Fair warning, provoking a thought is literature’s job

Washington Post ^ | 5/21/14 | Kathleen Parker

[Impala64ssa]

Just when you thought American higher learning couldn’t get any more ridiculous, along come demands for warning labels on provocative works of literature.

One never knows when a sentence, phrase or word might trigger some buried memory or traumatic experience. Life is a veritable assault on the excessively sensitive, but somehow most of us muddle through. C’est la vie , after all.

But literature, apparently, is fair game for those tortured souls who fear that some -ism or another might leap from a page, causing what exactly? A moment of discomfort? An opportunity to sort through one’s emotional attic? Or, heavens, exposure to an involuntary insight?

Several schools (including Oberlin College, Rutgers University, George Washington University and the University of Michigan) are toiling with these very questions as students have begun requesting “trigger warnings” on books and syllabuses.

“ Warning: This book includes a rape scene ,” for example, would warn rape victims lest they be traumatized by the contents.

Mightn’t students Google a book in advance of reading if they’re so fearful of a psychological crisis? One is surprised that student organizers at these schools would use such a loaded word as “trigger,” given its obvious association with guns.

Without making light of anyone’s ethnicity, race or trauma, especially rape or stress disorder suffered by veterans (another specific group of concern), such precautions are misplaced in an institution of higher learning where one is expected to be ntellectually challenged and where one’s psychological challenges are expected to be managed elsewhere.

snip, if reading “The Great Gatsby” causes one undue angst owing to its abuse, classism, sexism and whatever-ism, then one might consider that college is not the right place at the right time.

[Impala64ssa]

It's one thing to issue parental warnings on albums, Xbox games, etc, parents have a right and a duty to decide what's appropriate for their minor children, but this BS is WAY out of line. I remember when some Christian Fundamentalist groups were ridiculed for their attempts at banning Huck Finn because of some sexual innuendos and other immoralities in their view. Those same hypocrites, almost overnight assailed this very same book because it contains the dreaded n-word. Instead of worrying about maybe offending who knows who, what's wrong with "honesty is the best policy"? Oh, that's a tenet of White privilege, doncha know.

[TurboZamboni]

Do “trigger warnings” need a trigger lock ? maybe a “universal background check”, too.?

[Da Coyote]

The liberal arts (an oxymoron if ever there was one) crowd has totally beclowned themselves out of any relevance to life.

Those very same libs - accompanied by some D level science grads (can you say climate change?) are trying to get science down to the same level...thereby making the libs seem almost intellegent again.

Won’t work, clowns. You’re stupid.

Get used to it.

Live it.

Love it.

[FredZarguna]

I call for a ban on Dostoevsky, Rand, and other writers of high-capacity books.

[Billthedrill]

Every university education worth the name should come with a trigger warning on a Freshman’s first day: You will encounter disturbing things here. Deal with it.

[Mears]

““ Warning: This book includes a rape scene ,” for example, would warn rape victims lest they be traumatized by the contents. “

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I am so glad I’m at the end of my life and not just starting out.

This is pure madness.

.

[Terry L Smith]

Quick! Buy anything of Harlan Ellison’s works, before the Newspeak people get to them!

Harlan Ellison on 1984, in 1984:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jYT6WgNFFE