A Trigger Warning, Just For You

Last year (as you probably know all too well), I wrote a novel called RAIN ON YOUR WEDDING DAY. If you’ve read the book, you probably know that it contains at least one very violent and disturbing scene, along with a few other scenes that are troubling. The book’s themes deal with suicide, abortion, and mental illness. The main character experiences the deaths of three of his children and one grandchild. It is a dark book, and I make no apologies for that.

So, therefore, I say this. If you have (just for example) endured the suicide of a loved one, and don’t wish to read a book that has suicide as a main theme, don’t read RAIN ON YOUR WEDDING DAY. I’m OK with that. If you want to read it, but feel you need a “trigger warning” before attempting it, well, this is that for you. The same thing goes for people who’ve experienced the loss of a child. If you have, you may find aspects of RAIN ON YOUR WEDDING DAY to be disturbing and unsettling, and I understand that it may be difficult for you to read the book.

I will even go farther to say that if you have issues with personal betrayal, the depiction of abortion, the portrayal of mental illness, or a couple of other things I’m not even remembering, you are probably entitled to a trigger warning before reading RAIN ON YOUR WEDDING DAY, and I am OK giving you one. I understand that there are certain people who have undergone trying circumstances in their lives that make exposure to certain story elements difficult.

Having said that, there is the Oberlin College statement about trigger warnings, noted today by Rich Lowry in National Review Online. You have to give whoever wrote this all the credit in the world for being, well, inclusive:

Triggers are not only relevant to sexual misconduct, but also to anything that might cause trauma. Be aware of racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, ableism, and other issues of privilege and oppression. Realize that all forms of violence are traumatic, and that your students have lives before and outside your classroom, experiences you may not expect or understand.

I just don’t know, as an author, what you do with that. I am perfectly OK with the concept that people might have a reaction to a specific trauma in their past. But trigger warnings about this kind of thing are just beyond useless.

The focal point in my book is a wedding between a straight white woman and a straight white man, both of them reasonably well-to-do, with the woman being a scion of the WASP old-money elite. I would have to ask an Oberlin English major to be sure, but I think that sentence, in and of itself, pretty much qualifies my book for a trigger warning on all those grounds. (You have been warned.)

I am perfectly comfortable with the notion that, if someone some day decides to use my book in a classroom, with a student requesting to be warned about disturbing and troubling material. But the idea that a student would be so scarred by classism (whatever you interpret that actually meaning) that the student needs a trigger warning before reading a book about a high-class wedding is… well, the third most absurd thing in the document.

Anything could be a trigger — a smell, song, scene, phrase, place, person, and so on. Some triggers cannot be anticipated, but many can.

I look at that, as an author, and I just cringe. Just to pick one random spot, there’s a scene in RAIN ON YOUR WEDDING DAY that takes place at the Atlanta airport. I will concede that the Atlanta airport is a zone of negative energy, and that all sorts of people have all sorts of different reactions when you talk about the Atlanta airport. But the very idea that I (or anyone else) is obliged to give a trigger warning to the reader that a given scene takes place at the Atlanta airport is utterly ridiculous. If you, personally, have had a bad experience at the Atlanta airport, and it was emotionally scarring for you, I apologize deeply, but it is not my job or anyone else’s to say, “Hey, at one point Will goes to the Atlanta airport, so you might want to steel yourself, because part of the book takes place at the Atlanta airport, and that might be an issue for anyone who’s had Delta lose their luggage, mmm-kay?” No.

And yet, that’s not the most absurd thing.

Remove triggering material when it does not contribute directly to the course learning goals.

No. Please, no. Just stop. This is censorship, and even if it’s well-meaning goody-goody censorship, it still stinks. Stop.

Just to reiterate: I have no problem with the concept of the trigger warning as an accommodation for individuals who have experienced extreme trauma and are sensitive to certain issues. If that’s you, then God bless your heart. I do have a problem with people insisting that they deserve trigger warnings about every single possible thing in the universe that might upset their equilibrium, whether anyone realizes it or not.

I have been reading the Horatio Hornblower books, and there’s a scene, after a winning battle, where Captain Hornblower complains to his crew that he’s seen (trigger warning!) a crew of Afro-Portuguese sailors do a better job of trimming their sails. Except that he didn’t say that. He said what is politely referred to as “the n-word.” I read that, and I was startled for all of a second and a half. And then I kept reading, because I am not three years old and am therefore good with the concept that a Napoleonic-era British sailor might use that exact word. If you need a trigger warning to read Horatio Hornblower, I suggest that you should stick to Goodnight Moon.