If you need trigger warnings in order to learn, then the only warning anyone should hear is a warning against letting you in the classroom.
Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and Foundation for Individual Rights in Education President Greg Lukianoff recently wrote a tour de force of an article entitled, “The Coddling of the American Mind.” In response, Maddy Myers of The Mary Sue wrote an article so petulant it verges on self-parody. Worse yet, it is insulting to the readers’ intelligence, insofar as Myers apparently believes that an article coauthored by a decades-long veteran of studying psychology (Haidt) simply suffers from a failure to understand post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Among the more amusing bits of Myers’ non-response is an admission that she “[doesn’t] have evidence back up [her] claims of how these warnings work,” but does have “a lot of anecdotal stories from friends about how they have trouble predicting what will ‘set off’ their anxiety.” The crux of her argument (to the extent she can be flattered with such a term) seems to be this: more
This passes for scholarship?
Scholarshit, maybe.
Anxiety? What is it to be human? To be able to rise above your emotions. Grow. Mature.
Those people need to do a little growing. Their best therapy is a lot of exposure to things that cause them to need to rise above it all and get on with their lives. That’s all part of the human condition.
I tried reading the comments at The Mary Sue.
Now my brain is trying to crawl out of my head.
Good grief. What develops one’s character more than adversity?
So they want to avoid feeling bad. No wonder these people never grow up.
EXPEL them?!
I dunno.
They’re always fun to have around to laugh at.
I have a trigger warning. It goes “Stop or I’ll Bam Bam Bam shoot”
Whiny little “victims” piss me off. I have genuine empathy for people suffering from some sort of legitimate trauma or issue, but I have nothing but contempt for entitled little snowflakes who believe their “feelings” trump my right to talk freely and express myself.
“Now my brain is trying to crawl out of my head.”
Mine is just demanding copious amounts of alcohol in order to off a few sacrificial brain cells.
I’ve had quite a bit of anxiety – provoking stuff in my life. Raised by a neurotic, mentally ill parent, I was bullied relentlessly at school. Every time I found a job that I loved and wanted to keep forever, I would get laid off from it as surely as spring follows winter. My dear, sainted father died over twenty years ago and I still miss him. The love of my life left me, not once, but twice, for other women. And I’m still under psychiatric care from a 2011 bedbug infestation that really sent me around the bend. And regular readers of this forum know what my current job is doing to me with respect to my mental health.
If I were as delicate as these little pansy – assed snowflakes are about “trigger warnings,” I would probably lock the door, draw the curtains closed, and never, ever leave my apartment again. Grow up, people!
Just give them the ultimate trigger warning:
“Kiss my ass, you moron!”