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Trigger warning, content warning, emotive content: theatres across the UK use different terms to alert audiences to potentially distressing material. Amid objections that the practice ruins the power of surprise, Alice Saville asks whether it’s fair to trick theatregoers.

'For a good three days last week, I couldn’t open Twitter without feeling a bit sick, a bit unreal. One image patterned through my feed: an image of two women on a London bus, splashed with blood, visibly in shock after being beaten up in a misogynist and homophobic attack. At first, I was convinced it was staged; it seemed too artful, too accurate a distillation of every queer woman’s fears. A few nights before, I’d kissed my girlfriend on the top deck of a nightbus. Like them, we sat in the front seat. It’s clearly the best place to sit; the city stretched out before you in dark perpendiculars, damp streets glowing in the street lamps. The night, the city feel like they’re yours. That sense is an illusion, and every look at that image reminded me of that.' ... Keep reading on Exeunt.