Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

goole, one of the reasons i emphasized liberalism is that besides the context of rights and harms i was thinking of mill's utilitarianism, since that kind of rationalized/regimented epicurean or christian-derived project to ameliorate or eliminate suffering seems to feed the readiness to adopt trigger-warning policies as much as, say, a more justice-minded attitude toward reform might also. and for mill one of the chief virtues/passions to cultivate, for someone who wants to extend the application of the greatest happiness principle, is compassion (which in his description sounds basically like a feeling of oneness with all beings). (i don't know it well, but i think the flip side would be something like judith shklar's take on liberalism as motivated above all by a hatred of cruelty, as the chief vice.) and it fits with the way he roots the individual projects pursued in 'on liberty' in a richer picture of self-culture than just the yes-happiness-no-harms-no-unjustified-coercions picture of him that one can take from a looser reading of the utilitarian-reformist liberal project. (we want not just happiness or freedom from pain, but the satisfactions that come from directing our own growth as people, from being able to make ourselves whole.) which seems significant in this context since we're talking about the use of trigger warnings in education.

but 'regimented compassion' is a good term for it i think because it suggests that there's something odd about the undertaking. consideration would probably be a better term for it, in relation to ideas about the decorum and decency of speech and public behavior, but including 'compassion' in the phrase suggests the more fundamental motive while reminding how in certain ways the arrangement being promoted—more extensive use of trigger warnings to enable individuals to manage their own self-protection—effectively brings about the self-exclusion or self-absconding of people in need of compassion from a public space in which others would otherwise confront suffering toward which to be compassionate or not. so that policy officially acknowledges the existence of suffering but delegates its treatment to the sufferers, who if they are lucky will be suffering enough and in acknowledged-enough ways to be able to find some other private or official remedy (say, a therapist), and permits those who issue trigger warnings to think of themselves as having discharged the claims of suffering upon their attention because they have changed their behavior so solicitously.

While we're talking about racism and trauma/PTSD:

http://colorlines.com/archives/2014/03/suicide_crisis_among_native_youth_on_reservations.html

Native youth are more than three times more likely to commit suicide (a number that increases to more than 10 times on some reservations), and have post traumatic stress symptoms on par with Iraq War veterans.

http://gawker.com/triggered-college-professor-argues-for-right-to-tear-1550250284

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_words

thems triggerin words, podner

http://www.happytrails.org/_images/trigger/01-sm-Illustration%20Photo.jpg

so this happened: http://gawker.com/starbucks-apologizes-to-louisiana-woman-over-satanic-ca-1556322885?utm_campaign=socialflow_gawker_facebook&utm_source=gawker_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

A liberal friend of mine who also happens to be Christian was curiously defending this employee, indicating the customer was 'privileged' and guilty of "#firstworldproblems". I don't see how this is acceptable, though - employees shouldn't be speaking on behalf of their companies, and similar to me not being appreciative of having a Bible verse written on the side of my coffee cup, I don't think someone of religious persuasion would appreciate this kind of a message. At the end of the day, this isn't an earth-shattering event, no, but it is something that could get that employee (rightfully) shitcanned - people order a drink, not unsolicited symbolism.

I mean hell, I have Sigil of Baphomet jewelry so obviously I am not offended by these symbols, but I get a little unnerved when some liberals seem to hold themselves to lower standards than they do conservatives.

the defense was largely strange too - "companies have a right to spread whatever message they desire"...well last I checked, I'm fairly sure Starbucks wasn't endorsing Laveyan Satanism or the LEft Hand Path etc etc

The kid was a dopey jerk for doing that at work, the customer was overly dramatic in being so shocked that they couldn't speak to someone at the time. What they meant to say is that they didn't want an in-person confrontation. Unless you were the subject of satanic ritual abuse (lol) ain't no numbers in caramel gonna make you triggered.

the defense sounds oddly like they're trying to connect dopey barista to hobby lobby owners

I would agree with the customer's defense being code for conflict avoidance.

and yeah, this was more or less an idiot employee trying to be subversive. an entertaining debate ensued about whether this pentagram was Satanic in intent; because the cup is spherical, one can't easily tell whether it's inverted or classic in design!

that is a dumb debate, it's next to a 666, he was trying to rock out with the devil

last I checked, I'm fairly sure Starbucks wasn't endorsing Laveyan Satanism or the LEft Hand Path etc etc

― Neanderthal, Wednesday, April 2, 2014 5:35 PM

that's exactly right. nothing to see here.

http://cafesguide.com/assets/pages/68/9d/689deffca5a6f86c2c35858601ca6b58_330.jpg

I feel bad for this woman, I suppose, but I would be delighted if this happened to me. especially at a Starbucks!

finally figured out the gimmick for my future coffee shop.

i keep meaning to respond to j's long post up there and not getting around to it.

would love to see that.

i don't have a problem with half-measure meliorism, is the short versh

idk how religious i would have to be to find that bored adolescent chicanery more unpleasant than the 'coffee' itself, probably somewhere between fred phelps peace be upon his soul and torquemada

i would like that!

i was thinking some more about the genealogy of generalized 'triggering' talk after i read about that uc prof who tore up some protesters' signs because she said they triggered her.

i feel like i missed out on some change in academic fashion between the early 00s and now that expanded the scope of 'triggering'. my sense back then, around a lot of mostly white feminists and other activists (who still cared about issues like intersectionality), was that the trauma-studies-style thinking about triggering was not so much in the air yet and if ever, people talked about triggering mostly in connection with rape and sexual assault.

but i also feel like i lack perspective on how much influence the internet may have had in the meantime. looking around on tumblr, i was reminded somewhat of old livejournal days, thanks to a really widespread use of 'triggering' that seems to get underemphasized in the current discussions (prompted by e.g. the college curricula stories): on online diarists, basically, warning their readers (probably diarists themselves) that they're going to talk about self-harm and suicidal thoughts. which seems like a different vector for generalized talk about triggering. it goes along more closely with a style of self, performed in a space where vulnerability is given special license and where every reader is likely to be in a particularly vulnerable place if they share any of the triggerable issues they're reading about. i can see how enough talk about triggering in that sort of context would significantly open up the sense people attached to the word.

er, some xps there

http://www.thenation.com/blog/179160/cancelcolbert-and-return-anti-liberal-left

Call it left-wing anti-liberalism: the idea, captured by Herbert Marcuse in his 1965 essay “Repressive Tolerance,” that social justice demands curbs on freedom of expression. “It is possible to define the direction in which prevailing institutions, policies, opinions would have to be changed in order to improve the chance of a peace which is not identical with cold war and a little hot war, and a satisfaction of needs which does not feed on poverty, oppression, and exploitation,” he wrote. “Consequently, it is also possible to identify policies, opinions, movements which would promote this chance, and those which would do the opposite. Suppression of the regressive ones is a prerequisite for the strengthening of the progressive ones.”

i dont know marcuse that well, though i presume he says such things because he believes in some objective or marxist historical end game to be accomplished?

i think if you've abandoned that presumption you can still adapt what he's saying to the necessity of making "decisions" that will, in a sense, leave you open on one side; or sort of the pragmatic "half-measure meliorism" that goole talks about above. the other "half" being the one that inevitably bites you in the ass. which i think we have to accept as "ok."

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/04/14/oberlin-backs-down-trigger-warnings-professors-who-teach-sensitive-material

these kinds of policies sorta amount to a novel version of in loco parentis

http://duncanlaw.wordpress.com/2014/04/21/elements-of-liberalism/

http://www.w3.org/TR/2010/WD-emotionml-20100729/

1.2 The challenge of defining a generally usable Emotion Markup Language

Any attempt to standardize the description of emotions using a finite set of fixed descriptors is doomed to failure: even scientists cannot agree on the number of relevant emotions, or on the names that should be given to them. Even more basically, the list of emotion-related states that should be distinguished varies depending on the application domain and the aspect of emotions to be focused. Basically, the vocabulary needed depends on the context of use. On the other hand, the basic structure of concepts is less controversial: it is generally agreed that emotions involve triggers, appraisals, feelings, expressive behavior including physiological changes, and action tendencies; emotions in their entirety can be described in terms of categories or a small number of dimensions; emotions have an intensity, and so on. For details, see Scientific Descriptions of Emotions in the Final Report of the Emotion Incubator Group.

Given this lack of agreement on descriptors in the field, the only practical way of defining an EmotionML is the definition of possible structural elements, their valid child elements and attributes, but to allow users to "plug in" vocabularies that they consider appropriate for their work. A central repository of such vocabularies can serve as a recommended starting point; where that seems inappropriate, users can create their custom vocabularies.

i feel as if the w3c is trolling me

many xps

I think the idea that literary texts should have to come with a 'trigger warning' is not one I would endorse if I worked for a university - I'd expect that by definition, if you're studying a text you're going to be handling it (and its messages and attempts on the reader ...) with care, even totally deconstructing it.

i.e. something must have gone wrong somewhere if people really feel that in the university, ffs, Chinua Achebe, ffs, should be labelled with 'CONTAINS RACISM AND IMPERIALISM', ffs.

Sure, and it's not a big deal for me either. But if a group of people say it's a problem for them I don't see why it's such a big deal. I think I need people who object to the idea to explain why they find it so objectionable.

I suppose I resent the implication (implied by who?) that not labelling Chinua Achebe's novel with boilerplate warnings about the Racism and Imperialism contained therein would be to create a space that excludes non-white people

It also feels like the people in charge of student welfare have occupied the English department w/out really understanding what books are

English Departments have never understood what books are. Anyway, my impression of 'trigger warnings' is just a 'heads up' that there might be rape, racial abuse, extreme violence etc., which as I said has been going on for a long time (i.e. when I was at uni in the 90s).

I don't think the core of the objections to trigger warnings are really concerned with this or that deployment of the concept (and perhaps that's where they go wrong). the problem, or at least my sense of what the objectors have a problem with, is that it's not an idea that can be universalized (what's offensive/upsetting can only be linked to the individual experiencing said feelings--unless you want to arbitrarily declare who is and is not able to be "triggered" by something, anything) and leads to a suspicion that said warnings are merely an extension of a narcissistic view of the world (of young people in particular) that rejects what does not please us--a posture that tends to run counter to the hoary liberal humanist idea of being "educated."

it's kind of a reversal of previous attempts to communally or societally determine what is or is not "acceptable"--in the increasing absence of those communal standards we're forced back on limitless (ie, individual) potential determinations (and contexts) of that question. that's the source of the unease, perhaps. the irony, of course, is that the idea of a "trigger warning" is itself a kind of communal preference for individual standards.

the other irony is that all of this takes place against the backdrop of a media environment which is "anything" goes--hence, perhaps, the heightened consciousness about what we choose to expose ourselves to.

the problem, or at least my sense of what the objectors have a problem with, is that (what's offensive/upsetting) os not an idea that can be universalized

That describes me fairly well. (The idea that something can be labelled as universally offensive/upsetting is itself kind of hoary liberal humanist, no?)

a lot like "check your privilege" I think the debate is whether it's an idea that can exported from it's original context (internet based communities?) or pragmatic intent to the world at large (particularly education).

goddamnit I swear to god I know the difference between "its" and "it's".

xp

I also don't like how quickly a concept has jumped from online safe spaces (communities you choose to get involved with and adhere to the standards of) to the university.

'All potentially triggering posts must carry TW' is one good rough and ready axiom to have in place if you want a discussion forum that isn't going to be full of horrible stupid shit - it's fine. But for a university seminar?

You see, we thought alike

But if a group of people say it's a problem for them I don't see why it's such a big deal.

It only becomes a big deal if the person who sees the warning and decides not to read the material insists that they should receive the same credit as someone who did read the material. If they drop the class rather than risk being triggered, then I see no harm in the warning. If they want credit for something they did not do, then that opens a huge can o' worms. You'd either see a massive increase in people claiming they have triggers in order to avoid course work, or else instructors will be forced to erase vast swaths of material from academic settings.

more on this:

Warning: The Literary Canon Could Make Students Squirm

Colleges across the country this spring have been wrestling with student requests for what are known as “trigger warnings,” explicit alerts that the material they are about to read or see in a classroom might upset them or, as some students assert, cause symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder in victims of rape or in war veterans.

The warnings, which have their ideological roots in feminist thought, have gained the most traction at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where the student government formally called for them. But there have been similar requests from students at Oberlin College, Rutgers University, the University of Michigan, George Washington University and other schools.

...“We’re not talking about someone turning away from something they don’t want to see,” Ms. Loverin said in a recent interview. “People suddenly feel a very real threat to their safety — even if it is perceived. They are stuck in a classroom where they can’t get out, or if they do try to leave, it is suddenly going to be very public.”

The most vociferous criticism has focused on trigger warnings for materials that have an established place on syllabuses across the country. Among the suggestions for books that would benefit from trigger warnings are Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” (contains anti-Semitism) and Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway” (addresses suicide).

Also, Vox recently did a Q&A with the author of a Nation piece on the 'anti-liberal left':

Vox: To be basic: What do you mean by anti-liberalism on the left?

Goldberg: A belief on certain parts of the left that liberal values like free speech and tolerance for differing opinions should be jettisoned when they get in the way of social justice… I think you can see echoes of that in that famous Harvard op-ed from earlier this year, which basically says that research should be jettisoned if it's not going to promote social justice.

This is an old idea. In American politics, leftism and liberalism are often taken as synonymous, but they're really not. There is a long, long tradition of "liberal" being used as an epithet by people on the left to mean a sellout, a person who's more concerned with the ideas of abstract justice and rights that work to ensure the continuation of the existing order. So this is an old, old division…

You often see this phenomenon when Democrats or liberals are in power. That allows people on the left to direct their ire about continuing injustice onto the failures of liberalism as opposed to the successes of conservatism.

And so obviously you saw it with [Lyndon B. Johnson], and the rise of the Weathermen and other groups that came out of the fracturing of Students for a Democratic Society. You saw it — to a much lesser extent, and to a much less serious extent — under Bill Clinton, which was the heyday of political correctness and Naderism. And I think you're seeing it again now.

There is a long, long tradition of "liberal" being used as an epithet by people on the left to mean a sellout, a person who's more concerned with the ideas of abstract justice and rights that work to ensure the continuation of the existing order. You often see this phenomenon when Democrats or liberals are in power. That allows people on the left to direct their ire about continuing injustice onto the failures of liberalism as opposed to the successes of conservatism.

and we see it here on ILX (hello Dr. Morbius).

obvious solution is just don't teach these books/authors, maybe don't teach these classes period.

it'll all be "technical writing" soon enough.

very real

This TW on books at university thing sounds eerily similar to 'Christian family review websites'

It's interesting to see where one's thresholds lie though because I don't know what side of this the me who started this thread wd have been on

It isn't strange to me at all that many people find some literature frightening and disgusting. It would be much stranger if no one did.

There's also a sort of emotional extortion racket going on here:

“Be aware of racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, ableism, and other issues of privilege and oppression,” the guide said. “Realize that all forms of violence are traumatic, and that your students have lives before and outside your classroom, experiences you may not expect or understand.”

I don't think 'realize' used as a command has any place in the university tbh and the idiotic snarky vibes of 'you may not expect or understand' are not very chill imho

If YOU teach your class of adults this book, YOU are going to give them traumatic flashbacks