Trigger Warnings

As the United States bravely leads the modern world into a snakepit of blithering oversensitive red-cupping nitwits, I thought it timely to attempt some kind of definition that we could use to sort out what exactly does legitimately trigger offense in the otherwise molly-coddled. I have used the 1971 Miller Test for obscenity as a template.

• Whether "the average person, applying contemporary community standards", would find that the act or text, taken as a whole, appeals to chauvinist interests,
• Whether the act or text depicts or describes, in a way that consciously seeks to create or sustain a distribution of political power between groups or members of groups, whether defined by sex, sexual orientation, race, religion, ethnicity, nationality or political allegiance, that is unequal for reasons which offend natural justice as specifically defined by applicable state law,
• Whether the act or text, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.