Trigger Warnings on books?

lizmonster said:

IIRC that documentary correctly, it's actually hard to get a list of who is on the MPAA board. It may be different in the UK. Which is where I feel obligated to point out that if we're talking about forcing content warnings onto books, the US market is huge, and it's our reaction that's going to drive how this goes.

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It's kind of odd that this is becoming a thing now, at a time when a smaller and smaller percentage of the adult population reads for pleasure at all, and more kids give up reading for fun once they are old enough to get phones and (middle class and above, at least) be signed up for the endless progression of time-consuming activities they need to someday be "competitive" for college admissions.

It's interesting, actually, that no one argued for content warnings on novels back in the 80s when the whole issue was being debated regarding music, or even before that, when movie rating systems were first adopted. When I was a kid, no one stopped me from purchasing or checking out books from the adult racks (including bodice rippers and other books with sex and violence graphically portrayed), and even books for kids or teens often had content that could be labeled "mature."

People who could be triggered by certain kinds of content must have existed back then too.

What's different now?

Roxxsmom said:

It's interesting, actually, that no one argued for content warnings on novels back in the 80s when the whole issue was being debated regarding music, or even before that, when movie rating systems were first adopted. When I was a kid, no one stopped me from purchasing or checking out books from the adult racks (including bodice rippers and other books with sex and violence graphically portrayed), and even books for kids or teens often had content that could be labeled "mature."

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I think you're conflating two ideas here: actual censorship (like not allowing libraries to loan certain types of books), and industry labelling. Industry labelling has affected availability, which has affected artistic content. It's not government making certain kinds of speech illegal, but it does affect the sort of speech that's made available to the public.

Roxxsmom said:

People who could be triggered by certain kinds of content must have existed back then too.

What's different now?

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TBH I hadn't heard this argument made anywhere until I read about it here. If it's a widespread proposal, I haven't seen it covered much.

cornflake said:

Ok, who are they?

I mean I don't think they're elected, nor do I think they're a body of psychological professionals, who would have SOME idea how media of different types might impact younger people. They're movie people, random executives, etc. I might be wrong, but as far as I know, they are, yes, unqualified, random people.

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http://www.bbfc.co.uk/about-bbfc/who-we-are

The current board of classification includes media professionals, yes, but also Kamlesh Patel:

a qualified social worker and […] Chair of Social Work England, the regulator for all child, family and adult social workers. He […] was previously Chair of the Mental Health Act Commission.

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The BBFC certainly isn't perfect, but from what you're telling me about the MPAA, it is quite a different beast. [/derail]


I don't think movie ratings are actually that good a comparison, because they originate from a single point of access system (the cinema). Labelling applies to home media, sure, but since the demise of video rental stores, it's increasingly difficult to police. It doesn't seem right to take cues from a classification system built decades ago for a different industry, with different distribution models, and to apply them to the present-day book industry and present-day distribution models.

onesecondglance said:

I can definitely understand the concern over chilling effects. The recent debacles over YouTube marking LGBT+ content as "mature" (and thus not able to be monetised) is just one of many recent examples where attempts at rating content have restricted market access.

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According to the BBFC, it's illegal in the UK to discriminate between straight and gay content, i.e. give gay sex a higher rating than straight sex of the same intensity. Their rating depends on the intensity (e.g. more graphic detail). Whether the people in the scene are the same gender or not doesn't change the rating. https://www.bbfc.co.uk/case-studies/brokeback-mountain (see the paragraph near the end)

Has anyone challenged you tube over this? Their services are available within the UK, so they're breaking the law.

lizmonster said:

TBH I hadn't heard this argument made anywhere until I read about it here. If it's a widespread proposal, I haven't seen it covered much.

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I remember a virtually identical debate within fandom when Archive of Our Own was being established, focused on whether or not to require trigger warnings on fanfic. All the same arguments were made on both sides then. The outcome there was to require high-level content warnings, but to include "Chooses not to use warnings" as one of the options (along with "Warnings do not apply"), and to add an option for the author to also add free-form warnings if they chose. I've been largely outside the circle of fanfic fandom in recent years so I don't know how effective this system has been at satisfying all the constituencies, but it's been in place for about 10 years now. There are probably interesting insights to gather from their experience.

Wow. This thread certainly went long.

I noticed some nice humour within the pages. Hmmm?

This is actually not a very new debate. As I hang out a lot in YA Twitterverse, I see the topic kind of cycle through every few months. And the takes and opinions are fierce in both directions.

I love the argument that often pops up about SNOWFLAKES and BUTTERCUPS. To those people, I usually just say FUCK THE FUCK off.

I do think it wouldn't hurt to include triggers for certain topics. It's quite difficult to be reading along without realizing something is about to hit you that you may not be ready for. From a personal point of view, the trigger that most deeply effects me is sexual violence or rape or sexual abuse of any kind. No, I am not a snowflake or a buttercup. Quite often I'm rather strong and courageous. BUT---when I'm having a bad spell, reading about these things can help my downward spiral. I'd like to be able to pick and choose when I enter into these topics in my fiction reading life. If I'm already cycling down and having difficulty---a trigger warning would help me to avoid a certain book that might be my undoing. If I'm feeling strong and mighty and capable of dealing with the storm...then it would be my decision to read it if the trigger warning prepares me.

I will always see trigger warnings as helpful decision making tags that help me decide whether or not I'm up for a certain book. People who freak out over them are, in my opinion, exercising their privilege. Not all of us have the privilege of not having dark experiences in our past. I was violently sexually abused as an 11 year-old by a neighbourhood pedophile. I will not back away from YA books that cover topics that may cause me emotional pain...but I will put them aside if I'm having a weak day and the trigger warning on the book lets me know I'm not ready for it.

aspirit said:

When a trigger can impact your functioning for a day or more, possibly causing health relapse that needs medical attention, you learn to scroll for keywords in reviews and for common themes in an unfamilar author's website. Eventually.

The guides on Tumblr contained content tags for quicker selections, for avoiding and finding works that weren't discussed openly on review sites. Content warnings in most places are tags. We all know tags are useful for matching books to interested readers. (Don't we?)

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This times infinity. I hear you.

Cobalt Jade said:

What I don't understand about triggers and triggering as they relate to book content is that the act of reading is not a transitory, sudden phenomena. It's a participatory one requiring coordination of the physical body that holds the reading material in the view of the eyes, the eyes themselves, and the brain. It's not like watching a movie and suddenly seeing the leering face of a rapist, or walking through the park and hearing a firecracker go off suddenly. The reader can sense through the path of the reading material what is coming. The reader can put the book down, throw it, close their eyes, or just stop reading at the word rape or the word gunshots. They can put the book down as the main character walks through a dark alley at night under menacing conditions. As soon as anything untoward occurs, they can put the book down. The book doesn't force you to read it. It doesn't keep you momentarily trapped as a dark movie theater can do. You don't have to read it out of politeness, as you must listen to a family member tell you something difficult. It doesn't have that power.

I also think the words trigger and triggering have been tossed around so much they've been diluted of their original intent, so it's hard to know anymore what they are even referring to. In relation to reading material only, a full, AMA-style definition might help.

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I highlighted the direct part in your post here that I am addressing. Quite often at the word RAPE it's already too late. I was triggered yesterday just because my husband was scrolling through the TV schedule and I happened to see the word M*A*S*H. It ruined the rest of my evening. I know there was no way to prevent that one...there's often landmines we have to navigate through blindly. Books are an easy one to avoid...if they contain a warning. You can't just throw a book away once you come up on the scene that's going to trigger you...the damage is already done. This is what I meant in my previous post about privilege.

KTC said:

People who freak out over them are, in my opinion, exercising their privilege.

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I have no objection to voluntary trigger warnings provided by the author.

In the US, industry-adopted trigger warnings have always turned into a weird kind of capitalistic cultural censorship, where what gets decent distribution is what's considered to be the least politically offensive. In this political climate? There's no way I'd advocate chancing it for books. It would absolutely turn into de facto censorship, and not in ways that most of us would like.

And to be clear here: you know nothing of my past trauma, or my triggers, of which there are many. But I write in part to work through what life has thrown at me, and I'll be damned if I'll be quiet and watch publishing turn into a place where I have to choose between honesty and visibility. That fear, as it happens, is indeed an expression of my privilege, because people who write erotica and people who write about LGBT issues are often already facing that choice.

I'm flabbergasted that people are blithely assuming industry-adopted standards will actually be helpful here, especially in the US where this has never been the case.

KTC said:

I do think it wouldn't hurt to include triggers for certain topics.

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Third time I've asked this: Like what? Let's make a list.

benbenberi said:

I remember a virtually identical debate within fandom when Archive of Our Own was being established, focused on whether or not to require trigger warnings on fanfic. All the same arguments were made on both sides then. The outcome there was to require high-level content warnings, but to include "Chooses not to use warnings" as one of the options (along with "Warnings do not apply"), and to add an option for the author to also add free-form warnings if they chose. I've been largely outside the circle of fanfic fandom in recent years so I don't know how effective this system has been at satisfying all the constituencies, but it's been in place for about 10 years now. There are probably interesting insights to gather from their experience.

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This is the sort of author-driven filtering I very much support, and I think they came to a decent compromise. But it's a fundamentally different system than a large-scale commercial industry supporting labelling, which is (I think) what some people are advocating.

lizmonster said:

Third time I've asked this: Like what? Let's make a list.

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• Sexual Assault
• Abuse
• Child abuse/pedophilia/incest
• Animal cruelty or animal death
• Self-harm and suicide
• Eating disorders, body hatred, and fat phobia
• Violence

lizmonster said:

I'll be damned if I'll be quiet and watch publishing turn into a place where I have to choose between honesty and visibility.

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Not quite sure what you mean here? Trigger warnings aren't censorship...or am I way off base with your meaning?

KTC said:

Not quite sure what you mean here? Trigger warnings aren't censorship...or am I way off base with your meaning?

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If the industry starts instituting trigger warnings as a matter of course, they will absolutely be used to limit distribution and availability of materials. It's happened with film and music; it's happened with books in the past that were "known" to be subversive.

KTC said:

• Sexual Assault
• Abuse
• Child abuse/pedophilia/incest
• Animal cruelty or animal death
• Self-harm and suicide
• Eating disorders, body hatred, and fat phobia
• Violence

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I was going to LBL this list, but instead I will say that if we're talking about industry-mandated warnings, there need to be very hard, very specific definitions of every one of these terms, and the conditions under which a text will be tagged. It's obvious to you what you mean, but it's not going to be obvious to someone reading a MS with a checklist at hand. And you need to be specific about whether you'd tag a MS that mentioned one of these things in passing vs. having it happen on the page vs. being part of a character's backstory vs. being part of something a character is reading vs....you get my point.

I'm sure you think I'm being absurdly nit-picky here. But industries default to lazy about this kind of thing, and they'll cheerfully optimize for what they think will lose them the fewest customers. If we're going to hand over the keys to what we are and aren't allowed to write, we have to be very, very careful.

If I may I think I understand what lizmonster is talking about. It's the handing over the responsibility of creating warnings to a group of people who become the official ones who determine what is and is not trigger worthy. She keeps referencing a documentary about the film rating system in the USA and for good reason. This doc shows how these choices often end up being based more in bigotry and sexism than actual attempts to help. So for example, seeing a woman naked gets you an R. Seeing a man fully naked: NC17. A man masturbating? PG13. A woman? R. Straight sex . . . PG. Gay sex . . . R/NC17.

The concern is that if we hand over the trigger warnings to an independent body such similar biases might affect the book and its distribution. Already now publishers warn about certain content if you want to sell to middle America, certain words you shouldn't use etc. And bookstore buyers have a ton of power too. If they don't like your cover, the publisher goes back and changes it. So we already know that content affects distribution. What happens if we now have these warnings and because of that bookstore owners, librarians, teachers etc then make decisions on what should or shouldn't be on their shelves? What happens if they decide they want books with no trigger warnings just to be safe? Etc etc and so forth.

This is not me arguing against trigger warnings, as someone with my own triggers, I definitely appreciate a heads up. DEFINITELY. But when we have these conversations we need to discuss where things could go hypothetically (and not so hypothetically). And it's an important conversation to have: WHO decides what is or isn't trigger worthy, WHAT is trigger worthy (is an LGBTQ relationship a trigger warning situation? I mean we have people out there who think teaching children about the existence of such relationships at all is inappropriate [insert major eye roll here]), and what will happen once triggers exist (will that lead to more awareness and more thoughtful reading? Or will it lead to certain groups using the triggers to aid in censoring what people can read?).

It's a very tough conversation to be sure. But one that definitely should be had.

lizmonster said:

If we're going to hand over the keys to what we are and aren't allowed to write, we have to be very, very careful.

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Maybe herein lies the real argument. Because I'm not handing over any keys and believe wholeheartedly that this WOULDN'T be handing over keys. I'll leave the thread now. I'm tired of censorship tail-chasing.

Toothpaste said:

This is not me arguing against trigger warnings, as someone with my own triggers, I definitely appreciate a heads up.

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I'm not arguing against trigger warnings either. I use them myself. But I do believe the only way to avoid inevitable abuse is to make them author- or reviewer/reader-driven. Among other things, you're going to get better granularity and more usefulness out of author/reader triggers.

onesecondglance said:

http://www.bbfc.co.uk/about-bbfc/who-we-are

The current board of classification includes media professionals, yes, but also Kamlesh Patel:


The BBFC certainly isn't perfect, but from what you're telling me about the MPAA, it is quite a different beast. [/derail]


I don't think movie ratings are actually that good a comparison, because they originate from a single point of access system (the cinema). Labelling applies to home media, sure, but since the demise of video rental stores, it's increasingly difficult to police. It doesn't seem right to take cues from a classification system built decades ago for a different industry, with different distribution models, and to apply them to the present-day book industry and present-day distribution models.

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Sorry, but that sounds exactly the same unqualified group of random old people as in the U.S., to me -- bankers? Accountants? Movie execs and... a social worker? No psychologists, psychiatrists, etc., or what looks like anyone who'd have any actual expertise relating to theoretical age-related guidelines.

KTC said:

Maybe herein lies the real argument. Because I'm not handing over any keys and believe wholeheartedly that this WOULDN'T be handing over keys. I'll leave the thread now. I'm tired of censorship tail-chasing.

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I know KTC has left this conversation, but I do want to say in general that at least my own comment was made in good faith having observed how other bodies have handled rating systems in the past, and also personal experience having been told where I need to be wary in my writing or else certain parts of the States won't sell my books, and also having had covers re-designed based on the request of book store buyers.

I think the best way to handle trigger warnings is precisely as lizmonster suggests, that the authors themselves are in charge of such a thing.

That being said, I don't think it's wrong to discuss the potential dangers involved KNOWING how crap the rating system has been with other forms of media. I don't think it's disingenuous, I don't think it's "censorship tail-chasing" or a straw argument. I think in this case it's based very much in reality and at least in my case from personal experience. I think trigger warnings are important and useful. I also have seen with my own eyes how rating systems can be corrupted under the guise of "protect the children". I think it's important to learn from the past in order to secure the most successful possible future outcome.

cornflake said:

Sorry, but that sounds exactly the same unqualified group of random old people as in the U.S., to me -- bankers? Accountants? Movie execs and... a social worker? No psychologists, psychiatrists, etc., or what looks like anyone who'd have any actual expertise relating to theoretical age-related guidelines.

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You've made your position clear: you don't believe that any kind of content ratings should exist, so no list of personnel or qualifications will ever be satisfactory.

Per my previous post, I don't think movie ratings are the right comparison, so I don't see any value in continuing this part of the discussion.

onesecondglance said:

You've made your position clear: you don't believe that any kind of content ratings should exist, so no list of personnel or qualifications will ever be satisfactory.

Per my previous post, I don't think movie ratings are the right comparison, so I don't see any value in continuing this part of the discussion.

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I don't care if people put warning on their own stuff, and wouldn't mind content warnings on things like movies at all IF they were assigned by either the creators or by people with any qualifications at all -- and if those ratings were not used to make choices for other people (as in the UK, or here where theatres keep people out based on ratings -- which they can, sort of, but no, I don't think they should).

So, no, I'm not entirely against ratings. I'm entirely against a body made up of unqualified people who are also not the creators of the actual work deciding on them, yes.

If the UK group were qualified people I'd still not like that the UK backs ratings with the force of law, but it'd at least make some vague form of sense. Letting Bob from accounting decide what someone's kids can see isn't on, imo, nope.

The President of the BBFC has legal accountability and powers and must face off to Parliament. You don't think that person should be trained in the law?
The accountant you mention is the Finance Director. You don't think a person in charge of the finances should be a trained accountant?
You keep mentioning "movie folks". You don't think that people who classify movies should be familiar with the medium - with decades of professional experience in that subject?


We are not the US. We have different cultural norms regarding expression of speech. That doesn't make the US right and the UK wrong. They're just different. Leave it alone.