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🔹 Someone else’s fiction cannot cause you physical harm.
🔹If someone else’s fiction is causing you emotional or psychological harm, or distress, you can put it down and not read/watch it.
🔹Your emotional well-being is not the responsibility of fiction writers.
🔹Someone else’s fiction is not about your personal trauma.
🔹When reading or watching fiction, you always have the power. You can always stop. You are never reading fiction without your own consent.
🔹Fiction writers are not responsible for other people’s mental health.
🔹The content of a piece of fiction does not reflect on the morality of its author.
🔹Just because someone writes about bad things happening, doesn’t mean they want those things to happen.
🔹Don’t like? Don’t read.
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We can tag and content warn all we want but only readers have the power to stop themselves from reading something if it isn’t their in their wheelhouse.
so, I am strongly in this camp, but I do remember reading some stuff back in high school and college for a grade that could potentially be disturbing or triggering (I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Davitas Harp, The Bluest Eye, The Color Purple, Lord of the Flies, Night, Brave New World, I could go on). To be honest, I’m glad I did. I would’ve appreciated a heads up with some, sure, but I think being able to maturely discuss difficult things rather than try and sweep them under the rug because they are difficult made me better able to help, understand, and assist people, and recognize when people are trying to play on my emotions and morality to get what they want.
If you are still in high school or college or whatever and getting assigned books or movies, look it up on Book Trigger Warnings if you’re unsure. If you see something that might be disturbing or disrupting to you and you really don’t want to risk it, TALK WITH YOUR TEACHER. Ask for an alternative assignment. It is not the problem of the author (I mean, many are dead anyway), anything you have to say has likely been said before, and banning it doesn’t actually protect or help anyone.
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