Trigger Warning

Fair warning, today post, and all my posts for the foreseeable future are going to be triggering for many of us. The non fiction, autobiographical, stories I am going to be telling over the next few weeks will contain-

• Male on female violence,
• Stalking by a serial predator
• Sexual assault
• Rape
• Potential unwanted pregnancy
• Consideration of abortion
• STI’s
• Sexual objectification of females
• Sexual degradation of females
• Female on female judgement
• Female on female oppression
• Police interrogation
• Sexual assault court trials
• Witness intimidation
• Victim blaming
• Sexist inequality
• Gender based inequality
• Incorrect use/abuse of prescription drugs
• Incorrect prescription drugs being prescribed
• Severe mental illness
• Suicidal ideation
• Incorrect medical care
• Incorrect medical diagnosis
• Abusive relationships
• Abusive friendships
• Recreational drug use (not my own)
• Potential drug addiction (not my own)
• Suicide (not my own)
• More car accidents (this time non involving me)

If you can’t cope with reading about any of the above right now, then please don’t read the posts this trigger warning is for right now.

Though, I do sincerely and humbly request that if you can, or when you can, you do, especially if you personally have been affected by any of the above.

My reason for starting this blog wasn’t to vent, it was because I believe we need to change our society for the better, and soon.

Due to this, and the reality that it is going to be extremely triggering for me to write about these events, I am not going to be holding back my opinions or emotions, no matter how unpopular they are going to be to the majority of our society, and probably mostly to those in our society who have luckily never experienced the above. However, I will try to separate the stories and the opinions, by writing the stories as I normally do, and adding an opinion piece post. Honestly, I am proud, as a person these popular opinions are supposed to protect, to hold the unpopular opinions I do, because I am happy I am intelligent enough to understand that not enough of us, and especially those of us these popular opinions claim to protect, while actually doing the opposite, are challenging these harmful opinions that have made our society the shit show it currently is, and my opinions as unpopular as they may be, are just as valid as yours, or anybody else’s.

More importantly, they are more important and valid than the opinions of people who have never been affected by any of these things, as are yours if you have.

My opinions and thoughts around the terrible things I have lived through aren’t kind or nice, nor should they be. Just because they aren’t kind or nice doesn’t mean they are wrong, and society has no right to tell me that they are. They come from very real unpleasant events that I have actually lived through and survived, therefore it would be ridiculous if they were kind and nice, and nobody has a right to try to force me to feel the way they want me to about those events, especially when you consider censoring people like me only cuts us off from current and future survivors. My real emotions and opinions have the potential to inspire meaningful support to other survivors, and meaningful change that can hopefully lead to true equality for us all, and less people falling victim to the same or similar horrors.

It is time survivors started a meaningful conversation about how we as survivors feel and the change we want. We won’t agree on everything and that more than ok, it is normal. Respectful, openminded dialogue with those you don’t agree with is so important for society and societal change, and it is a skill many of us sadly don’t possess. The reason these people don’t possess that ability isn’t because they are incapable of it, it is because learning how to do it doesn’t benefit them. What they truly want isn’t to discus change that is best for us all, they want to force change that benefits themselves.

I am inviting that respectful openminded dialogue here, and now, between survivors’. If you’re not a survivor of any of the above please respectfully mind your own business and stay out of the conversation.

As survivors we need to stop caring about the emotions and opinions of people who are talking about the events we have survived, but they haven’t. You can’t claim to have the answers to a problem you haven’t experienced, or to know what is right for those who have experienced it, first hand. The fact we don’t request that these people be quiet and listen to us is the reason we can’t agree on and advocate for the change we want and need, and the true equality we want and need. When people talk about an issue they have never faced, over the people who have, that’s oppression. Worse. It’s oppression we, as a society, have approved.

Ironically, the same thing could be said about trigger warnings.

Trigger warnings are just another way of censoring those with trauma, by people without it, while they pretend they are doing it for the victims of that trauma.

Really think about it. The people who demand trigger warning are demanding them from people who have faced trauma they themselves haven’t.

Therefore, very rarely is the correct material censored in the correct way.

Those of us who have lived through awful things know that trauma isn’t a switch that can be flicked off and on. We live with it constantly. Sometimes it’s stronger than others, but its always there.

When that trauma is fresh or at it strongest, do, or did, you personally seek out material that depicted similar events?

The answer for some will be no. In which case, you don’t seek out horror, you don’t seek out true crime, you don’t seek out the news.

The answer for others will be yes. In which case, you ignore the trigger warnings knowing how it’s going to hurt and doing it anyway.

I think the answer for most of us is actually both at different times.

We don’t need those trigger warnings to baby sit us. We are adults, we know what we need to avoid in the media and what we don’t.

It’s real life where we need the trigger warnings, and it’s real life where we don’t get them. It is my opinion that real life is a place we shouldn’t get them. Who are we to say what can be censored in other people’s lives?

I also believe that true survivors will understand me when I say that it’s often not even the mention of the awful thing you survived itself that triggers you. Often it is the smallest, seemingly most insignificant, things.

For me, it’s not the mention of women being raped in their sleep, but if it was I can tell you I have never seen a trigger warning on a news story, or any of the in poor taste media that depicted female students being raped after passing out drunk that was shoved down our throats after the me too movement.

For me it’s Dr Who, guys who look like my rapist, finger shaped bruises…

Bruises, faces that look a certain way, Dr who, none of them come with trigger warnings.

Should they?

Of course they shouldn’t.

But, I give trigger warnings, and will continue to give them, on my blog as a courtesy, just in case someone is triggered by my subject matter.

And listen. If you do need them, I’m not slating you. Needed them doesn’t mean you’re weak. I just hope one day you won’t need them. It’s just that I feel most of us probably haven’t benefited from them, and don’t feel they are beneficial. As I said earlier, none of us will agree on everything.

It’s a courtesy that I actually never get repaid.

Nobody puts trigger warnings before they demonise, glorify, appropriate, or malinger, stigmatised mental illness.

Nobody cares whether those of us who are suffering with them and vulnerable because of them are triggered by what they are saying, or how that affects us in real life.

Yet, the same people who do this to us, demand trigger warnings on my tweets where I talk about the reality of living with my illness in order to educate people and destigmatise it. The same people will request I put a trigger warning stating that a tweet contains the word suicide before I list things I feel would prevent suicide in large numbers.

This is what I mean by it being oppression.

They are allowed to cause harm to me through their uncensored tweets, but I must censor my own when I speak about that. I must put a warning that this post mentions the word suicide, therefore saying the very word I’m warning you I’m going to say.

Its not just oppression. Its harmful, insane, oppression, that is counterproductive and makes no sense whatsoever.

The truth as I see it is that, trigger warning aren’t there to protect those of us who have lived through trauma. Sorry to break this to those of you who haven’t, we lived through it. If you think I survived the act of rape itself but you talking about it will break me then you’re absolutely disconnected from any idea of what its like to be a survivor of rape. No, trigger warnings are there so that those who are lucky not to have survived it don’t have to vicariously live through a situation they personally feel is icky.

Yet, these same people will happily read a news story that goes into great detail about how somebody killed themselves, without requesting a trigger warning for that article, even though suicide contagion is a very real thing.

For those of you asking what suicide contagion is, I’ve never looked up the meaning, as I’ve never felt like I have to, as when I heard the phrase being thrown around I was pretty sure I had it. When I read an article about a person killing themselves that goes into great detail about how they done it, I don’t feel the way other people say they feel. I don’t feel horror, or pity. I feel relief and happiness for the person who succeed in doing it, and a euphoria that one day I might succeed in doing it, to the point that sometimes it’s all I’ll think about for weeks, and the more I think about it the more I want to give it another go.

I say this, as two time suicide survivor, not to shock you, but to educate you, and to hopefully prove my point, because if I am going to read that article, I am going to read it whether there is a trigger warning or not.

Trigger warnings are censorship of those of us who have trauma or mental illness etc, while others talk freely about that trauma and those illnesses without censorship.

A person who has never been affected by real mental illness has no right to demand a trigger warning from me when I do.

Just like a person who has never experienced a certain type of trauma has no right to speak over those of us who have when we do.

I will share links to this warning every time I share a link to a blog it’s about.
This is it. These are the stories I have been building up to tell you for the longest time. Hopefully I will see you all on the other side.