In defense of trigger warnings

In this post I'm going to argue that colleges should (not necessarily right now, but at some point in the near future) adopt trigger warnings for required course reading material (I know, I surprised myself too). For the rest of the post, I'm going to taboo the phrase 'trigger warnings' and instead use 'content warnings' or similar. I think this is a more rational/less biased way to discuss the issue due to so many people having almost instinctive reactions (triggered, even) to the phrase.

Proposal

A nationally representative group of university psychology professors, statisticians, researchers, psychiatrists, university administrators, and possibly some lawyers should be constructed - a thinktank if you like. The constituency could either be randomized or intentionally selected to have a reasonable balance of conservative and liberal members. They should, as soon as possible, coordinate a nationwide study/survey of traumatic memory reliving/flashbacks, content warnings, and public as well as university preferences about content warnings. The goal would be to find out at a preliminary level what the most common triggers are and how experiencing these triggers affects students (there is already some research on this, but it's mostly specific to PTSD, and more general research would be better).

There would be at minimum a trial run in, say, a few dozen universities across the country. This would consist of content warnings placed in small, unobtrusive text that looks no different from the rest of the text at the bottom of the copyright/bullshit page of books with a pre-decided (by examining the results of the survey of common triggers and a subsequent lengthy discussion about which warnings to include) set of content warnings. The same thing (small, unobtrusive text, that looks the same as the rest) would be placed at the end of syllabi as well. Professors might be (not totally sure about this one) directed to say out loud any content warnings present in the syllabus, even if they don't present/read the whole syllabus.

No content warnings would be required for any non-required reading material. Students with a genuine concern about potential triggers could be required to register with disability services, and those who are properly registered may contact the professor to discuss potential alternative assignments. I am not yet comfortable saying professors would be required to provide alternative assignments for anyone who asks, because if the problem is so severe that the person just cannot get through a book or movie, then I would say they should be provided with access to therapy. Altering course content to dance around significant mental illness strikes me as not treating the illness seriously enough.

Reasoning

A common argument against content warnings is that they are or are akin to censorship. This is flatly incorrect. Censorship is telling you what you can and cannot read. It controls whether you can access certain information. Content warnings are effectively the opposite of that - 'we're warning you that this information/material might offend or shock you, so it's your problem if you continue'. Content warnings promote more informed choice.

Will some people abuse the idea of content warnings to reduce the spectrum of what they consume? Yes, of course. But why should that mean we don't use them to help those who could actually be helped by them? We don't force people to never reduce the spectrum of what they consume in other areas; there's no law mandating one Fox News article read for every ten NPR articles read. Why would we begrudge these categorizations, which could potentially have a significant positive impact on the well being of those who suffer from PTSD or other such conditions, when we don't begrudge video game ratings, movie ratings, or music ratings?

Content warnings are common on podcasts for example, like so: 'Hey guys, quick heads up that this episode features some strong language/graphic descriptions/whatever, so listener discretion is advised'. I don't think I've ever heard anyone argue against these or say they should be eliminated. What is the reasoning for not doing the same with books?

Another common argument against content warnings is that the world is a harsh place and you will not get trigger warnings in 'the real world'. This is unconvincing. Just because injustice or suffering or misery is inevitable to some extent in the world, does not mean that we should never do anything to mitigate or control it where possible. Further, people who genuinely suffer from triggers/have flashbacks/dissociate/whatever know full well that the world is not a nice place and that they will likely be triggered multiple times in their life. That's no reason to not implement a very simple policy that could reduce the suffering of these people greatly while barely impacting anyone else (given the small and unobtrusive nature of the warnings I propose).

Why do I say the warnings should be small, unobtrusive, and in effect not very obvious? This is in order to minimize the inconvenience or mental load placed on anyone else who doesn't suffer from the given trigger. People who have a serious issue with certain kinds of content are exactly the kind of people who will go through some concerted effort to avoid random contact with such content. They are the kind of person who will actually read the syllabus in full or specifically take note of the small, camoflauged warnings on book copyright pages. Nobody else has to even know that the warning is there in the book. If professors were required to mention any content warnings on the first day of class, that would be some burden on people who don't suffer from the given triggers, but it would be on the order of 5-10 seconds during which they don't even need to pay attention if they don't care about being warned, so I'd consider it practically inconsequential.

The warnings being small and unobtrusive, labeled as 'content warnings', and their nature of having been agreed upon after research conducted by a national collegiate body would also help work against the argument that warnings could contribute to ever-increasing politicization and partisanship on controversial issues.

Another argument against warnings is that 'the best way to get over a trigger is to confront it', that 'exposure therapy' is the best method of overcoming the problem.

The problem with this is that random, uncontrolled, unexpected exposure without warning is emphatically not how exposure therapy is conducted, and the other problem is that you don't give therapy to people who don't consent to it. Nobody with PTSD is forced to undergo therapy if they don't want to. And hoping that this aforementioned random, unexpected exposure to traumatic material will just naturally happen to help sufferers is ridiculous. The same argument would also support a marked increase in the base rate of triggers, such as utilizing much more graphic and disturbing material than is necessary, because hey, exposure helps, right?

Another argument against warnings is that people have extremely varied triggers and it would be impossible to warn for everything. Well, yes, but first, that's the point of having a central body conduct research on the prevalence of triggers so that the most common and most traumatic ones could be warned for; we develop a sort of beginning schelling point. And again we can point back to warnings about video games and movies; neither medium warns for a hugely varied assortment of content. For example, the ESRB uses 30 different descriptors, but they can really be boiled down to just a few categories, sex/nudity and sexual themes, violence/blood/gore, drug use, profane language, and gambling. People against content warnings in colleges or books might say something like 'I saw someone who was triggered by dolphins, what about that, huh?' to which I say 'no existing warning system warns for anything so obscure/unusual as that, so we almost certainly won't either'. In any case, just because you can't warn for everything doesn't mean you shouldn't warn for anything (again, see video games/movies/music/podcasts). And there's no reason students with unusual triggers couldn't email their professors (or go through disability services) on a case by case basis.