annoyedWhen 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.
February 21 2016, 12:10:50 UTC 1 year ago
Also, what about stories set in Britain and Europe and other theatres of war after WW2? Even in my childhood there were plenty of the physical and mental scars of the war around in my daily landscape - reference to family members killed, homes damaged or destroyed by bombing, the air-raid shelter in next door's garden (the whole point was that it should be difficult to demolish.) Should I be warning for passing references to these things do you think? (I'm also wondering about how to word a warning so that it isn't as bad as the actual reference if the reference itself is rather brief and doesn't "dwell on horrors". Wouldn't someone be thinking much more upsetting things if I put Warning: world war 2 references rather than just put in the relevant part of the story that X now that world war 2 is over, X and young widow is no longer needed to work at Bletchley Park and wonders whether she should look for a secure but dull job or follow the less financially secure career she has always wanted - and the rest of the story is pretty much about how she goes about that.
These are real questions, not just point-making. I'm very aware that one person's experiences have, by their definition, to be rather narrow. (Especially the one about US readers.)
February 21 2016, 13:21:00 UTC 1 year ago
So, do you put "set during the second world war or the year 1940" or do you put "set during the second world war" OR "set during the year 1940"? Because "set in 1940" would not be enough for me, because I have no memory for years (history classes were awful).
I personally have problems reading stories about WW2 because of the Holocaust and Nazis and antisemitism, which is why I specifically mentioned that. I read (or at least started) several books in the past few years that turned out to be WW2 alternate universe type settings and I didn't realize it until some way into the book, because I didn't pick up whatever indications there may have been. Some I finished anyway, some I didn't, mostly depending on how much it seemed like it was involved in the story.
I think there should be general war imagery warnings, especially if it's not obvious that it's going to be a war story (but "obvious" is different for different people, so maybe I think there should always be those warnings). I do understand what you're saying about how in some cases saying "WW2 references" might be a stronger mention than what happens in the story itself. So yes, I think a passing mention is different from, say, Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick (one of the books people recommended to me but neglected to tell me was WW2 AU) or, I don't know, The Devil's Arithmatic, which is a book I loved as a kid for some reason.
I'm not sure how helpful (or coherent) that is, but well. There's my thoughts.
February 21 2016, 16:11:49 UTC 1 year ago
I also thought that 1940 gave more, not less information, in that the (English) viewpoint character could by no means be sure that the end outcome would not be a German victory with all of Europe occupied which would in many ways be grimmer than the situation in 1944. I was quite evidently in error - from a UK point of view not knowing those dates (or at least having an approximate idea - to want to look it up to be sure) and yet still making the WW2/Holocaust/Nazi/ antisemitism link so strongly would be unusual to say the least.
This leads be to a further question - if the story is from the view of a non- Jewish person (which it is, I do realise that it would be quite unforgivable cultural appropriation for me to do otherwise) who is not from the US, and the death that occurs, occurs off stage to a non-Jewish person who is in the royal navy, the news coming by telegram with no details to a person in the UK, would that count as war imagery that needed trigger warnings? It is very definitely a war reference, but I'm not sure about the imagery bit? I do realise you can't speak for everyone, but just for yourself here?
February 21 2016, 17:19:46 UTC 1 year ago
Anyway, for me, what you described would not need a WW2 or a war imagery warning. As I said, it's the Holocaust and Nazis that I don't like watching/reading about, so even much more blatant war imagery isn't so much an issue in that regard even if it takes place in the same era (for example, the Doctor Who episodes The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances).
Something I've seen done is instead of saying "WW2 imagery" or whatever, it could say something like "brief WW2 reference".
February 21 2016, 17:22:28 UTC 1 year ago
February 21 2016, 17:25:08 UTC 1 year ago