The term "rape culture" is a useful term, but it's not a term that should go undiscussed or unchallenged.

If you've been through something that's so traumatic that having someone challenge the term is going to break you as a person, then maybe you should take some time out from college and work on healing.

Or maybe you could change your major to something like, oh, 95% of the majors on campus where sexual assault isn't a topic of classroom discussion. And maybe you could just stay home from lectures that bombard you with a lot of viewpoints that really go against your dearly and closely held beliefs.

that is the issue in a nutshell. I would lean towards an intellectual space.

Brown was absurd. Just don't fucking go to the event in question.

The event wasn't mandatory, right? Just don't go.

and wanted the class not to show/discuss them.

Seriously...if you don't want to see nude paintings, don't take an art history class.

I'm just wondering how far parents are going to "protect" their adult children. But your answer would be fine for high school level too.

Real Nude People!

The teachers just told us beforehand there would be some paintings with naked people. Which was good, I'm sure it cut down on the giggling.

I cannot imagine living with a parent that felt that it would be okay to ever talk to my professors about the course. Ever. Never.

when it appeared and found it deeply disturbing. The infantilizing of women by women is truly scary, but it goes wider than just women. And this stuff seems to be spreading by the day and becoming accepted. This '70's holdover questions any control of speech.

Avoidance is a common tactic everyone uses, and it is a potentially strategic approach for people who know their emotional triggers (it seems likely that underlies the DU function that places people, words and word phrases on ignore).

The sequence of avoidance>tolerance>acceptance has become in the minds of many the mile-markers on the road to resolving many affective disorders.

Without being judgmental about people who have great trouble even getting to tolerance...it's possible to see how both views are possible.

Creating safe spaces enables avoidance of triggers and immediate benefits, while such institutional steps may be seen as entrenchment and justification of avoidance that in comparison to the avoid-accept-tolerate model seem unhelpful and actually counter productive to resolutions.

That is part of what being a safe space means - not eradicating difficult material, but warning for it so that people who may be triggered by something can assess how they want to approach the material. It gives control to the viewer/reader/participant, and lets them decide if they are able to handle them right now.

Too many behave as if wanting to have trigger warnings mean censorship, but it doesn't. Having flashbacks because there's suddenly an explicit rape scene in the film you're watching is no fun, let me tell you. We are not talking about getting your feelings hurt, we are not talking about being offended, we are not talking about pearl-clutching. Being triggered is something that happens when you have a medical diagnosis - most often PTSD - and you can end up reliving, literally relivingand not simply remembering, your initial trauma. It can be very short, a bit of dizziness, shortness of breath and the like, or it can be long and drawn-out, and cause you to lose sense of where and when you are and think you are back at the initial trauma. If trigger warnings can avoid that, I don't see the harm there. You don't want trauma sufferers to have to deal with their trauma in public spaces without adequate counselling nearby, do you? That's what killed that American sniper film guy, for example, when he deliberately triggered a trauma sufferer, so that the latter couldn't "avoid" dealing with his trauma.


And it's not as if we don't have warnings systems for many things already. There's already a film rating system, news anchors already state that some reports may have strong visual imagery etc. For those who have no problems with (sexual) violence, trigger warnings aren't needed, but it's not like trigger warnings would hurt them. But they would help those who need them, so what is the problem?

but I can see how two points of view emerge.

Knowing and anticipating emotional triggers can be enormously useful

IMO the occurrence of affective disorders that are subject to environmental triggers isn't limited to PTSD/cPTSD, Understanding in the general population about affective disorders and 'dramatic' personality disorders that impact emotions is very low. Within American culture these things are still mostly viewed as character flaws, which are denied the status of health issues.

There is a sentiment at large in the US that these all within the domain of a 'personal problems' which shouldn't impinge upon the concerns/interests/functions of others. It's not surprising to me that sentiment is picked up as a theme in conversations, classroom lectures, and even public expressions by 'expert commentators' on society.

Even among mental healthcare advocates there is some sense that the objectives of treatment of affective disorders is to help sufferers reduce and manage dysfunctional responses to triggers. There is an expectation that these abilities facilitate resumption of 'meaningful and productive' lives within an unchanged reality. A reality that includes life in a pretty callous society that is significantly depauperate in understanding and willingness to provide much accommodation to people with mental disorders.

A not small number of women are survivors of trauma the majority cultural stakeholders (cis, straight men) consider normal, an attitude women adopt. Street harassment, assault in the form of inappropriate touching, refusal of respect for consent - what woman hasn't experienced these things in our culture? What woman isn't hypervigilant in incredibly many situations? All of these can cause trauma that can be triggered.

I use women as an example, but pretty much any minority group can furnish us with equivalent examples.

And when did it become a bad thing to be considerate? We don't demand the removal of allergy warnings, even though the majority don't need them. Trigger warnings are sllergy earnings of a mental kind.

But it seems to me that if you have, you might benefit more from therapy that enables you to live in the real world, rather than try to make the world comfortable for you, which will never happen.

As I recall, college was all about becoming familiar with ideas, some of which can be distasteful and it is a time when young people typically stretch their boundaries. Now, I do think name-calling and actively discriminating should not be tolerated. Nor should racism or misogyny. But it is possible to discuss those things without resorting to ugliness.

And I don't think infantilization- which some of this surely is, is the answer.

that really shook me to core of my being.

We watched raw documentary footage of the liberated camps, Night and Fog, Shoah, read memoirs and poems by survivors, etc.

It was a difficult class, subject-wise. But in addition to shaking my foundations, the course stretched my boundaries, too, as you put it. I found it to be one of a small handful of college courses that contributed to my growth as an individual.

Last edited Wed Mar 25, 2015, 11:55 AM - Edit history (2)

On one hand I'm for eliminating hostile environments for students on campus, but on the other hand there has to be some place on campus to have an intellectual discussion about controversial topics when students and faculty want to go there.

Trying to prevent an invited speaker from speaking on campus is progressivism gone too far. This is were the political tolerance of liberalism trumps progressivism.

was the woman who said that some people have confused racist speech with talking about racist speech.

Various parties have been calling for an "honest" discussion about race, but if we can't even talk about Huck Finn without people getting the vapors, how can we talk about something like modern dehumanization of people of color?

sort of thing at all. Most people, even at that tender age, tend to shrug off all such stuff. That does not mean that the minority that is very sensitive to trigger issues or situations should not have a safe place. Sometimes, institutions go farther than needed in their zeal to protect smaller groups of people. Usually, that does little harm, though, since the vast majority of college students simply go on with their activities, completely unaware of the controversy.

shut down intellectual debate.

completely.

from debate through a hostile environment on the other--has always been an issue.

In the 1980's and 1990's we had stuff like "womyn" being pushed as if it seriously challenged entrenched inequality.

On the other hand, one does not hear headlines about how minority students feel excluded at places like the University of Oklahoma, until a frat gets busted being explicitly racist in its admission policies, at which point the debate becomes oh why oh why did those white boys get their rights trampled.

excluded?

They didn't exist. Because that problem was invisible to white people, and to the press, etc.

After?

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-ff-oklahoma-racism-20150311-story.html

"Without Freedom of Thought, there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as publick Liberty, without Freedom of Speech; which is the Right of every Man, as far as by it, he does not hurt or controul the Right of another: And this is the only Check it ought to suffer, and the only Bounds it ought to know.

"This sacred Privilege is so essential to free Governments, that the Security of Property, and the Freedom of Speech always go together; and in those wretched Countries where a Man cannot call his Tongue his own, he can scarce call any Thing else his own. Whoever would overthrow the Liberty of a Nation, must begin by subduing the Freeness of Speech; a Thing terrible to Publick Traytors." - Ben Franklin

We have quite a few "Publick Traytors", either conscious or subconscious, trying to control language on DU.

"rape culture", like most of the terms developed by the humanities, may be a useful tool/framework for making sense of the world in certain contexts (like "anima" or "superego" and many more). But to elevate it to some kind of sacrosanct truth will hardly benefit anyone.

This is a pretty established concept for LGBT people, I'm pretty sure the term "safe space" was a thing that the handful of supportive faculty I knew in college used to refer to their offices and classrooms. I find it pretty alarming that liberals and conservative have united to bash the victims of homophobia and sexual assault for daring to call people out for their repulsive behavior and beliefs.

Besides, people can always say this crap at colleges even with safe spaces...why must schools give the fundies and misogynists enhanced platforms to spread their hate? Free speech doesn't mean "let's treat all ideas as equally valid" it means allowing people to present them and then be ridiculed if they aren't remotely valid. And the ideas being talked about in this article, like "rape isn't a serious cultural problem" and "gay people aren't fit to be parents" are not valid. They're not even things you could say on DU!

It's like all these DUers, who moan about how the mainstream media presents GOP talking points as equally valid as facts (Climate change isn't happening because I can throw a snow ball on the Senate floor! is just as valid an opinion as that of 90% of the world's climate scientists, doncha know?) have no problems with presenting extremist righties as the equivalent of center-left liberals when it comes to the two issues of sexism and racism. It says a lot about where they are on the continuum themselves on these issues, I think.

– John Carey "Eyewitness to History" Introduction

The world is not nice to people who don't want to deal with it. University education is not about making you comfortable, although many students seem to think so.