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Name Removed
Professor Conrad
ENGL 1102
5 June 2023
The Illusion of Safety/The Safety of Illusion
In, “The Illusion of Safety/The Safety of Illusion,” Roxanne Gay suggests that trigger warnings are not a true act of protection, and it could be a tool to keep people from taking action to seek true help. She supports her view by discussing the irony of television ratings being in place to protect children from inappropriate content, as well as discussing social media accounts that use the term trigger warning on sensitive content. She does this to gauge how effective a pre-warning truly is to those that have lived through traumatizing events. The writing is intended for those that believe in trigger warnings as a tool for safety.
I found the article interesting. I enjoy hearing and reading different perspectives on topics and at the end I had to agree with the author. I have come across social media posts that flashed “trigger warning” before the content and saw that many people would still watch and complain about being triggered, just as a child would sneakily watch a scary movie and have nightmares that night. I agreed with the author in the fact that people should seek help in dealing with their triggers versus having to tiptoe around social media to keep a sense of safety. I believe that we are all victims of some traumatic event, but it is not the responsibility of others to protect our feelings because life does not come with any caution signs; life just happens.
From the beginning of the article, the author describes her personal triggers. She details a trigger for each of her senses in different scenarios. She references the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that required programs to provide ratings about the content being aired as a way to protect children from inappropriate content (Gay). She goes on to reference Joanne Cantor’s “Ratings and Advisories: Implications for the New Ratings System for Television,” which showed that children have a stronger desire to watch content that they know is not made for them (Gay). This brought into question the effectiveness of television ratings as a means to protect children. She states, “even children want a taste of forbidden fruit,” (Gay). She compares this notion of television safety to trigger warnings across the internet that are supposed to protect the reader from sensitive content. So the question becomes, are trigger warnings truly a safety measure? Do trigger warnings give the reader the power to remain safe from reliving a bad experience, or is it a free pass to avoid dealing with those negative emotions? This is important because the author began the article in the voice of a victim, and yet feels censored, or victimized, in ways by trigger warnings. Even with these feelings, the author understands that not everyone has access to resources such as therapy, and that there is no one size fits all to what is appropriate for dealing with triggers.
Works Cited
Gay, Roxane. The Illusion of Safety/The Safety of Illusion. 1st ed., HarperCollins, 2014. pp. 147-153.
