Reelya, didn't we already have this exact same conversation?. A close friend of mine actually has PTSD that can be triggered by references to rape. You seem to throw out the word triggered and then decide afterwards whether you're using it as a meme or in its original serious meaning (which you clearly know).
We did, but if you look at the arguments from people who support content warnings, they actually object to the idea that it's about protecting individuals, it's about protecting "groups", and only the pre-defined 6-7 "oppressed groups" that they approve of using the content warnings for. That's coming from one of the main proponents of them as NYU, virtually literally what they said. So they're already being used in a way and promoted that's more about suppressing ideas that go against an ideology rather than about protecting people who have PTSD. The raw video is here:
https:/www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTU3hxgr2Kc
The woman actually strongly objected to the idea of defining the need for content warnings based on an individual actual needs case-by-case basis. e.g. it was brought up about stuff like car accidents or robberies and that survivors could have PTSD, and it might be appropriate to put academic content warnings on discussions of e.g. car accident fatalities for this reason. The pro-trigger warning person got really offended and said the "other side" is "co-opting" the idea of trigger warnings which are only "meant" to be "for" the "oppressed groups". However, the "other side" here is 100% composed of liberal leftwing college professors who merely wanted to extend the concept of trigger warnings in a self-consistent way that protects all students based on individual need. Since they didn't do it right, they are labeled the "them" in the "us vs them" system.
It's an issue of semantics here. "trigger warning" in the current campus usage is not used to mean "protect people with PTSD", it's used to supress opinions related to a pre-selected ideological stance based on privilege theory. e.g. if a straight white male has PTSD and asks for a trigger warning for imagery that could harm them, well you've been told that that's not appropriate to ask for because content warnings are for the "oppressed groups" to combat "systemic bias", and do you see your group on the list? I sure don't. Protecting the rights of that specific individual would be co-opting the system.
This is what academics such as Jonothan Haidt, who comes from a liberal left background are saying is going on. The wording "trigger warning" or "safe space" are not used the way you think they are used. e.g. if a teacher teachs the actual science about gender differences, you can get a student complaint. Because you failed to provide a "safe space" where people who have the ideological viewpoint of "no gender differences" can feel free from having to confront the scientific evidence which might challenge their belief system. The "trigger" here is that their ideas were challenged by acknowleding the existence of alternative ideas. It's not about individuals at all, it's about pushing a specific post-modern/post-structuralist ideology into other fields by using punitive mechanisms to punish lecturers who step event 1 inch outside the orthodox ideology. I couldn't give a fuck about milo or ann coulter not being able to talk on campus, that's only the view point from the right that makes that the big deal. the real insidious big deal is that otherwise left-wing and liberal college professors are now self-censoring actual course content just in case it freaks out some nutjob postmodernist victimhood culture ideologue that's sitting in the class. And by that, you create a generation of liberals less capable of actually debating reality and coming up with viable solutions. It turns into an echo-chamber controlled by only the loudest and most obnoxious 19 year old "radicals".
The main context I've heard discussion of trigger warnings is on the internet. Specifically in the context of fanfiction websites and Tumblr, which is the main place on the internet AFAIK where trigger warnings are considered good etiquette. Its also where the particular "triggered" usage you used comes from, as in "triggered Tumblrinas", which is what I was responding to.
For safe spaces... I went to a school that has in at least one past year made #1 on an internet "most LGBT friendly campus in the US" list. Most of the LGBT people who came to the school were from decently supportive backgrounds but there were people who came from uber-red states where, for example, their family members would go on anti-gay rants not realizing their child was closeted. If you don't provide a safe space for people like that, they're not going to be able to discuss their lifestyle and their perspective openly. One of the great things about college is you randomly bump shoulders with people from Thailand or whatever and it really does broaden your perspective. But oppressed groups in the US don't magically become fully empowered just because they're in college. In that way I actually feel like my college being a safe place for LGBT individuals broadened my perspective rather than narrowing it. Its not like homophobia is exactly rare, I don't particularly *need* to be exposed to that perspective, I got plenty in high school.
Speaking of which, another anecdote. I had a young teacher (first or second year teaching) in my high school and she described an incident that happened in one of our state universities. Mind you, this is in a blue east coast state. She was part of some campus organization or housing for racial minorities, I forget. But anyway, one day some students hung an effigy in a try across from the building in a mock lynching. This would have been... 15 years ago that this happened? Not that long. And the point is, the fact that she had this campus organization that likely did exclude white people to some degree, it would make it a lot easier to deal with an incident like that. And what I'm getting at with all this is, if you don't protect minorities, their perspectives are erased. So safe spaces aren't narrowing people's perspectives, they're broadening them. In much the same way that given the wealth and education level of our African American youth combined with all the neo-segregation stuff going on in America right now, without affirmative action what you have is no black people in colleges. And that's not good for the college or for our nation.
I myself suffer from mental illness (mostly treated at this point thank god). One of the recurring experiences of many mentally ill people including me is having extremely uncomfortable experiences in ethics class. See, one of the inevitable places that every ethics class goes is utilitarianism, and the thing about utilitarianism is that its basically moral math. And so without fail you will eventually come to the issue of whether people have different moral value. Is it more important to save a baby than an elderly person, yadda yadda. And so what happens is eventually the topic will turn to disability and whether disabled people should be supported or just left to die and what it means to have this person who's a taking up resources without contributing. And like, that's not a particularly accurate view of the issue, but that's not even the point. Being a liability or a failure is a deep personal fear/belief of... at least half, probably more like 70-90% of people who have a disability in America. Having all of your deep personal issues ripped out of your guts and dragged through the mud by people who don't even know you're there is just awful. So my heart goes out to any rape victims who have to cover stories with rape in english class. Much less listen to the two LoL players sitting next to them going on about how one team's jungler raped/gave surprise buttsex to/skullfucked the enemy team. And yeah, schools as safe spaces isn't going to do anything to help people like me, but I don't give a shit. Stopping another disadvantaged group from pulling themselves up, is not a path to advantage for myself or people like me.
And the thing is that I've met a couple people who work in fields relating to mental illness, and heard a fuckton of horror stories, where people who really should understand mental illness just don't. I was told by someone who was a special education specialist who handled the accommodations for my college, that "in most cases ADHD goes away as you get older." Which is not true at all, the current estimate is about 1/3rd of cases with the other 2-3rds being permanent with the most likely positive outcome being asymptomatic with medication. And its like... you have one job and that's super easy to verify. There's a gulf between the mental health professionals in the US and the mentally ill. The biggest reason being that the mentally ill have no input and almost no representation within psychology or special education. Part of that is precisely because people like me don't feel comfortable speaking up in psychology class. And its very difficult for a lot of reasons some of which are the school's fault, for people with mental illnesses to actually get into mental health fields, and even if they make it they feel the same way as the rest of us which is that disclosing their mental illness could harm their livelihood. If schools were a safe place for the mentally ill, a scientific field would be hugely furthered.
And so I'm just not impressed by the argument that safe spaces and trigger warnings are hurting schools. Part of the reason deep red states are so hateful towards LGBT kids is because no one there knows anyone who's out. Its not the most likely outcome but sometimes when someone comes out their family members immediately start backpedaling on the homophobia or transphobia. And its because exposure to other perspectives is genuinely educational, and a lot of that doesn't come from formal education it comes from rubbing shoulders. To be able to rub shoulders with certain groups, they need to feel comfortable being their genuine selves instead of hiding. Its not just some abstract political cause, there are real world implications here. At risk of being hamfisted, remember that corporations pay money to give their employees sensitivity training. Not necessarily for political causes but because its good for the bottom line.
I've mostly left trigger warnings out of this, but the two of us have already talked about this long enough so whatever. You're talking to someone who thinks that if enforcibility and political feasibility weren't an issue, we should blanket ban fireworks and find some other way to do the 4th of July so as to avoid triggering PTSD flashbacks in veterans. So I personally am unlikely to budge on this issue. All I'd say is, its not skin off my back if a professor lets people skip a section of a book with graphic rape or let's people leave the room prior to the discussion. Really has no effect on the education *I* paid for. As for the general PC stuff, its not suppression of an ideological standpoint. Believe it or not, by the time we're college age we've all encountered homophobia and racism and sexism before, often in quite intricate detail. There's nothing new to be learned there and there's nothing enriching about hearing any of it over again. It would be like adding a class on potty training as a mandatory gen ed. There are adult diapers out there if you have incontinence, the rest of us already have our bodily functions covered. Like if someone wants to go to the KKK rally and get racism 101 that's their personal problem, but you want to tell me that I should be "exposed" to that "perspective" and I just gotta laugh. I grew up in America, I'm plenty exposed. Also if your whole thing is that it doesn't matter what a perspective is it still needs to be in our schools, why did you stop defending Milo? You were willing to defend the Charleston protestors against the small group of first day academic counter protestors. That would imply you're willing to defend Unite the Right on principle, yet when Milo's pedophilia scandal came out suddenly you stopped using him as an example. That would imply that you think NAMBLA is worse than Neo-Nazis. And like... I don't have an opinion on that. That seems like a distinction so fundamentally meaningless its not worth thinking about. But like, would you say Milo still has a place in our academia? And if not, what makes his perspective not worth protecting?
The simple fact of the matter is you're pushing an alt-right talking point and an anti-progressive agenda. Not saying you're alt-right because I don't currently have an opinion on that, but its kind of an easy accusation to make.
Part of the reason that colleges have always been a hotbed of leftist movements and protest movements is because people have been taught to sit down and shut up their whole lives.
And then they get to college and they're away from their parents and allowed to be their genuine self and express their opinions. So they build up this confidence that they *can*
be their genuine selves and they can go out and try to change the world. That's the thing about "our kids need to know what the real world is like:" our kids already know what the real world is like. They've been living in it for, as of freshman year beginning, ~18 years. What's actually at stake there, is that our kids have one gap between K-12 and employment where they won't be told to sit down and shut up. And if they aren't told to sit down and shut up during that gap, they'll have the confidence to not do so for the rest of their lives even if they risk possibly severe consequences by doing so. Hence people standing in front of tanks on Tianamen Square.
So your whole beef with PC culture, safe spaces and... I presume but possibly in error, affirmative action?... can be looked at two ways. On one hand, you could be a person who just really really cares about free speech/equal treatment and this is your pet peeve. On the other hand... the actual real world consequences of your favored solutions look a whole lot like pushing an anti-progressive agenda on teachers and students against their will, in the name of empowering those same teachers and students to be able to speak freely. Like look at it like this, a trans person who listens to a speaker their school invited refer to trans women using bathrooms as predators and referring to them with male or neutral pronouns. That trans person is going to be far less likely to go out and join protests or become an activist. Because for trans people especially those with poor family support the entire world is this bleak place where you have to hide from pretty must people, and if they're going for their bachelors they pretty much get 4 years out of the fog. Take that away and you take away the agency that powers activism; because to go out and try to change peoples minds requires the confidence that anyone out there will be receptive to your message. Its not even about the actual speaker, its about the fact that the school itself chose to give the speaker their soapbox and their fellow students went and listened calmly. And so just, put aside right and wrong for a second, and just think consequences. The result of you not getting your way here, is progressive movements being strengthened. The result of you not getting your way is them getting weakened. And so the problem becomes that you argue not from a place of personal belief but from imperative. Your style of argument is that not having safe space and schools inviting a balanced selection of speakers to give to examples, that's necessary. For good education or free speech or not having conservatives be discriminated against or whatever. And on top of that you've both stated outright and implied that the government should intervene in some cases or that government policy should be changed to favor your view points, as in the changes you're suggesting shouldn't come about voluntarily or according to ethical or market pressures but schools should be actually forced to make these changes.
And so the actual on the ground results of what you believe, is using the government to enforce an anti-progressive agenda. People have tried to explain this to you nicely that what you are describing is not free speech and its not anti-discrimination but you haven't budged. On top of that every single education related viewpoint you have is explicitly an alt-right talking point. Your general mindset of arguing a very specific political point without adopting a larger political ideology or acknowledging the larger political context, well. That's alt-right political strategy 101. If nothing else you have this double standard where you reply to people's arguments as if they're part of antifa or rad fems or some school board somewhere, but you expect everyone else to treat your arguments like they exist in a vacuum. And like I've heard you talk about other things and you've seemed reasonable and in other threads you've seemed perfectly fine so I'm not accusing you of anything at this time. I just, can't say the connections hadn't occurred to me.
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