Why Trigger Warnings Empower Survivors
*Trigger Warning*
A talented author friend Amy Gigi Alexander pointed me to an opinion piece this past week in a journal (I’m purposely not sending you to it because, well, I’ll get further into that below), that stated with silly and outdated words (which the article author claims she used for effect) that trigger warnings for sexual abuse survivors are ‘poppycock.’ As is the right of the author and of the journal to share opinions, it is our right as readers to disagree. The reaction was swift: negative and uproarious from the survivor community (and I will say here, I like the journal — they typically publish great work).
The article author went on to say that while she herself is a rape ‘victim,’ she didn’t believe that trauma ‘victims’ could be triggered by reading content, and if we are, it’s because we’ve read too much misinformation on PTSD (which she claims is extremely rare and only exists in less than 2% of all (military, accidents, abuse) trauma ‘victims,’ and that all a trigger warning does is give us an opportunity to continue to ‘perpetuate avoidance,’ causing us to insulate ourselves from real life.
Finally, *trigger warning* she goes into an unrelated and extremely graphic description of a video of a young girl in third-world country being buried alive and stoned to death by a group of young men (with no warning and in far greater detail), which is where I stopped reading because, well, I WAS TRIGGERED.*
Let’s deconstruct.
TRIGGER WARNINGS
It wasn’t until I started writing my own book Broken Pieces, where I share my own experience with childhood sexual assault, rape, and other difficult topics, that I started to pay attention to and think about whether my content would trigger any readers who had survived such traumas themselves. I had a psychologist friend take a look, as well as an ER nurse, who had plenty of experience with trauma, particularly with rape kits in a trauma setting. With the exception of a few words (removed before release), they both gave me their approval. (Still, I do give readers plenty of warning that the material, while not graphic, can be triggering and is not appropriate for readers under eighteen.)
4 Top Tips for Creating A Spectacular Author Platform
