| I'm not blinded by my own perspective. I actually happen to listen to people, hear their opinions, and want to try to understand them. I don't tell people that their opinions or point of view are wrong, and shouldn't be listened to, just because they disagree with my own. > inside a liberal's mind Use of "liberal" as a snarl word. Awesome way to start a conversation - just go straight for a veiled insult. Nice. > Weasel words are present and everything. You're being condescending. This is literally the first thing you've said that could be said to be an argument, rather than an insult, and you've already resorted to trying to trivialize and ignore what I've said, rather than attempting to engage in it. Rather than claiming that I'm using "weasel words", how about actually engaging in discussion, rather than just dismissing things that you don't agree with? > The young liberal-speak of concepts of 'systemic bias' and 'societal pandering' and of course the students as victims who 'have no choice' but to complain I'm probably a lot older than you would assume, and seriously, "liberal" is not an insult, even though you keep trying to use it as one. And how would that invalidate anything? Frankly, you're being hopelessly naive if you don't think those things exist. Systemic bias is a thing. It also happens to be a thing that's incredibly difficult for straight white men to actually see, because it (mostly) only benefits them. They certainly can't see all the ways it disadvantages others, and are very often unsympathetic. Unless, of course, they actually take the time to listen to others, and attempt to understand their point of view. So, what do you expect students to do if their professor just ignores all their concerns, and acts like their opinions are worthless just because he disagrees with them? That attitude is obvious in the article. How else do you expect them to actually be heard? > The only systemic bias you'll find across a whole campus Is a reflection of wider culture. Which is wildly discriminatory in many different ways, including race, sex, gender, sexual orientation, country of origin, political or social status, class (even if that's invisible), religion, and a whole load more. > Nothing that can be checked up on specifically, no particular victim or perpetrator. Just a thing that we're supposed to believe is ever present, rampant etc. Did you read the same article as I did? This professor had nothing that can be checked up on, no victim, no perpetrator, no specific events... Just a thing that we're supposed to believe is ever present, rampant etc. Do you seriously expect me to come up with more specific detail about something that happened to someone else, on the other side of the planet? Or even to put that much effort into an comment on some random website? The author of this article didn't. You sure didn't. Why should you be holding me to a more strict standard, unless it's just because you happen to disagree with me. I will concede - I have not given specific cases. Fine. Neither have you, and you make a lot more allegations than I did. > You've got the SJW bug for sure. You need a dose of realism. Labeling someone is not an argument. Insulting someone is not an argument. Being dismissive is not an argument. > making wild assumptions about somebody else's frame of mind Implied in the original article. OK, I might have been reaching. I've seen versions of this article from various college professors recently. They're all pretty much the same, and some of those were a lot more specific. I can come up with a more specific example - a professor complaining that students wanted to be warned that a piece of literature contained a rape scene. Said professor's excuse was "it doesn't bother me, so it shouldn't bother you". Here's what he was failing to understand - the students in question had actually been raped. Surprising them with a rape scene is an extremely shitty thing to do, and in cases where rape survivors developed PTSD (which happens a lot), that can seriously screw them up. What the students wanted was to have been warned in advance. If they had been warned, they could have worked out for themselves whether they were up to dealing what that, and either mentally prepared themselves, or opted out by leaving the class. The professor interpreted that as "we don't want you to talk about rape ever", and "we're scared little children that need coddling". Then wrote an article very similar to this one. This isn't suppression of free speech. It's asking people, particularly those with power over others, to avoid being assholes for no reason, and to be considerate of other people. Not exactly difficult. > Add on to that getting mad that others aren't on your side. No? Kind of irritated that I'm spending part of my afternoon dealing with this shit, rather than actually having a productive discussion about something. > The reason society might be considering a lot of SJWs as scary is that they are young impressionable and have a lot of ignorant followers on twitter and will do anything and everything to weasel through a situation because their form of social justice must prevail. Sigh... How about a different perspective? Most people find this stuff scary because it challenges their existing ideas and beliefs. In particular, it challenges people's belief that the world is actually fair and just. Which is isn't. > that includes, as we've seen in St. Louis and Baltimore, justifying illegal behavior for so-called systemic racism. "So-called"? Y'know what? Not even touching that one. If you honestly believe that, there's absolutely no hope of reaching you, and you're clearly unwilling to listen to anyone else's perspective. > Like here you insist it's not being attacked but it is. Rubbish. Minority groups do not have freedom of speech. Majority groups do, and they are using that freedom of speech to suppress the voices of minorities. What's being "attacked" is the presumed "right" for the majority to have it's opinion heard to the exclusion of all others. Which is exactly what you're advocating for. |
Nope, try again.
As Judith Shulevitz wrote in the New York Times, these refusals can shut down discussion in genuinely contentious areas, such as when Oxford canceled an abortion debate.
More often, they affect surprisingly minor matters, as when Hamsphire College disinvited an Afrobeat band because their lineup had too many white people in it.
Consider that tweet I linked to earlier, from critic and artist Zahira Kelly, in which she implies that the whole of scientific inquiry is somehow invalid because it has been conducted mostly by white males.
In another instance, two female professors of library science publically outed and shamed a male colleague they accused of being creepy at conferences, going so far as to openly celebrate the prospect of ruining his career.