Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire

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Everything is trigger warnings, and that's not bad.

A few months ago now, I made a trip to my local Half-Price Books and found one of my favorite re-reads in a shiny new paperback. Oh, the joy of finding an out-of-print book for a reasonable cost! Oh, the glee of having a fresh copy for the loaner shelf! (I passionately adore a bunch of 1980s science fiction that isn't widely available, and often thrust it on people.) I snapped it up.

When I got home, I commented on Twitter that I'd found the book, and @-checked the author, who I thought might be pleased by my delight. It's nice when someone reads something I realized a while ago, and my clock only goes back 2009 (unless you have some of the ElfQuest 'zines I did in high school). The author, someone I have adored since middle school, responded.

"Trigger warning: dangerous ideas."

I sat there for a little while, stunned.

I am simultaneously very sensitive and very thick-skinned. Most of the people I know are. There are things that lance right past my armor and knock me on my ass, and then there are things that I can take for a long time. In the third category are the things I just need to be warned about, so I can choose whether I'm in the mood to deal with them. But here's the thing:

Most stories come with their own trigger warnings. They just aren't called out blatantly as such.

When I pick up a Jack Ketchum book, there will be language on the back about "horrible things" and "terrible crimes" and other coded comments that don't come right out and say "this book has rape in it," but which absolutely say that to someone who has been reading in the genre for a little while. And when I was getting started in the horror genre, I was largely operating on recommendations from friends and librarians--people who would say, when they handed me something, "this may be disturbing." They called out the things that might make the book difficult to read.

Movies are rated. PG, PG-13, R. I've seen a screenshot of a Facebook post going around recently, with a mother saying they had to leave Deadpool with their nine year old, and "why don't we have a labeling system?" Well, we do. It's called "this movie had an R rating." But R-rated movies get edited for television, and we don't think about that when we ask ourselves whether Little Bee enjoyed that film. "Oh, they've seen _________, and it was rated R, so they're ready for Deadpool." Movies get rated R for different reasons. Maybe it's language, maybe it's sex, maybe it's violence. When I was a kid, I tended to just tune out sex: you could take me to a lot of movies rated R for sexy innuendo and mild nudity, and I'd just be bored. But violence could still scare me.

(Note that this is "rated R," not "rated XXX." The fact that I saw a lot of boobies as a kid does not mean I was ready for a bunch of actual porn.)

Video games are rated. T for Teen, M for Mature. Yet everyone I know who works at a video game store has had the angry parent demanding to know why their kids have violent video games. Be...cause...someone didn't want to look at the ratings? Which are also, in some ways, the trigger warnings? Look at what's listed after a rating: those are the triggers. Maybe they're not intended for the person actually consuming the media, but once they're there, they're for everybody. I know people who only play T games, because they got tired of the casual misogyny and violence of M games. Why is that bad?

In the case of books, you're less likely to have a direct rating or label (although Angry Robot does a decent job). At the same time, if the back cover text is halfway decent, you should know what you're getting into. And yes, I am angry when a book promises me one thing and gives me something else. It's not a fun surprise, especially when the "something else" is a nice big bucket of rape and murder.

People who say they want trigger warnings are not necessarily asking to be coddled. They're asking for warning. They're asking for the courtesy that good fanfic writers afford to their readers. They're asking to be allowed to relax into the story. But saying "trigger warning: dangerous ideas" doesn't help anyone. My not wanting to read romanticized, eroticized rape in the middle of my zombie fiction doesn't mean I don't want to read exciting, complex, interesting books; saying that your book is just as triggering as something about child abuse or rape or graphic animal death does a disservice to both your work and your readers.

It can go too far: anything can go too far. I met a reader who told me that they refuse to read any books which include descriptions of food that they are allergic to, and that there should be food trigger warnings (I'm still not sure whether they were trolling me, but they seemed serious). If my book is called Spider Attack, I shouldn't need to warn people about the spiders. But common sense still gets to come to the party.

I have rarely felt so dismissed or talked down to by an author I admired, especially since I had not said or done anything to indicate that I was seeking a trigger warning; I had actually referenced reading the book before. It was a failure of kindness.

We have got to be kinder.
Tags: contemplation, cranky blonde is cranky
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Ah, there it is. This is what I've been trying to explain to my friends when they whine about trigger warnings. You put it perfectly into words.

Whether or not I'm "up" for a story that includes a particular topic depends on a lot of factors. Sometimes I can actually handle when the dog dies, because it's been the kind of day that an emotional cry isn't going to ruin or make worse. Other days, the dog dying can mess me up for the better part of a week. Sleepless nights, days where I have to endlessly tell myself to focus on other things. I'm asking for the information to make that call for myself.

dragonsally

February 20 2016, 01:04:59 UTC 1 year ago Edited:  February 20 2016, 01:05:49 UTC

You've said that perfectly alexcansmile and Seanan. I'm a little tempted to ask who the author was, because I don't want to support someone who is so dismissive to their readers. On the other hand I don't want to know, because it might ruin my love of their books. Of course I've just realized I could go to your twitter feed and find out...but I might just stay in a state of ignorance.

Yes, people should be kinder.

sylphon

1 year ago

seanan_mcguire

1 year ago

sylphon

1 year ago

seanan_mcguire

1 year ago

I'd be tempted to ask that jerk which idea in the book he flattered himself was dangerous.

I'd ask you who it was but you'd be too classy to tell me so we'll take that as read. It is a pity this happened. It's always rough when people you admired as a kid turn out to have feet of clay.
It's got to be tough, though. I was just saying, I am so grateful I wasn't publishing in the 1980s, because things were so different then. The things we look at today as problematic were just background noise, and everyone both absorbed and regurgitated them.

nipernaadiagain

1 year ago

seanan_mcguire

1 year ago

catsittingstill

1 year ago

dragoness_e

1 year ago

damerell

1 year ago

I wonder if any other countries offer ratings for books. I wasn't able to find anything with a very cursory search, but there might well be a system elsewhere.

It would be difficult, I think. I don't mind things being contextual, as long as they're not intentionally concealed.
It sounds like he was joking and trying to fluff up his own ego a little (by suggesting that the ideas his book contains are "dangerous", oooh) but he should have just said "Warning: This book contains dangerous ideas!" and then he could have left the whole "tw" battle totally out of it.
Ayup. The idea that trigger warnings are for the coddled and the easily offended is actually a big problem, because the more we joke about it, the harder it becomes for people who legitimately need trigger warnings to get them.

learnsslowly

1 year ago

seanan_mcguire

1 year ago

learnsslowly

1 year ago

tibicina

1 year ago

learnsslowly

1 year ago

tibicina

1 year ago

In a discussion a couple of accounts over on the "Rape your way to Twue Wuv!" trope, I brought this up: I'm not going to tell another adult what they should be creating. I would just appreciate a heads-up, so that if I'm reading for work or school, I have time to put some appropriate self-care measures in place. If I'm reading for enjoyment, I can decide that something else might be a better choice, depending on my emotional state.

In my extended family/friends group and my job, I have dealt with the aftermath of assault, rape, incest, domestic violence, suicide (attempted and completed), and child abuse which ended in the child's death. I am not fucking fragile. What I am is mindful of my own good mental health, and on a planet with 150 million+ books and climbing the field's got to be narrowed somehow.
I just don't get why trigger warnings are so hard to understand for some people.

Readers tend to read fiction for pleasure. Readers being blindsided by this shit will have an unpleasant experience. Therefore, book has failed at its primary purpose.

Not everything can be warned for, or should be*, but the big ones can be without spoiling anything. Knowing a book has x in it, doesn't give any details about when, how, or to who x happens.


*I'd love a "Warning: 9/11 reference or reminiscent imagery", but I'm a realist. (Fortunately, not a true trigger for me. Just something that makes me really unhappy to stumble across.)
I would have loved a "warning: 9/11 reference or imagery" for about the first decade after, because it was a trigger for me, and it was just impossible to avoid sometimes. I'd still like it - also "warning: WW2/Holocaust reference" - because they are things I prefer to avoid in fiction. But, you know. That's not that big a deal.

What I really hate is the Surprise Rape Scene. I was once reading several books at once and kept putting one down to start another because they all had it. Five different books, all had rape or attempted rape scenes, and I managed to read them all within like a week. Ugh.

learnsslowly

1 year ago

fiveforsilver

1 year ago

learnsslowly

1 year ago

fiveforsilver

1 year ago

learnsslowly

1 year ago

fiveforsilver

1 year ago

Yes to all of this (and the Deadpool thing reminds me of the time my mom let my sister watch my copy of Grave of the Fireflies when she was 8, because it was animation and therefore for kids, right? It.....did not end well. Had I been asked, I could've given my mom a warning about the subject matter content). Warning people about stuff that might not be good for the current headspace is a kind and considerate thing to do, and something that should be as commonplace and acceptable as saying 'hey there's an ice patch in front of the library, be careful' - some people might be able to walk on over it, others need to take another route that day.

Some days I can handle just about everything. Some days I need to curl up with my Kindle and read the literary equivalent of comfort food (like how I binged on Newsflesh and Parasitology during the recent 'my body is falling to pieces and I am dangerously ill' episode I'm still crawling out of). Some days I need to save spoons and stick to the safe areas. Sometimes stuff that would normally trigger me is ok in small doses and in the right headspace (case in point: Jessica Jones. If I am having a full spoons day I can watch it, when normally how similar Kilgrave is to my biological father would trigger me. But had I watched it not having been warned, I would've wound up in a very bad headspace and very triggered) But the important thing is knowing about things ahead of time and mutual consent to experience it. Because to me, it is a consent issue. And mocking people who need warnings so they can explicitly consent to experiencing certain things.....that's not being the kind of person Mr. Rogers knows you can be.

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Great way of putting it.

I personally get triggered by the minions and Miss Hattie in Despicable Me yet am usually fine with Game of Thrones, Dateline (and other true crime), and Criminal Minds (though it depends on the dynamic among the criminals). I don't expect folks to include trigger warnings for my particular issues, but I sure watch blurbs for hints of what'll trigger me. Sometimes I can handle some of it, but sometimes, I can't. Especially when I'm in the middle of getting harassed again.

That consideration of giving others a heads-up is certainly part of what I try to keep in mind when recommending titles to others or while writing the blurbs for my own writing.

I understand the urge to joke about the extremes, because they are ridiculous, but there are too many folks who use those jokes (and the extremes) as excuses to exert control over others, be it by ridiculing their presumed reasons for requesting trigger reasons or by demanding trigger warnings (especially unreasonable ones). …And my saying that outright probably just made clear where some of my own triggers come from. [wry smile]
I personally get triggered by the minions and Miss Hattie in Despicable Me

Dolores Umbridge in GoF did it for me. I don't think any TW would've prevented that because I didn't know it would even be a trigger until I hit it; I hadn't realised how angry I still was about some of my school experiences.

RE: Well said!

carradee

1 year ago

After a bit of digging, I found said author, and was a tiny bit relieved I'd never heard of him. (I was more into fantasy than sci-fi when I was in the 80's.) I think he was being rather rude with his comment and I shan't try and justify it by saying he is very old. (he is very old, however)

I'm not so far gone that I will refuse to read anything involving mushrooms, to which I am allergic, though I'd never buy a "Mushrooms Every Day" cookbook. Some warnings are appropriate, since I'd =never= read about called Spiders Attack, and would be grateful for the warning. I agree with several other commenters, in that my ability to handle things varies, though I can't ever deal with cats being treated horribly. I had to stop playing a MUD I really liked because their idea of a good 'spooky leadup' to Halloween was to leave the corpses of stray cats my character had been feeding lying around the main town, then acting very dismissive and really almost contemptuous when I objected.
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and yet, the actor who gleefully played deadpool said in words of few letters "this is NOT FOR CHILDREN".

i think that there are warning labels/trigger warnings for books, they're called an intelligent back blurb. surprise rapes still happen by some authors, then i know that i don't want to support that author again.

some authors, i know that i can read without fear of rape scenes, they made their female figures strong WITHOUT that.

i'm all for kindness. we DO need more of that.
A couple weeks ago I got into a lovely vehement argument in my writing class about trigger warnings. I grew up on and in fanfic culture, and cannot understand the teacher and a couple of my classmates saying that trigger warnings are the same as censorship. Granted, the ones on that side of the argument were all old enough to be my grandparents, but I've never been so spitting mad and disappointed in them before. I only hope that my last-shot remark about kindness and common courtesy eventually works its way through their skulls.
Authors who make jokes about trigger warnings tend to act as a trigger warning: one that tells me I might not enjoy their work.

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killjoy188

February 20 2016, 19:59:14 UTC 1 year ago Edited:  February 20 2016, 20:02:54 UTC

That's why I couldn't read Trigger Warning by Neil Gaiman. I couldn't get past the introduction. He says something like trigger warnings being for people who are afraid to go outside their comfort zone or some nonsense like that. I was just enraged, basically, that this straight white man who has never, in his life, been raped or feared being raped who thinks women and rape victims are immature for not wanting to read about rape!!! I think the vast majority of trigger warnings are for rape, and that most people who really NEED the trigger warnings, need it for rape. I think people no longer take trigger warnings seriously because of some extremely unusual things that get warned, like your food allergy example.
Yeah, I was just about to say -- Neil fucking Gaiman. Stopped reading his stuff after that shitshow.

Aulayan

1 year ago

Personally, I dislike when books that are promoted in one genre, are actually another. I read a wide variety of fiction, but a genre is a warning of a sorts, and if I expecting Urban Fantasy, it may not be a good moment for heavy duty hopeless horror. (This brought to you by a book I was reading lately, which turned out to be horror at exactly wrong time of the day. YMMV
I'm the same way, but what I hate, (I don't require a trigger warning for it, but I wish they would post some sort of warning) is romance/soft-core pr0n called 'urban fantasy' or sci-fi/fantasy. If your book can't be distinguished from mainstream romance once you remove the shifter/dragon/angel/demon/hawtdude with some sort of unexplained and pointless supernatural thingummy, then it really isn't what used to be viewed as fantasy/urban fantasy/paranormal. But I know if the title has 'alpha' in it, to avoid it.

(Look! I managed to discuss the fantasy romance "genre" without using any of the words or phrases I would prefer to employ! Go me!)
What a great post, and what a great lesson. YES, we should be kinder. And what a CRAPPY experience. There's an adage, never meet your heroes. Stuff like this just reinforces that (however, exceptions like meeting you make it worthwhile!).

I think TWs or CWs are a great idea. When I was going through small press e-publishers, they would have lists of "contains..." which was basically a list of content warnings. I loved that. I wish there was a way to do that in traditionally published books; it could be a page you could skip past if you didn't want to be possibly spoiled. For instance, there's another author I follow who does content warnings but is concerned about some also being spoilers, like character death. Warning for character death makes a lot of sense in fanfic, because I may not want to read about a canon character dying. But for original fiction, it would lessen the impact. For example, if I'd had a warning about character death in one of your stories (trying to be non-specific as possible to avoid spoiling someone), it wouldn't have had anywhere near the emotional punch.

But death is something that people can be legitimately triggered by, so ... I don't know if there's a right answer to this one.

As far as people taking TWs too far, I remember someone asking for a TW for music because she was deaf and it was triggering to read people talking about something she couldn't experience, and another asking for a TW for kittens because of something traumatic in childhood involving a kitten. I honestly have no idea how these people navigate the internet. I have some odd triggers myself, such as biopsies (and especially cervical biopsies, because I have PTSD due to how a doctor treated me during one), but I don't expect people to TW for biopsies. I'm of the opinion that asking or demanding TWs for unusual things can get ridiculous fast, and that lessens the impact and importance of TWs.

Because I do believe that TWs and CWs are important and needed. There are some things that I don't want to be surprised by, like rape. I'm still pissed at my ex who recommended a trilogy published in the last five years and said I'd love it. I am very glad I decided to read reviews first, because the main character is a rapist and murderer who apparently has no remorse. It's grimdark to an extreme degree. It's something that would have been highly triggering for me to read, and I am more than a little disturbed that my ex loved the books. Since I don't personally mind spoilers (the opposite, actually; I took my girlfriend of the time that we were seeing Frozen today after reading a review that spoiled the ending), I seek out reviews that do spoil, because that's about the only way I'll know whether something that sounds good will actually be triggering. There are authors I trust (you're one of them) that I don't seek out spoiler reviews for, but the majority of the time, I read spoilerific reviews first, even if it does mean that I see the twists coming instead of being surprised by them. Honestly, I'd love TW/CWs in books, so I could read more books and enjoy the twists, but my mental health comes first -- and speaking as a multiple rape survivor, I really don't want to be taken by surprise by gratuitous rape, of which there is far too much of in fiction. Sigh.
The sheer nastiness of demanding a spoiler simply for people enjoying something that person can't is mind-boggling. I'll never experience the pleasures (or social status) of parenthood, but I don't demand warnings about references to parenthood in books. A pity that individual can't be compelled to go round with a big T-shirt emblazoned with "Trigger warning: callous and self-centred individual" in their local language on the front, over their other clothes to warn others. Asking for that trigger warning comes very close to bullying, I suspect. Finding that you can enjoy somethings that others do is part of the human condition. Learning to cope with it in one of the many things that toddler-hood and childhood is for.

Warnings for rape, or attempted rape, violent attacks of any kind, including on one's self - yes, definitely. I've once warned for a story simply being "bleak" and judging by the reviews, was right to do so.

elialshadowpine

1 year ago

learnsslowly

1 year ago

elialshadowpine

1 year ago

This is why I love that my publisher Less Than Three has a trigger warning on book pages.
I really don't get the hatred for trigger warnings. Even leaving aside the triggering aspect, I'm surprised that there's such pushback against setting reader expectations over what they're reading. I don't have anything that will trigger me, but I do get very irate when a book's marketing copy leads me to expect something completely different than what is in the actual book. (I phrase it this way because it seems to me that unfortunately, a lot of people don't believe that others can be actually harmed by reading something that triggers them. They're flat wrong, mind, but that thinking seems way too prevalent.)

Also, as a tangent, your note at the end about kindness towards your readers and people in general is very important, I think. Honestly, as much as we love your books, it is the myriad ways you've shown yourself to be a kind individual that is what keeps Sarah, Joshua, and I coming to as many of your events as we can arrange. Especially the various ways you show kindness to Joshua and the other kids who turn up. While periodically boggled by it, we are quite pleased that our child considers you an important figure in her life. You model how to be a genuinely kind human being very well, at least when we're around you, and that is one of the things I consider most important for Joshua to learn.
Remember how back in the 1990s it used to be common for a certain kind of person to put up a warning sign on their website, about how their ideas were so shocking and radical that they might offend the casual reader? And if you clicked past the warning to the actual ideas, it was always some tedious old reactionary nonsense recycled from Ayn Rand and/or Robert Heinlein, maybe occasionally spiced up a bit with some HL Mencken quotes?

“Trigger warning: dangerous ideas” is the 2010s version of that.
Good point.

Some folks can say that kind of thing tongue in cheek and mean it as nothing more than a joke. Others… Well, they use it as an excuse for why others either disagree with or don't understand them, rather than taking responsibility for their own poor approach, arguments, or explanations. And the sort of folks who need trigger warnings probably have experience with the latter, which makes the former not work out well.
Love this post; the coded trigger warnings is a very good point.
Given the comments of the folks in this thread, I see a possible solution, not that it would be likely to be adopted industry wide. Treat it like an ingredients list on food and other products you can buy at a grocery store. By law, if a product includes certain common allergens (nuts, milk, certain food colorings, etc.) they have to be listed in the ingredients. Other ingredients over a particular percentage must be included. For things like cleaners "active" ingredients are listed, and additional "inactive" ingredients are optional to list.

So have a book ingredients list in small print on the back cover or inside back page... those who want to look can. Others can skip it. Certain subjects that are common triggers would fall into "must list" categories: rape, molestation, abuse, torture, imprisonment, war imagery, etc. Then the author/publisher could list additional possible triggers to their own discretion.

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