Scenes of a disturbing nature: trigger warnings
Slate magazine declared 2013 the 'Year of the Trigger Warning' (Marcotte 2013) emphasising the way that trigger warnings have become a significant feature of online interaction. A trigger warning is an 'explicit notification' designed to 'heads up' potentially disturbing, upsetting or offensive material (LaBossiere 2014) Warnings are frequently aimed at people suffering from post traumatic stress disorder (PSTD) where being exposed to certain content could cause anxiety. Indeed, some analysts including Dean (2014) believe trigger warnings should be provided for PSTD sufferers only, although she acknowledges this concept now includes all 'personally disturbing' material. Trigger warnings should be understood within the context of choice. This is not about alienating people, but making them aware of content that may trigger an adverse reaction and the effects this could have on their mental and emotional health (Eisner 2013, 10) Individuals can then control their exposure to it. Trigger warnings initially emerged on feminist websites to pre warn users of shared material concerning issues like rape, sexual abuse and violence (Veraldi and Veraldi 2015) The logic was to create 'safely navigable spaces' online where people could talk about their experiences without generating anxiety in others (Salter and Blodgett 2012, 407) Yet, this debate has not stopped at how the Internet should be supervised. Increasingly, there are calls to include trigger warnings on university course syllabi. This has implications for the study of security. Genocide, violence, rape, torture, human trafficking, female genital mutilation, displacement, weapons of mass destruction and natural disasters are just a few examples of potentially triggering subjects that come under the banner of critical security studies. This is not merely the discussion of traumatic threat, but also the security ethics that underpin such a discussion. Lisa Kretz (2014, 340) recalls a student describing an ethics course as 'depressing' a consequence, she says, of the 'all too present moral harms in the world that are the result of human behaviour' Consequently, comprehending security issues could have serious repercussions for students' well being. Trigger warnings are seen as one way of countering this. Yet the declaration by Slate was not wholly positive, and also engaged with a growing debate that trigger warnings are unnecessary, infantilising and even farcical (Breslin 2010) As Amanda Marcotte (2013) puts it: as well as being recognised as beneficial, the politically correct nature of trigger warnings also mean they are 'fodder for jokes' This pro/con debate has intensified over the past few years, with uncertainty over whether trigger warnings even work and if we can ever know what is likely to trigger stress or anxiety in the first place (Chait 2015) There are also concerns about the detrimental impact of trigger warnings on academic freedom. This revolves around an idea of the 'safe' classroom and creating a secure learning environment where 'no one should feel