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Comment by warfangle | Hacker News Reader

Trigger warnings are important, in the context of a safe place.

I'm coming from the direction of a) being genderqueer and b) having survived sexual assault. Safe places have been remarkable in giving me a place to discuss my feelings about gender without ridicule or hate. Trigger warnings have been pivotal in me recovering from being molested as a pre-teen.

I'm actively scared of coming out in the developer community, because of its deep rooted misogyny. But here I am :)

(edit: I love that I just got down-voted for coming out to the community as both queer and victim of sexual assault! Thanks for proving me right, HN.)

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> I love that I just got down-voted for coming out to the community as both queer and victim of sexual assault!

Do you really think that's why you were downvoted?

I mean, it's either that or people who really really hate the idea of someone getting their mental health together with useful tools like safe spaces and trigger words :)

I didn't downvote, but accusing the entire community of deep rooted misogyny might have something to do with it?

Are you denying that there is deep rooted (if surface-subtle) misogyny obvious in the comment thread on just about every post about women in tech / safe places / gamergate / just about anything that challenges the authority of cis-gendered white men?

I am not commenting on it either way. You seemed to be asking about why you were down-voted, I was merely proposing what I thought to be the most likely reason. I hope you can see how it doesn't imply anything about my own personal belief?

I think we both know how hard it is for people to look critically at their surroundings before someone points problems out directly. You might get further with example threads, and maybe a few specific examples of the worst offenders (so no one will fuss too much about you calling them out).

> Trigger warnings are important, in the context of a safe place.

I can see that, in the context in a "safe space" with a fairly specific purpose as to who (either by specific individuals are shared identity around common potential trauma source) it is safe for.

The reality of trauma and triggering is that there are a wide variety of sources of trauma, and that each is associated with a wide variety of both obviously related potential triggers and less obviously related ones, so I think a problem comes about when either safe spaces or trigger warnings become overly generic -- and, particularly, when contexts that are not specifically-sheltered "safe spaces" become the focus of efforts for demands for trigger warnings around any possible source of trauma (or, in a different way, when they became the focus of efforts to demand "trigger warnings" favoring particular sources of trauma, without any particularly strong reason that source of trauma is relevant and needing to be favored in the particular space.)

> (edit: I love that I just got down-voted for coming out to the community as both queer and victim of sexual assault! Thanks for proving me right, HN.)

Stop seeing the world through your victim-goggles. Just stop.

I always appreciate warnings that let me be ready to read or hear about the few things that still bug me (nothing as rough as your b). Way more effective than the "tough love" so many advocate.

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