I’d like to offer a friendly rebuttal to Jenny Davis’ recent essay in which she argues against the use of trigger warnings in favor of other signifiers of content that may cause people to relive trauma in unproductive ways. Davis proposes “an orientation towards audience intentionality among content producers, content distributors, and platform designers” as a potential path out of the mire of trigger warning debates, such as ending the use of clever titles that mask potentially disturbing content or doing away with autoplay. I think we can all agree that autoplay needs to go. Seriously, please stop forever.

I agree with Davis that trigger warnings don’t do enough; they often fail to take into account the wide variety of trauma triggers and leave content producers and distributers in the position of mind reading to predict what content will be triggering for whom. But the same argument can be made for nearly every social convention designed to mitigate harm. Laws against hate crimes will be unevenly enforced, warnings on labels will leave out chemicals not yet known to be harmful, and seatbelts will not prevent all automobile accident deaths. Yet the fact that someone will consume more than three alcoholic drinks per day while taking ibuprofen does not spur vigorous debate around the utility of the warning.

We put up with half measures all the time, in nearly every facet of social life. So why are trigger warnings so divisive, as Davis rightly points out? She compares the use of trigger warnings to picking a fight, but who fired the first shot? If using a trigger warning on content is a political decision, and I agree that it is, what are its politics? Davis argues that trigger warnings tell “a contingent of consumers to go screw.” But why are trigger warnings read that way by so many people? To my mind, there is nothing obviously offensive about writing “TW: anti-black violence” at the beginning of an essay or before an item on a syllabus. There is no clear reason why someone might read that phrase and be so turned off to the content itself that they refrain from reading it—unless, of course, they have experienced some trauma that gives them cause to.

Trigger warnings often spur disagreement that descends into a discussion of the warning itself, rather than the content. But what causes this divisiveness in the first place? I believe that trigger warnings are divisive because they suggest that we are responsible to each other to foster an environment of mutual respect, because they demand that we empathize with individuals in ways that, as Davis points out, we cannot predict or imagine. This responsibility and act of empathy is absolutely counter to the dominant neoliberal paradigm of individual responsibility and unmitigated competition that informs so much of our social imaginary. The idea that your pain might be, at least in part, my fault because I failed to do something as basic as type a few extra words in a syllabus is anathema to a culture that expects us all to train ourselves to be savvy consumers with bootstraps made for pulling.

Davis argues that trigger warnings often turn into “a self-congratulatory monologue” and, as with so much of progressive politics, she is absolutely right. She also argues that there is a slippery slope lurking on the horizon in which all content will be tagged with so many trigger warnings that they simply become noise; again, I agree. These are problems to contend with, but they are not so insurmountable that we have to dispose completely with the trigger warning as a tool which is limited, but still useful. Self-congratulatory monologues are unavoidable, but not a problem inherent to trigger warnings. Useful content often proliferates to the point of being mere noise but, frankly, I don’t see that happening any time soon with regard to trigger warnings. They are still very rarely used in mainstream news outlets, classroom syllabi, or literary works.

A frequent argument against the use of trigger warnings is that they are patronizing or, as Davis says, “paternalistic.” Now, patronizing generally means condescending, imposed from above by someone in authority. But it is those who have experienced trauma that demand trigger warnings in the first place. So who is patronizing whom? I argue that it is, in fact, patronizing to assert that individuals who have experienced trauma should prioritize the annoyance, or even hostility, of those who dislike trigger warnings above their own needs regarding mental wellness.

Early in her essay Davis asserts that “we all agree that people who have experienced trauma should not have to endure further emotional hardship in the midst of a class session nor while scrolling through their friends’ status updates.” However, many of the essays arguing against trigger warnings argue exactly the opposite. For example, this much-circulated essay in The Atlantic discusses exposure therapy and argues that students with PTSD should be exposed to their triggers in a classroom setting since “the world beyond college will be far less willing to accommodate requests for trigger warnings and opt-outs.” The author fails to point out, however, that exposure therapy usually takes place under relatively controlled conditions and in increments; in other words, definitely not a classroom environment.

Thus far I’ve tried to speak from my perspective as a scholar, a teacher, and as someone who is careful about how they share content on social media. I’d like to break from that perspective briefly and, if you’ll indulge me, speak as someone who has experienced trauma. I have had entire days robbed from me in the course of reading online because an essay or video failed to prepare me for triggering content. It is not merely a question of being unsettled, sad, or disturbed. For many, whether they are diagnosed with PTSD or not, it is a question of losing bodily autonomy, of descending into a panic attack and hyperventilating until you cannot use your hands or feet. It can result in more than just lost sleep or skipped meals, but self-harming and even suicidal behavior. When I see a trigger warning, I do not feel patronized—I feel respected. I am being given the informed choice to consume or not consume content that may rob me of my piece of mind. Davis ends her essay by saying “perhaps the best way we can care for one another is by helping and trusting each person to care for hirself.” This, I argue, is exactly what trigger warnings do by design. They don’t censor content (it’s still there!), they label it in a way that those most affected by it have found, and continue to argue, is liberatory.

Britney Summit-Gil is a graduate student in Communication and Media at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She tweets occasionally at @beersandbooks.