This seems like Ebonics 2.0. If you look up "trigger warning" you see a bunch of articles talking about how stupid trigger warnings are. You find almost nothing talking about how they're good. I say "almost" because I assume there's some somewhere but I didn't find it. If you look up "microaggression" you find an XOJane article celebrating a Tumblr blog that has had about 150 posts in a year, the most recent a week ago. There seems to be a whole bunch more discussion of 'ZOMG the thought police are coming' than 'why our language needs to be more sensitive.' Especially when the author calls Hanna Rosin 'longtime friend.'
? I know ("know" acquainted with) a lot of people who take trigger warnings seriously. Facebook friends, bloggers, whatever. Microaggression, I've never heard before, no comment. But yeah I didn't actually endorse this article I'm tryna trick you guys into reading stuff.If you look up "trigger warning" you see a bunch of articles talking about how stupid trigger warnings are. You find almost nothing talking about how they're good. I say "almost" because I assume there's some somewhere but I didn't find it.
And I "know" people on the Internet that take orgone energy seriously. The Internet is a big place that people can get away from easily. That's what makes it nice. It's when things cross over into the world that we start having a problem... and here in the tender state of California, where you can't sell nail polish without a carcinogen warning, where they tried to ban "master" and "slave" terminology in all government-funded enterprises, "trigger language" is something I only ever see on the Internet.
I have mixed feelings on trigger warnings. Not worth getting into here really. But ever since I first read this comment of yours one thing stuck out at me that I've wanted to let you know - I felt that you can make a better argument than: I am pretty sure your opinion itself is more nuanced than "Well, a lot of people seem to think they're stupid, so..." If you look up "trigger warning" you see a bunch of articles talking about how stupid trigger warnings are. You find almost nothing talking about how they're good.
'k check it. I live in the most liberal section of the most liberal city of the United States. My kid's daycare serves gluten free and allows unvaccinated kids. My wife is the go-to in the GLBT community for intrauterine insemination. A goodly portion of her income comes from intimate health services for lesbians. She sees sexual trauma regularly; in fact, she has a 1-page questionnaire for her patients because those things manifest in detrimental ways during childbirth. When I asked her how much "trigger warnings" were coming up in her conversations, I had to explain what they were. So allow me to repeat myself: this shit exists in a handful of universities and is debated pointlessly on the Internet. That's it. Yes, you see it in your Facebook feed because people are used to getting yelled at by friends of friends of friends and they all see each other using it, kind of the way old people spell out "hashtag" and think "LOL" means "lots of love." That doesn't make it a thing. When I was in 8th grade Newsweek lost their shit because some feminist somewhere decided "women" should be spelled "womyn" and the country collectively lost their shit. Two years later the country collectively lost their shit again over "ebonics" - whereby the country collectively lost their shit because a city university in Oakland recognized street language as a separate vernacular but for some reason, that meant all our children will be forced to learn "black talk" in order to get into college. When I was shortly out of college the social worker I was putting through grad school was required to learn seven genders in order to not oppress the GLBT community and soon enough we all would, dammit! Terk er jerbs! Terk er freedoms! Yet here we are. Nobody remembers ebonics. Womyn is a footnote. Chelsea Manning is a she and not even Rush fucking Limbaugh gives a shit - his whole beef with sex change operations is apparently in Dittoland gender reassignment somehow comes with a new identity. Which, for Rush Limbaugh, is pretty goddamn progressive. So no - it's not more nuanced. It's less nuanced if anything because I've lived this shit my whole life. My mother taught alternative medicine in Santa Fe. My cousin taught prenatal yoga in Santa Monica and now teaches it in Boulder. I went to a black lesbian wedding in 1985 and you know what? There will always be a tiny, irrelevant lunatic fringe that will come up with some idea about how the world might be a little better if everyone made a change and a giant, vocal backlash movement freaking out about how it's taking away their freedoms. That one person you know on Facebook that uses the phrase "trigger warning" from time to time? Yeah, I'll bet you a dollar she doesn't use it in real life. And if it isn't in real life, it isn't worth a fucking article in NYMag.