seperis | two highly recommended warnings essays

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two highly recommended warnings essays

As This Is My Life

So apparently, someone doing roadwork cut through our cable line, and we have a.) no cable, b.) no internet and c.) no phone. Which means tonight, may not be on if I can't get the tethering to work between John II and Arthur. However, Arthur the G1 and I are going to bond like whoa. Just. G3 is not very fast. So we'll see how that's going to work out.

ETA: Have internetz! They fixed it! Shocking.

Warnings

Sexual Assault, Triggering, and Warnings: An Essay by impertinence

Warning: Very explicit discussion of sexual assault and the nature, anatomy, cause & effect of triggers. Is itself triggery.

In response to this essay, I've had a complete reversal on my general attitude of whatever on warnings. Sure, it should not take someone gutting themselves publicly for me to work out why this is so important, but there you go, that's what it actually took in this case. That is perhaps one of the hardest things I've read in the last year, bar none. Recommended reading no matter what side of the warning debate you are on and in my opinion required reading if you're going to debate this topic at all, ever, anywhere.

Also recommended:

Warnings by zvi_likes_tv at Dreamwidth, with an alternate perspective on the warning issue, along with very good conversations in comments (actually, both essays have both great and faintly terrifying commentary). I'm going to say whatever side you are on, this, too, should be read thoroughly before engaging.

ETA: reginagiraffe linked in comments to kalpurna's post on easy ways to do warnings. We shall all read and learn and do better.

For me, I think I'll just automatically add a line to all headers (and if I don't, someone for the love of God slap me for stupidity; I'm adding it to my autotext header in MSWord now) for Warning and either enter None or See Cut for a separate section before the story starts. I don't often have the more common trigger issues in my fic, but honestly, since I haven't thought about warnings, I very well may have and just haven't paid attention to it.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I certainly don't mind you jumping in at all, in fact I am very glad you did so. Because I am stuck in anonymous for the time being (which is me making an informed decision, ironically) I've been wrecking my head as to how to make this point stand out as more than just one comment on one post, so you weighing in is tremendously appreciated on my part.

And yes, you are very right of course, with the being triggered whilst depression/self-harm/suicidal ideation is latent. I was finding it difficult enough to express things in a situation that may be more understandable to someone who's never been affected by mental health issue, so decided to stick with that out of anxiety (hah) of getting it wrong. Thank you for your eloquent way of phrasing it.

I'm really sorry you've had to go through that and I hope your functioning phases will outweigh the pits, because, yeah, I can truly sympathise. I have never actually been triggered by fic per se (because thankfully, warnings were there), but I know what you mean because I get the same trigger from certain music that I relate strongly to my first major depressive episode years back. (To the point where I deliberately don't listen to it when I'm on my own any more, because I never know whether that's going to be the day I come out of it so low I will end up reaching for that razorblade, after trying so hard not to.)

Most importantly, I need to be able to make an informed decision 24/7.

This. I think this is one thing so incredibly difficult for people without mental health issues to get - that it's not just some illness you've had in the past, and it's over and done with. It's something that stays with you for the rest of your life (I think - if not, I haven't reached the point where it isn't so), something that you carry around with you even when you are functioning, something that means you need to constantly question whether this stress or that event might be sufficient to cause a relapse.

What's so difficult to explain about it, I feel, is that there is such a wide spectrum. Because the key to understanding depression, imho, is to view it as such: a battle within yourself. A constant battle, and no matter how self-aware you are, how much self-insight you have, very often what you know to be rational doesn't connect with how you feel, how you think. Which means that you constantly need to be on alert, and check yourself, and find a way to beat down what you "know" isn't true, but what you feel so deeply (I'm a failure, I have no future, etc.) with rational counterarguments. But you never know whether it's going to work today or not, so you need to be able to make that informed decision on a day to day basis. And in terms of fic, you cannot do that without a warning.

Telling me to go and seek more medical support doesn't do anything (...) because I can be triggered even when the medical system has declared me pretty damn healthy for the time being.

Not to mention the fact that mental health services are permanently underfunded (at least where I am) and so can often only take on people who are literally on the brink of suicide. Or that there is no quick fix, no magic bullet even with professional help, but the onus lies on you to keep trying, keep fighting, no matter how exhausted you are.

I'm just glad if it might help clarify for anyone and lessen your own anxiety about saying the wrong thing. I think it's hard to convey to people without triggers that just saying we need warnings can be very confronting for some people. How do I justify what I need to be able to function (even minimally and with care to avoid some of my triggers) in fandom or wider society when I'm constantly needing to question my own thoughts and feelings and whether my illness is currently clouding my judgement? If someone says to me in isolation 'oh you should be strong enough to be responsible for stumbling across upsetting material and just severely limit the way you move online' and... I'll probably go okay, yeah, you might have a point, and I'll go off and think about it. I'll also probably feel weak and stupid and castigate myself, and it'll make me question whether I'm as well as I think I am and could potentially send me into a depressive episode if the timing was unlucky. Consequently, I'm struggling to work out where my line is in this discussion, and I had to wait until a lot of people were already speaking up in ways I agree with before I trusted myself and my judgement enough to say anything, anywhere.

My functioning phases outweigh my depressive episodes by a very wide margin lately, thank you for asking. Even then I've really had to wrestle with whether it was safe for me to engage with anyone on this subject, which makes my stomach turn over to think of how many people are more vulnerable and being hurt worse than me but aren't able to defend their needs, or their right not to be blamed for their triggers. I for one think it's really great that you're speaking up at all, even anonymously, because many aren't capable of that. So please try not to feel bad that you can't also contribute an identifiable username and a post at this time.

I think your point about music is a really good one, and I'm really sorry you have to deal with a trigger that's so difficult to remove from everyday life. When I lost a parent to suicide, I pretty normally had some songs that reminded me of them and were upsetting in normal and non-triggery way. About a year after the fact, I realised a few of those songs were now automatically linked to suicide (as opposed to my parent, as they were originally) in my head and were becoming quite triggery. We're only talking a handful of songs, most of them thankfully not in terribly common rotation on the radio so it hasn't posed too much of a problem for me, but if they were common or there were more of them? I'm sure there's at least one person somewhere in this discussion who would say (or already has implied when talking about a different trigger) that I should take responsibility for my exposure to them. But what about when I get on a bus and the driver plays that song over the speakers, or I get in a friend or a friend of a friend's car with a group of people and the radio is on, or it's playing over the speakers in a store or shopping centre I'm in? So many people have unusual and deeply personal triggers that are quite seriously impossible for us to avoid without completely withdrawing from society, but we sure as hell don't expect anyone to help protect us from them. We just want them to stop risking kicking us when we're already down.

On a more personal note, I want to say thank you for following the thread and telling me it was okay to have jumped in. I woke up this morning also incredibly anxious about having 'got it wrong,' so your reply was a big relief.

How do I justify what I need to be able to function (even minimally and with care to avoid some of my triggers) in fandom or wider society when I'm constantly needing to question my own thoughts and feelings and whether my illness is currently clouding my judgement?

Yes, this. More importantly, we shouldn't have to justify why we need these warnings in the same place. And asking us to justify this in the first place can, as you so very well describe, again set off that very chain reaction in our heads that might lead to us sitting there with that razorblade or comtemplating suicide once more.

I've seen people use the counterargument that writers don't owe anything to readers, because the mainstream opinion seems to be that the readers don't owe anything to writers (like feedback), and so if anyone takes that stance (and thereby upsets them because people read without giving feedback) they should just fuck up, because hey, they're being hurt as well if nobody responds to their fic.

I cannot stress enough how this isn't in the same league at all. Yes, at best your not warning might only cause someone to feel as upset as you are at not receiving feedback.

But at its worst? Your not including a warning about these things - be it mental health, be it non-con/dub-con - can leave a person actually physically harming themselves, can leave a person actually go through and TRY TO KILL THEMSELVES, because they could not make an informed choice as to whether this might be triggering. (Note: I'm not stating this would happen in the majority of such cases, but it's a definite possibility. The self-harm caused by being triggered is obviously far more likely, but that alone should make you pause.)

It blows my mind how any person who surely thinks of themselves as decent human being can see this, and STILL refuse to warn. It is beyond callous. It means, in a nutshell, that you care more about your artistic integrity/whatever counterargument is made than WHETHER ANOTHER PERSON LIVES OR DIES. Yes, that is what it ultimately comes down to. And it's sickening.

And I don't doubt for a second that most people don't do this deliberately, but that they simply don't understand this, that they are ignorant of this very fact. So I'm speaking up, to make them aware of this. So they can understand what it is for us to be in this place. That we have so little control over our own minds already, that it should not be outrageous to people to be asked to put a warning up front so we can exert what little control we might have left. (And as has been pointed out, this need not spoil your story - see the link to methods of warning in this very post for that.)

I am glad to hear that you're more functioning than not at the moment. It gives me hope that I may, in time, be able to reach that state once again.

And as for music triggers, yeah, they are a great bit pain. Fortunately, they are fairly limited for me, and seem to only strike really hard when I'm on my own, or already in a very depressed phase, so knowing that, I can consciously avoid them (as they are also not very widely played). And if they were played, say, at a close friend's party, who knows of my issues, and I could feel them triggering me, then I would have no compunctions to ask that friend to please change the music.

But I certainly don't expect society as a whole, or even most individual people (who aren't my very close friends) to cater to such very individual triggers. All I'm asking for, for myself, are warnings for mental health/self-harm (and possibly major character death, since my depression was caused by a delayed grief reaction to my father's death from cancer - but I probably wouldn't even go that far). And for survivors of sexual assault, I'm asking for the same in regards to non-con/dub-con, because whilst I have not personally been there, I can relate in some small measure at least.

(More personally, do you mind if I request that anyone who reads this thread and understands/supports it to link to it? Because I would understand if you didn't feel up to that, not being anonymous, but I feel it requires more exposure, as it has not been discussed in depth to my knowledge.)

It took a lot of constant, hard work, and a lot of fighting to protect my boundaries, but I got there in the end and I'm still there for the moment. I hope you can reach it too (and just comparing to my own experience, being aware enough of my boundaries was the biggest early step I had to conquer, so I think it's great you already have that) and wish you all the best with it. The fact that it takes such hard work and fierce boundary protection for many of us to get and stay there is absolutely why this discussion is important.

Because I'm not totally confident about how safe I feel participating, I'm being very careful to make sure I don't share anything in a public forum that I wouldn't want to be seen by a wider audience than I originally expect to come across it. So yes, please, feel free to ask people to link to anything including my words.

I've also been putting together a post on how this discussion has been relevant to my experiences and triggers as a sufferer of mental illness for exactly that reason. I know you said you feel a post is an easier vehicle through which to reach more people, so if (well, firstly if you read my post and feel comfortable with the content, and then if also) you felt it might be more useful to copy any of your comments over to that post as a mental-illness-triggers focused space and encourage linking to that, I hope you'll also feel free to do so. I had to take the time to make sure I had my boundaries located and firm before making a public post, and from then I've just been waiting for a chance when I wouldn't have to post and immediately walk away to do other tasks. But it should be up sometime over the next 24 hours, if you're interested and wish to look for it.

Edited 2009-06-25 14:10 (UTC)

Thank you, I'll keep an eye out for it. For the time being, I have to take a step back from this because it has been deeply upsetting to me, but I'm sure that at the very least, I'll want to read your post, and I am very glad that you feel safe enough in your bounderies to even consider making one in the first place.

Do either of you mind if I direct link to this convo until such a time as

shopfront feels comfortable making an independent post? I didn't want to interrupt your conversation or spotlight it and break anyone's comfort level.

Conversely, if you want it screened at any time for any reason, please tell me and I'll do so immediately. Here or direct email me at seperis@gmail.com.

Copying this to a reply to

shopfront as well.

Thank you, I would, in fact, very much appreciate that.

It was my original intention to ask you for that, after I'd ascertained whether

shopfront was comfortable with this being linked to, but by the time she did say she was, I was back in my anxiety zone of not knowing whether you might feel I'd expressed my thoughts on the matter too vociferously, and were therefore staying out of it, because I'd offended you.

(That'd be a perfect example of automatic thoughts and catastrophising right there, for anyone who cares to read this - this whole debate has gotten to me a fair bit, so I'm kind of swerving between "I believe this needs to be said" and "What if that means I offend people/am a horrible person for saying it?" Depressed logic, it is nothing like earth logic. *sigh*)

I was back in my anxiety zone of not knowing whether you might feel I'd expressed my thoughts on the matter too vociferously, and were therefore staying out of it, because I'd offended you.

Oh, I'm sorry I did that. I should have guessed how that would look. You both were having such an interesting conversation, I didn't want to intrude and spoil the flow or make anyone self-conscious. Trust me, I've been following along every time I got a notice this thread had updated and it's been, to say the least, riveting.

That'd be a perfect example of automatic thoughts and catastrophising right there, for anyone who cares to read this - this whole debate has gotten to me a fair bit, so I'm kind of swerving between "I believe this needs to be said" and "What if that means I offend people/am a horrible person for saying it?" Depressed logic, it is nothing like earth logic. *sigh*

There's utterly nothing said here offensive, even to asshats (for which I admire your restraint). I'm very, very sorry that I gave the wrong impression; I was worried anything I injected would come across as either ignorant or weirdly condescending, and I wanted you both to feel comfortable and safe enough to express what you were feeling without the impression anyone, including me, was passing judgment. I apologize for that.

I'll do a direct link in a separate entry either tonight or tomorrow; I don't want it to drown beneath the current events today. If there's anything else I can do, don't hesitate to contact here or email; I check my anonymous comments first now since those are the ones that need the attention the most quickly and currently have the most interesting things to say.

I know how sensitive and personal this topic is, so please, if at any time you don't feel comfortable or safe with what is visible, I'll screen or partially screen as needed. But I really think reading it will give others who read this a lot of needed context; I wish you didn't have to go through this to give it, but the gift is husgely appreciated and I believe others who read it will have a better idea of why the warnings debates are so necessary. Thank you very, very much for what you've written. And continue as long as you wish; I'm monitoring this thread directly to make sure it continues to be comfortable.

Oh, I'm sorry I did that. I should have guessed how that would look.

Thank you for apologising, although it really wasn't necessary. I don't expect anyone to be able to read my mind, and I gave no indication, so you couldn't have known. It would be silly of me to expect otherwise. And I went into this conversation knowingly, and aware that I might end up feeling that way, so I could control it enough so it didn't upset me in any significant manner. I just couldn't prevent it from popping into my head and stop me from asking you outright, because that would have augmented the anxiety, if that makes any sense? And I mentioned it only because I thought it illustrated the automatic thoughts thing quite nicely, but it was my responsibility to enter the discussion in the first place.(Reading some of the comments aimed at survivors was what distressed me the most, really. I can't even grasp as to how some of them must be feeling.)

I was worried anything I injected would come across as either ignorant or weirdly condescending

Replace "condescending" with "stupid", and you know how I feel most days every time I'm talking to someone I don't already know very well and trust (and on worse days, even then). It's something I've been working on for 6 years now, and I've got a hell of a lot better at it, but my (mistaken) default position in social contexts is still that I'm... wrong, awkward, uninteresting, stupid, pick a self-deprecating term, it'll have been in my head, a billion times. I hope I'm getting better at recognising those thought patterns now and try to actively work against them, but whilst I'm rationally there, emotionally my MO is still "I'm not ok, you're ok", most of the time. (Another classic psychology text, google "I'm ok, you're ok" if you are interested in finding out.)

I've seen that

shopfront has made her post (and made many valuable and interesting points), and I've linked to this thread from the comments there. I'd still appreciate it if you still linked to this in a separate post though, as I feel it provides some more concrete examples in some places that may make things more understandable for people, and I get the impression you have a fair bit of fandom traffic on your journal.

Thank you very, very much for your sensitivity and repeated offers of screening, I shall bear them in mind, though I hope it won't be necessary. But I appreciate the attention you've paid to this far more than I can express; many people in fandom should take you as an example in how to conduct yourself in these kind of discussions, imho.

(And I gather, from your other comment that you have first hand experience with depression, at least, so I just wanted to express my sympathy for that being the case. Ironically, and from a more detached/logical perspective, it serves as an apt example as to how wide the spectrum of mental health issues really is (with you understanding the depression side, but initially not the triggering one, I mean), and that you cannot simply lump everyone together in one group and stick a label on it.)

I want to quickly jump in and echo my conversation partner in saying thank you for this being such a safe thread for us to be talking in, and for taking the care to make sure we knew we have access to further screening if we need it. I've mentioned in the comments of my post how comfortable I felt here despite that the content pretty much automatically had me on the edge of freaking out that someone was going to jump on me for saying something wrong, and I want to make sure you know because, well, the comments of my post are an obscure place for you to spot it. It's pretty much impossible for me to have a conversation about this in this sort of detail without large helpings of anxiety and self-doubt, in addition to being in a public place and a post by someone I didn't already know, and you've been a fantastic host. I don't think you could have made me feel more comfortable than you already did. So, thank you for that.

I'm working on posting it sometime in the next few hours. I also wanted to say I'm really sorry that you've found the discussion difficult, I hope you're taking care of yourself and starting to feel more secure for having stepped back.

eta: Post is made (http://shopfront.dreamwidth.org/306105.html). Pre-emptively, should the issue arise, I'm absolutely fine with either of you continuing to link to this thread. Some of what I said here I copied over and tried to address, but it's also been a slowly evolving post more wrapped in my hurt and anger at times than in educated people who already understand why the discussion is important, so you may continue to find this thread a more useful link.

Edited 2009-06-26 08:52 (UTC)

Do either of you mind if I direct link to this convo until such a time as

Not at all, please link away freely. I won't say this subject doesn't set off anxious thoughts for me like anonymous describes, but luckily I'm stable enough at the moment that it's outweighed by how important I feel it is to also speak up. So thank you for the screening offer and I'll definitely keep it in mind, but, it should be fine.

Because the key to understanding depression, imho, is to view it as such: a battle within yourself. A constant battle, and no matter how self-aware you are, how much self-insight you have, very often what you know to be rational doesn't connect with how you feel, how you think. Which means that you constantly need to be on alert, and check yourself, and find a way to beat down what you "know" isn't true, but what you feel so deeply (I'm a failure, I have no future, etc.) with rational counterarguments. But you never know whether it's going to work today or not, so you need to be able to make that informed decision on a day to day basis. And in terms of fic, you cannot do that without a warning.

This. This all over the place. I want to add that it's so very, very hard to fight those feelings of worthlessness/insignificance with logic, because logic has so very little to do with them. But most of the time you're down there, logic is all you've got left to fight it with, inadequate as it may be.

Thank you for having the courage to come and express this so eloquently, clearly, and rationally, anon; thank you for being honest and willing to say it.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

two highly recommended warnings essays

Original anonymouse here.

Re: Original anonymouse here.

Original anonymouse here, boiling the point down to its very essence.

Original anonymouse here, more personal response to you, shopfront.

Re: Original anonymouse here, more personal response to you, shopfront.

Re: Original anonymouse here, more personal response to you, shopfront.

Re: Original anonymouse here, more personal response to you, shopfront.

Re: Original anonymouse here, more personal response to you, shopfront.

Re: Original anonymouse here, more personal response to you, shopfront.

Re: Original anonymouse here, more personal response to you, shopfront.

Re: Original anonymouse here, more personal response to you, shopfront.

Re: Original anonymouse here, more personal response to you, shopfront.

Re: Original anonymouse here, more personal response to you, shopfront.

Re: Original anonymouse here, more personal response to you, shopfront.

Re: Original anonymouse here.