Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

About the Greer thing, the furthest I've been able to get is something like: 'She seems to hate trans people, but she doesn't think trans people even exist; she can only see men dressing up as women so they can invade female spaces; does that make a difference? But then don't a lot of racists think their target is trying to invade their space ...'

j. could you expand on what you mean by left communitarianism?

it's funny, there's almost something sort of valorous in the way that students are willing to define the boundaries of their communities so explicitly--that this often makes us older liberals so uncomfortable is often a function, I think, of our own rather complacent (and rather outdated) notions of what a tolerant liberal community is supposed to look like.

liberalism can even be defined in strict opposition to "safe spaces" because it includes the possibility of actual politics in the schmittian sense: real antagonism and conflict. the notion of a "safe space" can always be interrogated: who's safe space?

goddamn autocorrect: "whose"

I should clarify what I mean a little better: rather than being naive or childish or "coddled" one could argue that the students see the biopolitical situation (i.e., whose safe space is at issue, whose mental health and security matters, etc) better than their elders.

i think there's a kind of paradox in that these students tend to be extraordinarily privileged w/ wealth + educational opportunities that are both globally and historically unique so that the demands for safe spaces within what already constitutes the safest of spaces can seem bizarre.

it does. and there's a cynical reading that would surely point out that these highly privileged universities are perhaps the first thing they have encountered in their lives that doesn't care about their feelings. (not saying I go along with that reading)

but if that's the case their response is interesting because it's a demand to expand the sphere of biopolitical "care" which is to demand in effect to be identified, determined, delimited, etc. it's a highly risky trade off.

which is to say: there are both good and bad effects of an institution taking an interest in your feelings.

i guess i mentioned this (maybe a few too many times?) on the "coddling..." thread, but fredrik deboer speaks to these issues in this piece http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/magazine/why-we-should-fear-university-inc.html=

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/race-and-the-free-speech-diversion

whole series of non-sequitirs there, an attempt to graft a general discussion of "climate" onto a host of very different issues with different particulars. what's happening at yale is not what's happening at mizzou is not what happened to a teenage girl in SC. and conflating the responses to these things--and implying that the same people criticizing e.g. the students calling for someone's firing at yale are those blaming the victim in the SC case--is not helpful.

yeah but The New Yorker wants Friedersdorf's hits

like NOBODY i know is actually making this argument:

Two weeks ago, we saw a school security officer in South Carolina violently subdue a teen-age girl for simple noncompliance, and we actually countenanced discussion of the student’s culpability for “being disruptive in class.”

that is plainly a red herring argument. whatever this girl did has no bearing on the awfulness and brutality of what was done to her.

there's a slipperiness in that "we actually countenanced..." line. who is "we"? what does "actually countenanced" mean? simply allowed to exist?

but conflating that red herring argument with the legitimate concerns about free speech raised by yale situation is, again, not helpful. she's tarring a disparate group of concerns with the same "this is distracting from racism" brush.

sure, some people said the girl in SC had it coming, or politer versions of the same thing. and some of those people are the same people pointing at the situations at missouri and yale and crying foul. those people by and large would be conservatives.

but there are also plenty of leftists concerned about aspects of what's gone down at e.g. yale--folks who are plenty concerned with racism, and appalled by the SC situation among many others--who don't deserve to be lumped in the former.

sorry, that post got garbled by some clumsy copy and paste. it should have read:

like NOBODY i know is actually making this argument:

Two weeks ago, we saw a school security officer in South Carolina violently subdue a teen-age girl for simple noncompliance, and we actually countenanced discussion of the student’s culpability for “being disruptive in class.”

the argument cobb synopsizes there is plainly a red herring argument. whatever this girl did has no bearing on the awfulness and brutality of what was done to her.

but conflating that red herring argument with the legitimate concerns about free speech raised by yale situation is, again, not helpful. she's tarring a disparate group of concerns with the same "this is distracting from racism" brush.

sure, some people said the girl in SC had it coming, or politer versions of the same thing. and some of those people are the same people pointing at the situations at missouri and yale and crying foul. those people by and large would be conservatives.

but there are also plenty of leftists concerned about aspects of what's gone down at e.g. yale--folks who are plenty concerned with racism, and appalled by the SC situation among many others--who don't deserve to be lumped in the former.

there's a slipperiness in that "we actually countenanced..." line. who is "we"? what does "actually countenanced" mean? simply allowed to exist?

i'm not sure about freddie's materialist argument; as tempting as it is to ascribe student reactions to the corporate university (or in a variation on that theme - on the uncertainty produced by the exploitive economic machine of the corporate university + the educational loan industry), this is not just something happening in the university. even ilx has numerous topics that one would be wise to avoid bc any hint of dissension or break w/ the "correct" POV is anathema to a particular expression of left-wing righteousness. this totalizing paradigm where the suppression of bad opinions is itself virtuous exists beyond the academy and if it is unique to the academy i think that's only in the sense that the academy has always been a locus for avant garde political action (particularly on the left). which is not to say that this is a "problem," in that it's unclear to me how widespread this ideology exists at all and it seems to me like the vast majority of people still believe in liberal values of conversation / freely sharing ones opinion / polite argumentation / etc. but i don't need to name names to point out that plenty of ppl no longer agree that this is an appropriate way to handle what i'll charitably refer to as "opinions that go over the line," or "opinions that reify oppression and domination," or "speech that is harmful," and that all it takes is a few ppl making a lot of noise to make things uncomfortable enough that the vast majority of ppl will just keep their mouths shut. to some this suppression of particular 'harmful speech' through non-illegal means (merely the shaming of those with whom we disagree) is a victory! but not to me. even discussing this i feel like is to court controversy. "oh look at the poor [white/male/wealthy/whatever] complaining about how they're oppressed," but really it's not an oppression issue but more of a way of shaping public discourse. if i walk to work every day past someone screaming and smearing their shit on the wall and i decide to stop walking that way bc it's unpleasant i'm not being oppressed, and truly the shit-smearer is probably experiencing far more degradation and alienation than i can even imagine. but it does ultimately result in me no longer walking that way bc of the sheer unpleasantness. i think when i first started posting to ilx i really appreciated the forum bc it gave me an opportunity to discuss things i couldn't in my real life but now i find myself in a constant state of self-censorship here not bc "woe is me" but bc i don't want to deal w/ some psycho smearing their shit at some perceived offense. it cheapens the value of ilx (to me, but maybe shit smearers are thrilled w/ the status quo) but i mean this is really just a metaphor bc ilx value is fairly superficial to begin w/, but it inevitably cheapens the value of the university too.

http://www.philebrity.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/09/smokey_04.jpg

j, what does that image mean in this context?

OVER THE LINE

line breaks, mordy. :)

i always feel more inclined to use "beyond the pale" as the operative idiom in place of "over the line" but bc of its racial etymological baggage i try to avoid it

lol no line breaks extremely long paragraphs are my new ilx style. i'm looking to have as few readers as possible while still satisfying my personal need to express.

lol

i would be hugely surprised if you knew what beyond the pale meant?

no i know bc my family is from the pale of settlement so at some time in college i [mistakenly] put two + two together and then looked up the actual etymology and educated myself a little bit about ireland

<3

also hugely otm obv

j. could you expand on what you mean by left communitarianism?

no not at the mo it's just a pregnant phrase

like NOBODY i know is actually making this argument:

Two weeks ago, we saw a school security officer in South Carolina violently subdue a teen-age girl for simple noncompliance, and we actually countenanced discussion of the student’s culpability for “being disruptive in class.”

lucky you

these people exist

And a lot of them work in schools

trigger warnings https://medium.com/@girlziplocked/on-jessica-jones-netflix-and-the-utility-of-trigger-warnings-843e73100048

a very nuanced and level-headed article, sure to change minds!

If you’re at all sensitive to the suffering of others, you’re going to start feeling pulled to empathize with Jessica which sets off a cascade of emotions that you may or may not exactly have the time, resources or ability to process on a random Tuesday evening.

So the problem is consumerism

Viewers having paid good money for content don't want to suddenly have to feel cascades of emotion

It makes technical sense (who hasn't experienced unwelcome emotions on hearing a bar of music or smelling a perfume?) but effectively they're arguing for an end to the Proustian rush

The correlative here is that consumers would be able to avoid things which triggered empathy if it wasn't the right time for empathy, like if they had someone they needed to fire that day

Wondering where that leave things like TV ads for charities?

Wondering where that leave things like TV ads for charities?

Getting muted.

Don't stop now lads yere winning!

xp Well no ... the viewer would need to have the choice not to see the advert

at all, that is

https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/668824174769606656

i fear for the future appreciation of the american ninja series

http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMjE4MjQ0MDM2OV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNjAwMTcyNA@@._V1_SX214_AL_.jpg

It seems only natural that this issue would be battened onto by concern trolls.

If I'm the concern troll in question my charity ad thing relates only to one sentence in that one article about marvel's jessica jones

I was referencing amateurist's twitter link

you had better not be referring to american ninja as a concern troll

more like concern throwing stars

Polite response to cultural appropriation is to cover your mouth while you laugh at the gwai lo

This thread was opened in July 2013 and I'm surprised to see this issue still unresolved tbh

the jessica jones article is a little ott but several posts in a row deliberately misreading one sentence in order to make fun of abuse survivors is not a good look, really

'make fun of' not exactly right. 'deny the needs of', idk.

i am thinking i have definitely seen 'the following programme contains disturbing content and viewer discretion is advised' warnings on (late-night, british) tv since before 'trigger warning' was a thing in the wider discourse, but i'm finding it hard to place what kind of thing they were on. is this a false memory implanted by social justice illusionists or

nah we even have a fuckin law about it in the states. parental advisory contains nudity violence, etc. i fail to see how trigger warnings as described here aren't just like a more voluntary, less censorious, ground-up version of that anyway without the shitty government mandate and stupid technological bits (lol v-chip)

lmao social justice illusionists