What the fuck is up with all these “trigger warnings” on feminist websites? Every time I go to wade through one of their articles, looking for the occasional cogent idea, I first have to read one of their warnings about what they are going to say in the article, apparently to keep me from freaking out when I read it. It rarely works. Probably because they don’t have trigger warnings for stupidity and lies. So, I have to figure that the warnings are more for their “regulars” than for likes of me. Still, questions arise.
Being the intrepid investigator that I am, I wanted the low down on the subject, so I did a Google search on the term and clicked though the first return I got. It took me to a site called Geek Feminism sumptin’ or another, and sure enough a nifty little primer on trigger warnings filled my screen, with no warning I might add.
Here’s how they describe it. (Warning: I am assuming this definition is safe to read. It does mention self-harm, though there was no warning about that beforehand.) I know, it is confusing, but you know I already told you where it came from.
Trigger warnings are customary in some feminist and other spaces. They are designed to prevent people who have an extremely strong and damaging emotional response (for example, post-traumatic flashbacks or urges to harm themselves) to certain subjects from encountering them unaware. Having these responses is called “being triggered”.
Now, does it surprise me that feminist bloggers figure their readers can’t make it through an online article without doing something stupid? Nope. Not at all. In fact, I have to give them kudos for knowing their audience. Camille Paglia, noted feminist and author, also knows the audience well, to her apparent dismay. She put it like this:
Let’s get rid of Infirmary Feminism, with its bedlam of bellyachers, anorexics, bulimics, depressives, rape victims, and incest survivors. Feminism has become a catch-all vegetable drawer where bunches of clingy sob sisters can store their moldy neuroses.
I gotta say, Paglia does have the gift. And she nails it here with one minor exception. You can scratch the delineation of “infirmary” from the equation. In other words, if you want to see the mental ward of modern feminism just turn on your TV, pick up a newspaper, watch a few minutes of C-Span or go to any feminist website and observe what a big steaming pile of sick fucks they all are. Infirmary feminism? Is there any other kind?
One might pop up and say. “Hey Paul, what about Paglia herself? She is a feminist. Doesn’t that prove NAFALT?”
Uh, no. It doesn’t. Camille, sooner or later, will have to resign herself to the fact that she subscribes to Paglism, a good enough philosophy, but not feminism. Feminists, the only ones that matter, are those with power and influence over law and social discourse. They are the hair-brained mental defectives; the ones that spend day in and out obsessing on and writing about rape and other trauma, for an audience they openly assume is not mentally stable enough to read it.
Is it any wonder that feminists manage to traipse through life unopposed by people with brains? Again, I say no. No one wants to argue with a retarded kid, especially one with a vagina.
Indeed, I suppose since we are dealing with trauma triggers for emotional imbeciles, which literally includes the entirety of the English language, and a few of them are likely to read this, I should have issued the appropriate alerts. Is it too late? Probably, but I don’t want it on my conscious that I clogged up emergency rooms with sickos making fake suicide attempts. So here we go:
Warning: This article contains all sorts of triggers. It has the word “rape” in it so please avoid all words that begin with the letter “R”. It also has references to trauma, which might be traumatic, or might trigger trauma, especially the kind you inflict on yourself because you’re a sick fuck. There are triggers in this article so big that Roy Rogers could mount and ride them. But wait, Roy Rogers is dead. Trigger warning: Dead cowboy! Come to think of it, his horse is dead…and stuffed. Trigger warning: Dead Trigger! Taxidermy!
Also, if your eating habits make you look like a resident of Auschwitz; if you can’t resist the impulse to eat seven bags of potato chips and then jam two fingers down your throat for desert, or if your idea of emotional pain management involves dragging razor blades across your wrists just deep enough to cut through capillaries and then calling 911, then consider this a Super Duper Extra Special Trigger Warning With Power Attachments. Better put your blindfold on before reading another line. Better yet, make this the last article you ever read anywhere. You never know when some unenlightened lout is going to cause you to starve yourself because he didn’t warn you he was going to mention a ham sandwich.
I don’t know about you, but I feel much better now. That may be short lived. Those geeky feminists also inform us that there are some of their ilk who believe the even a passive mention of “triggering” words and phrases, outside any emotional context, could give rise to fucktarded, self destructive behaviors or an acute episode of post traumatic stress. To wit:
Some people argue that even factual, dry mentions of the above subjects should be warned for. In some sections of Media fandom there are also arguments that warnings should be made for:
[unordered_list style=”tick”]
- depiction or discussion of violence
- depiction or discussion of particular kinds of consensual sexual activity (BDSM, homosexual encounters, heterosexual encounters…)
- depiction or discussion of any consensual sexual activity
- depiction or discussion of discriminatory attitudes or actions, such as sexism or racism
[/unordered_list]
After I stopped laughing (which took quite a while) I began to wonder about the Catch-22 this presents. What the fuck is a trigger warning if it is not a dry, factual mention of these subjects? Aren’t they telling us, in fact, that trigger warnings are a trigger? (sigh) So many idiots, so little time.
Just wondering aloud here, but wouldn’t it be better to just put a trigger warning on feminism itself? I mean, hopefully that would have the effect of driving out the mentally deficient from their ranks. Never mind. They couldn’t afford it.
