An interesting and, I’m ashamed to say, surprising conversation was sparked in our Workshop this week. The concept of the trigger warning was raised and I was shocked that in a group of twenty or so young university students there were very few who defended their existence and use.

I honestly (naively) expected the bulk of my class to fall on the same side as me on this issue, but I turned out to be spectacularly wrong. Most of my classmates seemed to agree that trigger warnings had gone too far, and there were some cries that they somehow curtail the inalienable right to free speech or artistic expression. (Note: we don’t have an inalienable right to free expression in Australia, and there are plenty of forms of speech that we as a society have deemed appropriate to curtail.)

It’s so easy for people who have never experienced any real trauma to complain about people (usually rape and domestic violence survivors) asking not to be exposed to material that could have long-lasting harmful effects. But I think if they actually knew the level of damage involved, most people would change their tune.

I understand that it might be slightly annoying to have to go out of your way to post and read trigger warnings, but does your desire to avoid that slight inconvenience trump a DV survivor’s wish to avoid a severe anxiety attack after randomly being shown a video of a woman being choked into unconsciousness in a university lecture (which we were actually shown in our Lectorial three weeks ago)? Personally, I think no – my right to say what I want is less important than the right of another human being to not randomly suffer an attack of PTSD, no matter how important I think what I have to say is.

I’m sure it was also really annoying for people in the 1960s who felt like they were no longer “free” to openly tell racist or sexist jokes in public – but that right was deemed less important than the right for women and people of colour to not be offended or discriminated against.

It’s important to note, though, that nobody argues that content that could be a potential trigger should be censored, necessarily — just that it should be labelled as such so people can make an informed choice to avoid it. We already have classification advice on films and TV shows, and language warning stickers on albums, and trigger warnings are in many ways the same thing — only driven by our desire to be respectful of others. To me, that’s a good thing.