G-Spot

 

Trigger Warnings: To Be or Not to Be?

That is not a question. There is no choice. In today’s climate and culture, an author must include trigger warnings for their books and stories or risk alienating their readers or worse.

The questions is: When is a trigger warning too much?

Recently one of my book promo posts through a collaborator garnered several comments about ‘interracial relationships’ being listed under my Author’s Note as a trigger warming. The remarks ranged from ‘Interracial relationships? I don’t see it’, to ‘Interracial relationships as a trigger warning seems wrong’, to ‘Why would interracial relationships be a trigger warning?’ Needless to say, I asked the promoter to remove ‘interracial relationships’ from my Author’s Note, but I did respond to the critics in the Comment section: “I see numerous mentions regarding interracial relationships as a trigger warning. In trying to include all the possible scenarios that could trigger an individual, I suppose I overreached with that one. Maybe. Just trying to cover all the bases as some individuals may be "uncomfortable" seeing and/or reading about interracial relationships." 

I never specifically said interracial relationships was a trigger, only included it as a note of what to expect in the book; it just happened to be listed with other elements that are typical trigger warnings. 

I still think my including interracial relationships in my Author’s Note was valid, especially nowadays when almost anything can be considered a trigger to someone, somewhere. Maybe not to you or me, but to someone. It’s impossible to list all the possible triggers and you can’t please everyone. The minute you try, someone else finds fault with what you’ve said or posted or written. Damned if you, damned if you don’t. I’m learning about Trigger Warnings by trial and error—I know, I’m late to the party again—and recently learned that (thirty-two published books in) my own writing is considered “dark romance” because of its triggering content. News to me. 

There are lit mags that request you list any possible trigger warnings for your submission so that they are better able to make a decision about which of their editors or first readers to assign the story. Fair enough. But then I have to comb through my memory bank, short of re-reading an entire story I’d written a while ago and been widely submitting, to figure out if there are any triggers. Again, what’s not a trigger to me, may be a trigger to someone else. So some or all of the triggers may get by me and I submit the work without noting any trigger warnings.

In my day (yeah, I said it, and I’m dating myself, LMAO) the only content warning we had for a book was the cover and the back-cover blurb. If you were like me and a dear friend of mine, we used to skim through the insides of books for any hot, spicy dialogue or scenes and when we found them, that was a reason to purchase the book (I believe this is how we chose Chances by Jackie Collins and how she became an auto-buy for a long while after). If this skimming method and the cover and back-cover blurb were not enough to “warn” us about the book’s content then oh well.

You would think there would be no such thing as wall-bangers with the amount of triggers and forewarnings and “spoilers” that go into promoting a book today. There’s no room left for surprises, which I find one of the best things about reading a book, the opportunity to be amazed by unexpected twists and turns and discover and learn about new ways of life not like mine. Some of those ways of life might be about drug dealing or the mafia or war. I don’t remember The Kite Runner having any trigger warnings, and there were quite a lot of events that could be construed as triggering in that book. But had I not taken the risk to read it, something so far outside of my normal read, I would have been deprived of one of the best books I have ever read. Same goes for a book like The Color Purple by Alice Walker (Domestic Violence among the triggers) or Tiger, Tiger by Margaux Fragoso about a young girl’s being groomed by a pedophile, or The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, a book about a Black teen who is killed by a cop (a theme that probably comes as close to a trigger for me as anything ever will). To my knowledge, none of these books had trigger warnings. If they were published today, they probably would though.

There are books, TV shows and movies (besides those featuring Black teens shot by cops) that I do tend to stay away from because I don’t like the subject matter. I won’t go as far as saying it “triggers” me. I’d just rather refrain from certain unpleasantries and I think that’s the distinction that some of the publishing world may not be making: stuff that actually triggers or stuff that’s just unpleasant (obviously, my interracial relationships inclusion in my Author's Note was guilty of not making this distinction). 

The unpleasant subject matter for me is the antebellum south and/or slavery. By its very nature, I know what I will be in for when I read or watch this content. I don’t need a trigger warning. I know there will be physical and sexual abuse of Black people. I know that Black people will suffer unimaginable grief and pain—emotional and physical.

I have not seen 12 Years a Slave to this day and I daresay I’m depriving myself of an evocative and stimulating watch. Gone with the Wind, same thing. I just don’t want to put myself through the vileness. Yes, I saw the original Roots and Roots: The Next Generation. I read Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred and her Parable books, all with their triggering content. I enjoyed these books and TV shows. I survived to read and ‘enjoy’ others. There were no trigger warnings back then, but because of the subject matter, I knew that there were going to be distasteful content in the books and I made the choices to partake accordingly.

I think the content warnings that are on TV shows—mature content, adult language, strong sexual content, smoking, drug use—and the motion picture content rating system are enough warning for me to make an informed decision about whether to read or watch something. But that’s just me. Usually these warnings are what attract me to a book, show or movie, rather than warn me away, but I understand why these warnings may drive others away and/or may not be specific enough. This is why trigger warnings are getting much more detailed (i.e., my interracial relationships inclusion) and prevalent.

Things like suicide, domestic abuse/domestic violence (all of which are pervasive in my Play On erotic romance series and others of my books and what makes them “dark” romances) are major triggers nowadays and not something I considered triggering when I sat down to pen my books. I just considered these issues par for the course and part of what made my characters who and what they were and what made my stories real.

Being a survivor of domestic violence and growing up in an environment where it occurred, I suppose I should be triggered by depictions of DA/DV in books, TV shows and movies but, unless I’m in denial, I’m not triggered. Again, that’s just me. Maybe there’s a trigger out there for me and I just haven’t encountered it yet. I hope I never do.

In the end, it’s better to err on the side of caution and add trigger warnings, exercising empathy for those for which they apply and can help. Thus my overreaching with interracial relationships in my Author’s Note.

So what’s your verdict? What type of trigger warnings, if any, do you want or need to see in your books, TV shows or movies? Or do you even want them at all?