in keeping with the food metaphor, out in the wild, where there ARE NO LABELS, when you find a food that you do not know if it will harm you (assuming you do not have access to plenty of food you are familiar with) what you do is
You assess it. If you have a nut allergy, you ask yourself if this looks like a nut. If you have a shellfish allergy, you ask yourself if this smells like seafood.
Then you test it. You touch your tongue to it and wait a couple minutes. If you feel okay you take a very small super tiny piece and chew it a couple times and tuck it in between your gums and your lip and leave it in your mouth for several minutes while paying close attention to your body, and see how you feel. If you feel okay you swallow that tiny piece, and you wait about 20 minutes and you see how you feel. If you feel okay you eat a more normal size bite and you wait a couple hours and you see how you feel.
If at some point in this process you start to feel nauseated, or headache-y, or ill in any way, you decide not to eat that thing.
OR. You don’t eat it until someone you know and trust has consumed it and tells you it doesn’t taste of nuts or shellfish. And even then. You proceed with caution.
You decide for yourself. You exercise care in what you consume. You don’t walk up to an unfamiliar plant and scarf down a handful of leaves then scream that it should have had disclaimers and warnings all over it when it gives you diarrhea.
Trigger warnings and tags and ratings on art or entertainment are a nice thing to do for people. I try to do it. But we are all responsible for our own immediate safety. We are also social creatures who depend on each other, so maybe that means you don’t read or watch something until someone you trust has vetted it, that’s a great way to handle that. So is finding authors whose labels and tags you trust. But when it comes to fiction and the communication of ideas, there are a billion things that are fine for most people but bad for some, and no way to get a billion labels on it, so… you still have to find your own way.
I will continue to tag and label things as well as i can. I hope i can be a trusted author for many people. But i’m never going to be able to put every warning. Take your own precautions. If you are continuously having issues with content, find a friend that can pre-read/watch and give you all the warnings you need. Take your own precautions.
amandla
theartofmadeline
germansingergirl
