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Do Trigger Warnings Work? (Patreon)

Published:
2026-05-28 17:10:02
Imported:
2026-11

Content

Do trigger warnings work, and even so, are their limits to their usefulness? 

Sources:

* Hollywood Censored: The Production Code Administration and the Hollywood Film Industry, 1930-1940 Gregory D. Black

*Chapter 8 Sexual Violence, Trigger Warnings, and the Early Modern Classroom Kirsten N. Mendoza Teaching Social Justice Through Shakespeare: Why Renaissance Literature Matters Now, 2019, pp. 97-105 (11 pages): https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctvrs912p.13

*"the gothic is not an aesthetic" SAINT (S.T.) GIBSON: https://saint.substack.com/p/writing-and-reading-the-gothic-novel

*“This Film Is Not Yet Rated”

*Fandom 101: The Origin of the Citrus Scale: https://duckprintspress.com/2023/11/04/fandom-101-the-origin-of-the-citrus-scale/

*"Remembering Hollywood's Hays Code, 40 Years On": https://www.npr.org/2008/08/08/93301189/remembering-hollywoods-hays-code-40-years-on

🫶🏾 General Disclaimer: This video only covers a narrow part of this topic and not an exhaustive look into the topic. Anything left out was either cut for brevity/subject matter or simply did not come up in my research. I encourage anyone to fill in any gaps I may have missed with their own content or in the comments. 🫶🏾

Special Thanks to Joey for Editing and Emotional Support.

Files

Do Trigger Warnings Work?

Do trigger warnings work, and even so, are their limits to their usefulness? Not clickbait.

Comments

Sugar Puff

I'm honestly really glad you opened up this conversation even though, as you said, it didn't go into that much detail, but it's honestly something I've been thinking of myself. There were honestly times where I didn't even expect a scene in a book or movie to trigger me until it finally happened. While the whole TW talk has been around for ages I definitely think it has become more prominent and people have gotten louder about it ever since the pandemic, where it all seems we've suffered a collective episode of psychosis lol. Imo there started to be a heavy focus on mental health post-pandemic which I don't think is handled very well. I see many people, especially in online settings where the focus is always on: putting trigger warnings, replacing triggering words(as mentioned in the video the grape example), protecting and ''advocating'' for people with mental and physical disabilities as well as psychological disorders, yet I never see anyone having actual nuanced conversations about said disorders, the people who have them and how it affects them(especially the negative and extreme parts of mental disorders that require medication and therapy), how we can help them, nor any genuine sense of community or empathy. Individualism is heavily promoted nowadays in our capitalist society, and even though people may TALK about or ADVOCATE for trigger warnings for others, are the same who will be uncomfortable or disgusted when someone with a mental disorder has an episode or acts out of the ''poor, oppressed, need to protect because im able bodied and white'' image(also as a mixed person I kinda notice the same when people try to ''protect'' and speak for POC in online spaces then get uncomfortable when they have to take responsibility for their colonial history). I think we need to have a healthier balance of knowing when the right time and place and method to help people in need is and also recognizing that said people are also capable (most of the time) of working on their issues and using literature and media that may be triggering as an outlet to cope or develop their knowledge. Honestly it often seems like we're being infantilized in this trigger warning discourse. A good, simple warning that triggering material is present without taking the issue to the extreme or pressuring and sometimes attacking (especially female and BIPOC) authors and creators into having a TW page detailing every single dramatic and ''bad'' plot point that we should watch out for is already fine enough. I greatly apologise for the longer comment but it's just something I myself noticed and put a lot of thought into in the last couple of years and I 100% agree that trigger warning shave their time and place and that if we just stopped to have more nuanced and respectful discussions on the matter and how we can go about it then 90% of the discourse would be solved

Pippa Russell

I think about this a lot when it comes to the reaction to It Ends With Us and the conversation around whether it should have warned it was about domestic violence. While I don’t like the execution of the novel at all, I could very clearly see the artistic goal was getting an audience to sympathize with and understand how someone becomes a victim of abuse, and that not immediately revealing that’s what the story is about is part of that artistic goal. Whether or not it succeeds, a trigger warning would have taken away the reader coming to the realization at the same time as Lily what was happening to her. I also empathize with people who don’t want to read a book and be blindsided by the depiction of traumatic events they weren’t expecting. Don’t know if there is a right answer to that.

Steve F

Really excellent discussion, thank you so much for this.

Ilana Galpert

"protect the children" sentiment from the right is infuriating when you consider the number one cause of child death is gun violence. protect the children from knowing about gay people but not from, you know, death