Trigger Warnings Essay

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Recommended: Health literacy and mental health theory

Mental Health or Education?
Trigger warnings are becoming a widely used method to prevent offending or upsetting people. Trigger warnings are used to alert people of content that might set off a strong emotional reaction. The people who usually experience these experiences are people who suffer from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or anxiety. There are many more, but these two are the ones I will be focusing on. As a survivor of my own traumas, and an anxiety disorder so bad that my hair fell out, I want trigger warnings to be in the college environment.
Friedersdorf is a neutral party in the argument of trigger warnings. He is not against it, but he does have his doubts when it comes to being for trigger warnings. After explaining to …show more content…

Friedersdorf quotes a college activist student from Rutgers saying “‘ should students about to read The Great Gatsby be forewarned about ‘a variety of scenes that reference gory, abusive and misogynistic violence[?]” Of course a students should be warned. Teachers might have survivors of domestic violence in their class and they could spark unwanted thoughts. If spoiling the ending of a story is such a terrible situation, the prologue of Shakespeare 's Romeo and Juliet should be removed from the book. Titles themselves have spoilers in them. Titanic will obviously have a sinking ship and drowning people. Colliers book My Brother Sam is Dead, should have to change its title. For people reading the bible, everyone knows that Jesus dies. Most people have never read the story of Moby Dick, and could tell you who Moby Dick is. The Diary of Anne Frank? I have never read it, but I know the story. If spoilers are the biggest concern, then people talking about books should stop and titles should be far more …show more content…

INSERT SOME SORT OF ARGUMENT HERE
Friedersdorf asks “How to study slavery or the Rwandan genocide, or the Communist purges, or the Holocaust, or the Crucifixion, or the prose of Toni Morrison or James Joyce, or the speeches of MLK...without risking trauma?” He is saying that learning about these things could traumatize us. College students are eighteen to twenty two years old. How many of us lived through any of these events? Not a single one. Could learning about these things leave unpleasant images in our minds for a short amount of time? Of course. But we will never be traumatized by learning about such horrible events. The subcommittee says “a trigger warning might lead a student to not read an assignment or elicit a response from students they otherwise would not have had, focusing them on one aspect of the text and thus precluding other reactions.” They say that triggers are an excuse for students not to read a book, and that if they did they would be focusing only on the warning, and not what the book is really about. On the other hand, Friedersdorf quotes a UC Santa Barbara professor “any student can request some sort of accommodation.” A student can go to their teacher after class, tell them of their situation, and get a different assignment. A physical education teacher cannot force a person with a broken leg to run

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