The Coddling Of The American Mind (Trigger Warning Article In The Atlantic...)

It's undeniably shitty behavior and not the girl's fault, but is it ok to say that I'm glad that kids didn't have an easy way to send nude photos to each other when I was in high school, with the attendant weight of confidential & responsible behavior? I don't even understand why adults do it tbh.

Politics "discussions" on ilx are so toxic. A bunch of twitter addicts shouting down and insulting anyone who isn't already completely on-board with whatever they feel is the right way to think about everything. Pretty rich that you think canceling isn't real, when you guys seem to be trying to do it right now! Have any of you ever convinced anyone of anything, or are you just happy yelling at them and writing them off? I don't want to grow a thicker skin. I want to talk to non-assholes. I don't like talking to people like this. I'll leave you to it.

Like, of course it's horrible that people shared nude photos of a teenage girl! Sorry I didn't mention that. I assumed that was a given.

uh. grow a thicker skin? you really think that's the right answer? sheesh.

xp it wasn't considering how thoroughly you misapprehened what the relevant issue was

I'm sorry for being abusive not for your sake but because it gave you the excuse to do pretend everyone is just being mean to you for no reason

Like, of course it's horrible that people shared nude photos of a teenage girl! Sorry I didn't mention that. I assumed that was a given.

Hot take: maybe it's good for high school boys to be shunned for doing genuinely shitty things to other people. They will eventually graduate, it's not going to ruin their entire life, and it will give them a chance to reflect on what they did and how it has consequences.

I think DJI means well and maybe the reaction is a little unfair to him, but I otherwise agree with gyac. Sharing nude pictures of someone is a kind of cancelation too, and in that case the victim did nothing to bring it on themself.

Not a very hot take to ask boys to be accountable for their behavior?? Gyac otm throughout this discussion imo.

Absolutely.

thirded

Did you guys really read the whole story?

Yaretzi, the young woman in the story who wanted to work for real change - things like counselors for victims, for example - thought that putting up lists of "known abusers"was counterproductive. "Her intent was to lay blame at the feet of the school district, not specific young men."

The guy's ex-girlfriend seemed to have forgiven him:

The vice-principal told Fiona she could file a police report. She didn’t want to do that. (Diego had not disseminated the photo.) In communication with her family, however, the school made a plan to help Diego and Fiona repair. Fiona’s family, the vice-principal wrote in an email to Diego’s, made two requests:

1. That all pictures are deleted from every possible device, cloud, storage/media platform, etc.

2. That it be made clear to Diego and his family that this was a serious violation that is having an impact on the student’s overall well-being.

Done and done. As individuals, at the beginning, the two had managed this incident okay. Fiona had no interest in getting back together. But a couple of weeks after their breakup, when Diego was still eating only a handful of peanut-butter pretzels a day, they’d met at the beach and talked. “I was like, ‘I don’t appreciate getting treated like an abuser,’ ” Diego said. “And she’s like, ‘I don’t think you’re an abuser at all. I know that.’ ” But this had grown way beyond them.

My problem is certainly not with holding rapists and sexual assaulters accountable! I also don't want innocent people to get swept up in a witch-hunt, or for young people to have their lives ruined over a forgivable mistake - whether criminal or not. This is where the usual restorative justice routines might make sense, if they were moderated by the right person, perhaps? Obviously it wouldn't be ok to force assault victims into a restorative justice session with their abusers, but if the offense falls short of assault, maybe it would be better than just letting a bunch of kids get all Lord of the Flies on each other.

I mean, she's forgiven him based on the testimony of Diego. I don't think the guy is an unforgivable monster, but I thought the story was really weirdly written - it seems desperate to make you sympathize with him, going on about how beautiful his girlfriend was, as if he couldn't help but want to show off her nude photos to people. It only gives you second-hand, glancing accounts of the innocent people who were swept up, while giving you endless detail about the tragedy of the guy who did something fucked up. But his life isn't ruined - I'm sure the rest of his high school experience was indeed stressful and painful, even if he went to four proms (!), but he's graduated and does not have to exist in the drama mill of high school for the rest of his life. Clearly the school handled the entire situation terribly, but the article would have been a lot more effective without "he's really a good kid!" in every other paragraph.

god just fuck off DJI.

Go piss up a rope with Noel emits

^ winning hearts and minds one "fuck off" at a time

well gyac already said everything that needed saying. you're just feeling superior, as usual

you're just feeling superior

and brimstead, ofc, was just feeling, uh, smugly, morally... (looks for a word that means 'superior', while avoiding the blatant irony of it. fails. seeks an alternative, gentler approach)

go piss up a rope, sleeve

and brimstead, ofc, was just feeling, uh, smugly, morally... (looks for a word that means 'superior', while avoiding the blatant irony of it. fails. seeks an alternative, gentler approach)

go piss up a rope, sleeve

― more difficult than I look (Aimless)

i'm sorry, i don't know the social dynamics involved, what are you doing here again?

dick measuring, apparently.

i will say that i am, in fact, grateful to brimstead for telling dji to "fuck off". to me, that's allyship. in a practical sense, telling dji to fuck off isn't something i can really do anymore, so i'm glad that brimstead did.

as far as aimless goes... thank you for getting your dick out on stage. is there a joke you're trying to set up by doing this, or were you just trying to be edgy for the sake of it?

Glad I could provide some catharsis.

fuck off

Glad I could provide some catharsis.

― DJI

fuck off, you didn't provide jack shit in terms of catharsis. you provided a hostile environment, you want to take credit for that, be my fucking guest

gyac otm throughout obviously

Now that the dust settled I'm curious what people now think of that original atlantic article scott posted in 2015?

you know what's funny is a lot of my liberal friends who have full-on embraced safe spaces and are sympathetic to triggers were positively railing against this article back then.

mocking the idea outright. guessing Trump brought them around to seeing their benefit.

there were a lot of things that i had to have very patiently explained to me by people who knew a lot better than i did. i'm grateful that they took the time. it wasn't their responsibility to do so.

Now that the dust settled I'm curious what people now think of that original atlantic article scott posted in 2015?

still very dumb moral panic stuff. just tries to tie a bunch of unrelated anecdotes into the idea that content warnings are bad and coddling students, it's a very weak argument.

Anything that resolves to "kids these days amirite" should be rejected out of hand and anyone pushing it should be ridiculed at every opportunity.

^^^^
Words to live by but damn does it get hard as you get older.

Anything that resolves to "kids these days amirite" should be rejected out of hand and anyone pushing it should be ridiculed at every opportunity.

― papal hotwife (milo z)

kids these days are based af amirite

heh, I was going to say that includes zoomer fetishism to a lesser degree

The excellent If Books Could Kill podcast recently did an episode of the The Coddling Of The American Mind book, no spoiler to say they were not very impressed.

https://pod.link/1651876897

Ooo, I love Michael Hobbes on Maintenance Phase, will check that out.

that pod is great (and so is the ep)