(1) Cool and (2) Srsly???

[delphipsmith]

The cool: The HTML5 Gendered Advertising Remixer. Drag and drop to mix audio and video from heavily boy-targeted and girl-targeted toy ads to see how ridiculous they both are. It's quite funny. I was particularly amused by overlaying the audio for Tonka Garage with the video for Betty Spaghetti.

The srsly?????: We all know about "trigger" warnings; fanfic has had them for ages as a courtesy to its reader. But it's really too much when college students demand trigger warnings on their syllabi.

This boggles my mind.

I'm not at all against trigger warnings in fanfic -- after all, fanfic is known for pushing the envelope in a lot of ways. But fanfic is, when all is said and done, a hobby. A thing you do on your own time, for your own reasons, in which you are free to seek out or avoid anything you like, from SSHG to Giant Squid + Hagrid.

The entire point of college, on the other hand, is (or should be) to expose you to new things, things you don't know about, things that make you think, and yes, even things that might make you uncomfortable. Because real life has those things. It's meant to spur dialog, critical thinking, analysis -- none of which are possible if the only things you look at are things that make you feel good. Because real life demands those abilities. And most importantly, it's meant to be a bridge between your (usually protected) childhood and the (often unpleasant) real world. Because yes, hon, you will encounter things that may be hard for you in Real Life.

As The New Republic pointed out, Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe’s brilliant novel about the great harms of colonialism, Things Fall Apart, now carries the warning that it “may trigger readers who have experienced racism, colonialism, and religious persecution, violence, suicide, and more.”

If we allow students to opt out of things that they assume or imagine might upset them, or that they just plain fear, it seems to me we are doing them a disservice.

Thoughts?

Comments

[anna-bird.livejournal.com]

I'm very torn on trigger warnings. I like the courtesy of it, and I think they're about more than just warning people with bad experiences to stay away--they're also a recognition that this real-life stuff has damaged some people, rather than telling them to just suck it up and get on with their lives, or worse--not discussing it at all. I can also get the idea of wanting control, especially if you feel like you have or had none.

However, I agree that college is the wrong place for this. The process of discovery is very often a painful one! I don't know how you would expand your horizons if you were in control of your intake, especially since being self-aware and fair/honest in your self-assessment is, um, HARD for the average human being. I don't know what the right place would be. Perhaps as an auto-speech preface for jerky cat-callers? We'd all need brain implants first, I suppose...

FWIW, I use trigger warnings and ratings on my fic, but I've contemplated using the "Author chose not to use warnings" tag. Because there's no way I can guess what might trigger someone, really. Also, I find the article's "growing tendency among North American university student groups" applies to a lot of things, not just "correctness", and I'd cast it up to people feeling like college is a business, and that they're the customer, paying for their degree. Which I think is actually true, given the increased enrollment + hiring of adjuncts + elevating tuition costs + grade inflation. But anyway.

[delphipsmith]

I don't know how you would expand your horizons if you were in control of your intake, especially since being self-aware and fair/honest in your self-assessment is, um, HARD for the average human being.

Exactly! And yes, there is no way to predict what may or may not upset people. Personally I'm upset when people add stupid skater-boy scenes to classic fantasy (I'm looking at you, Peter Jackson) but am I going to go all emo about it?