I sense that I should not get involved in this...
... and yet here I go.
It is my opinion that the issue of warnings for triggery material should be framed as people requesting for their needs to be accommodated. I am totally in favor of the accommodation of needs. I am totally in favor of fans choosing to make fandom a welcoming and comfortable place for as many people as possible.
However, I am not comfortable with the way that people have been adopting the framework of racism or other categorical prejudices as a way to structure the debate about warnings. The power difference between the unwarning author and the vulnerable-to-triggering reader is situational, temporary, and entered into voluntarily when the reader starts reading. The power difference between, for example, the racist author and the POC reader is wide-ranging, long-standing, and hard to escape because it is a local manifestation of a society-wide power structure, and it is *in the context* of that society-wide structure that racist words do their harm.
My intent here is not to minimize the potential damage done when people unexpectedly encounter material that is psychologically toxic to them. I'm glad that people are talking about that issue seriously so that we can all consider how it fits into our writing and reading experiences in a more informed and compassionate way. But I also see potential damage that might be done by the sloppy metaphors that I'm criticizing here. When people object to writing that is misogynist, racist, homophobic, or supports some other structural prejudice, the immediate hurt felt by the reader is not the only issue at hand. The larger problem is that the prejudiced writing helps to support a system of injustice from which the writer benefits. (Most of the time -- although members of the less-privileged group can certainly absorb, and display, negative stereotypes about their own group, to their own detriment.) Because time and time again, in discussions of racism for example, we see people get accused of being "hypersensitive", because the accuser can't see how anyone could possibly be hurt by seemingly innocuous words like "exotic eyes" or whatever. I worry that if we start equating injustice with triggering, that problem's only going to get worse, because people's concept of the problem will be limited to the objecting reader's *feelings*, and not the structural aspects.
I don't know, maybe I'm just borrowing trouble, but it's been bothering me.
This entry was originally posted at http://loligo.dreamwidth.org/372586.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
It is my opinion that the issue of warnings for triggery material should be framed as people requesting for their needs to be accommodated. I am totally in favor of the accommodation of needs. I am totally in favor of fans choosing to make fandom a welcoming and comfortable place for as many people as possible.
However, I am not comfortable with the way that people have been adopting the framework of racism or other categorical prejudices as a way to structure the debate about warnings. The power difference between the unwarning author and the vulnerable-to-triggering reader is situational, temporary, and entered into voluntarily when the reader starts reading. The power difference between, for example, the racist author and the POC reader is wide-ranging, long-standing, and hard to escape because it is a local manifestation of a society-wide power structure, and it is *in the context* of that society-wide structure that racist words do their harm.
My intent here is not to minimize the potential damage done when people unexpectedly encounter material that is psychologically toxic to them. I'm glad that people are talking about that issue seriously so that we can all consider how it fits into our writing and reading experiences in a more informed and compassionate way. But I also see potential damage that might be done by the sloppy metaphors that I'm criticizing here. When people object to writing that is misogynist, racist, homophobic, or supports some other structural prejudice, the immediate hurt felt by the reader is not the only issue at hand. The larger problem is that the prejudiced writing helps to support a system of injustice from which the writer benefits. (Most of the time -- although members of the less-privileged group can certainly absorb, and display, negative stereotypes about their own group, to their own detriment.) Because time and time again, in discussions of racism for example, we see people get accused of being "hypersensitive", because the accuser can't see how anyone could possibly be hurt by seemingly innocuous words like "exotic eyes" or whatever. I worry that if we start equating injustice with triggering, that problem's only going to get worse, because people's concept of the problem will be limited to the objecting reader's *feelings*, and not the structural aspects.
I don't know, maybe I'm just borrowing trouble, but it's been bothering me.
This entry was originally posted at http://loligo.dreamwidth.org/372586.html. Please comment there using OpenID.