Why I Don’t Use Trigger Warnings
by Benjamin Studebaker
In recent years, it has become increasingly popular among Millennial social justice activists to put trigger warnings ahead of material that might be “triggering” to a person who has had a traumatic experience or has other kinds of anxiety issues. There is a wide array of things that are deemed potentially triggering, ranging from rape scenes to war violence to alcohol use and on and on.While I sympathize with those who suffer from anxiety disorders, trigger warnings are the wrong way to solve this problem. Here’s why.
Anxiety disorders (like post-traumatic stress disorder) are mental disabilities. Anxiety disorders inhibit sufferers from being able to enjoy or be comfortable in various kinds of situations that normal people can enjoy or be comfortable in. Just as a paraplegic cannot walk, someone with an anxiety disorder cannot tolerate experiencing whatever it is that causes them anxiety. We don’t blame paraplegics for their inability to walk and we shouldn’t blame people with anxiety disorders for the fact that they have anxiety issues, particularly given that many of these anxieties are caused by traumatic experiences, many of which the state bears some responsibility for causing or failing to prevent. This is not a piece about how people with anxiety disorders need to just “get over it”. Anxiety disorders are serious problems for sufferers, for their families and friends, and for wider society. This is a real disability and should be talked about as such.
When we confront disabilities, there are two key questions that must be answered:
- Who is going to pay the cost of coping with the disability, the individual or society?
- Who is going to be modified to negate the problem, the individual or society?
Our society does not always answer these two questions the same way. We can think of this as a 2 x 2 matrix, with examples in each category:
| Social Response to Disability | Individual Pays | Society Pays |
| Individual Changes | Unrecognized disabilities, laser eye surgery | Therapy, eyeglasses, hearing aids (with Insurance) |
| Society Changes | Extra seats on airplanes | Access ramps for wheelchairs |
What does our answer depend on? Looking at these examples, we can observe a few trends:
- Society both changes and pays when it is impossible or far too difficult for the individual to change and the disability is especially crippling and/or not perceived to be the individual’s fault. We cannot as of yet cure many of the people in our society who need wheelchairs, and without access ramps, it is virtually impossible for these individuals to go anywhere, buy anything, or obtain any services of any kind. Access ramps are far too expensive for wheelchair users to pay for themselves, so the state is left with no other choice if it wishes to maintain wheelchair users as citizens.
- Society changes but forces the individual to pay when it is impossible or far too difficult for the individual to change and the disability is perceived to be less crippling or to some degree the fault of the sufferer. If Bob weighs 400 pounds and Bob wants to ride on an airplane, society recognizes that it is harder for Bob to lose the pounds quickly than it is for society to give Bob an extra seat on the plane. Nevertheless, we make Bob pay the cost because Bob could drive, take alternative transport, or stay home and because we still (perhaps erroneously) perceive obesity to be largely Bob’s own fault.
- The individual changes but receives societal aid when it is relatively easy for the individual to change but the disability is particularly crippling and/or not perceived to be the individual’s fault. Through health insurance schemes, societies prefer to cover the cost of treating or curing many disabilities rather than rearrange society to allow people to get along with them. Insurance often covers eyeglasses, hearing aids, and various kinds of family, marital, and individual therapy for these reasons.
- The individual changes and is forced to pay for the change himself when it is relatively easy for the individual to change and the disability is perceived to be less crippling or to some degree the fault of the sufferer. In many cases, the disability just isn’t recognized as a disability in the first place. The individual also changes and pays when the individual is electing for a treatment that is much more expensive than other, socially-financed options (e.g. laser eye surgery).
What bothers me about trigger warnings? Trigger warnings are a political tool whose purpose is to move anxiety disorders from the “individual changes, society pays” category to the “society changes, society pays” category. In the absence of trigger warnings, if a person has a serious anxiety disorder, that person is constantly bombarded with triggering content until that person seeks help, at which point there are a wide variety of therapists and mental health professionals available to help that person and health insurance organizations that will cover the cost of that help.
Trigger warnings make it easier for the sufferer to get by in society without seeking help by fundamentally changing the way we present content. They deliberately and purposefully spoil the content of books, movies, essays, and other material. To be truly effective as trigger warnings, a warning must go beyond the vague spoilers used by organizations like the MPAA or PEGI. Instead of just saying “violence” or “sexual content”, trigger warnings typically detail precisely what kind of violence or sex will be depicted. While trigger warnings have not yet fully permeated society, we can see clearly where this might be going. Imagine if HBO read off trigger warnings prior to every episode of Game of Thrones. Every episode, you’d know if there was going to be incest, execution, patricide, pedophilia, and so on down the line, substantially diminishing the emotional value of these reveals in the course of the plot.
This accommodation diminishes the ability of the general public to enjoy material while simultaneously reducing the incentives that push people with serious problems to get help. Trigger warnings are fundamentally not like wheelchair ramps. While wheelchair ramps cost us money, their presence does not diminish the experience of going to a place and using that place’s service for someone who doesn’t use wheelchairs. Trigger warnings diminish the pleasure of consuming film, literature and other publications for people who do not need them. And while most people who use wheelchairs have no choice–there are no available treatments or cures for their conditions–people with anxiety orders can and should get real help. By enabling people with anxiety disorders to avoid their triggers, we undermine their incentive to get help and legitimize and encourage their use of avoidance coping.
Proponents of trigger warnings often view their opponents as being supporters of an “individual pays” policy, which does not take anxiety disorders seriously and pushes the cost of treating them onto sufferers, but this is a false choice. We can and should pay the costs of treating people with anxiety disorders instead of paying the costs of putting trigger warnings on things. We should not retrofit our society to render it inoffensive and harmless to an increasingly anxious population. Instead, we should treat and cure that population of its anxiety and, where possible, eliminate the social factors that lead to it (e.g. reducing the incidence of rape, abuse, war, etc.).
It is unreasonable and wrong to make people with anxiety disorders deal with their problems on their own, but reasonable people can and should argue over the best way to help these people. Whether we change our society or we change these individuals, we are going to bear costs. It is worth arguing over which costs are preferable, both for sufferers and non-sufferers. We do sufferers no service by enabling them to avoid their triggers rather than seek treatment, and we do non-sufferers no service by spoiling material for them and diminishing its artistic or argumentative value. Just as the only way one realizes one needs glasses is by being unable to read the street signs, the only way to realize one needs treatment for an anxiety disorder is to be triggered, routinely and vociferously.
Benjamin Studebaker 
I very much enjoy reading your thoughts on things, especially your concept of government (was it ‘sophiarchy?’). I’ve read your discourses on economy, society, and government, but I’ve never seen you tackle the concept of violence, both globally, as between governments or countries, and locally, as between individuals or small groups. In this post, you talk about reducing the events that make trigger warnings necessary (“Instead, we should treat and cure that population of its anxiety and, where possible, eliminate the social factors that lead to it (e.g. reducing the incidence of rape, abuse, war, etc.)).
What are your (always hypothetical or theoretical) thoughts and solutions for making this happen? I myself am a proponent of violence as a response only, and always appropriate to the situation, and I don’t really care for the ‘well what if [insert inane improbable scenario]’ game, but I’d be interested to see your own personal thoughts and how your theoretical form of government would solve that problem.
Great question!
I see two categories of violence here:
1. Intrastate violence, violence that occurs within a state.
2. Interstate violence, violence that occurs among states.
Individual states have far greater ability to mitigate intrastate violence than interstate violence due to international anarchy, the lack of an independent final authority to constrain states’ behavior internationally (organizations like the UN are insufficiently independent, they rely on contributions from member states rather than their own forces). Interstate violence can only be completely put to rest if and when all people become citizens of the same state. This remains infeasible because people prioritize self-determination over peace.
As far as intrastate violence goes, the states that have the lowest incidences of violent crime/civil unrest are the states that do three things:
1. Provide equality of opportunity
2. Provide strong support systems
3. Show equal concern for citizens of diverse backgrounds
People from poor backgrounds need to believe that they have a legitimate opportunity to succeed that is competitive with that of citizens from wealthier backgrounds. Violence is most likely to arise in highly unequal societies where large numbers of people feel hopeless, trapped, or screwed over by a government that is indifferent to them. So the most effective way to fight intrastate violence is by improving the opportunities of poor citizens (e.g. equalizing educational opportunities at the primary and secondary level), strengthening support systems (e.g. unemployment benefits, drug rehab, etc.) and avoiding displays of state favoritism toward religious/ethnic/racial groups. Most violent crimes and riots/civil conflicts can ultimately be traced back to state failure in one of these areas.
I can certainly agree with your three equalities, but the problem as I see it is enactment. How do you create these systems and have them continue without mutating or become extremist? As long as the government (for whatever value of ‘government’) has the monopoly on violence, there won’t be true equality. How do you rectify this?
Sustainability has always been a serious problem with political systems. The tendency is for the state to be high-jacked by individuals or groups of individuals whose interests are not synonymous with the wider social interest. This is a severe problem for democracies, because a democratically elected government relies on a voter coalition for its power, and that voter coalition usually has the expectation that it will be favored over defeated voter coalitions. If a pro-business party defeats a pro-union party, that party will unduly favor business over unions, and vice versa. If it fails to do so, it will lose its base.
To make a good political system sustainable, we need to divorce the state from reliance on the active support of interested subgroups whose particular interests do not align with the social. To extend the example, we want our state to rely neither on business votes/money or on union votes/money. This means we need to draw our statesmen from a pool of people that is explicitly interested in statecraft for its own sake. These people need to be the sort of people who enjoy good statecraft more than they enjoy money, popularity, and so on. I’m very interested in attempting to identify this population and devise a political system that can sustainably produce enough of them and keep them in power without resulting in their corruption. Sophiarchism is broadly speaking that effort–at this point in time, I think the people who are most likely to see a harmony between their self-interest and the social interest are academics, people who have forgone potentially higher salaries in favor of doing work that focuses on identifying and/or resolving social and political problems.
Divorcing the state from its interested sub-groups is vital, I believe, and your concept of Sophiarchism is a great foundation for a government. However, academics, by and large, tend to stay in academia or in environments very similar to academia. How do you add the everyman touch? I would love to see this concept refined, so I apologize if I’m pestering you.
No problem at all, I’m happy to answer.
As I’ve currently formulated it, a sophiarchist state chooses its government by holding a convention every 10 years. PhDs in social science and related fields (e.g. philosophy, history, law) elect from among their number representatives to the convention. At the convention, these academics choose one from among their number to head the new government, author a constitution that indicates in what ways the new government will be legally bound, and choose from among their number a group of justices to enforce this agreement, a majority of which must not have supported the head of the government.
The everyman touch comes in when the convention is finished and this proposal is put to an up or down yes/no referendum, with an exit survey to follow. If there’s a no vote, the exit survey will identify what elements of the package the wider population is uncomfortable with and send the package back for review. Only when the package gets a yes vote can it come into force. I call this the “emergency stop”, designed to prevent the academics from getting too detached from the layman without binding them to public opinion.
This is very much out of touch. I suffer from mental health problems, but, thankfully they were not caused by extensive trauma.
I have, however, befriended many people who have experienced forms of horrific trauma, made all the worse by being huge result of systemic violence–usually patriarchy, by also white supremacy. Both ideologies are the foundation of western society.
Even after over a decade of treatment, it’s possible for a person with ptsd to be triggered. My ex-fiancée stumbled upon an episode of a crime procedural that triggered months of flashbacks to her years of abusive.
I wouldn’t wish my chronic, treatment resistant form of depression on anyone. And I certainly wouldn’t wish ptsd as the result of anything–war, assault, sexual abuse–on anyone, either. It’s hard to describe the pain and terror, how this invisible illness is just as life altering as physically losing a body part.
Trigger warnings are hardly an inconvenience. And they are hardly a deterrent to treatment! That’s simply an asinine argument. The psychic harm a brutal scene of violence or “joke” can inflict on someone is as real as a physical blow, and a person has the right to peace of mind more than anyone has the right to avoid spoilers. I mean, where the hell is your basic human decency?
This blog is a joke. You could not write anything and have just as much of an impact on the world, because all you have here is long-winded, pseudointellectual drivel that barely repackages prevailing cultural attitudes as something brave and new.
Well, they aren’t. Do yourself a favor and try growing as a person by being humble enough to share in the feelings of the victims of oppression before you spout off so much Dawkinsian fuckwittery.
While I sympathize with your suffering and with the suffering of your ex-fiancee, there is a limit to the extent to which society can be expected to accommodate the health problems of its members. Once we’re getting into the business of censoring speech, of telling people what they can say and how they must say it, a line has been crossed.
I oppose oppression and discrimination–I’m against classism, racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, and so on. But to compare policies that target particular subsets of the population for exploitation to an episode of a police procedural trivializes oppression and exploitation. The episode of the police procedural was disturbing not because there is anything intrinsically wrong with it, but because your ex-fiancee has a serious psychological condition that, by definition, causes her to experience harmless things as if they were harmful. Her mind is misinterpreting the content in a way that causes her to experience it more negatively than other people would. By urging us to change the content, you are urging us to censor ourselves rather than attempt to help your ex-fiancee. This denies the seriousness of mental health problems by blaming society for the symptoms rather than the health problem for them. It is the condition that causes her to feel this way, it is the condition that should be dealt with.