Oddly, I was on the pro-math side of that debate... and my take on it was that we were looking at a situation where Group X was suffering. Where there were obvious reasons to expect this suffering to go on forever if not relieved by an outside force (because math).
And where there were simple, logical measures to relieve that suffering.
But politically this could not happen, because of idiots throwing massive bitchfits at the notion that anyone should do anything inconvenient for the sake of relieving the suffering. Or who conflate relatively minor measures along these lines with massively expensive and useless ones.
To me, that's a situation where the bitchfitting people are being foolish,
probably not malicious but definitely foolish, and the simple measures to relieve suffering should be taken.
So I feel a certain irony here too. It seems to me that I am
still on the side of all these things, that the bitchfitters are still being foolish, though probably not malicious, and simple measures to relieve suffering should be taken. Meanwhile the rest of the battle lines have redrawn themselves around me.
Crown wrote: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.
In the first instance you argue that the student should have to ask the professors for the warnings individually, which rather defeats the purpose of a
warning. Sort of like needing the fire department to call
you to ask you if your house is on fire would partly defeat the purpose of having a fire alarm. It doesn't do a good job of communicating that you
favor being aware of the way that ill-chosen words and attitudes can harm others.
In the second instance, insofar as you touched on the issue at all, you were pretty comprehensively saying "we can't do that, it's not realistic," not just "we can't catch
everything that might hit
everyone."
In the third instance, you're managing to come out in favor of warning labels, while continuing to oppose warning speeches, while still fighting fiercely in defense of a quite ill-chosen example.
This sort of thing is apt to leave your position a bit muddled in the eyes of others.
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?
Except that you are pretty much staking out the position of being opposed to anyone expecting anyone to actually bother to provide them.
You extended the peanut analogy; what you're saying strikes me as analogous to saying that it's somehow a violation of a restaurant's right to... something or other... if someone DOES require them to put up a warning label for peanuts. That it's a major problem if people are asking for too many warning labels. As opposed to, well,
naturally if you allow people to ask for warning labels, a few people will go overboard, and the predictable response is courts saying "no, we won't make them print a warning label for that."
You can't
have a healthy process for creating warning labels or pollution controls or limiting any kind of real, consequential harm, if suddenly the minute people are actually getting any traction with limiting the harm, the narrative shifts to "we've GONE TOO FAR, we can't tolerate these frivolous accusations of harm!"
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.
I have not done so, because that is not my claim.
You've made it quite apparent that it is rather beside the point whether Y people are sensitive to X. That Y people have no reasonable expectation of consideration from others, even when X is a common issue where tens of millions of people are affected.
And yet you then use as an example of this 'getting out of control' someone who, rather than physically pursuing and confronting a person she believed had wronged her, carried the rather odd and dramatic demonstration around
herself. As a result his reputation was blackened, but if the university is obliged to protect students from having their reputation blackened, why are they not obliged to provide other forms of social, psychological, and moral defense for their students?
This bears no resemblance to "I demand we chase Y people around waving X under their noses to elicit a reaction." The student being accused by the mattress performance may have had to put up with people believing the accusations against him, but this sort of thing is a common part of day to day life. People get accused of shit, it ruins their social life.
And
if it is okay to expect college students to submit to the same harassment that "happens in real life" because "reality" doesn't care about their "safe space," I don't see why this is a good example of "social white justice knight warriors run amok," when there are other examples you could have chosen.
It is only after one admits that students have a right to reasonable protections against social harm and nonviolent harassment that there's a reason the university should have taken action against the mattress performance.
But then it becomes a matter of debating what is 'reasonable,' and I would argue that many of the things you
HAVE argued against were just as 'reasonable' as the things you support.
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?
[/quote]I never said you were one of those people in the first place so I don't understand why you're so obsessed with getting me to "admit" that you are or are not.
Thing is, there's still an inconsistency in your position created by claiming that people have a right to quite a bit of a certain type of protection at some times, but do not have any right to such protection at other times.
And, perhaps by bad luck, this inconsistency lines up very closely with a common inconsistency among people who decry "political correctness" and "outrage manufacturers." And
that inconsistency is that people are treated as having less right to be safe from harassment as part of a group with lower power. And more right to be safe if they are part of a group with higher power.
Perhaps it is simply bad luck that you share this inconsistency in this case, and if so I have committed a false alarm.
