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seanan_mcguireA few months ago now, I made a trip to my local Half-Price Books and found one of my favorite re-reads in a shiny new paperback. Oh, the joy of finding an out-of-print book for a reasonable cost! Oh, the glee of having a fresh copy for the loaner shelf! (I passionately adore a bunch of 1980s science fiction that isn't widely available, and often thrust it on people.) I snapped it up.
When I got home, I commented on Twitter that I'd found the book, and @-checked the author, who I thought might be pleased by my delight. It's nice when someone reads something I realized a while ago, and my clock only goes back 2009 (unless you have some of the ElfQuest 'zines I did in high school). The author, someone I have adored since middle school, responded.
"Trigger warning: dangerous ideas."
I sat there for a little while, stunned.
I am simultaneously very sensitive and very thick-skinned. Most of the people I know are. There are things that lance right past my armor and knock me on my ass, and then there are things that I can take for a long time. In the third category are the things I just need to be warned about, so I can choose whether I'm in the mood to deal with them. But here's the thing:
Most stories come with their own trigger warnings. They just aren't called out blatantly as such.
When I pick up a Jack Ketchum book, there will be language on the back about "horrible things" and "terrible crimes" and other coded comments that don't come right out and say "this book has rape in it," but which absolutely say that to someone who has been reading in the genre for a little while. And when I was getting started in the horror genre, I was largely operating on recommendations from friends and librarians--people who would say, when they handed me something, "this may be disturbing." They called out the things that might make the book difficult to read.
Movies are rated. PG, PG-13, R. I've seen a screenshot of a Facebook post going around recently, with a mother saying they had to leave Deadpool with their nine year old, and "why don't we have a labeling system?" Well, we do. It's called "this movie had an R rating." But R-rated movies get edited for television, and we don't think about that when we ask ourselves whether Little Bee enjoyed that film. "Oh, they've seen _________, and it was rated R, so they're ready for Deadpool." Movies get rated R for different reasons. Maybe it's language, maybe it's sex, maybe it's violence. When I was a kid, I tended to just tune out sex: you could take me to a lot of movies rated R for sexy innuendo and mild nudity, and I'd just be bored. But violence could still scare me.
(Note that this is "rated R," not "rated XXX." The fact that I saw a lot of boobies as a kid does not mean I was ready for a bunch of actual porn.)
Video games are rated. T for Teen, M for Mature. Yet everyone I know who works at a video game store has had the angry parent demanding to know why their kids have violent video games. Be...cause...someone didn't want to look at the ratings? Which are also, in some ways, the trigger warnings? Look at what's listed after a rating: those are the triggers. Maybe they're not intended for the person actually consuming the media, but once they're there, they're for everybody. I know people who only play T games, because they got tired of the casual misogyny and violence of M games. Why is that bad?
In the case of books, you're less likely to have a direct rating or label (although Angry Robot does a decent job). At the same time, if the back cover text is halfway decent, you should know what you're getting into. And yes, I am angry when a book promises me one thing and gives me something else. It's not a fun surprise, especially when the "something else" is a nice big bucket of rape and murder.
People who say they want trigger warnings are not necessarily asking to be coddled. They're asking for warning. They're asking for the courtesy that good fanfic writers afford to their readers. They're asking to be allowed to relax into the story. But saying "trigger warning: dangerous ideas" doesn't help anyone. My not wanting to read romanticized, eroticized rape in the middle of my zombie fiction doesn't mean I don't want to read exciting, complex, interesting books; saying that your book is just as triggering as something about child abuse or rape or graphic animal death does a disservice to both your work and your readers.
It can go too far: anything can go too far. I met a reader who told me that they refuse to read any books which include descriptions of food that they are allergic to, and that there should be food trigger warnings (I'm still not sure whether they were trolling me, but they seemed serious). If my book is called Spider Attack, I shouldn't need to warn people about the spiders. But common sense still gets to come to the party.
I have rarely felt so dismissed or talked down to by an author I admired, especially since I had not said or done anything to indicate that I was seeking a trigger warning; I had actually referenced reading the book before. It was a failure of kindness.
We have got to be kinder.
When I got home, I commented on Twitter that I'd found the book, and @-checked the author, who I thought might be pleased by my delight. It's nice when someone reads something I realized a while ago, and my clock only goes back 2009 (unless you have some of the ElfQuest 'zines I did in high school). The author, someone I have adored since middle school, responded.
"Trigger warning: dangerous ideas."
I sat there for a little while, stunned.
I am simultaneously very sensitive and very thick-skinned. Most of the people I know are. There are things that lance right past my armor and knock me on my ass, and then there are things that I can take for a long time. In the third category are the things I just need to be warned about, so I can choose whether I'm in the mood to deal with them. But here's the thing:
Most stories come with their own trigger warnings. They just aren't called out blatantly as such.
When I pick up a Jack Ketchum book, there will be language on the back about "horrible things" and "terrible crimes" and other coded comments that don't come right out and say "this book has rape in it," but which absolutely say that to someone who has been reading in the genre for a little while. And when I was getting started in the horror genre, I was largely operating on recommendations from friends and librarians--people who would say, when they handed me something, "this may be disturbing." They called out the things that might make the book difficult to read.
Movies are rated. PG, PG-13, R. I've seen a screenshot of a Facebook post going around recently, with a mother saying they had to leave Deadpool with their nine year old, and "why don't we have a labeling system?" Well, we do. It's called "this movie had an R rating." But R-rated movies get edited for television, and we don't think about that when we ask ourselves whether Little Bee enjoyed that film. "Oh, they've seen _________, and it was rated R, so they're ready for Deadpool." Movies get rated R for different reasons. Maybe it's language, maybe it's sex, maybe it's violence. When I was a kid, I tended to just tune out sex: you could take me to a lot of movies rated R for sexy innuendo and mild nudity, and I'd just be bored. But violence could still scare me.
(Note that this is "rated R," not "rated XXX." The fact that I saw a lot of boobies as a kid does not mean I was ready for a bunch of actual porn.)
Video games are rated. T for Teen, M for Mature. Yet everyone I know who works at a video game store has had the angry parent demanding to know why their kids have violent video games. Be...cause...someone didn't want to look at the ratings? Which are also, in some ways, the trigger warnings? Look at what's listed after a rating: those are the triggers. Maybe they're not intended for the person actually consuming the media, but once they're there, they're for everybody. I know people who only play T games, because they got tired of the casual misogyny and violence of M games. Why is that bad?
In the case of books, you're less likely to have a direct rating or label (although Angry Robot does a decent job). At the same time, if the back cover text is halfway decent, you should know what you're getting into. And yes, I am angry when a book promises me one thing and gives me something else. It's not a fun surprise, especially when the "something else" is a nice big bucket of rape and murder.
People who say they want trigger warnings are not necessarily asking to be coddled. They're asking for warning. They're asking for the courtesy that good fanfic writers afford to their readers. They're asking to be allowed to relax into the story. But saying "trigger warning: dangerous ideas" doesn't help anyone. My not wanting to read romanticized, eroticized rape in the middle of my zombie fiction doesn't mean I don't want to read exciting, complex, interesting books; saying that your book is just as triggering as something about child abuse or rape or graphic animal death does a disservice to both your work and your readers.
It can go too far: anything can go too far. I met a reader who told me that they refuse to read any books which include descriptions of food that they are allergic to, and that there should be food trigger warnings (I'm still not sure whether they were trolling me, but they seemed serious). If my book is called Spider Attack, I shouldn't need to warn people about the spiders. But common sense still gets to come to the party.
I have rarely felt so dismissed or talked down to by an author I admired, especially since I had not said or done anything to indicate that I was seeking a trigger warning; I had actually referenced reading the book before. It was a failure of kindness.
We have got to be kinder.
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Date: 2016-02-19 11:15 pm (UTC)Whether or not I'm "up" for a story that includes a particular topic depends on a lot of factors. Sometimes I can actually handle when the dog dies, because it's been the kind of day that an emotional cry isn't going to ruin or make worse. Other days, the dog dying can mess me up for the better part of a week. Sleepless nights, days where I have to endlessly tell myself to focus on other things. I'm asking for the information to make that call for myself.
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Date: 2016-02-20 01:04 am (UTC)Yes, people should be kinder.
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Date: 2016-02-19 11:18 pm (UTC)I'd ask you who it was but you'd be too classy to tell me so we'll take that as read. It is a pity this happened. It's always rough when people you admired as a kid turn out to have feet of clay.
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Date: 2016-02-20 02:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2016-02-20 01:42 am (UTC)In my extended family/friends group and my job, I have dealt with the aftermath of assault, rape, incest, domestic violence, suicide (attempted and completed), and child abuse which ended in the child's death. I am not fucking fragile. What I am is mindful of my own good mental health, and on a planet with 150 million+ books and climbing the field's got to be narrowed somehow.
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Date: 2016-02-20 01:53 am (UTC)Readers tend to read fiction for pleasure. Readers being blindsided by this shit will have an unpleasant experience. Therefore, book has failed at its primary purpose.
Not everything can be warned for, or should be*, but the big ones can be without spoiling anything. Knowing a book has x in it, doesn't give any details about when, how, or to who x happens.
*I'd love a "Warning: 9/11 reference or reminiscent imagery", but I'm a realist. (Fortunately, not a true trigger for me. Just something that makes me really unhappy to stumble across.)
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Date: 2016-02-20 11:31 am (UTC)What I really hate is the Surprise Rape Scene. I was once reading several books at once and kept putting one down to start another because they all had it. Five different books, all had rape or attempted rape scenes, and I managed to read them all within like a week. Ugh.
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Date: 2016-02-20 02:20 am (UTC)Some days I can handle just about everything. Some days I need to curl up with my Kindle and read the literary equivalent of comfort food (like how I binged on Newsflesh and Parasitology during the recent 'my body is falling to pieces and I am dangerously ill' episode I'm still crawling out of). Some days I need to save spoons and stick to the safe areas. Sometimes stuff that would normally trigger me is ok in small doses and in the right headspace (case in point: Jessica Jones. If I am having a full spoons day I can watch it, when normally how similar Kilgrave is to my biological father would trigger me. But had I watched it not having been warned, I would've wound up in a very bad headspace and very triggered) But the important thing is knowing about things ahead of time and mutual consent to experience it. Because to me, it is a consent issue. And mocking people who need warnings so they can explicitly consent to experiencing certain things.....that's not being the kind of person Mr. Rogers knows you can be.
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Date: 2016-02-20 03:15 am (UTC)Well said!
Date: 2016-02-20 04:27 am (UTC)I personally get triggered by the minions and Miss Hattie in Despicable Me yet am usually fine with Game of Thrones, Dateline (and other true crime), and Criminal Minds (though it depends on the dynamic among the criminals). I don't expect folks to include trigger warnings for my particular issues, but I sure watch blurbs for hints of what'll trigger me. Sometimes I can handle some of it, but sometimes, I can't. Especially when I'm in the middle of getting harassed again.
That consideration of giving others a heads-up is certainly part of what I try to keep in mind when recommending titles to others or while writing the blurbs for my own writing.
I understand the urge to joke about the extremes, because they are ridiculous, but there are too many folks who use those jokes (and the extremes) as excuses to exert control over others, be it by ridiculing their presumed reasons for requesting trigger reasons or by demanding trigger warnings (especially unreasonable ones). …And my saying that outright probably just made clear where some of my own triggers come from. [wry smile]
RE: Well said!
Date: 2016-02-21 08:34 am (UTC)Dolores Umbridge in GoF did it for me. I don't think any TW would've prevented that because I didn't know it would even be a trigger until I hit it; I hadn't realised how angry I still was about some of my school experiences.
RE: Well said!
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Date: 2016-02-20 05:32 am (UTC)I'm not so far gone that I will refuse to read anything involving mushrooms, to which I am allergic, though I'd never buy a "Mushrooms Every Day" cookbook. Some warnings are appropriate, since I'd =never= read about called Spiders Attack, and would be grateful for the warning. I agree with several other commenters, in that my ability to handle things varies, though I can't ever deal with cats being treated horribly. I had to stop playing a MUD I really liked because their idea of a good 'spooky leadup' to Halloween was to leave the corpses of stray cats my character had been feeding lying around the main town, then acting very dismissive and really almost contemptuous when I objected.
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Date: 2016-02-20 07:27 am (UTC)Learn more about LiveJournal Ratings in FAQ (https://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqid=303).
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Date: 2016-02-20 01:23 pm (UTC)i think that there are warning labels/trigger warnings for books, they're called an intelligent back blurb. surprise rapes still happen by some authors, then i know that i don't want to support that author again.
some authors, i know that i can read without fear of rape scenes, they made their female figures strong WITHOUT that.
i'm all for kindness. we DO need more of that.
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Date: 2016-02-20 10:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-22 12:04 am (UTC)(Look! I managed to discuss the fantasy romance "genre" without using any of the words or phrases I would prefer to employ! Go me!)
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Date: 2016-02-21 02:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-21 08:15 am (UTC)But death is something that people can be legitimately triggered by, so ... I don't know if there's a right answer to this one.
As far as people taking TWs too far, I remember someone asking for a TW for music because she was deaf and it was triggering to read people talking about something she couldn't experience, and another asking for a TW for kittens because of something traumatic in childhood involving a kitten. I honestly have no idea how these people navigate the internet. I have some odd triggers myself, such as biopsies (and especially cervical biopsies, because I have PTSD due to how a doctor treated me during one), but I don't expect people to TW for biopsies. I'm of the opinion that asking or demanding TWs for unusual things can get ridiculous fast, and that lessens the impact and importance of TWs.
Because I do believe that TWs and CWs are important and needed. There are some things that I don't want to be surprised by, like rape. I'm still pissed at my ex who recommended a trilogy published in the last five years and said I'd love it. I am very glad I decided to read reviews first, because the main character is a rapist and murderer who apparently has no remorse. It's grimdark to an extreme degree. It's something that would have been highly triggering for me to read, and I am more than a little disturbed that my ex loved the books. Since I don't personally mind spoilers (the opposite, actually; I took my girlfriend of the time that we were seeing Frozen today after reading a review that spoiled the ending), I seek out reviews that do spoil, because that's about the only way I'll know whether something that sounds good will actually be triggering. There are authors I trust (you're one of them) that I don't seek out spoiler reviews for, but the majority of the time, I read spoilerific reviews first, even if it does mean that I see the twists coming instead of being surprised by them. Honestly, I'd love TW/CWs in books, so I could read more books and enjoy the twists, but my mental health comes first -- and speaking as a multiple rape survivor, I really don't want to be taken by surprise by gratuitous rape, of which there is far too much of in fiction. Sigh.
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Date: 2016-02-21 12:32 pm (UTC)Warnings for rape, or attempted rape, violent attacks of any kind, including on one's self - yes, definitely. I've once warned for a story simply being "bleak" and judging by the reviews, was right to do so.
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Date: 2016-02-21 09:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-22 01:35 am (UTC)Also, as a tangent, your note at the end about kindness towards your readers and people in general is very important, I think. Honestly, as much as we love your books, it is the myriad ways you've shown yourself to be a kind individual that is what keeps Sarah, Joshua, and I coming to as many of your events as we can arrange. Especially the various ways you show kindness to Joshua and the other kids who turn up. While periodically boggled by it, we are quite pleased that our child considers you an important figure in her life. You model how to be a genuinely kind human being very well, at least when we're around you, and that is one of the things I consider most important for Joshua to learn.
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Date: 2016-02-22 06:27 am (UTC)“Trigger warning: dangerous ideas” is the 2010s version of that.
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Date: 2016-02-22 12:39 pm (UTC)Some folks can say that kind of thing tongue in cheek and mean it as nothing more than a joke. Others… Well, they use it as an excuse for why others either disagree with or don't understand them, rather than taking responsibility for their own poor approach, arguments, or explanations. And the sort of folks who need trigger warnings probably have experience with the latter, which makes the former not work out well.
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Date: 2016-02-23 07:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-26 02:39 am (UTC)So have a book ingredients list in small print on the back cover or inside back page... those who want to look can. Others can skip it. Certain subjects that are common triggers would fall into "must list" categories: rape, molestation, abuse, torture, imprisonment, war imagery, etc. Then the author/publisher could list additional possible triggers to their own discretion.
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Date: 2016-03-16 11:32 am (UTC)gen info
Date: 2016-06-10 02:35 am (UTC)