Trigger Warnings as Classroom Accommodation

[jesse_the_k]

Angela Carter challenges the academics dismissing trigger warnings as "pandering" to whiny students. Bringing teaching and trauma experience to the discussion she analyzes how trigger warnings accommodate traumatized people (in a dry, academic manner, but worth slogging through).
"Teaching with Trauma: Disability Pedagogy, Feminism, and the Trigger Warnings Debate"
Angela M Carter
Disability Studies Quarterly, Vol 36, No 2 (2016): Winter 2016 | free open access
http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/4652/3935

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In the most basic sense, accommodations are not about "safety," but about access to opportunity for a more livable life. When disability is denied because it is not understood or seen, or when access is denied because it is inconvenient or complicated, humanity is denied. While it is certainly possible to recognize trauma as a mental disability and still be hesitant toward trigger warnings as an accommodation practice, the content and tenor of that conversation would be far removed from the outright hostility and rejection that has reverberated most widely. When presented as an access measure, it becomes evident that trigger warnings do not provide a way to "opt out" of anything, nor do they offer protection from the realities of the world. Trigger warnings provide a way to "opt in" by lessening the power of the shock and the unexpectedness, and granting the traumatized individual agency to attend to the affect and effects of their trauma. Traumatized individuals know that trigger warnings will not save us. Such warnings simply allow us to do the work we need to do so that we can participate in the conversation or activity. They allow us to enter the conversation, just like automatic doors allow people who use wheelchairs to more easily enter a building.

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Comments

[davidgillon]

Oh, the language may be dry, but I adore "another ill-conceived discussion about us, without us"!

[jesse_the_k]

Yeah, that was my tipping point for posting. :,)

Just like Afro-American, Chicano/a, and Womens' Studies, the language of Disability Studies becomes less accessible to perform Serious Academic Subject.

I've been to the Society for Disability Studies annual meet twice. The first time I understood 1/4 of 1/3 of the presentations. The last time I chose more carefully, and they had simultaneous captioning, and I managed to get something useful from 5/7 panels. And there's a steady core of non-academic folk who ensure that there's programming useful to activists.

Have you ever gone to an academic DS conference?

[davidgillon]

No. My total attendance at academic conferences comes down to one British Computer Society day thing.

The spoon expenditure was too high when I was using crutches, it's slightly more feasible now I have the chair, but still an issue.

[shehasathree]

omg, you've been to SDS. *is jealous*

[jesse_the_k]

There's good & bad.

It's certainly thrilling to be in the room with some of my heroes, and there are definitely speakers whose work I'd never know about otherwise. Eli Claire is magnetic (I had the great luck to see him three times in a calendar year).

On the other hand, there's lots of swordfights-with-CVs as the academics establish dominance. Much much eyerolling and "all the cool kids sit together." First time (2000) I was struck at the lousy accommodations on offer; last time (2014) things were much better yet some holes.

[sasha_feather]

Yay!

[josiahd]

As a traumatized person who has serious reservations about trigger warnings, I vehemently object to this paragraph:

Those in opposition to trigger warnings in classroom reinforce the individual model of disability, suggesting that the traumatized or triggered individual seek help on their own from the proper medical establishments. It is the responsibility of the traumatized to deal with their excessive bodymind, not the society that produces and then pathologizes it as such. Those in support of trigger warnings attempt to locate the problem within the climate of higher education and its ableist infrastructure.

I think that a normative expectation of trigger warnings on disturbing topics does silence people. That doesn't mean I think that people who have triggers should just go away until doctors can fix them. It just means that I think something in this conversation has good wrong. (Including the idea that some topics are inherently triggering and some aren't. Literally anything can be a trigger).

I don't want to be protected from ever being triggered. I want to *still be welcome* when I'm conspicuously crazy.

[jesse_the_k]

I'm having trouble getting your objection. Is it that Carter puts all trigger proponents in the same boat? I suspect that the "t.w. is just PC nonsense" folks in academia hold different views than you on other topics.

"It just means that I think something in this conversation has good wrong."

I'm not familiar with a good wrong, can you tell me more?

excuse all my parentheticals but

[anna_bird]

Oooh! Thank you for this, I've been reading far too many treatises (or maybe, smear pieces) about the Dangers(!) of trigger warnings (especially in academic settings, oh noes!) and it's nice to see a dry, academic piece refuting much of that handwringing.

I think too it does a better job of actually defining trigger warnings than aforementioned smear pieces -- which seem to want to categorize TW as massive, silent canopies (woven of SJW/PC cloth) that will descend and fatally stifle all of The Learning.

Re: excuse all my parentheticals but

[jesse_the_k]

Speaking of warring parties, what would the camo pattern look like in "SJW/PC cloth"? As if our world isn't military enough, one can now purchase breast cancer pink camo underwear. (!)

Re: excuse all my parentheticals but

[anna_bird]

You never know when you'll need to hide in a forest/swamp/desert of ... cancerous breasts? I mean, people in pink STOP BREAST CANCER t-shirts.

The SJW/PC cloth would definitely contain a shade of blue, for tears of the various privileges.

Re: excuse all my parentheticals but

[jesse_the_k]

Your parentheticals r delightful (!)

So glad the article resonates for you.