I gave trigger warnings in my classroom. I never thought about whether they were necessary, or exactly what being triggered meant. I knew that I wanted to be respectful of students’ feelings and that I also wanted to be covered in our current social climate. But then I was triggered, and I made up my mind: trigger warnings are pointless.
In my first semester as an adjunct professor of creative writing at Hofstra University in New York, I sent out a survey before class started to ask students if they had any triggers. A trigger warning alerts students they may read or hear potentially distressing material. The alerts became popular on the internet in the late 1990s or early 2000s, and teachers and professors began to use them in their classes within the past five years.
When I got the trigger survey back from my students, most men said, “none.” Most women said, “rape.” My first thought was to omit Margaret Atwood’s Rape Fantasies and Sharon Olds’ The Girl from the syllabus. Surely these aren’t “sensitive,” but they are stunning, complicated pieces of writing. They use strong language and don’t shy away from confronting rape head-on. Rape Fantasies is a strange, unsettling and humorous story about a woman discussing her rape fantasies with her coworkers. The Girl recounts the true story of the brutal rape of two 12-year-old girls. I was so nervous about upsetting my students that I made Rape Fantasies and The Girl extra credit rather than mandatory.
I have successfully conducted class discussions about upsetting poems before.
Take, for example, Simon Armitage’s I Say I Say I Say about cutting oneself in the bathtub. I felt equipped to lead this conversation because I know Armitage’s poetry inside and out but also because I have a healthy distance from self-harm. Rape, however, seemed more daunting, more inaccessible. I didn’t know it yet, but I had my own feelings to sort out about why I felt this way.
II remember reading about rape in college and feeling disturbed, but not necessarily triggered. My friend and I read The Bluest Eye in a freshman seminar before trigger warnings were a thing. We sat in her dorm, reading the rape scene over and over. We both felt uncomfortable and disturbed, which pushed us to confront our own feelings and appreciate the brilliance of the author, Toni Morrison. We made another friend read it, almost just so we didn’t have to suffer alone. But at the same time, we were grateful for being forced to read and think about something so heavy. It would have been incomprehensible to me that classrooms would soon give the option to sit this book out. But then years later — recently, actually — I was triggered, and that led me to really think about trigger warnings and consider what their point is.
I saw Steubenville — a participatory theater performance held at Hofstra that deals with the first live-tweeted rape in America. Before the event, we received postcards from the ushers that read something along the lines of, “Trigger warning: the following production deals with rape.” I didn’t pay it much attention. I was there to lead a talk-back after the performance, and I thought at most I might be consoling others. But it turns out it was me who was inconsolable. Towards the end of the production, I felt my insides turning, my hands shaking and the tears welling up inside me. My heart was pounding and I thought I might throw up. When it was over, my boss turned to me and asked what I thought. I tried to compose myself, but I burst out crying and couldn’t stop.
I had been triggered.
II was sexually assaulted when I was 16, but not nearly to the extent of Jane Doe from Steubenville, Ohio. I had never talked about it, or honestly even thought about it, until I had a very intense flashback during the production. I had been interviewed by the producer earlier that day (they show the interviews during the performance) and when I was asked if I had experienced sexual assault I quickly said, “No.”
Steubenville deeply upset and disturbed me, but it also gave me courage to talk with others about what had happened to me. More importantly, it gave me a clearer idea of how I want to handle sensitive material with my students. A trigger warning can’t possibly prepare a student for reliving trauma. But difficult material can force someone to engage with, react to and revisit a terrifying place. And this can lead to a vital conversation.
Being triggered worked positively for me.
I was forced to confront and deal with long-repressed emotions. I felt a huge release after crying, and I appreciated the piece of art even more because it affected me so greatly. I wouldn’t un-see it if I could. I feel like I have battled my own demons, and can responsibly reintroduce on my syllabus pieces of writing that deal with rape. Art is supposed to make people feel, and when it’s especially good, deal with the hard stuff.
I haven’t had a student leave after I gave a trigger warning and I’m thankful for that. Because now I know for sure that it’s not OK to miss out on learning just because the subject is upsetting. I have decided to replace trigger warnings with a simple comment: “What we are going to read can be upsetting, and then we are going to have a discussion about it.”
I am getting rid of trigger warnings because they imply a person should leave and I’d rather my students stay, and, if they’re upset, talk about it. That’s when the deepest parts of learning and conversation happen, in the space of discomfort. Rape happens. It happens in literature; it happens in life and it needs to be talked about. The Girl is arguably one of the most upsetting poems ever written, but also one of the most brilliant. Reading the poem is viscerally disturbing. It can move anyone to tears, nausea or shock. The writing is sharp, brutal, blatant — then subtle, eerie, unsettling. To miss Olds’ poem would be to miss the horror of human experience and the beauty of powerful writing. This poem is essential in a lesson about writing honestly and well. It’s essential in talking about craft and it’s essential in talking about the atrocities of living. That’s what should be happening in a writing class.
Being triggered can happen whether you receive a warning or not — that’s the thing about triggers, they can be anywhere. They can be in a certain can of beer, in a certain whiff of cologne. When you’ve experienced trauma, reliving it at some point is inevitable. There is no trigger warning on life experience, and what I want from my classrooms is life experience.
I am taking away the trigger warnings and offering up a space to talk. To me, that is far more valuable.