We had a prolonged team-intern discussion about how to deal with trigger- and content-warnings (or just warnings), what it means for the recordings and all the pitfalls it includes and which approaches to choose. We want HAY& to be a platform for as many as possible to browse around, find recognition and learn about a wider scope of plural experiences. The following should display some of our reasoning and the way we are going to deal with warnings. It’s not perfect, and I don’t think there will be a perfect solution, but it’s the best we were able to come up with.

Our reasoning

Lets start with a simple question. What is a trigger? A simple definition would be a sensory input, often a certain topic or thing, that causes an involuntary, usually negative reaction. That involuntary element is sadly prevalent especially on the DID-Side of plurality. It is certainly nothing chosen, and it can be a seemingly random pattern. Part of the motivation of the podcast is to empower systems of all kinds, to give them a space to express themselves, and to construct that space in a way that it feels safe and predictable to navigate. Thats why warnings are very useful.

As creators of content of any kind, we don’t create our content into an empty void. The moment we publish what we create, there will be an audience. There will be some sort of responsibility, whether we accept it or not. So, from an content creator’s perspective, adding warnings is a way to tackle the responsibility we take by communicating in a public space. And we think its a good way, since it heavily changes the power dynamic of sender and recipient.

Trigger- and content-warnings are a powerful tool. They forward power to the audience. With them, the audience got to choose which contents they deem as appropriate to consume, and which they want to refrain from. We think it is very important that everyone participating in this little project gets empowered to fulfil their needs and get simple tools to ensure their own health and safety. They are granted the responsibility to take care for themselves.

Using trigger- and content-warnings comes with downsides too. For one, no matter how much we map out of the podcast, there will be always a potential trigger we miss. On the other-hand, the risk that the focus on warnings overshadow the actual content we want to provide, and the podcast starts to revolve around them. Then there are several edge-cases to cover, like individuals who abuse trigger-warnings to search for self-harming content consumption. People who get troubled by the mentioning of a topic alone. A huge list of content-warnings might be daunting on the potential audience.

Nonetheless, trigger-warnings give the participants of the podcast a fair amount of freedom. They allow us to provide a safe-space in that they can express themselves however they want and communicate whatever they feel like needs to be shared. They don’t have to take into consideration if it would be too threatening for some to listen to. We don’t have to censor our guests, as we can just describe what they will tell.

Of course, the podcast will still ensure a normal level of human decency, none of us support or want to publish statements that deteriorate, insult or invalidate the existence of anyone. We will make sure to keep it civil.

Our trigger- and content-warning System

Firstly, each recorded episode gets two lists of warnings. Trigger warnings are based on common triggers and topics with bad implications. Content-warnings are a more general description of the episode and are there to enable an interested being to asses if they want to listen to it. The warnings won’t be displayed automatically, but can be shown with a click of a button.

We might or might not add an option to propose additional warnings to an episode, that has to be seen in the future.

Additionally, there will be a list of topics that are only visible once a “show the heavy stuff” check is activated. We choose to hide these topics by default, because they are still an important part of plural experience, but are commonly traumatic and triggering for a lot of systems.