Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

I believe we set a terribly dangerous precedent when we habituate ourselves to thinking of the expression of ideas in terms of threat, safety and harm.

― 2-chords, a farfisa organ and peons to the lord (contenderizer), Sunday, March 22, 2015 4:57 AM (17 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I mean this is super otm. What do you think the dangers are? I wonder what would happen if some legislation were passed and the law was written with predatory corporate interests in mind.

but isn't that a kind of weird argument to make? it implies that if it weren't so minor, then yes, it would be an actual problem

I don't think that's a weird argument to make at all. I think revolutionary Maoism is a terrible ideology, and if it were a serious force on campuses, it would totally be worth writing long opinion pieces fretting about it, but since it's in fact a tiny fringe, it would be weirdly tendentious to write long opinion pieces fretting about it.

This is the internet and people that know how to use the echo chamber properly can have their speech amplified.

Of course, it's possible that True's manner in class was aggressive, threatening or otherwise actionably disruptive. But Professor Savery didn't make that claim in justifying his decision. He instead went with the assertion that True's ideas simply made people feel unsafe.

no, he went with the former

xxp social justice authoritarianism is a much bigger force on campus than Maoism

ROTC bigger than both of those.

and there has never been any controversy about having them on campuses

xxp social justice authoritarianism is a much bigger force on campus than Maoism

I'm sure that's true, but I went to college in the early 1990s, so I've already been through one full wave of newspaper columns about "our campuses are dominated by political correctness" that were absolutely irrelevant to actual campus life then. Why should I find this wave any more believable? I have seen nothing to make me think that "social justice authoritarianism" is a major aspect of the life of more than a tiny fragment of US college students.

Just scary to think social justice has infiltrated a private Portland liberal arts college that doesn't give out letter grades.

lol

"social justice authoritarianism" is maoism, m/l

I always thought that social justice was particularly a deemphasis of economic justice in favor of minoritarian identity politics but tbh I'm not sure I really have any idea what the 'social' in social justice means.

all the people i know of who would be classified as "social justice" type people take opposition to capitalism p much for granted. they're just not marxists.

as long as we're generalizing

Thought it was an appeal to basic human empathy (thus "social") in the face of inflexible and dehumanizing ideology.

all the people i know of who would be classified as "social justice" type people take opposition to capitalism p much for granted. they're just not marxists.

― goole, Monday, March 23, 2015 1:12 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

as long as we're generalizing

― goole, Monday, March 23, 2015 1:12 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that's otm, imo

I just meant it glibly in the sense of struggle sessions and Maoist self criticism

lmao first comment hall of fame

https://clairelehmann.wordpress.com/2015/03/20/our-generation-did-not-invent-political-correctness-but-we-can-fight-it/

Having read something about what actually happened to people during the Cultural Revolution, I get hazy with rage when people refer to privilege talk as "Maoist self criticism." Maoist self criticism works something like this.

"A ¡°black board¡± (or hei paiºÚÅÆ) hung on the front of the person who was labeled as an ¡°enemy¡±: On the board were written titles such as ¡°member of the black gang,¡± ¡°counterrevolutionary,¡± ¡°reactionary academic authority,¡± and so on. Below the title was the person's name with a red ¡°X¡± over it. This symbol was used because outside a court of justice there was usually placed an announcement on a bulletin board with a red ¡°X¡± over the name of the person who had been condemned to death. Many teachers were forced to wear such a self-condemnatory board whenever they appeared in public.

At the beginning most boards were made of cardboard. But later some students made heavy boards in order to add to the physical insult. At Beijing First Middle School, which was near the ruins of the old city wall, some students even took a huge brick from the city wall and hung it from a thin wire around the neck of their principal, Liu Qiming („¢†¢Ã÷), while denouncing her."

Read the whole thing if you can stomach it.

http://hum.uchicago.edu/faculty/ywang/history/1966teacher.htm

That's the kind of stuff that happened during the Cultural Revolution but that's not exactly how self-criticism worked. People whose previous statements in support of the party line, now contradicted the party line were forced to write statements of apology and to claim that the new thinking had always been ideologically correct.

lmao first comment hall of fame

^^^

glibly! i said glibly!!! dont struggle session me!!!

I am the God of MRA’s [men’s rights activists], Anti­feminists, Anti­Marxists, Libertarians, and White, heternormative men and women everywhere,” wrote True in a different part of the16-page essay posted on his Facebook page

An update from Reed: http://www.wweek.com/portland/mobile/blogs/blogView/id:32992

also he has done a youtube interview with Chuck C Johnson

so based on the Daily Beast linked to in that article, it sounds like Reed actually handled this decently, or did I miss something? the original Buzzfeed piece looks really premature now too

dont struggle session me!!!

― max, Monday, March 23, 2015 8:48 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wow man

http://www.mediaite.com/online/so-that-reed-college-rape-stats-kid-is-going-a-little-fubar/

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/24/rape-culture-troll-threatens-reed-college.html

Protest or no, when you read True’s rants and online name-calling (he referred to one female commenter as “a bitch and a cunt” and called another “fatty”), it all starts to seem a bit nuts.

“I am the God of MRA’s [men’s rights activists], Anti­feminists, Anti­Marxists, Libertarians, and White, heternormative men and women everywhere,” wrote True in a different part of the16-page essay posted on his Facebook page, “I am a misogynist and a misandrist, a racist, and a feminist. And now I’m here to call you out on your bullshit, Reed. I made my entire college run for cover because I’m an actual activist. I yelled “n**ger” in public places and nonviolently disrupted a forum on student activism when I felt my rights weren’t respected. Now that’s activism… Gender feminists. I am a biracial, bisexual, non-gender conforming Black n**ger. Suck. My. Enormous. Black. Dick.”

In the same essay, True writes separate missives to Savery, Barack Obama, “my n**gas in the hood,” Kevin Spacey, Emma Watson, and even Anita Sarkeesian (“I demand a formal apology from you to the entire gamergate movement.”) It’s rambling, but his point seems to be that he can use this moment to say anything he wants, and might as well while the public platform lasts.

Read the whole thing if you can stomach it.

http://hum.uchicago.edu/faculty/ywang/history/1966teacher.htm

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Monday, March 23, 2015 4:03 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark

Yeah as somebody whose family went through these episodes, don't really appreciate the glibness in this thread w/r/t what happened during the Cultural Revolution

i'm off work sick, should i read his opus

xp

i draw the line at chuck c johnson youtubes tho, no way

feel at this point that the guy is just trolling those ppl who were initially inclined to defend him, or at least his right to put forward unpopular views in class discussion

“I am the God of MRA’s

Crazy World of Arthur Brown's lost first draft

Getting angry at kids who leave lectures on rape is as useless as it is politically incoherent: What is the proper response to students who wish to exit voluntary lectures and go someplace else? Should they be forced to stay? How would we ensure that they are actually listening?

For students still developing their politics and personal strategies for grappling with views they find disagreeable, there isn’t much harm in stepping out of a lecture hall and into a safer space. Given that safe spaces have been a part of feminist discourse since the early days of the women’s movement, it seems unlikely that they will suddenly proliferate through broader culture, robbing us all of fair discourse.

A far likelier scenario is that colleges will—and should!—remain loci of experimental politics and their expressions, and that elite institutions will remain culturally removed from the world around them by nature of their constituents and the shape of the academic labor market. A continued obsession with campus culture will surely remain a politically impotent habit among the media class—unless those with axes to grind take up the cause of university staff as tenuous employees and citizens of a weak welfare state, a possibility even more distant than campus cultures suddenly mattering to the world at large.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121375/shulevitzs-new-york-times-essay-sparks-outrage

really there's no point in getting angry at anyone. anger is a toxic emotion. we should just love each other.

Tone policing

http://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/local/South-Windsor-Teacher-Facing-Termination-Over-Sexual-Poem-297593041.html?_osource=SocialFlowFB_CTBrand

http://allpoetry.com/Please-Master

okay

feelin like some old time 4n+h0ny 345+0N ilx up in here

feel like the teacher who shows that poem their high school students is begging for disciplinary action

heh

what a bunch of babies

though I guess that's the point

my hs library had a copy of Ginsberg's collected works and senior year a guy who'd been to a lit camp thing over the summer showed it to a few of us, and I was wowed by it, thought "Howl" was so gorgeous, and I wanted to show it to a few other people and the guy looked me in the eye and said, don't do that, they're not ready for it, and I didn't, and I thank that guy all the time both for introducing me to Ginsberg and a whole other world of literature but also for helping me understand how provocation works better than I would have otherwise.

lol adios, teach

gonna hafta rubber room ya son

Goodbye, Mr. Drips

http://theithacan.org/news/ic-sga-passes-bill-to-create-system-to-report-microaggressions/

i'm so glad ILX is the only permanent record of my social clumsiness

However, junior Kyle James, vice president of communications and co-sponsor of the bill, said those reporting a microaggression would likely have to reveal their identity if they wanted to pursue any legal action.

New Yorker cartoon in the making:

"What are you in for?"

"I asked someone 'Where are you really from?'"

in the jewish community "where are you really from?" == "where is your family originally from before they immigrated here?" (ie germany, pale of settlement, morocco, iran, bukhara, etc) i guess it means something different in sj land

is your contempt for "sjws" now so determinative that casual racism is a complete enigma to you

no i'm sure everyone who says "where are you really from?" means it maliciously to mock the person for looking different than them and has nothing to do w/ an inquiry about where their family is from