My Thoughts on Trigger Warnings

TW: I'm going to be discussing trigger warnings.

And, since I did a TW at all, this article includes language hinting towards eating disorders, trans* people, gay people, people with depression and anxiety disorders.

And millipede phobias.

Everybody has triggers. If you're a good person, then you generally want to do the best you can to not upset or, to use the word on everybody's lips, trigger anyone. My ten year old sister has triggers; if you showed her a photo of a millipede she would freak out, scream, maybe even cry. That doesn't mean that people would put “TW: Millipede” before photos of said insect on nature websites.

Now, this is not to say for one moment that the fear of millipedes is the same as fear of gaining weight, or the fear/discomfort experienced due to one's body, or sexuality, or low mood. Not at all. I am not an idiot, or at least I like to think that I'm not.

I am going to stop going around the houses now and get to the point.

In the past week, within the trans* community, there has been a massive debate surrounding trigger warnings, especially on YouTube videos. If you know what I am talking about, then you don't need to know the exacts, and if you don't know what I am talking about, then you don't need to. Not a fan of name dropping, to be quite honest with you. Basically someone said something that a lot of people didn't like and everything kicked off.

As a YouTuber, I know how hard it can be to say something you don't mean in a video, especially when you are making a video every single week. No body is perfect. And nobody thinks about every single word they say. Mistakes have to be made, they just do.

Inviting discussion is fine; correcting someone on their hurtful language is fine; comments voicing one's opinion are also fine. In fact, I promote all of that. What is not fine, however, is when discussion leads to hate, which leads to the invalidating of people's identities.

Can I just say right now that to say that someone is not one gender or the other or any kind of gender is really disrespectful. Policing people's identities is wrong. Stop it. Who are you?

To be honest, the fact that trigger warnings are being used on YouTube is a completely new territory to me. I've been posting videos for the past four years, on different channels (a few of them have actually had quite a large audience), and never once have I ever used trigger warnings. And never once have I had any complaints about language I have used.

Is this because I get terminology correct one hundred per cent of the time? Of course it doesn't. So what has changed?

A few years ago, if someone said something on YouTube that made me feel uncomfortable, then I closed the video and tried my best to get over it. Just like real life, you have to deal with it. I don't think that people have become more sensitive than they were when I was 14, but I do think that ideas of what is PC and what is not have expanded increasingly. People are more willing to question and argue than they were before. Is that because the audience has aged? Or is it just a “thing” in general?

Back to trigger warnings. Sorry, went off on a slight tangent.

The truth is, life does not have triggers. If someone is going to be rude to you, they're going to be rude to you. They aren't going to have a t-shirt on saying “TW: I am homophobic, transphobic, will talk about your weight and discuss self harm. I also have photos of millipedes on the back of this shirt.” This simply doesn't happen.

As said by my good friend, Hannah “you can't escape life”.

Now, this is not to say that trigger warnings are completely irrelevant. I can see why people would want them there. I know people who are very easily triggered and to watch some videos, read some articles, would send them into masses of anxiety, panic, or low mood. So for some people, they are a godsend.

And when videos have such a large viewership, and no one can know exactly who is watching what, it does make sense to have the trigger warnings there.

But can you say that everyone takes trigger warnings seriously? Sometimes, if I see a trigger warning at the beginning of a YouTube video for “discusses body parts”, I think “nah, it'll be OK. I can handle it.” and do you know what? I watch the bloody thing! And do you know what else happens? I can't handle it!

Does that mean I can blame the people who said/wrote such things? No it does not. So, for trigger warnings to have any effect, they would have to say exactly what they were discussing. And do you know what that could do? Trigger people.

Soon we'll need trigger warnings for our trigger warnings.

I, for one, want this post to invite discussion so please do not hasten to talk to me about it.

Love,

Benjamin x

P.S. Although this post did allude to the drama of the past week, I do not mean it specifically to it. I think this can apply to everything where trigger warnings are used. In the case I am discussing, however, I do not agree that the language used in the video was correct. At all. And I do back the questioning that they received. However, I just think that the backlash was OTT, offensive and ultimately, quite ridiculous. Just a disclaimer. If you want to talk to me ABOUT that video/scenario/thing, then that's fine too. Peace out.