Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

spectrum, i think the idea is that other people share a contributory responsibility where issues of privilege and oppression are involved, and the structures that sustain them cannot be 'dismantled' without awareness of them

sounds like an idea cooked up by a bunch of privileged kids with no experience whatsoever in the harsh realities of life.

"c'mon gang, if we can convince 10 joe schmoes they're privileged, we can rebuild the community center!" "yeah!

http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/44/db/12e8c6e543340a7e9d9a0a.L._V192535042_SX200_.jpg

lol check out this idealistic child

http://www.popularresistance.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/bell-hooks.png

what a dumbshit teen with no experiences in the harsh realities of life

http://bw.edu/news/mcintosh/mcintoshphoto.jpg

god, grow the fuck up

alfred's professor friend seems to handle it the way i would: put a couple of disclaimers in the syllabus, and let the students decide if they want to take the class or not. even this is a bit silly to me, but if it makes people happy, i don't see the harm

xp didn't bell hooks recently call beyonce a "terrorist" for making some stupid sexy music video? that's friggin' george w. bush talk.

i guess "trigger warnings" and "checking your privilege" belong to a victim mentality that puts responsibility for your personal comfort in other peoples' hands, yet gives you a sort-of negative power over them if they fail to do this. so it's passive aggressive, too.

― Spectrum, Sunday, May 18, 2014 1:11 PM (6 hours ago)

THIS, and ILX provides many helpful examples in action

need a trigger warning for this thread, tbh

alfred's professor friend seems to handle it the way i would: put a couple of disclaimers in the syllabus, and let the students decide if they want to take the class or not.

This seems perfectly reasonable. English Lit is unlikely to be more harrowing for students than criminal law or 20th century history but potentially more likely to take them by surprise if they aren't aware of the content in advance. There are two elements - flagging books that you can reasonably imagine might get a strong adverse emotional reaction from a small number of students and being able to deal with that reaction if it occurs (not making a scene if someone leaves the room, not flunking students if they explain that they don't feel they can participate in a class, etc). Neither seems particularly onerous.

^

yeah, reasonable middle ground is reasonable

Ilx, have any of you had any classmates or friends who have had bad reactions to material presented in lit courses? I mean, from the articles I've read on this topic have focused on student groups who want to implement trigger warnings and the reactions of teachers and administrators to those requests. I really don't have any idea about the student victims in this.

I've never known anyone to have anyone to have negative reactions. But I've also never know anyone to complain when a lecturer or tutor has warned about racism or rape in something to be studied. To me it seems like such a non-issue. If some people have a problem, in what way is anyone else put out by such a warning?

It seems unpleasantly tied into 'anti-PC' thought.

i don't have a problem with teachers telling their classes that something they're about to see or read has potentially traumatizing content, i've had a number of profs who did that. the specific complaint that sparked the santa barbara thing -- a student who was upset that a teacher had shown a movie with a violent rape scene without warning the class -- seems completely reasonable to me. otoh the trigger warning guidelines are so broad that i can't imagine they'd be all that effective, seems like every single book would need a trigger warning.

a english professor friend of mine posted the following on facebook: "Dear Students, If you aren't disturbed by what we read this semester, you prob haven't done the reading. Love, Prof"

The widely quoted Oberlin (iirc) guidelines did this issue no favours. If you ask people whether a teacher should warn students before showing a film including a violent rape most will say yes of course. If you show them the guidelines about Achebe most will find them foolish at best and dangerous at worst. I'm fine with asking teachers to bear potential triggers in mind but as soon as it gets codified it looks terrible. Likewise the Tumblr that was cited in a few places with the epic list that includes "slimy things", the word "stupid" and "Death or dying".

It's just pretty amazing that anyone could wander into a college literature class any time after their Charlotte's Web years and not be braced for trauma.

The Tumblr list people (including The Guardian) were linking to is a two-person operation that hasn't been updated in over a year. I'm rather suspicious of the intentions of anyone going out of their way to find marginal interpretations to ridicule the concept as whole.

I see your point but this one of the first dozen Google results for "trigger warnings". You don't have to go out of your way. Nor have most of the articles I've read ridiculed the whole concept, only its application in academia rather than feminist blogs and other "safe" spaces.

what's the least charitable interpretation you can give for ppl who ridicule trigger warnings? that they're not empathetic enough?

that they are elitist?

really? i mean, anything can have elitism in it but that seems more like the uncharitable reading of pro-trigger warning ppl than anti.

they have experience with the harsh realities of life

If one of the first dozen Google results for "trigger warning" is someone's abandoned blog project, it might not be the all-pervasive threat to academic freedom it's being painted as. As with anything, drawing the line of common sense is never going to be entirely straightforward but it seems a little dishonest to point to extreme examples rather than working with the ones that are actually being discussed in academic contexts.

xps.

"Hey doll, if you weren't prepared for the cold hard realities of life maybe you shouldn't have chosen to study English Literature at university"

that's how it looks from my perspective, but i also regularly warn my students about stuff that they might find disturbing.

And I wouldn't criticise anyone who doesn't want to include trigger warnings - but what is the criticisim of those who do?

my concern w/ trigger warnings comes primarily from growing up in a community + going to schools with tons and tons of censorship (charedi judaism). we weren't allowed to read literature w/ sex of any kind, violence, any kind of message that might undermine Torah values, etc. i once had a personal copy of As I Lay Dying taken away by the Rabbis bc it wasn't appropriate reading material. so i get all upset about any suggestion of censoring literature. even if this is just encouraging teachers to disclose upsetting thematic material before reading a new book, i can't help but feel like mandatory trigger warnings will inevitably lead to censoring, even if it's just self-censoring bc why bother with the inevitable complaints? when i was in 12th grade our English Lit teacher assigned lord of the flies, but the rabbis thought that was too disturbing so instead we all read Around the World in 80 Days. 12th grade. for real.

i think the criticism (or least favorable interpretation of pro-TW ppl) is that this is a kind of creepy censorship masked in the rhetoric of empathy + respect

I guess I just don't see the leap between description of content and censorship. After all, such descriptions happen in all sorts of media all the time.

It's difficult to square the idea of a liberal college student base that wants to study more works dealing with racism, colonialism, the range of negative experiences women have traditionally had to put up with, etc, etc, with one that's deliberately trying to keep those topics off the curriculum.

yeah, it's not even like ppl are complaining about riefenstahl or birth of a nation - explicitly ideological works that were intended to make political/racial statements. ppl are complaining about achebe!

(i meant to add, explicitly ideological works *that are frequently taught in universities)

and The Great Gatsby!

maybe it's Gatsby's pink suit?

WARNING: This novel may contain outrages against fashion.

That's the jump that bothers me: who wants to keep it off the curriculum? (it's possible this story has outpaced me somewhat)

x-posts to sharivari.

I watched Birth of a Nation at uni - and we discussed the problems raised by it before we watched it.

In fact, the problems raised were the main (only? Sepends on your opinion of the film I guess) reasons for watching it.

yeah, it's not even like ppl are complaining about riefenstahl or birth of a nation - explicitly ideological works that were intended to make political/racial statements. ppl are complaining about achebe!

This is where the censorship idea doesn't stack up for me. If you asked the pro-warning crowd whether Achebe should be taken off the curriculum, what percentage do you think would say yes?

xp

then why even mention it as an example?

Oberlin College has published an official document on triggers, advising faculty members to "be aware of racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, ableism, and other issues of privilege and oppression," to remove triggering material when it doesn't "directly" contribute to learning goals and "strongly consider" developing a policy to make "triggering material" optional. Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, it states, is a novel that may "trigger readers who have experienced racism, colonialism, religious persecution, violence, suicide and more." Warnings have been proposed even for books long considered suitable material for high-schoolers: Last month, a Rutgers University sophomore suggested that an alert for F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby say, "TW: suicide, domestic abuse and graphic violence."

Warning to the Trigger Warning: may contain spoilers

like why are we creating a dialogue in our academic communities where we assume achebe might not be fit for every student to read? on the contrary - everyone should read achebe.

Yeah I was just about to say to Sharivari that the Oberlin guidelines sparked this recent debate, not some Tumblr.

and also, if you are too triggered to read eg Heart of Darkness (which isn't about racism but is actually racist) then maybe you're too sensitive a soul for college tbph

“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.” For example, it said, while “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe — a novel set in colonial-era Nigeria — is a “triumph of literature that everyone in the world should read,” it could “trigger readers who have experienced racism, colonialism, religious persecution, violence, suicide and more.”

i keep coming back to this. there is something so goddamn infuriating to me about the fact that they used this particular example. maybe it's the suggestion that a bunch of college students somehow 'know better,' are more enlightened, whatever, than an actual african author who was, you know, actually trying to make his readers more aware of all these awful things they so smugly act like they're the first ppl in history to know about.

It doesn't sound to me like they are trying to remove it from the course, though - just encouraging people to flag what it's about in advance and potentially not make it mandatory in the rather unlikely event that anyone feels it's too traumatic. It's difficult to see how any course on contemporary literature that isn't focused solely on white people wouldn't run into those issues at some point - i don't think the objective is to get professors to just teach books by white authors.

But what about schools who want departments to write curricula that includes alternatives?

I guess I'm also skeptical enough of the triggering thing to begin with, which isn't really under debate here, but forms some of the resistance to TW i think.

"You're allergic to lobster? Cool. Here's some mac and cheese. Read the warning label first."

like really? you can't read a piece of literature about sexism/racism/violence without having a PTSD flashback? i guess it's possible but idk. seems unlikely to me.