Bad Feminist: Essays (19 page)

Trigger warnings are, essentially, ratings or protective guidelines for the largely unmoderated Internet. Trigger warnings provide order to the chaos of the interwebs; they are a signal that the content following the warning may be upsetting, may trigger bad memories or reminders of traumatic or sensitive experiences. Trigger warnings allow readers a choice: steel yourself and continue reading, or protect yourself and look away.

Many feminist communities use trigger warnings, particularly in online forums when discussing rape, sexual abuse, and violence. By using these warnings, these communities are saying, “This is a safe space. We will protect you from unexpected reminders of your history.” Members of these communities are given the illusion they
can
be protected.

There are a great many potential trigger warnings. Over the years, I have seen trigger warnings for eating disorders, poverty, self-injury, bullying, heteronormativity, suicide, sizeism, genocide, slavery, mental illness, explicit fiction, explicit discussions of sexuality, homosexuality, homophobia, addiction, alcoholism, racism, the Holocaust, ableism, and Dan Savage.

Life, apparently, requires a trigger warning.

This is the uncomfortable truth: everything is a trigger for someone. There are things you cannot tell just by looking at someone.

We all have history. You can think you’re
over
your history. You can think the past is the past. And then something happens, often innocuous, that shows you how far you are from
over it
. The past is always with you. Some people want to be protected from this truth.

I used to think I didn’t have triggers because I told myself I was tough. I was steel. I was broken beneath the surface, but my skin was forged, impenetrable. Then I realized I had all kinds of triggers. I simply had buried them deep until there was no more room inside me. When the dam burst, I had to learn how to stare those triggers down. I had a lot of help, years and years of help.

I have writing.

Every so often debates about trigger warnings flare hotly and both sides are resolute. Trigger warnings are either ineffective and impractical or vital for creating safe online spaces.

It has been suggested, more than once, that if you don’t believe in trigger warnings, you aren’t respecting the experiences of rape and abuse survivors. It has been suggested, more than once, that trigger warnings are unnecessary coddling.

It is an impossible debate. There is too much history lurking beneath the skin of too many people. Few are willing to consider the possibility that trigger warnings might be ineffective, impractical, and necessary for creating safe spaces all at once.

The illusion of safety is as frustrating as it is powerful.

There are things that rip my skin open and reveal what lies beneath, but I don’t believe in trigger warnings. I don’t believe people can be protected from their histories. I don’t believe it is at all possible to anticipate the histories of others.

There is no standard for trigger warnings, no universal guidelines. Once you start, where do you stop? Does the mention of the word “rape” require a trigger warning, or is the threshold an account of a rape? How graphic does an account of abuse need to be before meriting a warning? Are trigger warnings required anytime matters of difference are broached? What is graphic? Who makes these determinations?

It all seems so futile, so impotent and, at times, belittling. When I see trigger warnings, I think,
How dare you presume what I need to be protected from?

Trigger warnings also, when used in excess, start to feel like censorship. They suggest that there are experiences or perspectives too inappropriate, too explicit, too bare to be voiced publicly. As a writer, I bristle when people say, “This should have had a trigger warning.”

I do not understand the unspoken rules of trigger warnings. I cannot write the way I want to write and consider using trigger warnings. I would second-guess myself, temper the intensity of what I have to say. I don’t want to do that. I don’t intend to ever do that.

Writers cannot protect their readers from themselves, nor should they be expected to.

There is also this thought: maybe trigger warnings allow people to avoid learning how to deal with triggers and getting help. I say this with the understanding that having access to professional resources for getting help is a privilege. I say this with the understanding that sometimes there is not enough help in the world. That said, there is value in learning, where possible, how to deal with and respond to the triggers that cut you open, the triggers that put you back in terrible places, that remind you of painful history.

It is untenable to go through life as an exposed wound. No matter how well intended, trigger warnings will not stanch the bleeding; trigger warnings will not harden into scabs over your wounds.

I don’t believe in safety. I wish I did. I am not brave. I simply know what to be scared of; I know to be scared of everything. There is freedom in that fear. That freedom makes it easier to appear fearless—to say and do what I want. I have been broken, so I am prepared should that happen again. I have, at times, put myself in dangerous situations. I have thought,
You have no idea what I can take
. This idea of unknown depths of endurance is a refrain in most of my writing. Human endurance fascinates me, probably too much because more often than not, I think of life in terms of enduring instead of living.

Intellectually, I understand why trigger warnings are necessary. I understand that painful experiences are all too often threatening to break the skin. Seeing or feeling yourself come apart is terrifying.

This is the truth of my trouble with trigger warnings: there is nothing words on the screen can do that has not already been done. A visceral reaction to a trigger is nothing compared to the actual experience that created the trigger.

I don’t know how to see beyond this belief to truly get why trigger warnings are necessary. When I see trigger warnings, I don’t feel safe. I don’t feel protected. Instead, I am surprised there are still people who believe in safety and protection despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

This is my failing.

But.

I do recognize that in some spaces, we have to err on the side of safety or the illusion thereof. Trigger warnings aren’t meant for those of us who don’t believe in them, just like the Bible wasn’t written for atheists. Trigger warnings are designed for the people who need and believe in that safety.

Those of us who do not believe should have little say in the matter. We can neither presume nor judge what others might feel the need to be protected from.

But still.

There will always be a finger on the trigger. No matter how hard we try, there’s no way to step out of the line of fire.

Though I’ve lived all over the country, I have spent many years, off and on, living in Nebraska, both as a child and as an adult. Nebraska is Husker country. There is God and there are the Huskers, and sometimes their order of importance is, well, unclear. On game day, Memorial Stadium is the third-largest city in Nebraska. Even though he has long since retired as coach, a position he held for twenty-five years, there is Tom Osborne, seated at the right hand of the Holy Father. He is the current athletic director at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. He handily won his congressional district and served in Congress for six years. At the height of Nebraska football, during the 1990s, Nebraska won the national championships in 1994 and 1995, and captured part of the championship in 1997. Osborne ascended somewhere above God. To Nebraskans, Tom Osborne is much like Joe Paterno is to the people of Penn State. Amen.

In the 1990s, the unnecessary roughness of many Nebraska players was well known. Lawrence Phillips was probably the hottest mess on that team, always getting in trouble for one thing or another. His crimes, more than once, involved violence against women, but he was such a fine running back and that mattered more than the woman’s face he threatened to break. In those years, Nebraska players were getting arrested so much it was as if criminality had become a second letter sport for the players. The media would halfheartedly question Osborne about these “thugs,” and he’d talk about how he was able to see the good in flawed men. More often than not, these players were forgiven for drug and alcohol infractions and assault and rape allegations because they could move the football down the field. They could fill Memorial Stadium week after week. They could take
our
team to the championship game, over and over. They could take us to church. Amen.

Nebraska certainly was not and is not unique. Neither is Penn State. College and professional athletes get away with all kinds of criminal behavior, and we must be comfortable with that criminal behavior because week in and week out we tune in to the football games and baseball games and basketball games and hockey games that showcase broken men carrying the hopes of millions on their backs. We cheer and buy jerseys and make rich men or soon-to-be rich men richer. When the truth about Jerry Sandusky and the Penn State football program was revealed, we were outraged, and rightly so, but there’s plenty more to be outraged about where athletes, coaches, criminality, and silence are concerned. We live in a culture where athletes are revered, and overlooking terrible, criminal behavior is the price we are seemingly willing to pay for our reverence. Amen.

We’re supposed to give accused criminals the benefit of the doubt. We are supposed to at least consider the possibility that someone accused of a crime is, actually, innocent. It’s hard to do what we’re
supposed
to do sometimes.

In high-profile cases such as the Sandusky case, it is very difficult to give the accused the benefit of the doubt. Being tried in the court of public opinion is the price highly visible figures must pay when they are accused of wrongdoing. Their penance begins well before they ever enter the courtroom.

I was marginally willing to give Jerry Sandusky the benefit of the doubt before I watched his interview with Bob Costas on
Rock Center
at the end of 2011. I was willing to do so because I don’t want to believe a man is capable of sexually assaulting several children, for more than a decade. I don’t want to believe that same man is capable of getting away with such heinous crimes because of the prestige and power of his position. I don’t want to believe a coach who positioned himself as a paragon of moral virtue in a football program widely lauded for having a moral compass enabled such criminal and corrupt behavior. I certainly don’t want to believe a grown man watched a young boy getting raped and, instead of trying to stop the rape or notifying the authorities, called his father and then called his boss and did nothing more. I don’t want to believe a university would work to cover up this crime for years and years.

There’s a certain crassness to an alleged pedophile being allowed to defend himself on national television. While our justice system is predicated upon the notion of the presumption of innocence until the establishment of guilt, there should be limits to what a highly visible figure can do to establish that innocence outside of the court of law. There aren’t, though, not really.

Like most people, I gather what legal knowledge I have from a little show called
Law & Order
. My grasp on most legal concepts is tenuous at best. On
Law & Order
, most defense attorneys strongly discourage their clients from taking the stand in their own defense. They also discourage clients from talking to the media. Innocent or guilty, it is too easy for accused criminals to incriminate themselves when their words are not managed and mediated by someone else. With the hellstorm that surrounded Jerry Sandusky, you have to wonder what kind of attorney would let that man speak to the media.

I watched the
Rock Center
interview between Bob Costas and Jerry Sandusky. Beyond my general disgust for the proceedings, I realized Sandusky sounded like a broken, broken man. If he is guilty of the crimes he has been accused of—and yes, I surely do believe he is guilty, as does a court of law—Sandusky has been a broken man for a very long time. In that interview, he chose to reveal the ways in which he is broken, laid himself bare, however unintentionally.

Or, perhaps, he sounded so desperately broken because he got caught, because he no longer has unfettered access to young boys and an elite athletic program. After more than fifteen years, the loss of that lifestyle must have been quite a blow. You never can tell what it takes to break a man down.

If you ever want to know what guilt sounds like, listen to Sandusky try to explain his untoward actions with young boys over the years. His voice is haunting—weakened, I hope, by the gravity of his crimes. He talks of showering with the boys and roughhousing and touching them as if such behavior is normal. When asked, “Are you sexually attracted to young boys?,” Sandusky repeats the question. Instead of simply saying, “No,” which is what most people would say whether they were guilty or innocent, he says, “Am I sexually attracted to young boys? I enjoy young people. I love to be around them. But no, I’m not sexually attracted to young boys.” The denial is an afterthought.

I give the victim the benefit of the doubt when it comes to allegations of rape and sexual abuse. I choose to err on that side of caution. This does not mean I am unsympathetic to the wrongly accused, but if there are sides to be chosen, I am on the side of the victim. I am glad such decisions are not left up to me because I don’t know how to be impartial. It’s all too close.

There is no easy way out of this situation for anyone involved. Either Sandusky sexually abused young men or he didn’t, and the damage in either case is irreparable and runs deep. There are Sandusky and those surrounding him, a constellation of broken men—the victims and the men who enabled him, the men who looked the other way, year after year, men who would have to be broken to commit such inexplicable acts of silence and collusion.

After the interview aired, more victims stepped forward and accused Sandusky of sexual abuse. Sandusky and his legal team continued to cast aspersions upon the victims while offering a hollow defense. They chose the age-old “blame the victim” strategy, which is, all too often, how broken men respond to these situations, making it seem as if the damage lies elsewhere even though their own fractures are plain to see.