At the start of the 2014-15 school year, which we’re just finishing now, collidge students throughout this great land demanded “trigger warnings” be posted on books of literature, textbooks, or any other kind of potentially upsetting material that might send a poor, defenseless student spiraling into post-traumatic stress disorder. At my own alma mater, Rutgers–they’re always trying to hit me up for money, and I always say no–some budding interllectural called for a warning label to be slapped on to The Great Gatsby on account of its “gory, abusive, and mysogynistic violence” ( http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/us/warning-the-literary-canon-could-make-students-squirm.html ).
Please don’t stop to consider how the same people who grow up playing Zombie Holocaust every waking moment turn into dainty little drips who can’t read The Great Gatsby because it might be too scary for them.
This has caught on at various universities, nationwide. At the U. of California, Santa Barbara, the student government formally demanded that “trigger warnings” be placed on all sorts of reading material.
You don’t know what a trigger warning is? Don’t blame yourself. The term was invented only recently and is only used by morons in the academic world. Not at all surprisingly, the warnings “have their ideological roots in feminist thought,” according to the New York Times. Of course.
Oberlin College published a guide to trigger warnings, containing this jewel of wisdom:
“Triggers are not only relevant to sexual misconduct, but also to anything that might cause trauma… racism, classism, heterosexism, cissexism, ableism, and other means of privilege and oppression…”
I wonder which is worse–cissexism or ableism?
But here’s the kicker: someday, blithering idiots who know all about cissexism and ableism, and can go rattling on about them for hours, will be old enough to vote and hold public office. They will become the next generation of teachers, noozies, lawyers, judges, and bureaucrats.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
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