Postcards From Across the Pond

Oh my! Apparently, I’ve been going about this all wrong. For years I’ve been releasing books willy-nilly without a thought toward the easily triggered by neglecting to include trigger warnings.

This grievous oversight was brought to my attention by Sue Coletta in her recent post on the KillZone blog. Like me, Ms Coletta was unaware of her negligence and, also like me, thinks the whole thing is a bit of a farce.

Much of what follows is either borrowed from her blog or mirrors it, so you can read her thoughts, or mine; the results should be the same. I’m going to upend her essay, however, by beginning with the conclusion so you don’t think I’m making light of people with true PTSD. I’m not. I’m making fun of people who are so thin-skinned they believe that a book that mentions Arophobia must have a warning label on it so unsuspecting Arophobics (or Arophobicphobes) don’t suffer trauma.

(Arophobia, by the way, is fear of aromantic people, and the Trigger Police are afraid that someone reading a book that mentions a character who isn’t keen on romance might have a breakdown.)

In Ms Coletta’s piece, she quotes thriller writer Jay Darkmoore (you might guess a guy with the name of Darkmoore writes thrillers) which I paraphrase here:

“Triggered” means to be triggered into a PTSD flashback, to the point where you lose control of yourself because the stimulus has ‘triggered’ significant trauma. It hasn’t triggered you; it’s offended you, and being offended is a choice. You CHOOSE to be offended, and you CHOOSE to be angry. You do not choose to be triggered. Stop saying being angry is the same as being triggered. They are worlds apart, and it’s disrespectful to actual sufferers of PTSD to say you got triggered because you read something that made you sad.

It’s important to bear in mind that the people insisting authors put trigger warnings on their books are not the ones being triggered, they are merely afraid that someone else might be triggered. So, to put this in succinct perspective by quoting H.L Mencken:

Whenever A imposes upon B for the sake of C, A is a scoundrel.

There are, as you might imagine, websites devoted to this. And their enthusiasm toward offence is such that it would be impossible to accurately label a book with all the appropriate Trigger Warnings.

The several hundred Triggers listed range from sleep disorders to mass murder and everything in between, including references to Harry Potter. (Can you imagine being so thin-skinned that you have a mental meltdown because someone in a book you are reading mentions that he read The Goblet of Fire?)

A sampling of these warnings (and my related books) include:

Anxiety: If there are no anxiety-causing scenes in your book, it’s too boring.

Bestiality: I must admit, I missed this one out. I also never sought this one out, but you do you.

Bullying: The Magic Cloak, the first book in The Talisman Series, is all about bullying—read at your own risk.

Blood and Gore, Decapitation, Violence, Death: The Sacred Tor covers the Battle of Stamford Bridge and the Battle of Hastings, and The Isle of Avalon is about the Battle of Camlann, and they pretty much cover everything. In one scene, a guy’s eyeballs explode. My G-son told me that was his favourite scene.

Dementia: In Finding Rachel Davenport, one of the characters is a bit addled.

Dubious Consent: Dubious? Really? It’s fairly black and white. The rape scenes in The Brighton Virgins and attempted rape in Finding Rachel Davenport are pretty straightforward.

Improper BDSM practices: Does this mean PROPER BDSM practices (Hey, you’re doing that wrong!) are acceptable? Not my thing but, again, you do you.

Sibling Abuse: There are two brothers in The Talisman. They fight. Like brothers do.

Snakes: There is a snake in The Isle of Avalon, but it has to be there to be historically accurate. Not my fault.

Harry Potter references: I’m pretty sure there is a reference somewhere in the fifteen books I’ve published, so I’d better hunt it down and take it out. I’d hate to be responsible for someone going off the deep end.

I think I’ve made my point: it’s stupid, impossible, and ultimately demeaning to the people you profess to be “protecting.” And, if you really want to protect them, why stop at Trigger Warnings? As I’ve demonstrated, it is impossible to put all the possible Trigger Warnings on most books. Why not simply ban them? Take them out of the school libraries, petition the city to remove them from the bookstores.

If you are so certain that words inside those books are causing people to have mental breakdowns, then it’s your duty to stop those books from reaching the reading public. So, by all means, ban them, bin them, then burn them.

That’s the logical conclusion, is it not?