The Coddling of the American Mind

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Dragon Angel
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Re: The Coddling of the American Mind

Post by Dragon Angel »

Crown wrote: :roll: Smarmy Asshole was a term of endearment?
The difference was, I addressed your arguments as well as commented on how you were acting. You're only commenting on me.

The way you opened with your first response to me talking about quoting South Park (which, note, while you were technically included in that I didn't mention you specifically because guess what, I was attacking the argument! I was not attacking you personally! isn't that fascinating!?) was great and heartwarming and not inflammatory at all tyvm.
Crown wrote:I lumped her in the same category of reactionary children who can't cope with reality. I think her pathological actions justified inclusion. /flex
I still see no reason why you had to attack the rape part of it. In a thread that was ... not talking about rape.

God, you're a non-sentient idiot.
Crown wrote:And within, what three? Four? Interactions I had cleared up my position with Flagg only for you to tack on, strawman it, lie about it and now pretend that it never happened?
If I did ever strawman, it was 99.9999 repeating overshadowed by the amount you've done. Then again, I'll leave it to the mods to make that decision there.
Crown wrote:*clap* *clap* *clap*

Hey, remember the time when you got all outraged that I hadn't read your other posts? Fun times. :D
Nah, it's really not fun dealing with fools like you on a daily basis, but I have the coveted thick skin that you seem to clearly lack.
Crown wrote:Oh, mockery of stupid cunts I can do in between reps. This will go on, until you be the 'big person' and admit you done fucked up.
Last I checked, you were the one who started this little flame war, and you are the one who is continuing it. At this point I'm just laughing at how sorry you are and wondering how your life is going to be in the next several years, with the kind of empathy you are capable of.
Crown wrote:So you're quoting me saying that I believe that there are genuine examples of people 'triggering' to mean that I somehow am I denier of mental illness. My how sophistic dishonesty grows.
The hypocrisy. It burns.

Believing there are "genuine" examples of triggering is in the same category as believing there are "genuine" forms of mental illnesses. Reading comprehension, doyyy.
Crown wrote:"Also love" eh? So there is more than one of my many attributes you find lovable? I feel special now. :luv:
There are special places in my heart for village idiots who flaunt their qualities. :luv:
"I could while away the hours, conferrin' with the flowers, consultin' with the rain.
And my head I'd be scratchin', while my thoughts were busy hatchin', if I only had a brain!
I would not be just a nothin', my head all full of stuffin', my heart all full of pain.
I would dance and be merry, life would be would be a ding-a-derry, if I only had a brain!"
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Re: The Coddling of the American Mind

Post by Crown »

Dragon Angel wrote:
Crown wrote: :roll: Smarmy Asshole was a term of endearment?
The difference was, I addressed your arguments as well as commented on how you were acting. You're only commenting on me.

The way you opened with your first response to me talking about quoting South Park (which, note, while you were technically included in that I didn't mention you specifically because guess what, I was attacking the argument! I was not attacking you personally! isn't that fascinating!?) was great and heartwarming and not inflammatory at all tyvm.
Oh, the 'but I didn't mention you by name' defence, eh? The last refuge of intellectually spineless the world over.
Dragon Angel wrote:
Crown wrote:I lumped her in the same category of reactionary children who can't cope with reality. I think her pathological actions justified inclusion. /flex
I still see no reason why you had to attack the rape part of it. In a thread that was ... not talking about rape.
I explained; it was part of a wider symptom of special little snowflakes who can't cope with reality. I also tacked on the kid who lied about his Dean running him over at Missou. What does that say about my psychology? That I'm pro-running over pedestrians? Fuck of you shallow little agenda politics myopic worm.
Dragon Angel wrote:If I did ever strawman, it was 99.9999 repeating overshadowed by the amount you've done. Then again, I'll leave it to the mods to make that decision there.
All I've done? What have I done? Mocked your idiocy? Exposed your hypocrisy? Defended my position from misconstruction?
Dragon Angel wrote:
Crown wrote:*clap* *clap* *clap*

Hey, remember the time when you got all outraged that I hadn't read your other posts? Fun times. :D
Nah, it's really not fun dealing with fools like you on a daily basis, but I have the coveted thick skin that you seem to clearly lack.
Yeah, but do you remember the time when you got all outraged that I hadn't read your other posts? :lol:
Dragon Angel wrote:
Crown wrote:Oh, mockery of stupid cunts I can do in between reps. This will go on, until you be the 'big person' and admit you done fucked up.
Last I checked, you were the one who started this little flame war, and you are the one who is continuing it. At this point I'm just laughing at how sorry you are and wondering how your life is going to be in the next several years, with the kind of empathy you are capable of.
Four paragraphs up you admit to initiating this conversation by referring to an item I posted, no?
Dragon Angel wrote:
Crown wrote:So you're quoting me saying that I believe that there are genuine examples of people 'triggering' to mean that I somehow am I denier of mental illness. My how sophistic dishonesty grows.
The hypocrisy. It burns.
Oh, this. Will be epic.
Dragon Angel wrote:Believing there are "genuine" examples of triggering is in the same category as believing there are "genuine" forms of mental illnesses. Reading comprehension, doyyy.
When someone is in a court, and they are pleading insanity or diminished responsibility. Do we accept them at their word, or do we get a professional mental health expert to asses them and recommend to the court their findings?
Dragon Angel wrote:
Crown wrote:"Also love" eh? So there is more than one of my many attributes you find lovable? I feel special now. :luv:
There are special places in my heart for village idiots who flaunt their qualities. :luv:
Certainly explains the little circle-jerk you got going on with others in this thread, but where do I fit in?
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Re: The Coddling of the American Mind

Post by Dragon Angel »

Crown wrote:Oh, the 'but I didn't mention you by name' defence, eh? The last refuge of intellectually spineless the world over.
Crown wrote:Four paragraphs up you admit to initiating this conversation by referring to an item I posted, no?
Your inability to recognize an ad hominem from your ass isn't my problem. I'm also glad you can't separate an argument against people in general submitting the work from you, personally, and your preference of the work.
Crown wrote:I explained; it was part of a wider symptom of special little snowflakes who can't cope with reality. I also tacked on the kid who lied about his Dean running him over at Missou. What does that say about my psychology? That I'm pro-running over pedestrians? Fuck of you shallow little agenda politics myopic worm.
I'll just leave a quote from a friend of mine:

"You have an agenda"
Yes, you have correctly identified me as a social subject within a social context. Do not end your analysis there.
Crown wrote:When someone is in a court, and they are pleading insanity or diminished responsibility. Do we accept them at their word, or do we get a professional mental health expert to asses them and recommend to the court their findings?
Finally, something close to an argument!

Yes, we get a professional mental health expert, the same as we would do for assessing triggers. Mental health experts should be involved in the creation of trigger policies. However, mental health is still a developing field, and we would require the input of many experts, not just a few. There are many opinions from many perspectives, and mental health is not an exact science the way physics and biology are. What is considered "genuine" can vary in degrees you would not even imagine.

As there is so much variation from even professionals, you can imagine there is infinite variation among people who have no clue where to begin on mental health and tend to assume people with issues can just walk them all off. Or that schizophrenics are all serial killers that need to be straitjacketed and locked up in padded rooms en masse for the rest of their lives.

See, it wasn't hard to make an argument! Maybe we could actually find some common ground instead of starting off with a toxic flame battle! Or ..... maybe I'm being too idealistic, and you'll just gloss over those paragraphs. It's up to you.
Crown wrote:Certainly explains the little circle-jerk you got going on with others in this thread, but where do I fit in?
Circle-jerk, being, you can't accept that people have vastly different opinions than you and that you can't properly attack them outside of the people themselves?
"I could while away the hours, conferrin' with the flowers, consultin' with the rain.
And my head I'd be scratchin', while my thoughts were busy hatchin', if I only had a brain!
I would not be just a nothin', my head all full of stuffin', my heart all full of pain.
I would dance and be merry, life would be would be a ding-a-derry, if I only had a brain!"
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Re: The Coddling of the American Mind

Post by Crown »

Dragon Angel wrote:
Crown wrote:Oh, the 'but I didn't mention you by name' defence, eh? The last refuge of intellectually spineless the world over.
Crown wrote:Four paragraphs up you admit to initiating this conversation by referring to an item I posted, no?
Your inability to recognize an ad hominem from your ass isn't my problem. I'm also glad you can't separate an argument against people in general submitting the work from you, personally, and your preference of the work.
You had no argument for me to refute dumbass. You were upset that I was being 'smarmy' and used the term 'thought fascists' for the people I was talking about, but not being nuanced enough to (I guess) not use it for others - who I didn't think were 'thought fascists'. It was, in essence one of your many, many, pointless soliloquies that had no bearing on what we were discussing, unless I wanted to yield the conversation to your favour. Which I'm not going to do.
Dragon Angel wrote:
Crown wrote:I explained; it was part of a wider symptom of special little snowflakes who can't cope with reality. I also tacked on the kid who lied about his Dean running him over at Missou. What does that say about my psychology? That I'm pro-running over pedestrians? Fuck of you shallow little agenda politics myopic worm.
I'll just leave a quote from a friend of mine:

"You have an agenda"
Yes, you have correctly identified me as a social subject within a social context. Do not end your analysis there.
You're a cunt and a liar as well? You implied that I was a rape denier just because I lumped Mattress Girl in with trigger warnings and safe spaces (as presented in the OP article). Well I also lumped "I got run over by the Dean despite video evidence showing nothing of the sort" in there as well, waiting for your 'expert' assessment there.
Dragon Angel wrote:
Crown wrote:When someone is in a court, and they are pleading insanity or diminished responsibility. Do we accept them at their word, or do we get a professional mental health expert to asses them and recommend to the court their findings?
Finally, something close to an argument!

Yes, we get a professional mental health expert, the same as we would do for assessing triggers. Mental health experts should be involved in the creation of trigger policies. However, mental health is still a developing field, and we would require the input of many experts, not just a few. There are many opinions from many perspectives, and mental health is not an exact science the way physics and biology are. What is considered "genuine" can vary in degrees you would not even imagine.

As there is so much variation from even professionals, you can imagine there is infinite variation among people who have no clue where to begin on mental health and tend to assume people with issues can just walk them all off. Or that schizophrenics are all serial killers that need to be straitjacketed and locked up in padded rooms en masse for the rest of their lives.

See, it wasn't hard to make an argument! Maybe we could actually find some common ground instead of starting off with a toxic flame battle! Or ..... maybe I'm being too idealistic, and you'll just gloss over those paragraphs. It's up to you.
Pat yourself on the back, you're nearly there. Follow up question; why do we need professional mental health experts to give witness to the veracity of a someone's claims of mental health issues? Could it be because some people might be ... *dramatic pause* ... lying? :shock:
Dragon Angel wrote:
Crown wrote:Certainly explains the little circle-jerk you got going on with others in this thread, but where do I fit in?
Circle-jerk, being, you can't accept that people have vastly different opinions than you and that you can't properly attack them outside of the people themselves?
No.

Also, we have discovered we don't have vastly different opinions do we? Lets put our cards on the table; am I against this? No. That's rational and reasonable and I encourage its implementation as an advisory (not a mandate).

Am I against this? Yes. Whole heartedly and without apology or reservation. Which 'this' was the OP talking about?
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"Science is one cold-hearted bitch with a 14" strap-on" - Masuka 'Dexter'
"Angela is not the woman you think she is Gabriel, she's done terrible things"
"So have I, and I'm going to do them all to you." - Sylar to Arthur 'Heroes'
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the atom
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Re: The Coddling of the American Mind

Post by the atom »

Jub wrote:
the atom wrote:
This is entirely different than causing said trauma in the first place. Institutions are individuals have a responsibility not to create trauma in others and can face legal consequences for doing so. They do not, to the best of my knowledge, have a legal responsibility to avoid triggering ongoing issues caused by mental illness or past trauma
So if I kick out your crutches and your fractured leg becomes more fractured, I'm off the hook? Nifty.
That would be willfully targeting a pre-existing injury and battery to boot. That's a bit different that mentioning that ducks are rapists in a biology class and trigger a victim of sexual abuse. This is especially true if you weren't explicitly warned that a person in your class had that as a potential issue.

Once again I'll ask you to address the issue of a crowded mall triggering a panic attack in a person with an anxiety disorder. Is that the mall's issue for not being a safe place for all shoppers? Well, probably not, especially because it's reasonable to expect that a mall may be crowded. Now in the case of animal rape coming up in a biology class, shouldn't a student who's done even cursory research on the subject know that this is likely to come up in such a class? In that case, why should it be on the university to protect a person from an expected hazard?
Taking 4 seconds to give people a heads up on some grisly material is a basic precautionary measure that movies and tv shows have been doing for decades. It affects nobody except for the minority it is intended for, and the grognards that fly into a be-spittled rage at the idea of trigger warnings.

Clearing out an entire fucking shopping mall on the other hand is an excessive measure that inconveniences thousands in order to convenience dozens.
I am highly skeptical that a university that produces numerous on-campus suicides will come under no scrutiny, legal or otherwise.
You can be skeptical all you want, but I'm going to demand evidence that such investigations have happened and commonly result in rulings against universities. If such evidence can't be provided you'd best provide a retraction of that claim.
I found these in less than a second of googling.
http://www.thedp.com/article/2015/09/ar ... on-lawsuit
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/sto ... -1.2295276

Also:http://www.hbmhlaw.com/student-suicide.html
Academic administrators such as deans, residence hall advisors, and professors can also, in appropriate cases, be held responsible for failing to respond appropriately to students who exhibit signs of mental health distress or depression
The mysteries of google!
Last edited by SCRawl on 2016-02-09 09:35am, edited 2 times in total.
Reason: Quote tag fixed and duplicate post deleted
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Re: The Coddling of the American Mind

Post by Dragon Angel »

Crown wrote:You had no argument for me to refute dumbass. You were upset that I was being 'smarmy' and used the term 'thought fascists' for the people I was talking about, but not being nuanced enough to (I guess) not use it for others - who I didn't think were 'thought fascists'. It was, in essence one of your many, many, pointless soliloquies that had no bearing on what we were discussing, unless I wanted to yield the conversation to your favour. Which I'm not going to do.
I'm sorry I'm ruining your sense of e-pride by having already agreed with you earlier on a single point and not conceding to the rest of what you had to offer which was ... a bunch of insults and nonsense, pretty much. Maybe trying not being a dick is beyond your comprehension as is proper parsing of what I'm arguing, but, OK whatever. Concession accepted.
Crown wrote:You're a cunt and a liar as well? You implied that I was a rape denier just because I lumped Mattress Girl in with trigger warnings and safe spaces (as presented in the OP article). Well I also lumped "I got run over by the Dean despite video evidence showing nothing of the sort" in there as well, waiting for your 'expert' assessment there.
You follow the trends of people who love to deny rape at every turn. I've dealt with numerous amounts of them, all saying the same shit you are. Walks like a duck, flies like a duck, quacks like a duck.....

If you aren't one of those, then you'd do best to follow my advice to you earlier and ... type clearer.
Crown wrote:Pat yourself on the back, you're nearly there. Follow up question; why do we need professional mental health experts to give witness to the veracity of a someone's claims of mental health issues? Could it be because some people might be ... *dramatic pause* ... lying? :shock:
Oh lord. It's seriously all about lying in your mind. Oooh, false accusations! Have you stopped to think why that seems to be the topmost thought in your lump of meat within your skull or is self-examination just that hard for--actually wait it is what am I saying.

There are people who lie. Those people should not be the first example when you consider a situation, and comparing trigger warnings to the insanity defense is just completely indicative of your mindset. You're right, this isn't worth arguing, because you have jumped to such an extreme you're going to have to dig for years to get yourself out of it.
Crown wrote:Also, we have discovered we don't have vastly different opinions do we? Lets put our cards on the table; am I against this? No. That's rational and reasonable and I encourage its implementation as an advisory (not a mandate).

Am I against this? Yes. Whole heartedly and without apology or reservation. Which 'this' was the OP talking about?
OK I just read about the incident in question and my take is: Was what the Yale lecturer said wise, at all? No, it was not just insensitive but utterly stupid in the context of the discussion. She mentioned something about "children" having no room to be "offensive" when ..... we aren't exactly talking about children. We're talking about adults. In college. The original e-mail was aimed at the student body of Yale, presumably, adults. Young adults who are in several ways naive, but nevertheless, adults. Which kind of completely torpedoes her argument.

The video you linked shows protest, which, given the context of recent events in the #BlackLivesMatter movement and how people of color have been massively mistreated by society still in the last few decades, is completely understandable. Nevertheless, it is one thing: Protest. Angered, emotional protest, but protest nevertheless, and what protest isn't emotional? I'm not going to deny them their emotions. Protest does not directly equal changes in policy, and academic settings do not tend to favor "mob rule".

Should the lecturer have resigned? I don't know, and I need more context than this. Based on what I've seen, she said one extremely idiotic thing that may or may not be indicative of other things she's said or done. I have no idea.

However, this is something that, ultimately, the people at Yale should be the ones to weigh in, faculty and students. This is a complex, nuanced matter. This is not something you can make an immediate judgement based on a video showing people who are, by all rights, very legitimately angry. If that is all you're going to submit on the matter, then I'm going to say you're gravely naive about the origins of their feelings.





Actually hold on just a minute, everything makes complete sense now. Your fervent belief in South Park and its love of golden means and hate of having actual feelings, your specific citation of a protest, my god it all makes sense. You're literally taking your silly philosophy so far as to deny people the right to express their feelings.

Carry on, then. You're not only a dickshit that jumps on people for having the wherewithal to express their frustration, but you're literally a dickshit who truly believes in his own fundamentalism. I really do feel sorry for you.
"I could while away the hours, conferrin' with the flowers, consultin' with the rain.
And my head I'd be scratchin', while my thoughts were busy hatchin', if I only had a brain!
I would not be just a nothin', my head all full of stuffin', my heart all full of pain.
I would dance and be merry, life would be would be a ding-a-derry, if I only had a brain!"
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Re: The Coddling of the American Mind

Post by Jub »

Simon_Jester wrote:For the same reasons that you are required by the law to ensure the physical safety of people on your property. If you do something careless with your property and someone breaks their leg as a result, you're liable. You have a duty to remove physical hazards.
Yes, but I do not have a responsibility to provide a wheelchair ramp, elevator, or stair lift and would not be held responsible if a person with mobility issues tried to climb my front steps and fell. Stairs are not a physical hazard to the vast majority of people that will visit my home.

Obviously public spaces are designed to be accessible to all and thus laws are in place requiring things like ramps and elevators for the physically impaired, but even in these cases, somebody in an iron lung probably won't be able to access stores that meet the legal requirements. Should the law be changed to make sure that iron lung patients are able to have access equal to anybody else?
And if (like a university) you sell a product (education), you are responsible for making that product reasonably safe.

You don't sell exercise equipment that is likely to break someone's leg in the course of normal use. That would be grossly negligent and you'd get sued into the dirt if you did that. You can't just say "well, risking huge crippling injuries is the price you pay for your body to become stronger!"

Because the risk of injury isn't part of the normal risks of exercise, if the exercise is performed competently with proper equipment. There are some normal risks- you can't build strength without being sore and tired sometimes. But losing the use of an arm or leg is not a normal risk, and you ARE under an obligation to make sure that doesn't happen to people who use your products.

This is exactly analogous to the situation in mental health and education. You can't just say "well, risking huge crippling psychological traumas is the price you pay for your mind to become stronger!"
Injuries are an accepted risk of physical fitness training and sport. Even using gym equipment in an entirely correct and safe manner, I a healthy if out of shape individual risk injury by going to the gym. Now usually, I'll go in, work out, and come out a bit sore. If I went in with some lingering physical issue my risk of injury goes up dramatically, the same exercise that might have only caused me discomfort before could now aggravate my lingering injury. This is analogous to a person with pre-existing mental scars suffering mental trauma due to a subject coming up that would, at worst, cause mild mental discomfort to a healthy person.
There's nothing about the learning environment that SHOULD mean you have to accept such a risk. You might accept the risk of being confused, or bored, or suffering cognitive dissonance that bothers you, or learning about things you wish you didn't know about. But you aren't under an obligation to accept the risk of having thousands of dollars' worth of education blown up because people were harassing you, or because you had to pay for therapy just to be able to function in public again after being horrorstruck by a bizarre and cruel sort of hazing, or some such.
Hazing and harassment are, depending on severity, already crimes and fall well outside of the discussion about trigger warnings due to subjects brought up in a class which I'm discussing. Even so, the school shouldn't be responsible for these acts any more than a mall should be responsible for you getting pickpocketed or even mugged while shopping. Most places will install some level of security as a deterrent, but to the best of my knowledge, there is no legal requirement for the average American mall to have security guards or cameras to defend shoppers from one another.
If the university allows it to happen on their property and could reasonably have prevented it by performing their duty of care, then they share some liability, I'd say.
Please quote the law stating this as a legal requirement and provide examples of case law showing how this law has been interpreted and that the level of responsibility is as extreme as you have claimed it to be. Otherwise, I'm going to require a retraction.
A university CAN function as a discrimination-free space where people with trauma are warned before being forced to dig up old ghosts. There is no reason why you have to put up with racial or sexual discrimination, or harassment and rape, in order to get an education.
First of all, many of the things you've mentioned are already crimes. Secondly, define exactly what terms and circumstances should be defined as causing harm and in a such a way as to create a workable and consistent legal framework that doesn't trample on the right to freedom of speech. Then, even if you can do that, kindly show how a university or college can be expected to do what society as a whole have failed to do so for all of recorded history.
Thing is, that's saying that mental suffering is different than physical suffering. The university does have a duty to take reasonable steps to ensure the physical safety of students; that's why they invest in campus police, expel students who behave violently, and otherwise act to ensure that people and their belongings are physically safe.

They have a corresponding responsibility to make sure students are mentally safe- are able to think clearly and concentrate fully on their studies. Universities already do this, which is why they spend lots of money providing lounges for student study, and why you can get thrown out of campus housing for being disruptive while people are trying to sleep and study.

Now, "mentally safe" includes some things and does not include others. But it definitely does include "the university won't willfully inflict psychological torture on you." If the university does that, they are failing their obligation to provide you with a learning environment in exchange for your money.
My college had 24/7 security but the other campuses only have security on call and others have no private security at all. Are you saying that there should be a legal requirement for 24/7 security on all campuses where students have housing?

Mental suffering is different from physical suffering in that physical suffering can be easily seen and we generally understand how to provide for the needs of those in a wheelchair due to cerebral palsy, or with diabetes, or with a broken leg. We don't know with any certainty how to deal with somebody who's suffered mental trauma, suffers due to being born with a mental condition, or even just the extremely mentally fatigued.

Universities don't do a good job of dealing with students with depression and in fact, inflict mental fatigue to the point where people are turning to a pharmacopeia of drugs just to cope and get a leg up. Are you suggesting that university should be made less competitive to lessen the mental impact on students who know that the top 10% of a class often go on to earn far more than the median graduate?

Also, define exactly what a school's responsibility is and explain how it fits into the current legal framework of criminal or civil culpability.
Which is why I keep using the word 'reasonable.'
You've failed to define the term in any meaningful fashion and I'm going to require that you do rigorously because without such a definition the term is useless.
The exact nature of what it is 'reasonable' to do depends on specifics.

When it comes to depression, there are relatively few precautions a large institution can make to ensure that depressed people come to no further harm. Aside from making support and counseling available, there's not a lot they can do.
That's bullshit, and if you'd ever dealt with depression you'd know that. Are you sure you're qualified to speak on this subject?
When it comes to things like rape trauma... the university knows, statistically, that a large percentage of its students have been raped in the past. And another percentage will be raped during their time at the university, unless steps are taken. Rape is not that hard a crime to prevent, and triggering other people's rape trauma is not that hard to avoid doing, on average. Therefore, the university should take reasonable steps to prevent rapes on campus. And to avoid common things that might trigger horror for rape victims, knowing that statistically speaking they probably have hundreds or thousands of rape victims on campus.
Ignoring that many of those studies have been disputed and that some have had, what I and the law would consider, an overly broad definition of what counts as sexual assault are we sure that a 'large' percentage of people have suffered in this fashion? I'm not disputing that most, if not all campuses, will have some number of rapes and/or sexual assaults over a small a span as a semester, but I'm not sure that these numbers are as far above the national average for places of the same population density and wealth/power disparity between residents.

Even so, I do agree that simple things like writing a detailed syllabus that highlights things known to have an above average mental impact and giving warnings before those lessons come up are a good thing. I would argue that they shouldn't be mandated without further study into what terms require such warnings and a detailed framework outlining what constitutes culpable mental harm due to negligence.
If the issue was something that affected you personally (say, you become incredibly super-depressed whenever you see the color orange), then yes, you have a responsibility to contact others about the accomodations you need.

On the other hand, if the issue was something that affects many people (say, you become incredibly super-depressed whenever your boss makes rape jokes, because bad teenage memories)... your boss has an obligation to stop doing the thing that he should know hurts other people. Because it's not just hurting you, it's hurting a lot of people. Statistically speaking, if he keeps it up for any length of time he IS hurting people.

It's like, if I go out into the woods I'm not obliged to shout "hey, hunters, don't fire guns randomly into bushes, you might hit me!" The hunters are reasonably expected to know that, and to NOT fire guns randomly into bushes, because even if they don't hit me, or if I'm somehow bulletproof... sooner or later that action will result in serious harm.
Frankly, I disagree, at least from a legal standpoint. Nobody aside from me is responsible for my mental state, it is entirely up to me to manage that be that with drugs, counseling, lifestyle changes and what have you. A boss making comments that cause me mental harm might or might not be an asshole, but either way he's not responsible for my mental state or my depression.

the atom wrote:Taking 4 seconds to give people a heads up on some grisly material is a basic precautionary measure that movies and tv shows have been doing for decades. It affects nobody except for the minority it is intended for, and the grognards that fly into a be-spittled rage at the idea of trigger warnings.
Outside of the currently required rating codes (TV-Y, TV-Y7, etc. and G, PG, PG-13, etc. as well as the riders D, L, S, V, etc.) I'm unaware of any America legal requirement to flag graphic content. It's likely smart to do so, but I doubt it is required.
First, I'm not reading through three separate articles, so if you have a point to make quote the articles and make the argument.

Secondly, prove that such cases are common and tend to result in successful action against the university/college being accused.
The mysteries of google!
Obviously, some level of negligence will cross the line and result in successful legal action. What you haven't proven is that such cases are common or that they are usually resolved against the university, dean, or professor standing accused. Nor have you shown what the threshold is for these legal cases. I'm going to require that you do so or that you retract your claim.

Note, merely providing links without any accompanying argument doesn't meet the minimum debate standards required of this board. If you keep dancing and not complying I will call for moderator action against you.
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the atom
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Re: The Coddling of the American Mind

Post by the atom »

Jub wrote:Outside of the currently required rating codes (TV-Y, TV-Y7, etc. and G, PG, PG-13, etc. as well as the riders D, L, S, V, etc.) I'm unaware of any America legal requirement to flag graphic content. It's likely smart to do so, but I doubt it is required.
'Outside of the required rating codes, there are no required rating codes'

You are an idiot.
First, I'm not reading through three separate articles, so if you have a point to make quote the articles and make the argument.

Secondly, prove that such cases are common and tend to result in successful action against the university/college being accused.

Obviously, some level of negligence will cross the line and result in successful legal action. What you haven't proven is that such cases are common or that they are usually resolved against the university, dean, or professor standing accused. Nor have you shown what the threshold is for these legal cases. I'm going to require that you do so or that you retract your claim.

Note, merely providing links without any accompanying argument doesn't meet the minimum debate standards required of this board. If you keep dancing and not complying I will call for moderator action against you.
First, each article is a quarter of a page long, which I can only assume is not too long for your mayfly-like short term memory to handle. I've already done enough of your job for you. Read them or fuck off.

Secondly, I'm not playing ring around the goal-posts with you. I've shown that universities can and do come under legal scrutiny, and that it does cost them a lot of money. This more than satisfies the requirements of the original claim. The rest of this bullshit was tacked on by yourself.

Also:
http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts ... nt-suicide
http://www.gwhatchet.com/2016/01/18/exp ... ry-for-gw/
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/ ... story.html
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biostem
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Re: The Coddling of the American Mind

Post by biostem »

Flagg wrote:
biostem wrote:IMO, the issue lies with a person who "self diagnoses" some word, event, image, or anything else, as triggering. I believe it was Christopher Hitchens who said "offense is not given", meaning that potentially anything one person says can be triggering/offensive/problematic, (oh how I hate that last one), for another. It gets to a point where you start going from things which may be sensibly off-putting, (gore, racial epithets, etc), to things which are simply mundane, (gendered pronouns, colloquialisms).

It is important for young people to accept that the world will not, (and should not), cater to their whims and desires, and while striving to improve said world is a noble sentiment, you must also toughen up to ideas and positions that do not align with your own. Frankly, it is this latter point which should be emphasized in these institutions of higher learning.

If I were a university official, and students started acting up like some of the clips I've seen, I'd issue them demerits or suspensions. Heck, I'd mandate that they take classes which teach the harsh realities of differing opinions and how to deal with dissent/conflict, not how to shy away from it and retreat to your "safe space". Bring in trauma counselors or other legitimate experts, instead of setting up these saccharine rooms with bubbles and puppies...
And what about those with diagnosed mental illnesses that are a result of past trauma? Do you do the intelligent thing and offer in-depth information of things in the curriculum so that those individuals can avoid them or do you just tell them to "get over it" after the fact? And will the university officials who take such a tack be paying for the resulting mental health treatment out of their own pockets, or will tuitions be raised?
Perhaps you missed the part where I said:
Bring in trauma counselors or other legitimate experts, instead of setting up these saccharine rooms with bubbles and puppies...
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Re: The Coddling of the American Mind

Post by Jub »

the atom wrote:'Outside of the required rating codes, there are no required rating codes'

You are an idiot.
Yes, but those rating codes don't cover things like a news broadcast that shows a graphic news story. Nor does a show about surgery have to open with a graphic content notice, it could merely flash the rating code with no specific warning and be fine.

This is not the graphic content warning that you stated was standard.
First, each article is a quarter of a page long, which I can only assume is not too long for your mayfly-like short term memory to handle. I've already done enough of your job for you. Read them or fuck off.
That's not how this site works. You're making a specific claim, now quote the parts of those articles which support them and provide your argument as to why this small number of articles proves your point as a general rule or fuck off.
Secondly, I'm not playing ring around the goal-posts with you. I've shown that universities can and do come under legal scrutiny, and that it does cost them a lot of money. This more than satisfies the requirements of the original claim. The rest of this bullshit was tacked on by yourself.

Also:
http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts ... nt-suicide
http://www.gwhatchet.com/2016/01/18/exp ... ry-for-gw/
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/ ... story.html
I haven't changed my request of you. It started as:

"You can be skeptical all you want, but I'm going to demand evidence that such investigations have happened and commonly result in rulings against universities. If such evidence can't be provided you'd best provide a retraction of that claim."

You've failed to do so, now retract your claim or fuck off.

You're currently violating DR4 and dancing close to breaking DR5. So back up your claims with a valid argument, or mods will be involved.
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the atom
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Re: The Coddling of the American Mind

Post by the atom »

Jub wrote:Yes, but those rating codes don't cover things like a news broadcast that shows a graphic news story. Nor does a show about surgery have to open with a graphic content notice, it could merely flash the rating code with no specific warning and be fine.

This is not the graphic content warning that you stated was standard.
The rating codes cover everything, graphic content included. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.
That's not how this site works. You're making a specific claim, now quote the parts of those articles which support them and provide your argument as to why this small number of articles proves your point as a general rule or fuck off.
Okay.
A complaint has been filed against the University and Amazon, Inc. on behalf of nursing student Arya Singh, who died in February 2013 by suicide in her dorm room.

The lawsuit blames Amazon for allowing her to purchase the soluble cyanide salts online that she used to kill herself. It alleges that there have been 51 purchases of these types of salts online that have resulted in 11 deaths, even though Amazon had some policies in place to prevent such sales.

Penn is named as a defendant due to alleged “unsympathetic, hostile and at times vindictive” behavior that administrators showed towards Singh. In 2011, Singh reported being sexually assaulted in her dorm room as a freshman by another student. Her case was not pursued by the district attorney, but the University took steps to isolate Singh from her alleged assaulter.

The complaint targets the University for negligence in pursuing her case due to the changeover in the sexual assault investigating procedures over the last year.

It states that Singh became depressed and began drinking heavily as a result of the trauma of her assault, which resulted in Singh being placed on academic probation in January 2013 and facing other student conduct offenses. She was asked to leave University housing on Feb. 8 of that year, and she was found unconscious in her dorm room that day and was not able to be revived.

Mental health has been an ongoing conversation among Penn students and administrators, who witnessed a string of six student suicides in 15 months.
The parents of a promising journalism student who committed suicide at Stony Brook University are suing the shrink and counselors on campus for allegedly failing to properly treat their daughter’s worsening depression.

Catherine Ayescu, 20, took an overdose of anxiety and anti-depressant pills last January in a campus library. She had been receiving treatment from the counseling and psychological services department since last September, but her depression intensified during the winter break, according to lawyer Daniel Woodard.

“There were signs her condition was worsening and those signs went unheeded by the doctors,” Woodard said. “The parents want this to be brought to the attention of the public because they want the school to realize they are providing mental health services to students (and) the lives of students are in their hands.”

Ayescu was in her junior year and the managing editor of the campus literary magazine. She had also participated in a “journalism without walls” program in China.

A university spokeswoman said she was unaware that a lawsuit had been filed and declined further comment. The suit, filed in Long Island Federal Court, accuses the medical personnel of negligence and malpractice.
I only actually need one incident to fulfil the burden of evidence for my original claim. Giving you five links was charity.
Secondly, I'm not playing ring around the goal-posts with you. I've shown that universities can and do come under legal scrutiny, and that it does cost them a lot of money. This more than satisfies the requirements of the original claim. The rest of this bullshit was tacked on by yourself.

Also:
http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts ... nt-suicide
http://www.gwhatchet.com/2016/01/18/exp ... ry-for-gw/
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/ ... story.html
I haven't changed my request of you. It started as:

"You can be skeptical all you want, but I'm going to demand evidence that such investigations have happened and commonly result in rulings against universities. If such evidence can't be provided you'd best provide a retraction of that claim."

You've failed to do so, now retract your claim or fuck off.
[/quote]
I never claimed that 'such investigations have happened and commonly result in rulings against universities', so you can get fucked.
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Re: The Coddling of the American Mind

Post by Simon_Jester »

Jub wrote:Yes, but I do not have a responsibility to provide a wheelchair ramp, elevator, or stair lift and would not be held responsible if a person with mobility issues tried to climb my front steps and fell. Stairs are not a physical hazard to the vast majority of people that will visit my home.

Obviously public spaces are designed to be accessible to all and thus laws are in place requiring things like ramps and elevators for the physically impaired, but even in these cases, somebody in an iron lung probably won't be able to access stores that meet the legal requirements. Should the law be changed to make sure that iron lung patients are able to have access equal to anybody else?
What is normally done here is to weigh the burden of making accommodations against the burden to the individuals who need the accommodations. That rule works perfectly well here.

See, adding wheelchair ramps costs money, but on a per-business basis it's not THAT expensive, and it simplifies life for millions of people who are now, or some day might be, in a wheelchair. By contrast, adding iron lung access is vastly more expensive, and the number of people in iron lungs who actually move about in society is miniscule. Therefore, we require public spaces (including private property routinely accessed by the public) to have wheelchair ramps... but not iron lung access.

The burden of, say, not making rape jokes and warning people before showing them a depiction or description of rape is very small. Compared to all sorts of other burdens normal people accept without complaint it is nothing.

And the burden on the tens of millions of rape victims in the US, or the probable million or more rape victims in Canada, of allowing the rape jokes to go on and not issue the warnings, is quite substantial.

So it is reasonable to expect people to make reasonable accomodations so as to NOT needlessly traumatize rape victims.
Injuries are an accepted risk of physical fitness training and sport. Even using gym equipment in an entirely correct and safe manner, I a healthy if out of shape individual risk injury by going to the gym. Now usually, I'll go in, work out, and come out a bit sore. If I went in with some lingering physical issue my risk of injury goes up dramatically, the same exercise that might have only caused me discomfort before could now aggravate my lingering injury. This is analogous to a person with pre-existing mental scars suffering mental trauma due to a subject coming up that would, at worst, cause mild mental discomfort to a healthy person.
Except that people with lingering mental scars don't get to decide NOT to participate in education, work, or other parts of public life. It's not optional.

If society had an expectation that everyone would perform physical exercise and labor, it would be reasonable of us to make some accommodations for those who have old injuries that affect their capacity to withstand such exercise and labor. Otherwise, it is unjust to require people to suffer needlessly when we could easily prevent that suffering.

Society DOES have an expectation that everyone will perform certain kinds of mental exercise and labor... the same argument applies.
If the university allows it to happen on their property and could reasonably have prevented it by performing their duty of care, then they share some liability, I'd say.
Please quote the law stating this as a legal requirement and provide examples of case law showing how this law has been interpreted and that the level of responsibility is as extreme as you have claimed it to be. Otherwise, I'm going to require a retraction.
...The case law arguing that universities have some reasonable degree of obligation to ensure a safe and functional environment is pretty well established. They may not be individually responsible for every crime or offense which occurs on their grounds, but they do still have some responsibilities.

"Negligence" is a real thing, Jub; I'm not making it up. There are things you are reasonably obliged to do in order to ensure that others don't come to harm. And your right to control your property, your business, or your school do not relieve you of those obligations.
My college had 24/7 security but the other campuses only have security on call and others have no private security at all. Are you saying that there should be a legal requirement for 24/7 security on all campuses where students have housing?
It depends on the level of the threat. This is why I keep saying reasonable precautions. If my campus is in a very secure and remote location and crime is virtually unheard of, private security may be unnecessary. If my campus is in the heart of a busy populated area and crime is relatively common, private security may be constantly necessary.

The precautions and protections we are obliged to put in place to prevent suffering are determined by:
1) The likelihood and frequency of the suffering
2) The difficulty of preventing it (whether it presents an undue burden)
3) The severity of the suffering.

This isn't a hard thing to understand...
Mental suffering is different from physical suffering in that physical suffering can be easily seen and we generally understand how to provide for the needs of those in a wheelchair due to cerebral palsy, or with diabetes, or with a broken leg. We don't know with any certainty how to deal with somebody who's suffered mental trauma, suffers due to being born with a mental condition, or even just the extremely mentally fatigued.
Where we do understand what is to be done, and we can reasonably do it, it should be done. We should not stand around complaining about the terrible burden of having to spend five seconds uttering a warning, or of refraining from making certain kinds of jokes, or things like that.
Universities don't do a good job of dealing with students with depression and in fact, inflict mental fatigue to the point where people are turning to a pharmacopeia of drugs just to cope and get a leg up. Are you suggesting that university should be made less competitive to lessen the mental impact on students who know that the top 10% of a class often go on to earn far more than the median graduate?
I think reasonable measures should be taken, because negligence is a thing and by definition no one should be negligent or willfully bring about harm and suffering to others. This is an ethical issue as much as a legal one, though.

Because, you see, the competitiveness of university and the difficulty of university courses DOES touch directly upon the function of a university. And trying to make the classes easier will impede the functionality of the university.

The issuing of warnings that "this lesson might cause distress to rape victims or people with histories of childhood abuse, if you need a different environment or means of learning this information, that is okay" DOES NOT directly impede the functionality of the university.
Which is why I keep using the word 'reasonable.'
You've failed to define the term in any meaningful fashion and I'm going to require that you do rigorously because without such a definition the term is useless.
"Reasonable" is a common legal term and anyone with any sense or ability to carry on discussions of public policy should understand what is meant by it.

See here for an illustration of what is meant:
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictiona ... reasonable

The exact nature of what is and is not 'reasonable' depends on detailed decisions that should be made by qualified professionals (i.e. not me). I may be qualified to debate the issue with other amateurs on subjects where I and my fellow amateur have roughly equal knowledge... but that doesn't mean I am a lawyer, a psychiatrist, or an expert in university finances.
The exact nature of what it is 'reasonable' to do depends on specifics.

When it comes to depression, there are relatively few precautions a large institution can make to ensure that depressed people come to no further harm. Aside from making support and counseling available, there's not a lot they can do.
That's bullshit, and if you'd ever dealt with depression you'd know that. Are you sure you're qualified to speak on this subject?
Okay, I accept that I am wrong.

In which case, I ALSO accept that universities are in fact under more obligation to reduce harm to the depressed, insofar as this is compatible with their mission of providing a functional learning environment to everyone involved.

The more they can realistically do without undue burden, the more they SHOULD do.
When it comes to things like rape trauma... the university knows, statistically, that a large percentage of its students have been raped in the past. And another percentage will be raped during their time at the university, unless steps are taken. Rape is not that hard a crime to prevent, and triggering other people's rape trauma is not that hard to avoid doing, on average. Therefore, the university should take reasonable steps to prevent rapes on campus. And to avoid common things that might trigger horror for rape victims, knowing that statistically speaking they probably have hundreds or thousands of rape victims on campus.
Ignoring that many of those studies have been disputed and that some have had, what I and the law would consider, an overly broad definition of what counts as sexual assault are we sure that a 'large' percentage of people have suffered in this fashion?
There are numerous, multiple, converging lines of evidence indicating that the percentage of women (in the US) who have been raped is in the double digits. There is NO convincing or compelling reason why such a massive number of women should methodically misrepresent whether or not they have been raped, to the point where the numbers in those surveys would end up being double or triple the true numbers.

Nor, for instance, is there a reason why 6% or more of American men should identify themselves as rapists by effectively confessing to rape in an anonymous survey... if they have not in fact committed rape. And if 6% of American men say they have done it, common sense suggests that:
-Some men have committed rapes against multiple women, and
-Some men aren't dumb enough to confess.

This in turn suggests that whatever the percentage of American women who have been raped is, it's probably considerably more than 6%... which kicks it up into 'double digits,' like I said before.
I'm not disputing that most, if not all campuses, will have some number of rapes and/or sexual assaults over a small a span as a semester, but I'm not sure that these numbers are as far above the national average for places of the same population density and wealth/power disparity between residents.
Since I did not say any such thing, I am not concerned about whether or not you are "sure" of this. I don't even know why you brought it up.

All I said is that a "double digit" percentage of women on campus (probably a double digit percentage of people on campus) have been raped or will be raped during their time on campus. This is not a trivial minority; we are not talking about throwing the whole university out of gear to accomodate one or two people here.

Indeed, the list of rape victims at a given university is, I suspect, at least as long as the list of people with severe physical disabilities, so I see no reason the university shouldn't be working about as hard to accomodate the rape victims as it does the disabled people. Or at least, working hard enough that the relative degrees of effort are consistent.
Even so, I do agree that simple things like writing a detailed syllabus that highlights things known to have an above average mental impact and giving warnings before those lessons come up are a good thing. I would argue that they shouldn't be mandated without further study into what terms require such warnings and a detailed framework outlining what constitutes culpable mental harm due to negligence.
In which case, surely you would support people who call for qualified professionals in social work, mental health, law, and university finance to try and construct such things?

Rather than constantly protesting and impeding and devil's advocating whenever anyone tries to say that doing such a thing is a good idea, right?

You're a basically sensible person; I assume your answer is 'yes' to what I just asked.
If the issue was something that affected you personally (say, you become incredibly super-depressed whenever you see the color orange), then yes, you have a responsibility to contact others about the accomodations you need.

On the other hand, if the issue was something that affects many people (say, you become incredibly super-depressed whenever your boss makes rape jokes, because bad teenage memories)... your boss has an obligation to stop doing the thing that he should know hurts other people. Because it's not just hurting you, it's hurting a lot of people. Statistically speaking, if he keeps it up for any length of time he IS hurting people.

It's like, if I go out into the woods I'm not obliged to shout "hey, hunters, don't fire guns randomly into bushes, you might hit me!" The hunters are reasonably expected to know that, and to NOT fire guns randomly into bushes, because even if they don't hit me, or if I'm somehow bulletproof... sooner or later that action will result in serious harm.
Frankly, I disagree, at least from a legal standpoint. Nobody aside from me is responsible for my mental state, it is entirely up to me to manage that be that with drugs, counseling, lifestyle changes and what have you. A boss making comments that cause me mental harm might or might not be an asshole, but either way he's not responsible for my mental state or my depression.
Why? Why is mental health unique in being the sole responsibility of the sufferer, with no one else having any obligations to take common sense measures to protect others?

I'm responsible for not engaging in behavior likely to cause traffic accidents. For not engaging in behavior likely to spread disease. For not spreading malicious rumors about others that might harm their lives or careers. For not engaging in reckless use of machinery or weapons around them. For not lying to them and defrauding them of time or money. There are all sorts of ways in which I am responsible for the simple concept of not harming others.

When any reasonable person can easily understand how an action might cause harm, and they know harm is a likely result of the action, people are obliged to not commit that action.

This is true in business, in sports, in driving cars, in all sorts of areas.

Why should mental health be any different?

Balrog wrote:
Dragon Angel wrote:
Simon_Jester wrote:Specifically, the argument being that people who don't have to deal with Problem X should not lecture those who do have Problem X on how it's "not such a big deal" and they should, literally or metaphorically, "walk it off."

Right?
Exactly, and where even if a person does have Problem X they do not get to dictate the terms under which other sufferers of Problem X react to it.
People are free to react to whatever they want however they like. You could be traumatized by a picture of a water bucket and end up spending days in your room rocking yourself back and forth. Other people are free to ridicule you for this response, they might suggest you receive help for this overreaction, but you are free to spend as long as you want in that state. The issue becomes when you want your hypersensitive reactions to be consequence-free (in art class you have to draw a picture of a water bucket but you get to skip that day and won't be graded on it) or for others to be affected by it (because water buckets traumatize you, all water buckets are banned from campus property).
Thing is, what if it's 5% of all humans who are driven into this state of catatonia by the sight of a water bucket? At what point does it behoove the rest of us to put away the damn water buckets, or throw a tarp over them or something?

It's like, oh, peanut allergies. One person in a thousand or so has an allergy to peanuts so intense that they can literally swell up and die if they consume peanuts. Some, so intense that just being in the same building with peanuts, or eating food processed with equipment that was used to process peanuts, will cause swelling up and dying.

The minimum reasonable response in light of this is to put signs on the door of your restaurants saying "danger: we serve peanuts here, we cannot protect you from peanuts." And to publish information saying that your candy bars or granola contain peanuts. So that people are not, unwittingly and innocently, caused to eat peanuts that kill them.

We're not really talking here about things that 'trigger trauma' for only one person. We're talking about things that trigger trauma for millions of people throughout America. There are tens of millions of rape victims in America. Do they all have to constantly go around ALL THE TIME asking us not to talk crudely or insensitively about rape in front of them? Should we ask them all to wear signs around their necks saying "I was raped, please be considerate?"

How is that LESS of a burden overall than just, you know, being considerate?
Alyrium, Simon, and others will have to elaborate here because I don't know the process, but I'm sure that does not happen nearly as often in practical matters as you would think. From what I gathered in their typing, at the least.
It doesn't have to be commonplace to have a toxic affect on the environment.
How, then, is that NOT an argument that applies equally well to the very provocations and offenses that are being protested?

If we can get a toxic academic atmosphere from a spray of isolated instances of someone asking a university to do something extreme like ban a literary classic for containing racism, or ban 'violate' from its law curriculum, or expel a student for a rape accusation that evidence doesn't support...

Why can't we get a toxic atmosphere from a spray of isolated incidences involving people having their mental illnesses blown up by traumas or public humiliations, or by racist or sexist acts on campus, or the like?

Why is it important to remove one sort of toxin but not the other?
The problem arises with defining what is and isn't a microaggression. It's asking people to police their thoughts and actions on the vague pretext that someone might be offended, not for something explicit like using a racial slur or even being rude like asking to touch someone's hair, but otherwise innocuous statements which people make out of genuine belief rather than deep-seated need to oppress others.
The level to which people are actually being asked to do this is pretty minor. It's not worse than any number of other 'politeness' rules people in civilized societies routinely follow anyway.

There are a lot of things that can get a professor censured, which are pretty harmless by the standard of 'objectivity' most anti-outrage types are applying here. Dropping your pants and mooning the lecture hall is "objectively" harmless, right? No one was injured. People should be able to take that butt-waving in stride.

But no one would say that the student body is somehow out of line for protesting if their professor habitually moons his students.
Balrog wrote:
Simon_Jester wrote:Some of the flipouts in question are triggered by descriptions of damaging rapes being inflicted by animals with (by human standards) grotesque anatomy. Or things like parasitic wasps that paralyze other insects and lay eggs inside them, which hatch and eat the victim alive from the inside out.

Those are NOT normal things which appear in everyday society. Being unusually disturbed by such things is not a sign that one is 'unable to function.'
There is a world of difference between "wow, that's rather disturbing that ducks rape each other, I wonder what I will have for lunch today" and "OMG I have been emotionally scared to have learned that! Why did you teach me that!? How dare you!" It's not even the case that these people are being forced to watch ducks rape each other, the simple transmission of this knowledge is apparently so debilitating as to demand conformity to their hypersensitivity.
Alyrium, who brought this up in the first place, says otherwise.

His entire point is that he says to students "yes, to understand how sexual selection works in animals, you need to know that (for example) ducks commit rape a lot, and how this affects evolution in ducks. You need to know this. However, you do not need to learn this information in a public venue, in the presence of large numbers of your peers; if this subject is likely to disturb you, you may read it in your own pace in private where you can stop reading and call your therapist at any time."

I see no practical difference between this and, oh, a physical trainer who, mindful of one of his athletes having an injury or a minor disability, adjusts their exercise regimen so they don't tear or break anything.

Surely we wouldn't complain that the trainer was "coddling" athletes who have knee injuries just because he doesn't exercise them hard enough to re-injure the knee, and wants to make sure they heal as smoothly and efficiently as possible. We wouldn't say the trainer should expect his athletes to "toughen up" and "fight through the pain" of their knee injuries. Because that's not how recovery from a knee injury works.

Balrog wrote:
the atom wrote:Your survey was specifically talking about statements that are offensive to minority groups.
And...?

...

You realize that's because it includes everyone with a college education, including the people in the older generations who don't subscribe to government censorship, correct?

...

Because television is broadcasted on public airwaves which anyone, including small children, can watch or listen, and it is a legitimate concern that small children should not be exposed to certain ideas because they are still developing mentally and emotionally; the same shouldn't be said for someone of legal age to smoke or get married. Note that on pay-for services like HBO or satellite radio they have no compunction about censoring violent media or coarse language.
Here's the problem, which you seem to have missed.

You are conflating a desire to censor anti-minority speech with a desire to censor all speech. To oversimplify a bit for the sake of explaining:

Suppose you have proven (for example) that very few seventy year old men think racial slurs should be censored. Does this prove that seventy year old men respect freedom of speech? No, it does not.

It might be that twenty year old men want to censor seventy year olds talking about "damn kikes," while the seventy year old men want to censor the twenty year olds who are complaining about their anti-Semitic speech.

It may well be that twenty year old women want to censor the seventy year old women who berate the media for "acceptance of the gay lifestyle" while seventy year old women want to censor that acceptance.

So you keep claiming things along the lines of "older people are less likely to support censorship." Except that's not what the survey you cite proves. That survey proves that older people care less about censoring speech that specifically offends or harms minorities. That doesn't mean they care less about censorship.

And since, quite frankly, the historical trend over the past sixty years has been that we censor LESS and not MORE, I suspect that support for censorship is not increasing anywhere near as fast as you think. Or at all, really. The biggest difference is that we as a society have reached a point where we actively try to suppress intolerance, rather than trying to suppress those who protest intolerance.
Dragon Angel wrote:It's interesting how things like these are overexaggerated. Yes, there are certain groups of activists who take these too far to the point of outright bullying, but the people who take the very concept of trigger warnings' and microaggressions' existences to mean "these subjects will be outright banned from the curriculum" is just as much, if not higher. Two extremes, really, and people would be advised to try not falling into them.
It's the extremes which drive the narrative and have the power to influence public policy though, and in the end many moderates help give legitimacy to their voices. Not every Republican is a member of the Tea Party, and in polling they tend to be a small minority, but they are a loud and active minority. It was because of them that many of the more moderated politicians were "primaried" so their extremist candidates could get on the ballot, wherein the rest of the more moderate Republicans voted for them for one reason or another and thereby contributed to the problem.
Except that the bullying activists on the left have far less influence.

We don't have dozens of university presidents being forced to resign because someone protests the microaggressions they tolerate on campus. We DO have dozens of Republican politicians being driven out of office because someone protests their willingness to vote against a tax cut. One of these situations is not like the other.

So honestly, the protests of the microaggressions don't strike me as a significant threat. They raise a sensible point, and while some of them may go too far, there is far MORE going-too-far on the side which opposes them.

Very few people are actually threatened by 'censorship of speech offensive to minorities.' Very many people are threatened by a cultural climate permissive of sexual assault, harassment, casual racism, and cruelty towards the mentally ill.
It isn't the intent of these to ban subjects from ever being taught or give students "easy" ways to avoid keeping up with their classes. Their intent has been to a. maximize learning in educational environments by giving proper warning to prepare for content that could possibly produce intense anxiety,
Except some of the demands are exactly for the ability to avoid being taught this subject matter, which deprives them of an education and (unless the teacher can creatively find an alternative) allows them to skip work their peers still have to do.
The existence of a handful of people who "demand" this is largely irrelevant and frankly I don't see what the fuss is about. Wake me up when they have as much success advancing their agenda as the young-earth creationists.
It's "internet tough guy"-ism taken to real life to expect people to casually deal with negativity in their professional learning environments--where they may have already dealt with this same sort of negativity throughout their entire lives on a constant, never-ending basis--without a single complaint. This is literally the definition of privilege.
But it's not about dealing with negativity, not in the sense of having a professor that (for example) is openly racist, uses racial epitaphs when referring to minority students and gives them lower grades on purpose compared to his Aryan brothers and sisters. It's reading Heart of Darkness in a class on colonialism and being offended that you had to read about a minority group being oppressed and now you have to run to your safe space to put back together the pieces of your broken emotional state. It's participating in a class about great American plays of the 20th century and not having to examine A Streetcar Named Desire because of implied rape, Fiddler on the Roof for depictions of anti-Semitism, or A Raisin in the Sun for depictions of racism, which not only denies the person the chance to exam great works of art that speak to human experiences but reduces that same great material and defines it in terms of vulgarity.
I see a profound lack of evidence that this prospect is a realistic threat to anyone. We might as well discuss the threat of being invaded by the Moon Men or some such.

The only "threat" I see is that professors might be expected to mention that Heart of Darkness contains profoundly brutal colonialism, or that A Raisin in the Sun depicts racism. How exactly is that a threat, anyway?

I mean, it's like saying that golf is somehow undermined by the fact that the golfer yells "Fore!" before hitting the ball so that people know there's about to be a golf ball flying through the air.

Crown wrote:
Simon_Jester wrote:Amusingly, in that case, the male student accused of rape, the one who was the target of the mattress performance (the one that Mattress Girl wanted to leave the university) himself sued the university because he felt like he was being 'abused' and 'slandered' by the fact that this girl kept walking around campus carrying a mattress and calling him a rapist.

That sounds exactly like the very profile of someone who you'd expect the "anti-outrage" crowd to say is 'oversensitive' and needs to 'toughen up' and 'walk it off.'
Failed at he first hurdle. That's impressive.
Since you have chosen not to substantiate this claim, I am going to ignore it.
Simon_Jester wrote:She wasn't suing anyone over anything, she was carrying heavy objects and saying nasty things about somebody (which may have been true, or not, I don't know and it hardly even matters for our discussion).

By contrast, HE was suing the university for harassment because someone else threatened to carry heavy things around and say mean things about him and demand that he be expelled. Not because the university actually said it would expel him, certainly not because it DID expel him. Because someone was carrying mattresses around campus.
You understand that my objection to the notion of trigger warnings for things like the word 'violate' and safe spaces doesn't mean I would advocate spray painting the word violate all over a school campus just to illicit a response?
Um... you really have done an amazingly good job of NOT making that clear.

If you're going to talk constantly about how mentioning "this movie contains depictions of a racist beating and if you have trouble coping with that, talk to the TA about some other way to get your grade" somehow undermines a necessary form of 'mental toughness...'

And if you're going to repeatedly scoff at someone whose argument is literally "look, minorities put up with real harassment and you are not well qualified to tell them they just need to 'toughen up...'

No, you are NOT giving people reason to "understand that your objection" to people having to pay attention to this issue and show basic human empathy has limits you deem "reasonable." You're doing a very good job of giving the impression that you basically just can't stand the idea of anyone being required to care or pay attention to how their actions, speech, or curriculum might affect the more vulnerable members of their audience.

This is why there are like three or four people who've gotten the same impression in the same thread.
Simon_Jester wrote:It's only a problem worth remembering and caring about when a woman is publicly lugging mattresses around as a way of protesting the continued presence of a man she claims abused and raped her, and when insults directed against this man are scrawled on bathroom walls.
No, it's a problem when someone exonerated of any wrong doing faces continued abuse from some whack job who can't accept that the world doesn't agree with them, so they have to make someone else's life hell.
Is it an equally serious problem when a man stalks a woman because he can't accept that she isn't interested in him? Do you bring that up on a regular basis in discussions of behaviors you perceive as harmful?

Do you store specific high-profile instances of such behavior in your brain so you can refer back to them years later?

If you do, I'm surprised.

If you don't, then there's a double standard here.

Basically, men being targeted by slander campaigns and harassment is a problem, even when they are not directly confronted, when it's a woman who believes she has been objectively harmed... But women being targeted by slander campaigns and harassment is less of a problem. For that matter, women being physically intimidated and threatened isn't a problem. Or at least, it's not a big enough problem that you need to remember to think about it while debating.

...

Beyond this, what I'm getting at here is that if we ARE asking minorities to 'toughen up' and accept the level of sensitivity toward minorities that was common in, oh, 1980 or 1990... Frankly, we're asking a lot of women and gays and racial minorities and abuse victims to accept precisely the threat of "facing continued abuse from some whack job who can't accept that the world doesn't agree with them, so they have to make someone else's life hell."

We're asking women to quit their job for fear their boss will coerce them into a sexual relationship. We're asking minorities to move off campus for fear of being attacked by racist students. We're asking abuse victims to be unable to complete their education because they fail a class due to repeatedly reliving the abuse trauma and refusing to treat them because they should "toughen up."

Because that is exactly what used to happen. Legally, and the authorities would do little or nothing about it.

If you don't have a problem with asking that of women who feel trapped in an abusive relationship that they believe has become sexually exploitative... why do you have a problem with asking that of the men these women feel trapped and exploited them in the first place?

Why is sauce for the goose not sauce for the gander here?
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Re: The Coddling of the American Mind

Post by Alyrium Denryle »

I dont have the patience to deal with Jub, Crown et al here right now, and frankly, Simon Jester has Jub handled. But I do want to elaborate on a given detail
There is a world of difference between "wow, that's rather disturbing that ducks rape each other, I wonder what I will have for lunch today" and "OMG I have been emotionally scared to have learned that! Why did you teach me that!? How dare you!" It's not even the case that these people are being forced to watch ducks rape each other, the simple transmission of this knowledge is apparently so debilitating as to demand conformity to their hypersensitivity.
No one is ever offended by learning the material or wanted me not to teach it. I have not encountered that. But once you start talking about the evolution of sexual coercion in other animals, it is not much of a logical leap at all to extend the same evolutionary logic to people, everyone in class does it very quickly, and they are correct to make that leap. But unless I and everyone else in the room treads very very carefully (which I can never guarantee), it starts looking like a naturalistic fallacy. Especially once you start getting into the fact that women are more likely to be impregnated after being raped because their body literally betrays them and ramps up the process of oocyte maturation. You start getting into inter-sexual reproductive conflict etc etc.

It gets creepy really really fast (because evolution gives no fucks), and if someone has been raped it can rip open old wounds pretty easily. I have seen it happen in and out of the classroom (because my casual conversations get dark).

But I have never had anyone be anything but intrigued or even thankful for learning that information. Getting there can be really painful, and the process is not one-size-fits-all. If someone need to step out for a minute, or get the information some way other than a class discussion where the overall stress level is lower, thats cool. The imposition on me is Nil.
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Re: The Coddling of the American Mind

Post by Terralthra »

I'm also a college professor. I give trigger warnings when we read things that touch on brutal racism, sexism, and various forms of violence - sexual, war, domestic, etc. I've very rarely had people excuse themselves and get the material from me privately. It has so close to nil burden on me it might as well not exist.
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Re: The Coddling of the American Mind

Post by Flagg »

Crown wrote:
Flagg wrote:Anyone who uses any variation of the term "genuine mental illness" in that context in a thread like this has the "genuine mental illness" of being an empathy lacking waste of meat and bone.
No one is using that term, and I could give a shit if you like me.
Flagg wrote:Civil War Man has it dead on, as well. Apparently people who don't want to needlessly inflict mental pain or trauma should give a "trigger warning" before saying so, so that insecure douchebags like Crown don't get offended and have to retreat to their "safe space". You know, places where they can whine about strawmen of actual positions people take on matters like this with like-minded dickheads. They can watch South Park together.
The South Park clip is parodying the people who don't want the word 'violate' to be used in Law School or students taught about rape law at Law School because it might 'trigger' someone.

With all sincerity Flagg, fuck off.
No, you used it as a rebuttle to everyone who is arguing for sensible warnings. Since no one is arguing for the ridiculous extremes, you essentially strawmanned everyone in this thread who posses a conscience, and effectively mocked people who suffer from serious issues related to past and/or present trauma. So not only will I not "fuck off", I'd advise you and the rest of your ilk to do the world a favor and find a very high spot overlooking very jagged rocks, and test the theory of gravity. It would make the world a much better place and advance humanity greatly. Cocksucker.
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Re: The Coddling of the American Mind

Post by Crown »

Dragon Angel wrote:I'm sorry I'm ruining your sense of e-pride by having already agreed with you earlier on a single point and not conceding to the rest of what you had to offer which was ... a bunch of insults and nonsense, pretty much. Maybe trying not being a dick is beyond your comprehension as is proper parsing of what I'm arguing, but, OK whatever. Concession accepted.
Delusional and bombastic what a treat! :D
Dragon Angel wrote:
Crown wrote:You're a cunt and a liar as well? You implied that I was a rape denier just because I lumped Mattress Girl in with trigger warnings and safe spaces (as presented in the OP article). Well I also lumped "I got run over by the Dean despite video evidence showing nothing of the sort" in there as well, waiting for your 'expert' assessment there.
You follow the trends of people who love to deny rape at every turn. I've dealt with numerous amounts of them, all saying the same shit you are. Walks like a duck, flies like a duck, quacks like a duck.....

If you aren't one of those, then you'd do best to follow my advice to you earlier and ... type clearer.
Still smearing without any evidence? What an amazing cunt you are. You think I'm 'a rape denier' because I cite an example of a woman who was specifically found to not have been raped, using a platform to try and shame the person she accused.
Dragon Angel wrote:
Crown wrote:Pat yourself on the back, you're nearly there. Follow up question; why do we need professional mental health experts to give witness to the veracity of a someone's claims of mental health issues? Could it be because some people might be ... *dramatic pause* ... lying? :shock:
Oh lord. It's seriously all about lying in your mind. Oooh, false accusations! Have you stopped to think why that seems to be the topmost thought in your lump of meat within your skull or is self-examination just that hard for--actually wait it is what am I saying.

There are people who lie. Those people should not be the first example when you consider a situation, and comparing trigger warnings to the insanity defense is just completely indicative of your mindset. You're right, this isn't worth arguing, because you have jumped to such an extreme you're going to have to dig for years to get yourself out of it.
No, no, no fuck face. You don't get to go 'oops, I got myself in a corner and I'll just choose to not engage' when yet another of your smears ends up being exposed as fallacious. You accused me of being a denier of mental health because I used the phrase 'genuine instances', I have demonstrated that neither I nor any court of the land is a denier of mental health if we don't just take it on faith that a person's claims of mental health issues are valid.
Dragon Angel wrote:OK I just read about the incident in question and my take is: Was what the Yale lecturer said wise, at all? No, it was not just insensitive but utterly stupid in the context of the discussion. She mentioned something about "children" having no room to be "offensive" when ..... we aren't exactly talking about children. We're talking about adults. In college. The original e-mail was aimed at the student body of Yale, presumably, adults. Young adults who are in several ways naive, but nevertheless, adults. Which kind of completely torpedoes her argument.

The video you linked shows protest, which, given the context of recent events in the #BlackLivesMatter movement and how people of color have been massively mistreated by society still in the last few decades, is completely understandable. Nevertheless, it is one thing: Protest. Angered, emotional protest, but protest nevertheless, and what protest isn't emotional? I'm not going to deny them their emotions. Protest does not directly equal changes in policy, and academic settings do not tend to favor "mob rule".

Should the lecturer have resigned? I don't know, and I need more context than this. Based on what I've seen, she said one extremely idiotic thing that may or may not be indicative of other things she's said or done. I have no idea.

However, this is something that, ultimately, the people at Yale should be the ones to weigh in, faculty and students. This is a complex, nuanced matter. This is not something you can make an immediate judgement based on a video showing people who are, by all rights, very legitimately angry. If that is all you're going to submit on the matter, then I'm going to say you're gravely naive about the origins of their feelings.
Translation; I agree with the babies who wanted a school body to police a dress code for Halloween on the off chance that someone might be deemed offensive over a lecturer who said that it wasn't really the school's position to act as fashion police and you can always use an opportunity like this to engage in conversation with someone who you may feel is being disrespectful to explain to them your position.

The fucking gall on a lecturer encouraging the student body to discuss things, rather than censoring costumes.
Dragon Angel wrote:Actually hold on just a minute, everything makes complete sense now. Your fervent belief in South Park and its love of golden means and hate of having actual feelings, your specific citation of a protest, my god it all makes sense. You're literally taking your silly philosophy so far as to deny people the right to express their feelings.
WHAT?!?!?!?! They were the ones who wanted censorship. They can express their displeasure at someone wearing a costume as much as they want; in fact they were encouraged to do just that. But they didn't want that, they wanted Yale university to BAN Cowboy and Indian Halloween costumes.

Holy shit, how did you get this so arse backwards?
Dragon Angel wrote:Carry on, then. You're not only a dickshit that jumps on people for having the wherewithal to express their frustration, but you're literally a dickshit who truly believes in his own fundamentalism. I really do feel sorry for you.
I think we've established that you fundamentally are incapable of reading or a patently false narrator on any issue you disagree with. Amazing.

Oh, and you seemed to have cut something out; remember that time you accused me of not reading all your posts and getting all angry, self righteous and pissy about it? While in the same fucking post you demonstrate that you didn't read all of my posts? Do you remember that?

What a fucking waste of air you are. :mrgreen:
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Re: The Coddling of the American Mind

Post by Crown »

Flagg wrote:No, you used it as a rebuttle to everyone who is arguing for sensible warnings. Since no one is arguing for the ridiculous extremes, you essentially strawmanned everyone in this thread who posses a conscience, and effectively mocked people who suffer from serious issues related to past and/or present trauma. So not only will I not "fuck off", I'd advise you and the rest of your ilk to do the world a favor and find a very high spot overlooking very jagged rocks, and test the theory of gravity. It would make the world a much better place and advance humanity greatly. Cocksucker.
A gay slur? Really, in this thread? :lol:

I posted, in a thread, where the OP was talking about instances of people wanting to not use the word 'violate' and not be taught rape law in Law School. My post was perfectly in line with that context.

YOU not understanding this; is not my problem. So since you refuse to believe me, I'll say it again; with all sincerity, fuck off.
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Re: The Coddling of the American Mind

Post by Crown »

Simon_Jester wrote:
Crown wrote:
Simon_Jester wrote:Amusingly, in that case, the male student accused of rape, the one who was the target of the mattress performance (the one that Mattress Girl wanted to leave the university) himself sued the university because he felt like he was being 'abused' and 'slandered' by the fact that this girl kept walking around campus carrying a mattress and calling him a rapist.

That sounds exactly like the very profile of someone who you'd expect the "anti-outrage" crowd to say is 'oversensitive' and needs to 'toughen up' and 'walk it off.'
Failed at he first hurdle. That's impressive.
Since you have chosen not to substantiate this claim, I am going to ignore it.
What's there to substantiate? You've lumped me in this "anti-outrage" crowd further down in this post did you not? Well as a so called member of this "anti-outrage" crowd I am telling you your hypothesis was dead wrong.
Simon_Jester wrote:
Crown wrote:
Simon_Jester wrote:She wasn't suing anyone over anything, she was carrying heavy objects and saying nasty things about somebody (which may have been true, or not, I don't know and it hardly even matters for our discussion).

By contrast, HE was suing the university for harassment because someone else threatened to carry heavy things around and say mean things about him and demand that he be expelled. Not because the university actually said it would expel him, certainly not because it DID expel him. Because someone was carrying mattresses around campus.
You understand that my objection to the notion of trigger warnings for things like the word 'violate' and safe spaces doesn't mean I would advocate spray painting the word violate all over a school campus just to illicit a response?
Um... you really have done an amazingly good job of NOT making that clear.

If you're going to talk constantly about how mentioning "this movie contains depictions of a racist beating and if you have trouble coping with that, talk to the TA about some other way to get your grade" somehow undermines a necessary form of 'mental toughness...'

And if you're going to repeatedly scoff at someone whose argument is literally "look, minorities put up with real harassment and you are not well qualified to tell them they just need to 'toughen up...'

No, you are NOT giving people reason to "understand that your objection" to people having to pay attention to this issue and show basic human empathy has limits you deem "reasonable." You're doing a very good job of giving the impression that you basically just can't stand the idea of anyone being required to care or pay attention to how their actions, speech, or curriculum might affect the more vulnerable members of their audience.

This is why there are like three or four people who've gotten the same impression in the same thread.
Hey asshole, let me make this easy for you. Lets pretend that I agree with everything you've just posted. I want you, to explain to me how one logically goes from "I don't believe we should ban X because Y people are sensitive to it" to "I don't believe we should ban X because Y people are sensitive to it and further I demand that we chase Y people all around their daily lives waiving X under there noses just to illicit a reaction".

Fucking do it, or shut the fuck up.
Simon_Jester wrote:
Crown wrote:
Simon_Jester wrote:It's only a problem worth remembering and caring about when a woman is publicly lugging mattresses around as a way of protesting the continued presence of a man she claims abused and raped her, and when insults directed against this man are scrawled on bathroom walls.
No, it's a problem when someone exonerated of any wrong doing faces continued abuse from some whack job who can't accept that the world doesn't agree with them, so they have to make someone else's life hell.
Is it an equally serious problem when a man stalks a woman because he can't accept that she isn't interested in him? Do you bring that up on a regular basis in discussions of behaviors you perceive as harmful?

Do you store specific high-profile instances of such behavior in your brain so you can refer back to them years later?

If you do, I'm surprised.

If you don't, then there's a double standard here.
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Simon_Jester wrote:Basically, men being targeted by slander campaigns and harassment is a problem, even when they are not directly confronted, when it's a woman who believes she has been objectively harmed... But women being targeted by slander campaigns and harassment is less of a problem. For that matter, women being physically intimidated and threatened isn't a problem. Or at least, it's not a big enough problem that you need to remember to think about it while debating.
And dead wrong again. You're impressive at how fucking bad you are at this. Go on Mystic Meg, show us what you got next for us.
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Re: The Coddling of the American Mind

Post by Dragon Angel »

I'm just gonna go ahead and disengage with Crown because it seems nuance is beyond him and this thread needs more actual, uh, debate than mindless personal shit-slinging attacks.

Crown: My last piece of advice to you is, if multiple people are taking what you are writing into directions you "obviously" never intended, then it's probably wise to consider it is not them conspiring to misunderstand you, but rather, you just are not writing clearly enough. Occam's razor dictates.
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Re: The Coddling of the American Mind

Post by Crown »

Dragon Angel wrote:I'm just gonna go ahead and disengage with Crown because it seems nuance is beyond him and this thread needs more actual, uh, debate than mindless personal shit-slinging attacks.

Crown: My last piece of advice to you is, if multiple people are taking what you are writing into directions you "obviously" never intended, then it's probably wise to consider it is not them conspiring to misunderstand you, but rather, you just are not writing clearly enough. Occam's razor dictates.
Appeal to Popularity (argumentum ad populum) fallacy.

Nice way to demonstrate what a fundamental dishonest little cunt you are. But we're forgetting something aren't we; remember that time you accused me of not reading all your posts and getting all angry, self righteous and pissy about it? While in the same fucking post you demonstrate that you didn't read all of my posts? Do you remember that?
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Re: The Coddling of the American Mind

Post by Simon_Jester »

Crown wrote:What's there to substantiate? You've lumped me in this "anti-outrage" crowd further down in this post did you not? Well as a so called member of this "anti-outrage" crowd I am telling you your hypothesis was dead wrong.
I observe that a priori, one would expect that people opposed to 'outrage' would favor telling the target of a nonviolent protest campaign that borders on harassment to 'just deal with it.' Rather than going on about how the person engaged in the nonviolent protest campaign is a 'psycho' or whatever.

I am quite sincerely surprised that anyone who favors mental toughness in academia would do an about-face to sympathize with the target of a "expel this guy or we'll keep carrying mattresses around because he raped me" campaign.

Suddenly, harassment and public humiliation are bad.

I mean, I can understand why I might think they're bad...

But I'm not the one who somehow thinks it's a sign of the collapse of American education when Dr. Alyrium tells his biology students "this is a unit on forced copulation and the discussion will predictably cause distress for anyone in the class who has mental scars associated with rape, so I will make accommodations to make sure you can learn this without being torn apart by psychological trauma."
Hey asshole, let me make this easy for you. Lets pretend that I agree with everything you've just posted. I want you, to explain to me how one logically goes from "I don't believe we should ban X because Y people are sensitive to it" to "I don't believe we should ban X because Y people are sensitive to it and further I demand that we chase Y people all around their daily lives waiving X under there noses just to illicit a reaction".

Fucking do it, or shut the fuck up.
What you have made unclear is your general stance on the issue. Basically, you're coming out against some pretty trivial examples of "try to be considerate of other people's mental trauma and experiences of discrimination." If you're against those, it's hard to imagine what examples of it you are for. Even if you're not actively proposing to make society as discriminating and brutalizing as possible for giggles, you give us little cause to expect anything but disdain for minorities who feel harassed or discriminated against.
Simon_Jester wrote:
Crown wrote:No, it's a problem when someone exonerated of any wrong doing faces continued abuse from some whack job who can't accept that the world doesn't agree with them, so they have to make someone else's life hell.
Is it an equally serious problem when a man stalks a woman because he can't accept that she isn't interested in him? Do you bring that up on a regular basis in discussions of behaviors you perceive as harmful?

Do you store specific high-profile instances of such behavior in your brain so you can refer back to them years later?

If you do, I'm surprised.

If you don't, then there's a double standard here.
Answers in order of questions; yes of course, yes when it's relevant to the conversation and yes I have a photographic memory. If I read something, it generally stays with me forever.
Thing is, "Mattress Girl" is a lousy example of anything related to "hypersensitive social white justice knight warriors are on the rampage!" Because no one was actually expelled, you see. The consequences were limited to a smear campaign, and some of the students involved in the smear campaign were actually fined for their tactics or otherwise penalized. I have other opinions on why it's a lousy example but they are irrelevant.

If you have a vast arsenal of examples at your fingertips due to photographic memory... I'd expect you to pick a more likely example. Say, one where action with concrete consequences happened, rather than just having a guy embarrassed by his ex-girlfriend choosing a very embarrassing and awkward way to publicize that she felt he was exploiting her.

Unless, as mentioned, there is a double standard in play on some level, and it's somehow worse when "man bites dog" than when "dog bites man," on account of "dog bites man" somehow being the natural order of things.
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Re: The Coddling of the American Mind

Post by Crown »

Simon_Jester wrote:
Crown wrote:Hey asshole, let me make this easy for you. Lets pretend that I agree with everything you've just posted. I want you, to explain to me how one logically goes from "I don't believe we should ban X because Y people are sensitive to it" to "I don't believe we should ban X because Y people are sensitive to it and further I demand that we chase Y people all around their daily lives waiving X under there noses just to illicit a reaction".

Fucking do it, or shut the fuck up.
What you have made unclear is your general stance on the issue. Basically, you're coming out against some pretty trivial examples of "try to be considerate of other people's mental trauma and experiences of discrimination." If you're against those, it's hard to imagine what examples of it you are for. Even if you're not actively proposing to make society as discriminating and brutalizing as possible for giggles, you give us little cause to expect anything but disdain for minorities who feel harassed or discriminated against.
I asked you to do one simple thing asshole. Explain to me how one goes from "I don't believe we should ban X because Y people are sensitive to it" to "I don't believe we should ban X because Y people are sensitive to it and further I demand that we chase Y people all around their daily lives waiving X under there noses just to illicit a reaction".

Are you capable of doing this without some kind of back and forth sophistry, yes or no?

There are people with nut allergies in the world. I don't believe nuts should be banned. Am I or am I not walking around with nuts in my pockets trying to find these people with the allergies so I can shove one under their nose. Yes or no?
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Re: The Coddling of the American Mind

Post by Simon_Jester »

You have, quite persistently, been arguing against things like warnings in course curricula likely to set off trauma. That is what you have been saying. You may think you are instead arguing only against attempts to, say, "ban the word 'violate.' " But that's not what you've actually been saying. You've been saying "say no to trigger warnings and safe space," and referencing the parody dark humor of a bunch of random idiots as justification for your right to do so.

I've been arguing against that.

This is not sophistry. I simply disagree with you about things you actually said, and the attitude you've been expressing. This does not mean I am constructing some absurd inflated straw version of your position. The most I've done is express that in my opinion, if your position is to be consistent, then you cannot readily or lightly go around opposing a group of people who feel harassed and want the harassment banned one day, and then turn around and support others who feel harassed and want the harassment banned the next.

You're demanding that I prove that, because you believe A, I must feel justified in thinking you believe B and C.

Except that I've been arguing with A, and with slightly modified versions of A that we might call A', all along.

So I reject your challenge as a piece of irrelevant puffery.
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Re: The Coddling of the American Mind

Post by aerius »

Dragon Angel wrote:This isn't "coddling". This is attempting to prioritize mental health and make learning more streamlined, and the casual dismissal by many of the importance of mental health is seriously disturbing. Anyone without personal experience of mental health issues or professional experience dealing with those with mental health issues has no qualifications to make this kind of a judgement. People with either who casually dismiss the importance of mental health don't speak for everyone either, nor do they have either a full grasp of what actually happens or basic empathy for others in their situations, or others they attend to. I've heard of and even experienced shit therapists who are like that, and who have no business being in this kind of a field.

I have no idea what it is that makes a lot of people believe they are experts on mental health. This is such a common theme it's infuriating, even moreso than Internet Lawyers or Internet Doctors.
Let's see, is social anxiety disorder, depression, and PTSD, all of which were formally diagnosed by health professionals good enough for you? Cause I went through all that. As in fuck, there's a ringing phone and it's freaking me the fuck out because if I pick it up I have to talk to someone. Been there, done that, dealt with it. So don't tell me I don't know what triggers are and I'd never understand, because fuck you I lived with it when I was younger. And I still live with depression and will likely do so for the rest of my life since my brain function is permanently out of balance from a bad concussion. And you know what those same mental health professionals told me during the therapy sessions? There's no running away, that shit in my head has to be confronted and overcome. You're not going to like it, but you will have to do it if you want to live a functional life. And that's exactly what I did with their help.

And maybe, if you'd bothered reading my entire post, you'd notice the part where I mentioned having therapists & counselors readily available for those who need them. But I guess it's more convenient to think of me as a heartless bastard like this hilariously bad therapist.
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Re: The Coddling of the American Mind

Post by Crown »

Simon_Jester wrote:You have, quite persistently, been arguing against things like warnings in course curricula likely to set off trauma. That is what you have been saying.
Not true. Not true x2, and oh look not true.
First Instance wrote:And there's the rub; if you proactively discuss your issues with a lecturer and then ask them to inform you if their course is right for you that's fine. That's you being proactive in protecting yourself. However to put the onus on the lecturer to view every possible subject through the "what's the most fucked up thing one person could do to another that could cause someone to be traumatised that I might inadvertently cause a relapse of said trauma" before they speak is fucking absurd and un-workable.
(Please note this is in the context of using the word 'violate')
Second Instance wrote: Nope. You can scroll up to my response to Flagg where I have no problem if one proactively enquires about subject matter so that they can make an informed decision if it is 'safe' for them.

<snip>

Err no. Again, read my response to Flagg; support should be given I've never argued against that. But you can't expect the entire curriculum to be tailored around someone being 'triggered' by the word 'violate'. It's idiotic. And more to the point, you can't expect anyone to know what could potentially trigger someone in a class of 40, 50, 60 odd people. Get a grip.
Third Instance wrote:Lets put our cards on the table; am I against this? No. That's rational and reasonable and I encourage its implementation as an advisory (not a mandate).

Am I against this? Yes. Whole heartedly and without apology or reservation. Which 'this' was the OP talking about?
Third instance is my favourite since I actually used a nifty audio visual to make perfectly clear that I am not at all against warnings that certain subjects may cover naughty activities.

So, you were saying?
Simon_Jester wrote:You may think you are instead arguing only against attempts to, say, "ban the word 'violate.' " But that's not what you've actually been saying. You've been saying "say no to trigger warnings and safe space," and referencing the parody dark humor of a bunch of random idiots as justification for your right to do so.
I most certainly did that in my first post when it was directed to no one in particular and which was building directly off from the OP which is building the argument around "ban the word violate". I have provided irrefutable evidence that in subsequent posts I have no animosity to things that we can term as 'content warnings' that we see before movies or TV programs. AM. I. LYING?
Simon_Jester wrote:I've been arguing against that.

This is not sophistry. I simply disagree with you about things you actually said, and the attitude you've been expressing. This does not mean I am constructing some absurd inflated straw version of your position. The most I've done is express that in my opinion, if your position is to be consistent, then you cannot readily or lightly go around opposing a group of people who feel harassed and want the harassment banned one day, and then turn around and support others who feel harassed and want the harassment banned the next.

You're demanding that I prove that, because you believe A, I must feel justified in thinking you believe B and C.

Except that I've been arguing with A, and with slightly modified versions of A that we might call A', all along.

So I reject your challenge as a piece of irrelevant puffery.
We've already dealt with what I "actually said". YOU made the claim that if "I don't believe we should ban X because Y people are sensitive to it" then I must believe "I don't believe we should ban X because Y people are sensitive to it and further I demand that we chase Y people all around their daily lives waiving X under there noses just to illicit a reaction". And you have now failed for the third fucking time to justify that logic irrespective of what I said or you imagined me to say.

So the fourth, and final time; There are people with nut allergies in the world. I don't believe nuts should be banned. Am I or am I not walking around with nuts in my pockets trying to find these people with the allergies so I can shove one under their nose. Yes or no?
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Η ζωή, η ζωή εδω τελειώνει!
"Science is one cold-hearted bitch with a 14" strap-on" - Masuka 'Dexter'
"Angela is not the woman you think she is Gabriel, she's done terrible things"
"So have I, and I'm going to do them all to you." - Sylar to Arthur 'Heroes'
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