Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

instead they seem to prefer to, well, object

like of interest is that even this stupid cafeteria food thing apparently had demands about workers' conditions but those are eclipsed in the interest of objecting to the idea that nobody cares about workers' conditions

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/persinger-psychology-class-1.3389410

heyyyo

A Laurentian University professor in Sudbury, Ont. says he has been stopped from teaching a first-year psychology class after asking students to sign off on his use of vulgar language.

Dr. Michael Persinger, a neuroscientist, said he asked students in his introductory psychology course to sign a "Statement of Understanding" during the first lecture. The statement lists a sample of words that might be used during class, and includes the F-word, homophobic slurs and offensive slang for genitalia.

Read the contract and sample questions (Warning: Some readers may find the language offensive).

"One of my techniques is to expose people to all types of different words," Persinger told CBC News. "Silly words, complex words, emotional words, profane words. Because they influence how you make decisions and how you think."

By using words in lectures that cause emotion, Persinger said he can teach students about how that affects the brain's rational processes.

But in December, two months into the course, Persinger said he was called into the office of the university provost and told he would no longer be teaching the class.

"[ I was told my ] statement of understanding interfered with the senior administration's idea of the workplace policies, specifically the respectful workplace policies. When I asked for details, I didn't get any."

Interesting. Libertarians I've argued with insist that it is one's own "fault" if one has an emotional reaction to language. This guy seems to be arguing the opposite, and I'm inclined to agree with him.

For example, I have a strong visceral reaction to the n-word and the f-word, regardless of who is using the word and why. I'm sure it is conditioning from hearing repugnant people using those words.

http://tressiemc.com/2016/01/06/when-your-curriculum-has-been-tumblrized/

I have taken to sending some terms on vacation in my class (e.g. privilege) and pulling others out of retirement to play first string for a bit (e.g. power). I ask students to consider these other terms as ways to explain their ideas and ways of knowing for twelve to thirteen weeks before we revisit the more popular words.

There is some resistance at first. The biggest challenge so far has been confusion when I may not give the right amount of credit or praise for using words that I think students have intuited as being “right” and laudable. But, by the middle of the semester students tend to be taking more risks with new ideas and readings. And, by the end when I do throw the gates back open to talk about privilege, oppression and microaggressions students tend to use them much less often than they did at the start. I hope that is because they’ve developed a tool-kit with more scalpels than hammers.

For example, students are very comfortable talking about “oppressions”, “intersections”, and the macks of them all, “privilege and microaggressions”. Those are all core sociological concepts. I teach them. You have to learn them if you are going to say that you successfully learned anything about contemporary U.S. sociology.

my god that essay is such a relief to read

Yes, it's fantastic.

interview with eileen myles in the nyt

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/magazine/eileen-myles-wants-men-to-take-a-hike.html?smid=tw-nytmag&smtyp=cur

You’ve written: ‘‘If the poetry world celebrated its female stars at the true level of their productivity and influence, poetry would wind up being a largely female world, and the men would leave.’’ What if society as a whole recognized women that way?

I think it would be a great time for men, basically, to go on vacation. There isn’t enough work for everybody. Certainly in the arts, in all genres, I think that men should step away. I think men should stop writing books. I think men should stop making movies or television. Say, for 50 to 100 years.

man-exclusionary radical feminism

MERFs

If the poetry world celebrated its female stars at the true level of their productivity

gonna have to wait for the labor dept. stats on whether mostly female poetry shops produce more lines per fiscal year than male ones

i'm helping the cause by never writing a book

If the poetry world celebrated its female stars at the true level of their productivity and influence

"celebrated at" is some shitty writing, shouldn't that be "celebrated for"

i found the interview really amusing but i'm not sure what it has to do w free speech + creepy liberalism?

more like free verse & creepy lyricism

"celebrated at" is some shitty writing, shouldn't that be "celebrated for"

No, I think she means "at", i.e. "at what level are they celebrated?"

Maybe a more precise way to say it is

"If the poetry world celebrated its female stars to a degree commensurate with the true level of their productivity"

but that's a bit wordy and it's pretty clear to me what she's getting at.

The essay that j posted is interesting. I think one of the problems with the current discourse is the obsession with a few magic words that are used so often and so bluntly that they not only become a substitute for original thought but lose the precision of their original meanings eg intersectionality. Scalpels vs hammers is exactly the image that kept springing to mind.

I see u president keyes

I think one of the problems with the current discourse is the obsession with a few magic words that are used so often and so bluntly that they not only become a substitute for original thought but lose the precision of their original meanings

but this is also the problem with every discourse that has ever existed, that's why we keep needing new discourses

they just lose that new discourse smell after a while

Discourses for dose horses

aggressive microhorse this cause

What do people make of the recent hebdo cartoon?

Well, I know I can't say "someone should shoot them again", but maybe a bit of a kicking?

i've read ppl say it is a mockery of ppl who believe that immigration should be limited bc of the actions of a few individuals, and i've read ppl say it is raising the important question of whether emotional appeals to humanitarianism can override rational policy. that it can be read either way is probably a pt in its favor - unless yr complaint is specifically about how tactless + vulgar it is to use an image of a dead child to make any kind of argument but hebdo is all about being tasteless right?

the defense that I've heard from ppl is that it's satirizing the hypocrisy of the tabloids and right-wing media IE they publish tear-jerking stories about the tragedy of Alan Kurdi's death, but had he lived to adulthood they would have demonised him like all other refugees? I don't really know enough about the context to tell if this is more than special pleading, or if that would be enough to make it 'acceptable' if that was the intent

For me (no expert) it feels like these defenses/readings are legit until ... you start to ask questions about responsibility when putting out images in public ... by analogy, there's an old prejudice that casts gay men as paedophiles ... if I put out a cartoon that I know millions will see and circulate depicting a gay man as a paedophile, when 'gay = paedophile' is the obvious reading, is it still reasonable for me to say 'But it's attacking the prejudice'

And I'll be honest: I hadn't got round to thinking of the readings Mordy and soref present (i.e. both are news to me) because I couldn't get past the 'fuck this, taking piss out of dead kid' reaction stage ... wonder how average my reaction there was, am I 'soft' etc

Wee bit soft.

hebdo is definitely not careful about ppl's sensitivity and they often use replications of bigoted ideas as satire. in the end the image of Aylan Kurdi is both an image of an actual human being who actually died, and also [and really moreso] an image that has a certain amount of social meaning beyond [tho inextricably tied to] the real human. to not be allowed to comment on the latter before of the former would be a kind of self-censorship. is there a way they could've interrogated these issues (the media's relationship to the refugees, the current situation in europe, the syrian crisis, the use of emotionally potent humanitarian arguments to forward policy, etc) without possibly exploiting the image of a dead child? yes, certainly. but hasn't that image already been exploited and isn't that part of the point they were trying to make here? i think so.

because* of the former, i meant to write

im always just grossed out by their love of gleeful racial caricatures - arab, jew, black - whatever the satirical motivation.

someone better versed in the history of underground comix could probably speak better to this than me but it seems like they're coming out of the r. crumb tradition in many ways? i don't read hebdo regularly but my [probably] favorite living cartoonist works for them so i do feel affection for their existence even if not everything they publish is my cup of tea.

xp. well how gleeful they are about employing them rather.

also yes, the use of the boy doesn't sit very well with me, his aunt who lives in the metro area here (Vancouver) has been quoted in the press saying that it disgusted and upset her.

http://i.imgur.com/oz3RVYz.png

Feel like the context for Crumb and Hebdo are different in relevant ways

i dunno, I also find crumb really horrendous at times, and he's not even always being satirical when doing so

Like Crumb was publishing 'comix' which I understand to have been under-the-counter products whereas the CH stuff is closer to (though not quite the same as) the classic, acceptable 'newspaper cartoon'

This article from India cropped up which I think is fairly agreeable, also gives an interesting perspective -

https://sabrangindia.in/article/racism-not-anti-racist-%E2%80%98satire%E2%80%99

my impression of CH is that it was pretty underground w/ a v limited audience that gained an expanded readership after the attack on their offices, but i might be misinformed - maybe euler knows?

I don't know, tbh I'd not heard of it before the attacks. but I only moved full time to France a couple years ago. I think it's lower profile than Le canard enchaine, another satirical newspaper that I see people reading all the time, whereas I've never noticed anyone reading CH.

Regarding the assertion that the cartoon was satirising attitudes, the picture was apparantly printed under a banner which said "France isn't what people say" which might give that claim more credibility. Most reproductions of the cartoon I saw online failed to provide that context however.
https://twitter.com/ystriya/status/687415698008764421

i found the interview really amusing but i'm not sure what it has to do w free speech + creepy liberalism?

― Mordy, Wednesday, January 13, 2016 5:18 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

her suggestion that men stop writing for a while rang with something we discussed i think back in the genesis of this thread, the discussion about "if you really believed men's voices were overrepresented then as a man you wouldn't write anything"

oh yeah. well i still agree with that. if your primarily consideration vis-a-vis yr writing is whether yr gender is being appropriately represented or not than probably you don't have v much to say anyway. that can be read as snark but it's also that writing probably should function as a "calling" (it certainly pays like one) and if you feel a little enough compulsion to write that you're musing about yr role in perpetuating the writing gender hegemony, you probably don't need to be.

And it isn't going to stop another ten men from writing, thus preserving the hegemony

I do try to keep my mind bashed/pinned open when reading things people different to me have written - different gender, different race, location, etc. I take on board the 'there are things you probably don't know much about so let's be careful with these conclusions of yours' idea in a way I didn't a few years ago. I like to think if I was an editor or publisher I'd apply that

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/01/21/oberlins-president-refuses-negotiate-student-list-demands

Marvin Krislov, the president, said that while some of the demands "resonate with me and many members of our community, including our trustees," he would not respond directly to the proposals from black students, which were termed non-negotiable.

"[ S ]ome of the solutions it proposes are deeply troubling," Krislov wrote in a response posted on Oberlin's website. "I will not respond directly to any document that explicitly rejects the notion of collaborative engagement. Many of its demands contravene principles of shared governance. And it contains personal attacks on a number of faculty and staff members who are dedicated and valued members of this community."

re demands linked to above ~ december

this one belongs in a rolling academia and its discontents thread:
https://anthrodialogue.wordpress.com/2016/01/18/bds-and-the-rise-of-post-factual-anthropology/

pretty sure this goes here:

http://fredrikdeboer.com/2015/12/22/yes-virginia-there-is-a-left-wing-reform-movement/?fb_ref=Default

I can dig that