I agree, Bostonian-- posting reading lists seems the best way to handle this. After all, post-secondary settings are (hypothetically) places for adults, not children. That also serves as a means of GENUINELY empowering those who might struggle with a way to control their own lives (rather than the sense of "being controlled" by external forces).
Trigger warnings-- and I say this on the basis of a fair number of family and friends who have experienced genuine PTSD-- are somewhat patronizing, and may well be isolating in and of themselves. Oh, fireworks aren't triggering for you as a combat veteran? What? Descriptions of others' assaults don't trigger flashbacks of your own??
People who have PTSD have already been traumatized by circumstances that most people cannot truly share in understanding. In a social sense, they are outsiders with a minority identity that they themselves didn't "choose." But trigger warnings serve as a patronizing means of "othering" on that basis, and furthermore, if your alienating experience doesn't meet someone else's specifications, then... it's alienating again. Because you aren't the RIGHT kind of survivor/veteran if your PTSD isn't the "right" sort.
Believe me, in some trauma victims, not responding the way that you are "supposed" to-- that is, to having no particular problem with "trigger warning material" means potentially feeling shame and self-doubt all over again regarding that trauma, and the resultant PTSD. PTSD already comes with a lot of shame that the individual is incapable of managing stress, weak, etc.
Does that make sense? I do get the sense that most of the people using "trigger warnings" are doing so out of a pop-culture understanding of what PTSD actually looks like. "Trigger warnings" do come from internet culture-- and like so much else that does, they may or may not have any particular value or validity when subjected to the rigorous sort of evaluation that decides whether or not they are supportable.
