The Coddling Of The American Mind (Trigger Warning Article In The Atlantic...)

What harm comes from those warnings? Xp

― Eallach mhór an duine leisg (dowd), Thursday, 27 April 2017 14:23

Don't know if there would be any. My understanding is that just about anything can be a trigger but it's sometimes recommended to avoid overly specific warnings because they themselves can be triggering.
Wondering whether umbrella groups are better or if something so conceptually specific is necessary sometimes.

I've seen people who use trigger warnings say that they can be used excessively and can be harmful to certain people. Perhaps harmful to people who would benefit from exposure therapy and/or should be prepared at all times without warning?
In all the FAQs I've read I haven't seen whether syllabus sheets are tailored to specific students who've already asked for certain warnings, or if everyone get the same syllabus (with spoilers and potentially triggering triggers).

I recently saw someone posting a photo on Twitter of a table of contents page for a fiction anthology, with trigger warnings for each piece of fiction. The tweeter was saying this is the ideal standard but I don't know if it was just a book for a specific audience or what they expected of all books. If it's the latter I'd prefer they were at the back of the book, because it looked like it'd be easy to spoil the stories by glancing the wrong spot on the page. Not sure what to make of the whole idea.

Still wary that some people will exploit these things to their own ends and that people who would genuinely benefit from warnings are not always being catered to as much as they should be.

Tangentially related, some books/authors being judged harshly for representation issues
http://yhlee.dreamwidth.org/2298302.html

"Walk on the Wild Side" is now considered to be transphobic:

https://www.facebook.com/csaguelph/posts/1303682526336126

Their reply to the first comment is priceless.

idk seems kinda otm to me?

It looks like they've deleted the post.

https://media.giphy.com/media/5xaOcLtop2JSKbnCBoY/giphy.gif

yeah it's gone, wish I'd screenshotted it now but the story is here:

http://www.mrctv.org/blog/canadian-student-association-apologizes-playing-transphobic-take-walk-wild-side

I wonder if there were any other problematic songs 40 some years ago? Investigation is required.

Kinda dickish coverage (and don't read the comments). I think the actual point, that trans people in the present day don't like being thought of as a way for cis people to "take a walk on the wild side," is well taken and worth thinking about. I'd compare to POCs saying hey, um, please don't refer to dating us as your encounter with the "exotic." I have no beef with Lou Reed but yeah, it's not some crazy notion to say that a forty-year-old classic-rock staple might just maybe reflect ideas (even ones that were 'liberal' at the time!) that don't comport with present mores. Based on the comments, I imagine at least some of the response would be the same if the organization had apologized for playing "Brown Sugar" or "Under My Thumb."

The idea that this song is some kind of watershed moment in transgender acceptance or something is pretty hard to take - can't imagine anyone advancing that claim until it came under criticism, but I might be in a bubble here and perhaps there are trans people for whom this is some kind of beloved anthem.

my take on that is that a song not comporting with present mores is not something to get worked up about.

I think saying the song "might just maybe reflect ideas (even ones that were 'liberal' at the time!) that don't comport with present mores" is a heck of a lot better than calling it "transphobic." But I guess historical context gets in the way of dogma reciting.

what's inherently transphobic about those lyrics?

woops sorry dr casino i didn't read your post before posting mine

wasn't Lou in some kind of relationship with a transgender person at one point? I seem to recall the Spin Alternative Record Guide or somesuch references paens to his (unfortunately phrased in retrospect) "shemale lover."

a song not comporting with present mores is not something to get worked up about

or the clash between past/present offers a teachable moment, maybe look at the history of how representation has evolved in pop culture. crazy i know.

no. just ban the songs and issue apologies.

honestly the best thing to do is burn all previous media. this will help prove how evolved we are.

'-phobic'?

wasn't Lou in some kind of relationship with a transgender person at one point? I seem to recall the Spin Alternative Record Guide or somesuch references paens to his (unfortunately phrased in retrospect) "shemale lover."

Rachel: http://dangerousminds.net/comments/rachel_lou_reeds_transsexual_muse

The most interesting thing about this for me is that the refrain about 'coloured girls' apparently did not trouble them.

perhaps there are trans people for whom this /is/ some kind of beloved anthem.

there were at least a couple in the comments.

fwiw, the invitation to the wild side in the first two verses comes from Holly and Candy. was Lou with Rachel when the song was written?

who the invitation comes from in the lyric strikes me as maybe kind of a weird standard for evaluating these things. lou reed wrote the song! it's like saying "well, the woman in 'under my thumb' certainly doesn't seem to have any complaints, or mick jagger would surely have told us about them."

but yeah um... it's a student organization. presumably they place a high priority on inclusiveness and listening to their mebmers, and everybody having a good time, especially when picking out things like the background music playlist for a social get-together or a bus trip. so they respond to their members' feedback, by deciding not to play something that makes them feel shitty. getting in a lather about this as a "ban" is what seems hysterical and oversensitive to me, sorry.

good music is supposed to make you feel shitty iirc

some eyerolling on ilm is hardly getting in a lather btw

but who will eyeroll the eyerollers

how much airplay does "i wanna be black" get on the cbc?

"it's a student organization. presumably they"......

we can presume a lot of things here tbf

getting in a lather about this as a "ban" is what seems hysterical and oversensitive to me, sorry

It does seem a bit too much 'the perfect storm' also, like I wonder if someone out there has a job which is basically looking for INSANE SJW BANS to write articles about?

Still, talking generally about the song, I dunno if 'phobic' really describes its attitude

who the invitation comes from in the lyric strikes me as maybe kind of a weird standard for evaluating these things. lou reed wrote the song! it's like saying "well, the woman in 'under my thumb' certainly doesn't seem to have any complaints, or mick jagger would surely have told us about them."

understood, and generally agree, but the fact that Holly and Candy were actual people and Lou's friends is context for reading the voice.

I wonder if someone out there has a job which is basically looking for INSANE SJW BANS to write articles about?

― Never changed username before (cardamon), Friday, 19 May 2017 15:00 (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

these ppl exist on either side of the spectrum and v few of them need paying

When that song was written was there even a framework/language through which the talk about or understand trans people? Or any kind of agreement on terms/attitudes in the LBGTQ community as it existed at the time? Like, with "I Wanna Be Black" you could have pointed Lou toward any number of sources to show him how fucked up his lyrics were, but WOWS? I dunno.

replace "the" with "to"

maybe they should have played the very next track on the album, "Make Up", which is about embracing queerness and has a supportive chorus of "Now, we're coming out/Out of our closets/Out on the streets/Yeah, we're coming out"

also important to note the album is called TRANSformer just to make this situation even more ironic

more than meets the eye there

The student association at a Canadian university is apologizing to members of the transgender community who may have felt “hurt” or devalued by overhearing Lou Reed’s “Take a Walk on the Wild Side.”

In a statement on Facebook, (...)

I don't think the point of the objections is to say that Lou Reed was a bad or thoughtless person in the 70s, or that he hated trans people then or now. The context is certainly helpful if we do want to understand what he was going for in writing it, but obviously that's not the only lens through which you might evaluate a song's suitability for a playlist. Presumably no one would find it newsworthy if they'd decided to cut the song on the grounds that their membership was telling them it was sucky and boring to sing along to, to name yet other criteria for making such decisions. Meanwhile I think it's cool that whoever decided this went "good point, I never thought of that," instead of treating the complainant(s) as an outsider/irrelevancy/freak/whatever.

It's not my fight, and I don't want to try and speak for either the objectors or the people they persuaded, but I feel obliged to say something since this thread is so often a space for weak high-fiving about those out-of-control hippie-stink-line SJWs. Sometimes I feel like starting a thread tracking the latest battlegrounds in the sinister left-wing War On Christmas and seeing how many people dive right in. Did you know some of the most virulent anti-Santa rhetoric is spread on... wait for it... COLLEGE CAMPUSES???!!

this thread is so often a space for weak high-fiving about those out-of-control hippie-stink-line SJWs.

This is the sort of stuff I hate. Shoveling every objection into the same pile as the gamergate/alt-right.

xp I have a feeling unsubstantiated by any evidence whatsoever that 'War on Christmas'/'You can't say blackboard anymore!!!!' is a sort of 80s/90s phenomena which was mostly fictional, whereas the current round of c2015-now stuff has sometimes (sometimes) actually happened (and so it's worth sifting through the stories that come out to establish this: did it happen, what really happened, what's the context)

the war on christmas is just a metonymy for concern about a general erosion of religious faith + public expression thereof.

no. just ban the songs and issue apologies.

― President Keyes, Friday, May 19, 2017 10:31 AM Bookmark Flag PostPermalink

yeah wow sorry to have "shoveled" this super accurate and illuminating analysis of this story in with people thoughtlessly throwing around the language of "bans" to make things that aren't free speech issues into free speech issues.

That was a hyperbolic joke pretty post pretty obviously

Yup, and with almost no real anti-Christmas 'warriors' to be found, when we actually look for them. Whereas you do actually get a significant number of young people self-identifying as a 'Social Justice Warrior' (as well as it being a label that gets applied to people by others)

xp to Mordy that one

That was a hyperbolic joke pretty post pretty obviously

FWIW I read that as a 50/50 could be serious could be hyperbolic post, but this being ILX I decided to assume deliberate hyperbole as that's a common style here

The conflation of criticism/statements of opposition etc with 'banning' and 'censorship' is one of the most corrosive things under the sun rn imo

I thought this thread bump would be about https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/lolas-story/524490/

The conflation of criticism/statements of opposition etc with 'banning' and 'censorship' is one of the most corrosive things under the sun rn imo

Yup

war on christmas stories are mostly an excuse for the news to promote buying things & competitive consumerism

if the internet wasn't here and we didn't have 24 hour news streaming instantly to every corner of the globe this type of stuff would probably just remain controversies for a dozen people. but we are here, the genie isn't going back in the bottle. i think there's definitely merit and conversations to be had around the actual issues whenever these things come up so long as it isn't just limited to "how can we label this discussion and ignore it" and airmchair sociology generalizing

"Her name was Eudocia Tomas Pulido. We called her Lola."

L-O-L-A Lola

At least three of the commenters are blaming 'Democrats' for this, which uh.

"Her name was Eudocia Tomas Pulido. We called her Lola."

L-O-L-A Lola

Read somewhere that "Lola" is "Grandmother" in Tagalog.