Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

express feeling traumatized by classroom discussion

traumatized by reading a Victorian novel

these aren't the same thing

really what we're talking about is not the text itself, it's the discussion of the text in a controlled, semi-public space like a classroom.

with visual materials the sense a little different, but there's this idea out there that words on the page are the triggering thing at issue (they can be)

in that prof's own description, i wonder if it wasn't a classroom of kids blithely talking about rape w/o much insight or sensitivity that was the thing, not slogging thru hardy

ideally it would be on the professor to challenge what the kids are saying then, right? i mean i don't think anyone is calling for a banning on discussing rape or colonialism or whatever in humanities seminars

or at least more accurate to what the thread is now about. cardamon seems to be describing a different phenomenon in op

Yup

The kind of people I was thinking about when I said 'creepy liberals' are, at this very minute, putting links to this story on facebook and talking about the rise of politically correct censorship and et cetera ... and yet one feels that they don't really care very much about literature or trauma victims. For them, Literature Under Threat is just useful as a rhetorical image, and unlike me, they have no interest in exploring the real psychology of triggering and flashbacks.

Update over, carry on. (Some of the most interesting stuff I've read on ILX for a while coming through here.)

IDK I was a lit major in a pretty small department and a small state collegeand I got raped by another lit major. They should've put a trigger warning on him! Haha, not really. But seriously the hardest thing was having to run into him on campus almost every day.

A lot of the books I read could've had trigger warnings, and I wouldn't have wanted them to. Esp the "postmodern" class with stuff like Kathy Acker, Muriel Spark's _The Driver's Seat_, V., }The Passion According to G.H._, a lot of books I've forgotten just made me think "postmodernism = repeated motifs of severe genital injuries/sexual abuse." And, no biggie, because it was so arty and weird. And it might sound silly but I am glad I got to reach this definition of postmodernism ON MY OWN.

The only time it GOT weird was in my <3<3<3ed class on William Blake, when we read "Visions of the Daughters of Albion," which features sort of a No Exit triangle of a husband and wife figure (IIRC) and the wife gets raped by the third guy. She gets upset at her pussy-ass husband who just mopes and does nothing, and upset at the rapist, and also experiences sort of a changing sense of self/sexual liberation because of it (NB: paraphrase). So, that poem was actually really liberating and thrilling, and it was a huge part of me reclaiming my own identity, and probably the first precipitating event towards eventually getting divorced! Just to be overly real here.

ANYWAY, what made it AWFUL was a guy in class who was just insisting over and over that "it had to be a rape, it had to be a rape" to make Oothoon, the main character, sexually liberated. And the prof was trying to deal with it gracefully – "You've been the main voice in this discussion, so you're not going to get to talk anymore so we can hear other voices." But he kept piping up if anyone disagreed. "No! It had to be a rape!" I was feeling self-conscious anyway because the prof known I'd been raped (because she had to get that guy who raped me off the roster the first week of class – I told her about it). And him just repeating it, man!

What I mean to say by all this is boorish people have always been "triggers" for me in a way no piece of literature ever could.

fwiw i don't care very much about literature. don't teach these books, cancel these classes, shut down these departments, and move the funding elsewhere. perhaps something like the ptsd research cardamon apparently does irl. humanities are ridiculously overfunded at a college level anyway, the arts esp. w/ class discussions surely one of the roles of an educator is to instruct in students appropriate kinds of behavior and methods of interaction in a workplace environment. some shmuck like the guy in crabbits class would've been justifiably fired for behavior like that in the real world, and so any prof that didn't deal w/ it or shut it down effectively would be failing that boorish student, other students in that class, the school and society in general.

humanities are ridiculously overfunded at a college level anyway

they're not, at least in Florida. Piddling before, worst now that testing and Kaplan rule the earth.

typically the humanities pay for themselves through enrollments in well-attended service courses and efficient use of their budgetary allotments. it is not uncommon for them to profit while other programs that supposedly subsidize them run at losses.

p sure he's trolling

getting pretty tired of teaching Muriel Spark to bored sophomores tbh

psychiatrist AND comp lit phd sez…

http://chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2014/05/23/treatment-not-trigger-warnings/

As an assistant professor of German literature at Princeton University, I once taught a class about how Germans understood World War II and the Holocaust in the postwar period. Several weeks into the course, an Orthodox Jewish student came to my office hours to tell me how troubled she was by the material, which she had not realized would be included in the course. She felt that the Holocaust should only be discussed in a sacred context and had avoided taking classes on the topic taught by secular academics. As a theological question, I cannot say whether she made the right choice, but she decided to stay and became one of the most thoughtful participants in the class. Her perspective added greatly to the education of the other students.

Recently, students on campuses across the country have begun asking for “trigger warnings” to be placed on course material that might cause distress or provoke symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The student government at the University of California at Santa Barbara formally called for such warnings to be placed on potentially offensive materials. Oberlin College students drafted a guide for professors that was, for a time, posted on the college’s website (after being criticized by faculty and outsiders alike, the policy is “under revision,” as the site says now). As a psychiatrist and former professor, I am opposed to such proposals.

One of my areas of specialization as a psychiatrist has been the psychiatric consequences of trauma, which can range from nightmares and flashbacks to panic attacks. On my child-psychiatry rotations, I have seen children with severe behavioral problems resulting from abuse and neglect. I have worked with adults who have gone on to become chronically suicidal or self-harming as a result of early abuse. At the VA, I have treated veterans haunted by horrifying acts of war that they experienced or in some cases even took part in.

I have enormous sympathy for students who arrive on college campuses suffering from the aftereffects of childhood trauma as well as for returning veterans trying to go back to school burdened by symptoms of PTSD. These students have often been living with their symptoms for a long time and have come to accept them as normal. They may not be fully aware of the impact symptoms are having on their daily lives, and many of them are certainly not aware that help is available. The late teens and early 20s can be a critical window in the development of symptoms that can impair people for the rest of their lives.

As a psychiatrist, I nonetheless have to question whether trigger warnings are in such students’ best interests. One of the cardinal symptoms of PTSD is avoidance, which can become the most impairing symptom of all. If someone has been so affected by an event in her life that reading a description of a rape in Ovid’s Metamorphoses can trigger nightmares, flashbacks, and panic attacks, she is likely to be functionally impaired in areas of her life well beyond the classroom. The solution is not to help these students dig themselves further into a life of fear and avoidance by allowing them to keep away from upsetting material.

I am also skeptical that labeling sensitive material with trigger warnings will prevent distress. The scientific literature about trauma teaches us that it seeps into people’s lives by networks of association. Someone who has been raped by a man in a yellow shirt at a bus stop may start avoiding not only men, but bus stops and perhaps even anyone wearing yellow. A soldier who has seen a comrade killed by a roadside explosive device may come to avoid not just parked vehicles, but also civilians who look like the people he or she saw right before the device exploded. Since triggers are a contagious phenomenon, there will never be enough trigger warnings to keep up with them. It should not be the job of college educators to foster this process.

It would be much more useful for faculty members and students to be trained how to respond if they are concerned that a student or peer has suffered trauma. Giving members of the college community the tools to guide them to the help they need would be more valuable than trying to insulate them from triggers. Students with unusually intense responses to academic cues should be referred to student-health services, where they can be evaluated and receive evidence-based treatments so that they can participate fully in the life of the university.

One of the most important treatments for PTSD is exposure therapy, which helps patients unlearn the associations between traumatic events and triggers so that they can start functioning again. Narrative therapies also provide exposure by encouraging patients to tell their stories over and over again, allowing them to find a less central place for the event in their personal history so that they can start to rebuild their lives.

One of my biggest concerns about trigger warnings is that they will apply not just to those who have experienced trauma, but to all students, creating an atmosphere in which they are encouraged to believe that there is something dangerous or damaging about discussing difficult aspects of our history. The current DSM specifically excludes exposure to media depicting traumatic events as a cause for PTSD. During my training as a psychiatrist, I have seen how the aftereffects of trauma can destroy lives, but I remain convinced that discussion and debate are among the most important things a college education has to offer.

not trolling! (well...) think alot of the supposed purpose of humanities education at an undergrad level should be happening at a high school level and suspect to an extent alot of it is a scam - sell some kid on accumulating a ton of debt so he or she can devote their lives the next 2-3 years to poetry or the classics w/ the full awareness that there are very few jobs that are going to justify that investment. the grand notions of why you have every student take humanities classes in their core - they discover something about themselves, they discover something about the world, they learn critical thinking skills - i'm very skeptical this happens w/ much regularity. by and large someone who hasn't developed in these ways before they've arrived at college isn't developing in these ways period, the mediocrity has calcified. so the one thing that can be hoped for is training (maybe) and verifying some level of communication skills in reading comprehension, writing, and discussion. i'm not sure traumatizing young ppl suffering from ptsd w/ torture porn is necessary to do that. i'm not sure 'these departments are moneymakers' is enough justification.

I like that reading torture porn of the 18th and 20th centuries helped qualify me to teach budding young humans how to write argumentative essays about cell phones.

by and large someone who hasn't developed in these ways before they've arrived at college isn't developing in these ways period

I know some very old people who are more interesting than is dreamed of in your philosophy

did you come across them in yr research?

balls how far would you say your argument is from questioning a college degree altogether? (not that you'd be out of line to do so)

Nowhere have I ever claimed to do any 'research', the verb I used iirc was 'explore'

College degrees symbolize the sum total of what your parents paid/financial aid provided + years of your toil. By themselves they're worthless except as access to grad schools. I've never seen the point of a business degree.

or journalism and English too

fwiw balls I sense that you are someone who has either experienced PTSD or knows the subject professionally and can see that it's probably very annoying, if that's the case, for you to come across people like me saying things about it

it depends, but (and god i hate that this is something i apparently agree w/ republicans on) i do think that college degree as default norm and necessity for so many entry level or basic management jobs is ridiculous. think a great number of ppl just automatically getting college degrees cuz that's what you do if yr middle class and american could be better served and would better serve society if they went to technical schools or 'learned a trade'. at the same time i would change high school education drastically as well, w/ more humanities there (so the trigger warning dilemma isn't avoided entirely i guess), think you're more likely to reach someone, develop themselves as humans, learn to consider other perspectives, think critically, etc, the social benefits of teaching the humanities, when they're younger but capable than when they're an adult and have generally turned into whatever little shit of a person they're going to be. a strong counter is that a college degree represents years of toil as alfred said as well as the ability and fortitude to finish something you could very easily not finish, to an employer it represents the ability to see something thru and the ability to work. i just think there must be better ways to test and demonstrate that ability.

xp and as I understand it you're in favour of TWs in lit seminars or don't see it as bad thing; if that's the case do you not think everyone else should do TWs as well, not just lit lecturers? Because at the moment it's like, well, the entire rest of the media seems to pump out disturbing stuff quite happily ... and yet with this demand for TWs a big moral obligation is being placed specifically on universities

i don't see tw in classroom setting or even everyday life as a bad thing really. very much in line w/ discussions of privilege or any other recent manifestation of political correctness where yes in practice it could seem ridiculous or coddling or whatever but in principle is just generally 'consider other ppl, treat them w/ respect'. the potential for a chilling effect in terms of the exchange and development of ideas is there i guess, it's generally common sense to not discuss politics or religion in mixed company, etc, but in circumstances where these delicate topics can't be or shouldn't be avoided then all you're enforcing is that they be approached w/ respect and a kind of seriousness w/ respect and seriousness incentivised by the enforcement of this code, and bullying or various sorts incentivised by its absence cuz bullying really really works. obv this is something i generally agree w/ more in principle than actually apply in practice.

x-post universities are the only places that are even going entertain such a thing at present

it's generally common sense to not discuss politics or religion in mixed company,

lol what is this 1950?

let's not offend the womenfolk w/ talk of politics

Oberlin College students drafted a guide for professors that was, for a time, posted on the college’s website

just wanna otm myself for a minute

The value of having lit departments at the college level (or any level) is mainly to reflect some social prestige onto literature, so it doesn't sink out of sight entirely. As long as there's a sense in society that this lit stuff is worth something, then a sufficient number of readers who will love it will find it and read it. In the process hundreds of thousands of college freshmen and sophomores will become bored and fidgety and vaguely resentful about "being forced to bullshit" their way through their lit courses. It's a sacrifice, but one that must be made!

^ I was responding to:

fwiw i don't care very much about literature. don't teach these books, cancel these classes, shut down these departments

College is also a good time to make friends, have sex with different kinds of people, and experiment with drugs. Most of my time at college was spent unproductively and it was criminally expensive but I don't know where I'd be without it. I also read a bunch of great books and was exposed to ideas that transformed the way I think about things. I see how the ritual or going through college can seem arbitrary or silly but it's extremely depressing to me to see it measured solely in terms of its value as vocational training. I think all 18-22 yr olds should have the luxury of goofing off, learning, and discovering themselves but maybe that's unrealistic. In any case the trigger warning debate is good because it's causing people off and on campuses to re-examine the purpose of the humanities and that's usually a stimulating convo, esp for young people who haven't thought about this before.

balls and iatee using the same syllabus

this is a subject that's near and dear to me. for the last 9 years i've worked in the disability services dept of a community college, where my role is to attend classes with deaf/hard of hearing students and transcribe the class for them in real-time. at this point i've probably spent a semester in at least one class of every discipline we offer, including the trades.

now, i totally run in tumblr sjw circles, so i'm very pro-trigger warnings as a concept. but the worst of the potentially triggering stuff i've encountered wouldn't be resolved by trigger warnings, because it comes from other students during class discussions, like crabbits mentioned. one instructor i encountered was very shy and had a hard time maintaining control of the class, so discussions would often devolve into the brashest students making their best newspaper-comments-section remarks unchallenged. i've also seen instructors bring up potentially triggering stuff in the middle of topics you'd think were unrelated: a science teacher making an off-the-cuff comment about rape, a reading teacher assigning an article about health and then making fat-shaming remarks during the discussion, etc. i think that kind of stuff is shitty, but i don't think trigger warnings will address it.

otoh, my work in disability services makes me VERY skeptical about remarks like "if you're too fragile to handle it, maybe college isn't for you" or "the real world won't coddle you, so toughen up." they play into the pervasive idea that environments are immutable, when it's entirely reasonable to make changes to an environment that is not serving the lived reality of the community.

College is also a good time to make friends, have sex with different kinds of people, and experiment with drugs.

― Treeship, Friday, May 23, 2014 9:49 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i understand there are other ways to do this

getting married?

What I mean to say by all this is boorish people have always been "triggers" for me in a way no piece of literature ever could.

― just like the one wing dove (Crabbits), Friday, May 23, 2014 2:47 PM (6 hours ago)

my work in disability services makes me VERY skeptical about remarks like "if you're too fragile to handle it, maybe college isn't for you" or "the real world won't coddle you, so toughen up." they play into the pervasive idea that environments are immutable, when it's entirely reasonable to make changes to an environment that is not serving the lived reality of the community.

― funny unconscious rocks creating your consciousness with free choice (reddening), Friday, May 23, 2014 7:32 PM (1 hour ago)

The kind of people I was thinking about when I said 'creepy liberals' are, at this very minute, putting links to this story on facebook and talking about the rise of politically correct censorship and et cetera ... and yet one feels that they don't really care very much about literature or trauma victims. For them, Literature Under Threat is just useful as a rhetorical image, and unlike me, they have no interest in exploring the real psychology of triggering and flashbacks.

― cardamon, Friday, May 23, 2014 1:46 PM (8 hours ago)

i don't think most itt are treating the issue in so aggressively black & white a fashion...the question, as i see it, is more like "what changes, and under what circumstances, and on whose authority?" the details.

one interesting thing i've learned from working in disability services is the distinction between the "medical model" of disability and the "social model." the medical model is the traditional way: student goes to a doctor, comes to us with a note of diagnosis, and we provide accommodations. the "social model," which my department promotes, is an attempt to make certain accommodations a normal professional expectation among all instructors: captioned videos, powerpoint slides made available online, that sort of thing. that way students who struggle with undiagnosed disabilities or students who don't want to disclose their disabilities are able to benefit as well. it's a way of saying "students with disabilities are normal, expected participants in the college community, and everyone's work practices should reflect that."

this argument over trigger warnings feels really similar. in the social model, you'd make up a list of triggers and say "let's accommodate everyone's sensitivities generally." not a lot of people are going for that idea, so i'd think the next proposal would be the medical model, where trigger-related accommodations are reserved for people who have doctor-diagnosed issues with trauma/ptsd. but (and here's where my bit of stridency upthread comes in) a non-trivial number of instructors are just not cool with the idea that they need to change anything about their work practices, period. it's like pulling fuckin' teeth just to get some of them to accommodate bone-obvious disabilities like hearing or vision loss. so i tend to be suspicious of appeals to tradition or "principled stands" in this kind of argument, as i think it's often just another way of saying "i find it a hassle to change." but this probably has less to do with the discussion itt than it does with my experience "on the ground" or w/e.

anyway my presence in the classroom already has a chilling effect on the instructor's free speech, namely their desire to spend half an hour of class watching uncaptioned YouTube videos.

In the old culture war, we were supposed to read Ovid. We were supposed to read the "classics". I suppose I should dig up citations, but part of the original conservative beef was that "modern" lit with its bad language was preferred to the classics. Now we're supposed to have shocking, offensive lit with lots of violence.

my work in disability services makes me VERY skeptical about remarks like "if you're too fragile to handle it, maybe college isn't for you" or "the real world won't coddle you, so toughen up." they play into the pervasive idea that environments are immutable, when it's entirely reasonable to make changes to an environment that is not serving the lived reality of the community.

And they also assume that accommodating people is the same as 'coddling' them, that there is no legitimate sensitivity, only 'over-sensitivity', etc ...

x-post the Classics probably need TWs as well, what with all that child murder and incest leading to eye-gouging.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2014/05/trigger-warnings-and-the-novelists-mind.html

i didn't find this post particularly interesting ("trigger warnings are dumb. but maybe they're useful! alas, i am a writer"), but for the sake of completism, here's jay caspian kang's take

curious how it's possible to even think yr engaging w lolita if you're not keeping in mind it describes the systematic rape of a young girl

My professor’s pronouncement felt too didactic, too political, and, although I tried to put it out of my mind and enjoy “Lolita” ’s cunning, surprising games with language, I could no longer pick up the book without feeling the weight of his judgment.

like this sentiment is so bonkers-dumb as to actually be evil

maybe the weight you were feeling was THE BOOK

years of staring rapt at the alliteration in "to tap at three on the teeth" and here comes this political asshole with his personal-experience-polluting claptrap about the "plot"

no i think what he's saying is that to be an artiste is to slip the bonds of mooing humanity

'every word matters'

"tried to put it out of my mind"!!!

curious how it's possible to even think yr engaging w lolita if you're not keeping in mind it describes the systematic rape of a young girl

Yeah, I find I'm always almost getting drawn into Humbert's self-pitying schtick and then something doesn't feel right and then I remember - argh fuck this narrator is a lying rapist

I thought that's what Nabokov was trying to do with the novel, really?

humbert trying to seduce you, the conspiratorial way you laugh at charlotte together, the coy self-identifications as a "murderer" (meaning quilty, but, really, especially since you read the prologue first, meaning lolita), the way the part of the first paragraph people leave out explicitly frames the entire book (except the prologue) as a defense in a celestial trial--a defense of what? what is tangling the thorns? what are the rotting monsters behind the slow boyish smile? forget politically correct, none of this stuff is even aesthetically pleasurable, nor (when it comes to all the beautiful odes to humbert's covetous kind of love) provocative, if you forget you're being smoothtalked by a rapist. that's the book.