Cat Fight In The Kitchen-Wattpad Rant

Trigger Warnings

I swear I'm trying to get back to updating weekly/biweekly. It's just that there is a lot of stuff on Addy's plate and sometimes she gets stressed out. But it's okay. I'm here. Let's chit chat.

So, this week we have a rant about something a TON of people ask my opinion on, but I don't like giving, because I'm a soulless bitch. And to be honest, my opinion changes daily and situationally. Which means, you guessed it, this rant is more of an open discussion. I would LOVE to hear your opinions on the topic today, which means, leave them in the comments. Even if you're not the kind of person who comments a lot, drop me an email or a PM or just comment. I really, really want to know how others feel and I'm sure everyone else wants to know how you feel.

So let's get to it and talk about: Trigger Warnings

I don't know if you guys have noticed lately or not, but there has been this huge controversy over whether or not trigger warnings should be placed at the beginnings of classic novels. And this controversy has inevitably spilled over to Wattpad, so I think it's important we discuss this.

How do we feel about trigger warnings, guys?

I toyed with the idea of whether or not I should tell you guys my opinion, because I know it's controversial. But I have been confronted with a lot of angry readers over some (okay a LOT) of the material in Pretty Little Bones, which as you guys probably know by now is more or less a memoir and felt it was finally need to address this.

So I did a little digging and came across the two most popular arguments which we shall discuss below:

1. It's important to protect people, especially when they're mentally unstable

I promise you I understand the importance of protecting someone who is sensitive to sore topics. But at the same time, I feel like if I had hidden from everything like that, I would not have been able to live a real life. I would spend every day hiding and I don't think that's much of an existence. But I don't know. I've been wrong before.

And I discussed this with my best friend when I was debating whether or not to have my students read a more serious book with abortion and hints of rape in it. And he told me he thought it was important that I not let the students hide from these horrible things. Obviously if it bothered them so badly they couldn't handle it, such as a student who had experience sexual assault or something, there should be supplemental reading, access to counselors, etc. But, as he said, if we shelter our future generations from these horrible topics, who will they talk to? If we make everything a taboo, we're never going to get anywhere.

I mean, just being in active war zones, he's seen a lot of really terrible, terrible things. Things that probably make what happened when we were kids seem like walks in the park. And we hide that from the public, but we shouldn't. Because it's sad that this is going on in the world and we don't know. We spend too much time in our own bubbles and I don't think that's right. That's what happened in Vietnam. The horrors of the war were shoved down people's throats and it was decided the public couldn't handle it. And now we know nothing about the horrors of the world. And that's unreasonable, in my opinion.

I mean, my best friend and I were always the kinds of best friends that told each other anything and everything. But there are things he's seen while deployed that he doesn't talk about. And he went through a lot before then, but those things were so terrible he won't mention them at all. Because as a society, we've become so sensitive that there are topics we hide from. And I don't like that.

Books are a powerful tool that open the door to important discussions. I think we need books that discuss the hard topics like abuse, r*pe, violence, abortion, depression, suicide, and every other sensitive topic, because we need to let our future generations know it's important to talk about. It's important to seek information and more importantly, to seek help. And I feel like trigger warnings take away from that.