people are stupid.

today i am going to talk about trigger warnings and why to a certain degree i view them with some annoyance. we live in a society which has the internet as a tool for all of our daily needs, whether it be social contact or research or just spouting opinions at random.

my problem with trigger warnings is the extent to which people take them. i'm not against the concept of trigger warnings. i am against the idea that every moment, every space on the internet or in real life has be to 'a safe space'.

in a recent article i was reading, this was the main point of this story:

During the week spent on Ovid’s “Metamorphoses,” the class was instructed to read the myths of Persephone and Daphne, both of which include vivid depictions of rape and sexual assault. As a survivor of sexual assault, the student described being triggered while reading such detailed accounts of rape throughout the work. However, the student said her professor focused on the beauty of the language and the splendor of the imagery when lecturing on the text. As a result, the student completely disengaged from the class discussion as a means of self-preservation. She did not feel safe in the class. 
safe is the key word here. there’s the suggestion that a work may be a masterpiece, but heck if it makes anyone feel bad, it’s automatically out. and that notion is ridiculous. art in itself is meant to challenge. to be confronting. be make you think, to make you uncomfortable. if we constantly demand that the world exists purely in a 'safe' state, then history would never progress. the world will never change because anything challenging would never have occurred, like feminism.
there is a fixation with the idea of personal safety, by which apparently means not having any uncomfortable or unhappy thoughts and feelings? because unfortunately, that is impossible. the fact that you live in this world with 7 billion other people means that life gives you potentials for freedom, creativity, achievement, love, all sorts of beautiful things. with freedom comes lack of safety. people will say and do things that are wrong, stupid, unkind, meant to insult and injure. this means that subjects that will make you uncomfortable, will make you cry, will inevitably rear its head.

you CANNOT expect every single person out there to cater to your needs. because it's not going to happen. for example: the recent game of thrones episode triggered me. i was furious, upset and spent the better part of an hour crying and trying to keep myself in control. but the main reason why this was triggering was the absolute butchering of a character plot for the sake of shock value and oh hey look RAPE. however, it made me realise that despite how horrible i felt going through it, i ended up just feeling angry because it was shitty writing. the trigger moment itself however, was something i had to overcome. i could not let this cripple for the rest of my life, and skirt around it by blacklisting anything to do with 'rape'.

because in the end, it doesn't help. it is a means to shelter me from every being exposed to something that will remind of the event, but the problem will still remain at the end of the day. it is not a solution to the problem, which is what tumblr thinks it is.

i am not merely talking in a vacuum. i was sexually assaulted in high school, and to this day i still get moments of flashbacks and need a few minutes to get my emotions under control. neck kissing would be a trigger. the sight of a pale mess of blonde hair on a man on a train makes me hyperventilate and brings me to tears at some points. every time someone says the name, i have to stop, remind myself to not react, to not lose control.

can i possibly ask the guy on the train to cut his hair shorter and dye it another shade? of course not. can i ask every man that i come across whose name is the same as the one who hurt me to change it? that's ridiculous. i LIKE neck kissing but i don't want to have to stop for the sake of it reminding me of something bad.

and that's where my problem stems with trigger warnings. i absolutely cannot expect people to tag all of the things that hurt me. if that was the case, then i’d have to sequester myself in a dim quiet padded room for the rest of my life to avoid it all, because otherwise i'd never set foot on a bridge ever again because it 'triggers' my fear of heights.

tumblr as a place has become a joke to me. subjects which should be taken seriously, like trigger warnings and feminism, have been reduced and trivialized to the point where i actively avoid reading or seeing anything about it because it will actually annoy me. this knee jerk reaction is not because i hate feminism or the concept of trigger warnings - it is because of how the internet trivializes them to the point where i'd simply roll my eyes and move past it.

trigger warnings are great for certain things, no doubt. i for one, do not need to see gore of any sort, and i doubt most people do either. it's about finding a balance between tagging trigger warnings, and realising that your trigger might be something that needs therapy, rather than block posts online.

consider this: homosexuality might be triggering to some people, especially devout christians and people raised in such families. i for one, would not condone tagging it for the sake of these people feeling 'safe'. when you realise how ridiculous trigger warnings have become, seeing tags like 'tw: milk, and 'tw: hands', it makes me think 'you should probably seek professional help' and 'dear god do you even leave the house???'

it just furthers a culture of over-sensitivity and a fear of confronting actual problems. tagging is all well and good, but if someone tells me i need to tag 'cis people' then they can just gtfo.