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

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.

Honestly until a couple years ago I thought Walk on the Wild Side was just about, like... ya know, get out of your comfort zone, man! Then again I never know what songs are about.

Is Mountain High, River Deep about puppies and ragdolls and true love or did I read that one terribly wrong too?

gdamnit i meant River Deep, Mountain High.

I always thought The Who's "I'm a Boy" was a trans anthem and pretty neat. Is it phobic now?

Lou Reed had many bad qualities, but transphobia wasn't one of them.

"Holly" was an actual person

I am suspicious of this story because the first time I saw it was a link from Heat Street, which is a noxious right wing garbage fire.

if you want to heat up the street sometimes you have to burn the garbage

noxious right wing garbage fire or '80s syndicated action series about an ex-cop with a motorcycle?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-campus-mob-came-for-meand-you-professor-could-be-next-1496187482

Any trustworthy pieces on this that aren't behind a paywall?

try this maybe?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/05/26/professor-told-hes-not-safe-on-campus-after-college-protests-at-evergreen-state-university-washington/

or this: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/05/30/escalating-debate-race-evergreen-state-students-demand-firing-professor

Thanks

So they're asking people to stay off campus on a day when there are classes scheduled? I feel like the articles mentioned don't get into the history and particulars of this tradition enough: past turnouts, current success. I googled up the Day of Absence and it looks like this all happened way back in April.

The university thing is more of a head fuck for me. It's like, really? You can't go talk to other people who want to learn stuff in another country? Really? The one place where you need to be free to express everything you possibly can. You want to tell these people you can't do that? And you think that's gonna help?

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/thom-yorke-breaks-silence-on-israel-controversy-w485142

not a particularly thoughtful argument from Thom there. this little snippet from Nigel is honestly more persuasive than anything Yorke says:

I think that it's true to say that the people you'd be denying [the music] are the people who would agree with you and don't necessarily agree with their government.

well he is kind of, as he says, "retarded"

yeah that one line from Nigel is pretty good, should have been the entire response. a lot of this feels like Thom getting into a hissy over being told what to do, rather than providing any nuance to their decision-making, indulging in the very black-and-white thing he is decrying.

That TESC controversy seems like a textbook situation where very strong emotions (mainly fear and anger) were already stirred up by off-campus events in the larger world, and due to a lack of appropriate nearby objects to fasten onto, they were vented upon the nearest facsimile of an enemy they could locate. You can't say the students are wrong to feel fear and anger, or their analysis of social ills is off-base. The disproportion is of size. The threat posed required so much less firepower than was trained on it.

But this is strictly an initial impression formed from the minimal information in mordy's linked articles, which distance lends it a simplicity that the participants probably would not recognize as true.

That is one of the points that Weinstein made on the Joe Rogan podcast yesterday. I haven't listened to the entire thing, and Rogan is full of his usual wide-eyed "PC gone wild" bluster that makes him so difficult to listen to, but Weinstein is given a chance to relate his account of the situation at length.

http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/bret-weinstein

The Evergreen State College controversy is the worst one of these things yet. Seriously, these protesters won't even abide a modicum of disagreement. Bullies.

Clearly the dangerous, paranoid fringe politics in this country is coming from the right not the left but I don't think they're unrelated. These kids are just the other side of the coin of right wingers who think Hillary Clinton is a human trafficker.

One thing that doesn't seem to get mentioned by the pro-Weinstein narrative is that this Day of Absence was entirely optional and required pre-registration.

http://www.portlandmercury.com/blogtown/2017/06/02/19057135/what-we-know-about-the-lockdown-and-unrest-at-washingtons-evergreen-state-college

another one of those great situations where if you take a side you're automatically lumped either with an old tone-deaf professor or a bunch of dumb brats

I think both extremes come from a rather rapid delegitimization of institutions. In that sense the decline of academia is the canary in the coal mine. It's possible this current legitimation crisis is being driven by new communications technology, or it's simply just the "terminal phase"of the present organization of capital, but it seems clear that is what's happening. We are in a moment in which the"legitimizing beliefs" which ground institutions are nowhere to found.

xp to Treeship

speaking of evergreen, looking forward to the inevitable softening of treeship's stance on this in about 20 posts

Another outcome of legitimation crisis is that every action we can take, from our social media postings to our consumer choices, is then overladen with "political" consequences. The whole of everyday life becomes politicized.

From Weinsteins original email:

If there was interest in a public presentation and discussion of race through a scientific/evolutionary lens, I would be quite willing to organize such an event (it is material I have taught in my own programs, and guest lectured on at Evergreen and elsewhere). Everyone would be equally welcome and encouraged to attend such a forum, irrespective of ethnicity, belief structure, native language, political leanings, or position at the college. My only requirement would be that people attend with an open mind, and a willingness to act in good faith.

Sad lol...

We are in a moment in which the"legitimizing beliefs" which ground institutions are nowhere to found.

http://peterlevine.ws/?p=18594

... when things are going well, institutions offer attractive deals to citizens that they would be very happy to accept today. For instance, if unionized manufacturing jobs paid decent wages, people would like unions. If local government agencies had enough resources to provide consistently decent services, people would like government. If political parties were driven by volunteers (instead of swamped by money that flows to for-profit consultants who work for entrepreneurial candidates), people would engage with parties. And if a metropolitan daily newspaper offered the best available way to get news, sports, classifieds, and comics, people would subscribe, the subscription money would pay for journalists, and readers would trust the news industry.

But there are reasons that these institutions are not prospering. They all have competitors or outright enemies.

In that sense the decline of academia is the canary in the coal mine.

yeah, if the canary had personally leaked the carbon monoxide

We are in a moment in which the"legitimizing beliefs" which ground institutions are nowhere to found

i think ryan is on to something here and i also think a lot of this is technologically driven. similar to how digital technology is making past physical media meaningless we are deconstructing a whole host of previously accepted beliefs. in the past these beliefs were largely defined at the top and dictated by authority. whether they were genuine or coherent in of themselves was sort of not really an issue since there was no easy way to challenge that hegemony. now thanks to tech not only can everyone have input, but the discussions are occurring faster and faster, giving everyone open access but also weakening that original belief.

Bill Maher had a guy from Google on his show last night talking the ethics of what they do, and kept asking "How do you ethically manipulated people's beliefs". this rubbed me the wrong way cos it felt like he was connotating "beliefs" with social media/identity culture signifiers. i am not sure they are the same thing, and i think assuming they are is a bit dangerous and self-glorifying on the part of the tech industry. ultimately there is always a political element to what you make public. what you believe is something in and of your own experience, and what you choose to share invariably presents a simplified/commodifiable/calculatable version of that infinitely nuanced and ultimately unspeakable personal experience. at some point we are going to have to get real with this lost spiritual element to modern consumer/social/political culture and own up that these are just market-friendly approximations. in the meantime the global dialog will continue to deconstruct so much human posturing into its core absurdities.