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Recent reporting and discussions here about "trolls" and the "culture of hate" (both con and pro) have repeatedly broached the topic of what appropriate limits to free expression might be.
Dean of Students John Ellison at the University of Chicago has taken a stand on the issue in a letter welcoming new students. He writes:
Once here you will discover that one of the University of Chicago's defining characteristics is our commitment to freedom of inquiry and expression. [...] Members of our community are encouraged to speak, write, listen, challenge, and learn, without fear of censorship. Civility and mutual respect are vital to all of us, and freedom of expression does not mean the freedom to harass or threaten others. You will find that we expect members of our community to be engaged in rigorous debate, discussion, and even disagreement. At times this may challenge you and even cause discomfort.
Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so called 'trigger warnings,' we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual 'safe spaces' where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.
While some have voiced support for Ellison's commitment to free expression (with Robby Soave at Reason encouraging readers to give the dean "a round of applause"), others are concerned about the implications of his message. L.V. Anderson at Slate agrees with much of the letter's content promoting "civility and mutual respect," but finds the last paragraph quoted above to be "weird" and unsettling:
By deriding "safe spaces" and "trigger warnings" before students arrive on campus, the University of Chicago is inadvertently sending a message that certain students—the ones who have never been traumatized, and the ones who have historically felt welcome on college campuses (i.e., white men)—are more welcome than others, and that students who feel marginalized are unlikely to have their claims taken seriously. Adults who decry "the coddling of the American mind" will likely celebrate U. Chicago's preemptive strike against political correctness, but students who have experienced violence, LGBTQ students, and students of color likely will not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 27 2016, @12:52AM
> "Shielding" a COLLEGE STUDENT when it's their last chance to develop skills to deal with actual life would be tragic.
Where do you get the word "shield" from?
Trigger warnings are about preparing someone for what is about to come so they won't be blindsided.
(Score: 3, Informative) by MostCynical on Saturday August 27 2016, @01:03AM
It seems "trigger warnings" these days mean "get ready to scream" rather than "watch out if you're sensitive"
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 1) by invis on Saturday August 27 2016, @01:06AM
Absolutely - life *always* gives you a warning so you're *never* blindsided.
"What is there to fear from such a regular world?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 27 2016, @01:16AM
> Absolutely - life *always* gives you a warning so you're *never* blindsided.
Its weird how college kids are simultaneously infantilized and expected to be adults. As if there is no room for a middle-ground. Steeling yourself for exposure to something disturbing is how someone with PTSD learns to cope.
(Score: 1) by invis on Saturday August 27 2016, @01:49AM
I'm having a hard time understanding your point - are you suggesting all college students have PTSD? Or should be treated as if they do?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 27 2016, @01:57AM
Well, obviously only if they have survived an American High School, with Football.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 27 2016, @02:13AM
> are you suggesting all college students have PTSD? Or should be treated as if they do?
Do you honestly think trigger warnings are there for all college students?
I'm having a hard time taking your question at face value.
Trigger warnings are there for the people who might have a PTSD reaction to the content.
The people who have not been injured ignore them, just like people not in a wheelchair typically ignore wheelchair ramps.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 27 2016, @08:11AM
Surprisingly people who have gone through traumatic experiences, you know soldiers and the like, generally have little need for trigger warnings.
Such a shame that growing up in a western democracy carries such tremendous scars on the psyche of some people.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday August 27 2016, @01:30AM
Trigger warnings are about preparing someone for what is about to come so they won't be blindsided.
Reality doesn't give trigger warnings. And how are we to know what a listener needs "preparing" for? Sure, if I'm giving a photoessay on the atrocities of the Pol Pot regime, I'll warn the audience that it's going to be grisly. But what I keep hearing of trigger warnings is that they get used for really frivolous stuff. It's some sort of lame virtue signalling not a legitimate concern for the audience.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 27 2016, @02:38AM
> But what I keep hearing of trigger warnings is that they get used for really frivolous stuff.
Maybe you should actually look into it rather than take at face value the caricatures painted by intellectual gatekeepers trying to hold on to the last vestiges of their pre-nixon moral authority to dictate all that is good and right.
> if I'm giving a photoessay on the atrocities of the Pol Pot regime, I'll warn the audience that it's going to be grisly
Congrats! You are now a virtue-signaling pansy-ass worried that students will get their delicate fee-fees hurt.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday August 27 2016, @03:42AM
Maybe you should actually look into it rather than take at face value the caricatures painted by intellectual gatekeepers trying to hold on to the last vestiges of their pre-nixon moral authority to dictate all that is good and right.
I have, both direct experience and reading. Is ad hominem all you have?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday August 27 2016, @01:42AM
If you can't be blindsided now and then, without blowing up or whatever, then you are less than a man or a woman.
Try boot camp. When you graduate from boot camp, then you MIGHT be ready for an education.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday August 27 2016, @08:41AM
Life just isn't like that. Things happen with no warning whatsoever. If you cannot learn to cope with such things then you will fail to cope with the real world. So I think the previous poster's use of the word 'shield' is appropriate in the context in which (s)he used it.
How on earth have we managed to evolve to the state we are in today without having such things to worry about? Did the caveman worry about offending someone by using the wrong name for the colour of pigment on his cave drawings? Did he pile stones in a certain pattern to let others know that his gender had changed from being a male to that of thigh bone of a what-a-big-saurus or pineapple? No, he probably defended himself or moved away from whatever was threatening him. Why are such things even necessary today?
There is a famous RAF Squadron (617 Sqn) nicknamed the Dambusters, whose WW2 exploits are now famous. The CO, Wg Cdr Guy Gibson had a black Labrador dog which he called Nigger. However, when the film was made the dog's name mysteriously changed to 'Digger'. The dog wasn't Australian, and at no point during its life was it ever called Digger. So now we have to rewrite history to avoid possibly offending someone. However insulting or innocuous one finds the dog's name to be, we shouldn't go changing facts to suit any specific group of people. If I were to give a presentation on the Dambusters in the US, would I be expected to lie about facts rather than state the truth but explain that, in those times, the word did not carry an offensive meaning to the vast majority of people living at that time?
These things happened and they must be accepted in that context. We pride ourselves on this site for being intelligent and following scientific disciplines, rather than burying the truth and then making things up to ensure that we don't offend someone. Facts are just that - facts. People who need protecting from facts need to learn how to cope with the truth and life.
I fear that I am getting old.....
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Saturday August 27 2016, @05:43PM
his gender had changed from being a male to that of thigh bone of a what-a-big-saurus or pineapple
This is stupid, and you know it.
Facts are just that - facts. People who need protecting from facts need to learn how to cope with the truth and life.
This person who sexually identifies as a bone, a dinosaur, a plant, a grenade, or an Apache attack copter outside of MyTwitFace is a strawman. Some people make things up for the purpose of offending somebody else. Don't fall for it. I see this as a dangerous trend in the backlash against political correctness. Somehow it has become a badge of honor to be ignorant.
Educate yourself on peoples who haven't been influenced by Jewish desert religions. Transgenderism isn't some new hipster thing.
The use of the word identify was a misstep, that's for sure, but the science wasn't there at the time to show that there's no identify about it. It's like the moniker climate change. Idiots have turned it into a strawman, easily defeated because, well, obviously the climate's always been changing! Obviously, sexually identifying as an Apache attack copter is absurd! How absurd that somebody who has always felt they were a woman live as a woman! Absurdities abound, I tell you! People have been sexually identifying as Apache attack copters for millions of years, just like those other deranged faggots!
Remember, people who are assigned the female gender at birth never go on to live as men! Nope! No siree! Everybody knows gender is socially constructed! What's wrong with those faggots! /s
Another soul lost to the moon matrix….
As far as The Dam Busters, looking this [wikipedia.org] over, I can tell you exactly why they want to change the name of the dog. They're not making a documentary, that's why. They're making money.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday August 27 2016, @07:20PM
But when people make such ridiculous statements in the name of transgenderism then you should expect others to mock. And people do make such statements, as you have acknowledged in your statement here:
I'm not accusing you, or anyone else in particular, of making similar statements, but I am simply pointing out that the statements from the University of Chicago are partial a reaction to this.
You know nothing of my education nor of my religious beliefs. Please don't presume to lecture me on what I should do to rectify the situation as you have (incorrectly) perceived it. I have always treated you with respect; I would expect and appreciate similar treatment from you.
Very true - but apparently we have managed to live without making it an issue for many years. Why is it such a big deal now? Its because those who are affected by it have suddenly become incapable of coping with their life without imposing their feelings on others and expecting special treatment. They have a right so to do, but everyone else has the right to disregard their feelings and to treat them as they would treat everyone else. We are an imperfect lot, some will treat transgender people with respect and some will not. For their part, transgender people need to learn to cope with life as they find it. They do not have the right to expect everyone else to change simply in order to accommodate their views and feelings. They have been the cause of this response by being so vocal about their feelings and expecting special treatment. Hard luck - their are no 'intellectual 'safe spaces' where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.' I am under no obligation to give "trigger warnings" before I make a statement. The only 'safe spaces' that exist are in private homes - in public, they are merely a figment of someone's imagination.
My cursory look over the link you provided to the Dambusters' page, for which I thank you, only tells me what happened, not the 'why'. Someone decided to change a dog's name because they were uncomfortable with a fact from history. That was dishonest of them.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Sunday August 28 2016, @01:24AM
Special treatment? I don't see how expecting the authenticity of one's gender to go unmolested constitutes special treatment, especially in the face of feminist doxxing efforts (before it was called doxxing) to call individuals in deep stealth into question. I don't see what trigger warnings have to do with that. Either you dog whistled without realizing it, or you believe that being born a woman with the wrong reproductive system is no different from sexually identifying as some inanimate object.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Sunday August 28 2016, @07:13AM
I don't go around telling people that I am a male. I just get on with life. If someone is transgender then they should behave in a similar fashion. I don't need to be told - I don't even care. If someone addresses me by the wrong gender, I usually laugh it off. Transgender people should do the same. If they want to be treated like everyone else they should begin to act like everyone else. They should just get on with living their life.
I don't even begin to understand what this means. If you are suggesting that, perhaps because of your appearance, people are confusing your gender then get over it. People mocked hippies, skinheads, rastas, the handicapped, different races and cultures in the past simply because they were different. In the US in particular, they have a right of freedom of speech. You are no different, nor am I. It is part of life. Get on with it. You may believe that such mocking is rude or offensive, and I would agree with you to an extent, but that is what freedom of speech for everyone means. They are free to say whatever they want.
I will say however, most groups don't need parades to flaunt their differences - particularly if it stands a chance of resulting in more mocking and ridicule- yet the people who make up the many of those who are the subjects of this discussion tend to want to dress differently, act like crazies, and join in LGBT parades. That is their right, but either they are proud of what they are and they wish to flaunt it, and I support them if that is the case, or they are not. Wanting to flaunt it when it suits them but then wanting special treatment from everyone else is treading on other peoples' rights.
it is from TFS - that is what we are discussing.
Most people with unusual medical conditions tend not to want to discuss them in public. I sympathise with those who are suffering, but I'm not going to change my life just so that they can feel all warm and pleasant about it. If the condition is causing them psychological stress, go see a psychiatrist. Don't expect the average man on the street to want to listen to your problems or even know how to begin to treat the condition. Best advice - be who you are and get on with life, and let others do the same.
Now, how does someone 'molest the authenticity of one's gender'? That should fill the rest of my day with wasted thought....
(Score: 2) by Entropy on Sunday August 28 2016, @07:15AM
It means they need to stop being pussies.