Trigger Warning: No Trigger Warnings
I just did a search. 4,663 posts on ErosBlog, and the phrase “trigger warning” does not appear in any of them. Sadly, with this post I am blowing my perfect record.
For interest, I searched all 19,233 comments, too. No “trigger warning” phrase in any of them, either. I interpret this to mean that nobody has complained about the lack. (That’s not the only possible explanation; a complaint like that might have been moderated away if it was sufficiently jerkish. But I don’t remember anything like that ever happening.)
I don’t use trigger warnings. I don’t think they make sense. But I have refrained, ere now, from sharing this opinion, because I was (and remain) open to the possibility that my antipathy reveals me as a giant dick. But still, I don’t use them. I don’t think they make logical sense. No stranger can predict what will “trigger” another stranger. Put it another way, you got your trigger warning when you turned on your computing device. It’s up to you to protect yourself, using all the contextual clues that everybody uses in deciding what they should or shouldn’t read and view on the internet.
Although I don’t have much more to say about that, Erin Kennedy at Sex For The Rest recently explored the subject at length in the post Trigger Warnings Are The Arm Floaties Of The Internet. This part of the post does a good job of explaining my perspective:
Trigger warnings create an unrealistic expectation that people will cater language and behavior to accommodate you.
In kink culture, you’re responsible for your own self-care. If you’re walking through a dungeon and happen upon a scene that really squigs you out, you do not have the right to step into that scene and ask the participants to warn you the next time they decide to shove metal rods up someone’s urethra. Kink colloquialisms vary from city to city, but in my hometown if you see something you want to unsee, you say, “I’m going to go get a cookie.” Then you leave the room and have a cookie and a breath. Because the locus of control over your emotions is internal. It is not up to the people doing or saying the potentially disturbing whatthefuckever to tailor their expression to your comfort level.
Sex therapist and writer Buster Ross had similar feelings and expressed them at his workshop with Dr. Chris Donaghue about sex shaming at Catalyst Con:
how about we just all agree that the internet will trigger emotions, and then use it and take care of ourselves.
— Buster Ross (@LGBTGIF) September 11, 2015
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