Summary: Susannah Breslin mocks feminists (but evidently only feminists) who warn readers of unpleasant content with the text “trigger warning.” Whatever. Since I think such warnings are often a good idea I’ve created a freely-distributable badge people can use instead of the standard text and put it at the end of this post, along with cut-and-paste-able HTML code if you want to use it in your own posts.

Vanessa Valenti of Feministing, who titled her post “Susannah Breslin: Certifiable Asshole,” may actually feel more generous towards Breslin than I do.

Susannah Breslin, the writer who called feminism “cultural roadkill” has now taken it upon herself to mock the shit out of a very serious term: trigger warnings. You know, because it’s so uncool and passe to care about rape victims.

Her post on True/Slant today begins by calling us folks at Feministing self-victimizing, angry man-haters (*yawn*), setting the tone for this oh-so-expert account of contemporary feminism. What follows is joking banter about Feministing and other blogs’ use of trigger warnings with seemingly no knowledge of what they’re actually for:

Read the quote in context here.

If you follow the links to Breslin’s post (which I’m snit-ishly not going to post since I’m… pretty sure she’s mostly just trolling to boost her stats) you’ll see that she makes one modestly fair point in the midst of her otherwise general assholishness. I’ll get to the fair point in a moment.

First, though, I hadn’t really noticed that Feministing bloggers were particularly man-hating. Nor self-hating and/or self-victimizing. So fuck her.

Second point, Breslin claims she reads feminist blogs, including Feministing, “from time to time” but that “lately” she’s noticed that some posts are prefaced with the ZOMG!1!!-like phrase “****TRIGGER WARNING***” Since those things have been around for, like, years one wonders how often Breslin actually does read Feministing and other feminist blogs. As opposed to just pulling crap out of her certifiable ass.

For the record, the first comment on Breslin’s post, by someone named Sara Libby, makes the entirely sensible (and obvious) point that… (emphasis mine)

I actually wasn’t too familiar with the whole “trigger warning” phenomenon until I read this, so I went back and looked at the Feministing posts. I found most of them that included a warning talked about rape, and other serious stuff that I don’t think it’s unreasonable to believe some people could get offended by (like, say, rape victims?). The Internet can be a very cold, uncaring place, and I don’t see what the problem is in providing readers with a little heads-up that they might encounter something offensive, particularly if you’re trying to build a community where people feel comfortable expressing their opinions.

Breslin’s justification for snarking about trigger warnings is that there’s triggering stuff all over the internet

I guess I should’ve posted a trigger warning with that WikiLeaks.org video. Oooops! Come to think of it, probably 87-percent of the internet needs a goddamn trigger warning these days

You’ll have to find the quote yourself, but that’s what she said.

This, of course, is true enough. And as I recall many of the sites that posted that WikiLeaks.org video, including major, mainstream, general-interest, and otherwise non-“self-victimizing” ones, actually did include warnings that the material could be upsetting. And/or triggering. If Beslin didn’t include a warning when she linked to that video well… she’s still an asshole.

Creative Commons
license.
I do agree with her that the standard text with all its asterisks, exclamations and capital letters does seem a little retro-MSDOS. So I took a couple of minutes with Photoshop and, thanks to a randomly-Googled tutorial (from the CSS Creme design site) I put together a colorful little badge that people can use instead. If they don’t want to create their own.

Use the following HTML code to insert the image in your own posts. It will float the image on the left-hand side of whatever paragraph you insert it in, allowing the surrounding text to flow around it.

<img alt=“Trigger Warning” title=“Trigger Warning” src=“http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_cDVtg63O_Jc/S8VzA5JP2pI/AAAAAAAAAHs/_HQlWsz39ro/s1600/TriggerWarning.png” style=“float: left; margin: .5em;”/>

I do think it’s a good idea to replace the text with a graphic. (The HTML title and alt-text ensure accessablity on alternative browsers.) Feel free, of course, to make and use your own instead.