Trigger Warnings by Neil McGowan
The main topic of discussion in my house these past few weeks (at, least, in terms of book-related) has been trigger warnings, and whether they’re a good thing. I’ve never paid much attention to them, viewing them (rather cynically) as a marketing strategy – I’m reminded of when I was a teenager and a sure-fire way to guarantee a record would sell was to plaster it with stickers spouting text such as ‘Warning: contains explicit lyrics’ and similar. Of course, this all-but-guaranteed people would buy the records, because, well, forbidden… I’m aware there’s been a growing discourse on whether books should contain them, although I’ve not been following it as such – my social media presence is minimal to say the least, so most of what I hear is second-hand information. In my day job, I teach IT systems to healthcare professionals, and part of my remit is to look after mental health nurses. We often chat with them outside of training (and they’re a wonderful resource for a writer, but I ...