms.
And I decided to start this series because honestly, this is like an extension of Tyree
Tuesday.
I get so frustrated when people use these concepts and they have no idea what they're
talking about.
It is absolutely frustrating.
It happens in the public space.
It's used as, you know, dog whistles or other things in the public, in the political sphere.
And in social discussions, people use it as if they understand what they're talking about,
and they clearly have no idea.
And this is part of a general broader issue, I think, where people want to, how do you
say this, are too busy reacting with feelings and emoting and with all of these associations
that they seem to have latched onto a specific term and don't really understand what it is
and how it's actually used.
They hear one or two stories.
I mean, it might be true, but it probably is a one-off.
And then they run with it, and then they think that this is something that actually happens
or being taught to kids or, you know, a big thing that's being used throughout college
campuses or indoctrinating people.
This shit needs to stop, right?
It's just more like a call to the public to be rational.
That's really all it is.
Like, let's calm down people and let's talk about what's actually happening and deal with,
well, you know, the reality on the ground instead of whatever make-believe shit you
put into your own head, okay?
So you know, I have a series of these that we definitely need to cover.
Some of them are ones that are going to be, were bigger at some point in the past, but
I think it's always good to kind of clear the air, as well as some of the more recent
things that people have been using terms or catchphrases people have been using in the
public sphere, okay?
So today I want to talk about trigger warnings and why anybody who gets upset about trigger
warnings, y'all are just parking up the wrong tree.
Like, you're getting upset at something that is just non-existent, okay?
And I'm going to explain exactly what I mean by that, okay?
So trigger warnings, to be clear, are cases where, at least in terms of in colleges and
classrooms, right, is a case where an instructor decides to tell students, hey, trigger warning.
There's stuff that we're about to discuss that could raise a lot of strong feelings,
right?
Usually these will be cases of abuse, violence, graphic, sexual details of some sort, you
know, it could run the range, right?
But things that are not something that is necessarily pleasant and definitely could
have implications for students, especially given their personal experiences, okay?
Different kinds of trauma that are honestly pretty, unfortunately, way too common, especially
in college and high school, right?
Things dealing with abuse of power, abuse of body in various ways.
So why provide these trigger warnings, right?
Okay, so I could tell you this.
In the educational setting, the reason for trigger warnings is so that students can prepare
themselves emotionally, mentally for what is being discussed, okay?
And the rationale for it is nothing more than simply if you kind of hit a person from left
field, like just out of nowhere, with some topic that, you know, triggers some strong
emotions, then what happens is that the student is no longer able to engage in a fruitless
truthful discussion, brains shut down, people get too riled up in their feelings or brings
up trauma that they're not able to handle because they weren't prepared for it.
And as a result, the whole goal of an education endeavor, which is to, you know, learn to,
you know, engage in discussion and to kind of grow from those discussions, that can't
happen, right?
This is just true of people generally, right?
Like, look, I don't have to go through like, you know, crazy examples.
I'm sure that other people have experienced something similar, right?
I remember like when I was a younger kid, right?
My brother just knew how to, you know, just push the right buttons.
He used to drive me nuts, right?
It would be something that he would say or how he would say it.
And it would just set me off and I would go into like rage mode and I would just be so
angry that all I saw was red.
And it didn't matter whether or not I misinterpreted or somebody tries to calm me down with reason,
right?
Nothing would help because I was already off the deep end, right?
You might have had an experience like this, you know, it could be a range of different
kind of emotions, but like, you know, something triggers you in a way so that you're not able
to think clearly, right?
And as a result, you're not going to be engaging in any rational discussion.
You might resort to, you might desire at least to resort to violence or insults or yelling
or, you know, like, it's not going to be productive.
Nobody's learning anything, okay?
So if you're thinking about it in a classroom setting, it would be very helpful if we did
not have those kinds of, you know, outcomes, right?
That's not something that an instructor wants because it's not going to be conducive to
the whole point of having the discussion, which is probably something educational, I'm
guessing, right?
Okay.
Now, here are some things that trigger warnings are not, okay?
Trigger warnings are not necessarily an excuse for the students to not participate, okay?
That's not what trigger warnings are.
Trigger warnings, you should think of trigger warnings as no different.
And I mean it on a hundred percent, like, just on par with the kinds of warnings you
see when you go watch a movie, right?
When you go watch a movie, what do they tell you?
Like at the beginning, they'll say like it's rated blank, right?
And then nowadays they'll include, right?
Why is it rated that, right?
Is it for graphic nudity?
Is it for violence?
Is it for, you know, explicit language?
Why is it rated the way that it is, right?
That's the information that's given, right?
Trigger warnings are just that, right?
So if you are getting worked up over trigger warnings, that word, like it riles up a lot
of feelings, like a bunch of snowflakes, a bunch of people who are like all like mad
at, you know, like people being honest about reality and stuff or people being too soft
about this and that, okay?
That's not what trigger warnings are.
Triggers and warnings are just simply meant to be informative in the sense of like, look,
this is what we're going to be talking about, okay?
This is what we're going to be talking about.
I'm mentioning it, right?
If I'm the instructor, I'm mentioning it because I know that there is a chance that this might,
you know, trigger some people because I don't know everybody's background.
I don't know their history.
I don't know what they've been through.
I don't know what's going to set them off, right?
But these are the kinds of things that tend to, you know, set some people off in certain
ways or like have them spiral into depression or anxiety or, you know, extreme excessive
discomfort, right?
Like something, it's going to do something to a decent portion of the population.
So I'm mentioning it so that y'all can know what's coming up.
And then once y'all know what's coming up, you could actually prepare to hear it.
Or if you know that you are in a space or you're in a kind of place in life where you
know you're not going to respond to it very well, at least it could be a conversation
that could be had with the instructor, you know, not necessarily to divulge all the information,
but at least a discussion about, you know, maybe some ways of covering the material in
a way that is actually productive, right?
This is something that instructors, at least good instructors, are always looking to do.
They're looking to make sure that their time in the classroom is not, you know, just simply
the teacher just presenting a bunch of information that they think the students should be thinking
about or discussing, but rather also considering how, you know, that message is translated
by the students, how they receive it, how they're able to handle that material, right?
Whether it's something that is, you know, emotionally heightening or not, right?
That's the general goal of a good instructor, right?
They're trying to make sure that people learn, right?
So why do instructors put in trigger warnings?
Well, at least in theory, right?
It's just nothing more than, hey, I'm preparing you for what's coming so that you can prepare
your heart, your mind, right?
Your, you know, whatever is going on with you so that you can engage in a fruitful discussion.
And if it's something that is just too overwhelming so that you're not going to be able to learn,
then we could discuss maybe a way to go ahead and learn this in a way that, you know, is
productive for you.
Okay?
That's all it is.
Okay?
It is not to protect people's feelings.
That is not what trigger warnings are.
Trigger warnings are not there to be like, oh, I know this is like sensitive material.
And so, you know, you might not be able to handle it.
And so, you know, I'm letting you know so that you could leave the classroom and not
come back until we're done with talking about this portion.
That is not the case.
Okay?
Now, that said, there might be instructors that make such arrangements, right?
There might be instructors that say, hey, this might be a little bit too, you know,
too much for some of you.
And so if you feel uncomfortable with it, you could leave the room.
You could, you know, skip out on this portion of the discussion.
Okay?
Now, there might be actual instructors who do that.
I want to say, like, look, show me the proof in the pudding, right?
Like, give me the cases of where this is actually like happening in part because my guess is
that it's going to be if it happens at all.
And I'm not saying it doesn't.
If it does happen, it's going to be in a small range of cases.
And this is a problem with the way that social media often works.
People see one instance and then they infer that it happens on a regular basis.
Okay?
So I've had experience with like 99% of the instructors that I've encountered, like a
lot of them don't end up using trigger warnings ever in part because like there's nothing
that they're discussing that requires it.
All right?
That's the first thing.
Secondly, if they do use it, it's usually in a small subset of cases.
It's not like throughout the class.
Thirdly, when they do use it, they rarely just let the student just not participate
in class at all.
Usually it'll be let's find an alternative way of engaging with the material given that
this material is particularly triggering for you.
That's all it is.
That is all it is.
Right?
Like if you think about like if they had a speaker coming in and they're going to be
talking about certain sets of materials and so in the ads they say like trigger warning,
this is the kind of topic we're talking about.
Right?
They're not saying like, hey, we don't want you to come.
We want you to stay home and protect your feelings.
That's not what they're saying.
They're saying, hey, we're letting you know so that when you come in, you're not shocked
and you're not taken off guard that you have prepared yourself.
You know what you're getting yourself into so that when you're there, right, the thought
is that you could engage in a fruitful discussion because you're coming in already having readied
yourself for what you're about to hear.
That's all it is.
Okay?
That is all it is.
In other words, this should not be a controversial idea at all.
Like I don't know why this shows up in the public sphere and discussions, right, in commentaries
by people.
Like this is absolutely stupid.
The way that people use this term and the things that people associated with it about
people in college being soft and not being able to handle, you know, discussions about
real life stuff that, you know, that's not at all what it is.
And that is not the way that educators should be used.
Look, is there a reason to critique the way some people use trigger warnings?
Yeah, there is.
Some people might be using trigger warnings incorrectly, right?
And in fact, some of them might be instructors, right?
I know instructors who use a lot of these concepts and ideas that are thrown around
in the, you know, instructional circles, they use them incorrectly, right?
They're human, right?
They might not understand it clearly themselves.
Okay.
But that is not what it is.
They're just mistaken and they're not using it correctly.
Like they're just not actually providing trigger warnings, right?
They're taking it and making it into something else.
I'm not saying that that can't happen.
What I'm saying is, look, critique the specific instructor who's doing it.
And you know what?
I'll join in with you.
If they're doing shit that is completely out of bounds, I will join in you or join in with
you on the criticism.
Okay?
But I don't want this to be like some wholesale brush, you know, like, you know, what is that,
broads brush, like...
We're not going to paint all instructors as if they are doing this with their students
and coddling their students.
That's not what trigger warnings are.
Okay?
If there are instructors using it that way, that is a problem.
But my guess, just from experience, you know, and teaching in a lot of different institutions,
right?
Like this is not a real thing that happens regularly, if at all, right?
It is not a thing, right?
And what's so aggravating is that this becomes the narrative for so many people about what's
actually happening on college campuses that it just makes me want to like yell at them.
It's like, have you ever actually been in a classroom?
Like, do you even know what you're talking about?
Okay?
Maybe this is the lesson we should learn.
People should not talk about shit they don't understand.
That should be the lesson that we learn, right?
If you don't know what this really is, and just try to be rational here, right?
Like look, teachers are people, okay?
They're teaching the best the way that they can probably, they understand, you know, how
to teach, right?
They're trying to do the best job they can.
Okay?
I am guessing that like all of the people, they're going to make mistakes and they're
going to do things that are out of pocket that just happens, right?
This is how society works.
Humans are humans and we kind of sometimes need to keep each other in check.
Okay?
But at least do it for things that are grounded in what's actually happening, please, right?
Don't ground it in things that are just like imaginary made up issues that just don't actually
exist and trigger warnings is one of them, right?
I have, I mean, I have never seen, I mean, I've seen on social media some few cases here
and there.
Maybe it's true and if so, then yeah, we could critique it, but look, please don't make it
seem as if this is something that is a regular occurrence.
It is not.
When trigger warnings are offered, it is not in most cases.
And when it is offered, it is not an option for students to just like not learn.
That is not what it is.
It is meant to actually enhance learning.
That's what it's meant to do.
It's meant, it's no different than if I were to give students at the beginning of a new
segment in the class, right, where we're talking about a new topic, I would always try my best
and this is good teaching practice.
I would always try my best to give students a kind of an overview of what is about to
come so that they could kind of gather their thoughts around, you know, what's a, what
they're going to be introducing next.
They could contextualize what we're about to discuss coming forward.
Like look, trigger warnings are no different than that.
That's all it is.
So stop making it more than what it is.
Y'all need to calm down, relax, and not get worked up over trigger warnings.
If you are, you probably don't even know what it is.
My guess is you probably couldn't even explain it correctly.
Okay.
So just seriously put your feelings to the side and then see this for what it is.
All right.
Let's deal with what's, what's really happening.
Not all this bullshit made up imaginary crap.
Got it?
Thank you so much.