Support NeoGAF

[kirblar]

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/01/not-a-very-pc-thing-to-say.html

This article popped up yesterday and was referenced repeatedly in a previous thread regarding the overuse/misappropriation of "Triggers" and how certain aspects of left-wing political discourse have become problematic and frustrating. Chait's piece definitely hits upon something that's resonating w/ people- but I do think it has some real issues- a big one being that "Political Correctness" doesn't accurately represent what he's attempting to describe. It's a length piece that's great as a discussion start-off point, but one w/ some serious flaws, ones which have led to some responses that seem to completely misunderstand what he's describing and where he's coming from.

However, a number of very good follow-up articles have appeared in the past two days, and I think they do a much better job illuminating the faults and the very real issue he's trying to explore- this list is by no means exhaustive, but I would highly recommend reading these after reading the initial piece, as a common response to this article is that it's simply describing Straw Men created by conservatives/reddit, which is not at all the case.

http://fredrikdeboer.com/2015/01/29/i-dont-know-what-to-do-you-guys/ edit: Google Cache here in case it's down: http://api.viglink.com/api/click?fo...webcache.googleusercontent.c...OZL7sATnu4DYAw

http://www.thenation.com/blog/196521/jonathan-chait-and-new-pc

http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/...nti_political_correctness_essay_unpacked.html

http://www.juliansanchez.com/2015/01/27/chait-speech/

 

[nynt9]

I do partially agree with the Chait piece. I haven't seen the responses you posted, only borderline vitriolic disagreement, so I'll read the responses and get back. Thanks for the links OP.

To clarify: I am staunchly pro-human rights (be it minority, sexual or any other rights), however I do not believe that vitriol and throwing out terms to immediately silence discourse is not the way to go about. Here's another article that's a bit older that covers similar issues:

http://fredrikdeboer.com/2014/04/29/bingo-cards-go-both-ways/

The piece is written, as is the meme it describes, in the default code of today’s online social progressives, which I like to call We Are All Already Decided. This is the form of argument, and of comedy, that takes as its presumption that all good and decent people are already agreed on the issue in question. In fact, We Are All Already Decided presumes that the offense is not just in thinking the wrong thing you think but in not realizing that We Are All Already Decided that the thing you think is deeply ridiculous. And the embedded argument, such as it is, is not on the merits of whatever issue people are disagreeing about, but on the assumed social costs of being wrong about an issue on which We Are All Already Decided.

The danger, of course, is the temptation to simply respond to critiques like this one with more We Are All Already Decided, to drag yourself deeper into the dull warmth of the people you already agree with. It’s a human temptation, I suppose. Just try to remember how small a “we” can really be.

 

[Timeaisis]

Still reading through the original article, but I will say, from the outside looking in, it seems to me like liberals in america are becoming their own worst enemy.

 

[ZeroGravity]

Read through it yesterday and it's a very good piece. Really summarizes a lot of the issues I have with the version of liberal extremism that exists right now.

 

[nynt9]

I like the response pieces in the OP as well. I don't really see how the criticism of Chait's piece is accurate, though. I don't agree with the way the articles paint his piece when disagreeing with some of his points.

But regardless, I agree with the overall message. There is a "faction" of the left that is using buzzwords and tactics in a way that I do not believe to be conducive to discourse or results. I've previously spoken against the way I disagree with the usage of the "tone argument" shutdown - even though there are valid uses for it, it is also very often used to justify vitriolic speech. While the validity of an argument might not be tied to the way it is presented, whether you will succeed in getting that person to hear you out is definitely tied to it. I understand that arguing with people who are uninformed and arguing with ill will is tiring and frustrating and oppressed people are already frustrated due to their position, I really don't think hostility will "convert" people.

I wasn't always this progressive, I was raised in a Muslim and a very misogynistic and homophobic culture. I wasn't even aware of the biases instilled in me by the culture I was raised in. I slowly broke free of those and am now completely opposed to those values, but the road here was only possible because I had friends to guide me. They could have shut me out and written me off, but they didn't, and I am glad for it.

 

[cubicle47b]

That's a fantastic article.

 

[Surface of Me]

At work, will read at home. I caught a glimpse of it in the other thread and from that one of the points I got is blocking out things you dont like/offend you doesnt help you grow as a person? Maybe I'm totally off, but if it is that, I agree.

 

[crooked spin]

I've only been seeing him get torn to shreds in the last few days.

 

[The Elite]

I haven't had a chance to read through it all yet but I have largely agreed with what I read so far.

If I'm a bad person for supporting this view than so be it. I can live with that.

 

[Iksenpets]

I've only been seeing him get torn to shreds in the last few days.

Jon Chait is not the messenger that a lot of people on the left want to hear from, so there's a kind of visceral reaction against him in particular being the one to write it. The Fredrik deBoer and Julian Sanchez pieces that OP linked — which both basically concur while also acknowledging that Chait comes off as a bit of a jerk — seem to have gotten a much more positive reaction.

 

[dinazimmerman]

I thought the slate piece was a reasonable response.

 

[speculawyer]

Yeah, I'm getting quite annoyed by the PC police and the outrage brigade that gets angry over the smallest little gaffe, misstatement, clumsy phrasing, joke, etc.

People need to step back and get some perspective before demonizing people for an occasional off-color remark. You are just going to alienate people from your cause with that crap.

 

[collige]

I think it's a good article in how it identifies problems and not so good in how broad and widespread he claims these poor practices are, which in turn opens him up to a lot of the criticism he's been getting. The Slate follow-up is a good companion.

 

[freenudemacusers]

I consider myself a liberal person, and I am increasingly annoyed and frustrated by how the discussion of social issues is often conducted by people I often side with (mostly in the online space, since these arguments are usually much softer in tone in the real world).

I've been guilty of snide snipes and meaningless bickering in the past, so I'm not preaching from atop a mountain here, but the increasing frequency of the 'shut it down' approach is tiresome and self-defeating. It's just pointlessly shrill and reminds me of a kid throwing a tantrum, which I'm unfortunately deeply familiar with right now. I regularly see calls for nuanced debate buttressed against 'lol i bet you're a white dude' and various other inane assumptive dismissal.

 

[jchap]

These days arguments are won by who can be the loudest

 

[chaostrophy]

Freddie deBoer has been writing about this phenomenon for a while, and has really been on point.

Looks like his site is down, maybe it's getting a lot of traffic from this piece. Here's one he posted a while ago while guest-blogging for Andrew Sullivan, that's worth reading: http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/08/21/where-online-social-liberalism-lost-the-script/

 

[blame space]

the easiest thing to fix this is to just not talk to people.

 

[Hari Seldon]

Yeah I have long said that these people are simply returning to Puritanism. The good news is that like in the 90s, it is fucking ridiculous and the backlash will destroy it for another decade or so.

 

[kirblar]

Freddie deBoer has been writing about this phenomenon for a while, and has really been on point.

Looks like his site is down, maybe it's getting a lot of traffic from this piece. Here's one he posted a while ago while guest-blogging for Andrew Sullivan, that's worth reading: http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/08/21/where-online-social-liberalism-lost-the-script/

His piece illuminating the examples of this behavior he's seen in the real world is really great- definitely looks like his web host just blew up under pressure.

 

[Dabanton]

Good to see this being discussed as someone with liberal leanings, the current 'swarm' mode that is often deployed when someone does or says something 'wrong' is incredibly disturbing and turns a lot of people who would actually be on their side off. Social media has been a blessing and a curse for some issues.

Not every small issue needs to be challenged so crazily, save your energy for fights that are actually worth it.

 

[Cagey]

"If you are accused of bias, or “called out,” reflection and apology are the only acceptable response—to dispute a call-out only makes it worse."

This is much too common on OT threads. Poster A, operating under the assumption that they're clearly objectively correct, making repeated demands that Poster B just stop making any argument and simply listen, with the implication being that if Poster B would simply read Poster A's words carefully enough, Poster B would realize how clearly objectively incorrect they are, reflect on their mistakes, apologize for their purported ignorance, etc.

The arrogance can be stunning, at times.

EDIT: aha, further down in that Slate piece, he hits on this very point! The lack of directness and obsfucation of this sort of condescension by hiding it in coded language with fun buzzwords like imploring people "listen" or have "empathy" is irritating, as well. Why in quotes? Because the words, as invoked, are loaded to the gills with judgment, not used simply to ask someone to hear someone else out or understand another's feelings on a matter.

Here, Chait (and Sulllivan and Dan Savage, who all echoed him on this point) picks up on what is truly the most self-defeating part of contemporary PC culture—the refusal to distinguish between ignorance and genuine disagreement. We are not talking, to be clear, about disagreeing over, say, the value of trans lives or the fairness of gay marriage; those are no longer things seriously up for debate. But plenty of legitimate contentions remain.

Take, for example, one of my own (fairly rare) run-ins with the kind of digital pile-on Chait abhors. Years ago I wrote a post considering the demand by some queer people for bespoke gender pronouns, by which I meant unique replacements for him, her, or the all-purpose use of they that were invented by an individual who then expected others—including publications with grammatical responsibilities to readers—to use them without question. Though I felt this was a careful and limited point, I received a great deal of criticism from some members of the trans and genderqueer communities, some of which was useful (my parsing of standard “preferred gender pronouns” and the invented variety was admittedly imperfect), but much of which accused me of being an ignorant transphobe in need of re-education.

If only I would just listen to genderqueer people instead of running my privileged cis mouth all the time, I might advance to further enlightenment. Sullivan aptly describes this leftist call-to-repent: “The only ‘dialogue’ much of the p.c. gay left wants with its sinners is a groveling apology for having a different point of view.”

From the Slate piece:

Additionally, though it is impossible to say this without sounding condescending myself, a lot of the abuse of PC rhetoric comes from young college students who have not yet grasped the difference between a measuring tape and a sledgehammer. Of course, given that contemporary mainstream politics offers little for those hopeful souls who want to make truly radical change in the world, you can’t really blame them for gravitating toward a mode of critique that at least feels somewhat empowering. Here, first-year, is a framework by which you can reveal the (screwed-up) hidden structures of the world and use your newly honed textual close-reading skills to mount offenses against those structures—go for it. What works on a novel doesn’t necessary translate to a complicated, changeable human being, though, so it’s no surprise that the deployment of microaggression and cissexism and other social justice lingo can sometimes come off as strident and simplistic. It often is.

Beautifully written.

 

[timetokill]

Here's the google cache of Freddie deBoer's excellent post about it: https://webcache.googleusercontent....you-guys/&gws_rd=cr&ei=_5vKVKv5OZL7sATnu4DYAw

The whole thing is great but here are some bits:

I have seen, with my own two eyes, a 19 year old white woman — smart, well-meaning, passionate — literally run crying from a classroom because she was so ruthlessly brow-beaten for using the word “disabled.” Not repeatedly. Not with malice. Not because of privilege. She used the word once and was excoriated for it. She never came back. I watched that happen.

I have seen, with my own two eyes, a 20 year old black man, a track athlete who tried to fit organizing meetings around classes and his ridiculous practice schedule (for which he received a scholarship worth a quarter of tuition), be told not to return to those meetings because he said he thought there were such a thing as innate gender differences. He wasn’t a homophobe, or transphobic, or a misogynist. It turns out that 20 year olds from rural South Carolina aren’t born with an innate understanding of the intersectionality playbook. But those were the terms deployed against him, those and worse. So that was it; he was gone.

I have seen, with my own two eyes, a 33 year old Hispanic man, an Iraq war veteran who had served three tours and had become an outspoken critic of our presence there, be lectured about patriarchy by an affluent 22 year old white liberal arts college student, because he had said that other vets have to “man up” and speak out about the war. Because apparently we have to pretend that we don’t know how metaphorical language works or else we’re bad people. I watched his eyes glaze over as this woman with $300 shoes berated him. I saw that. Myself.

Jon Chait is an asshole. He’s wrong. I don’t want these kids to be more like Jon Chait. I sure as hell don’t want them to be less left-wing. I want them to be more left-wing. I want a left that can win, and there’s no way I can have that when the actually-existing left sheds potential allies at an impossible rate. But the prohibition against ever telling anyone to be friendlier and more forgiving is so powerful and calcified it’s a permanent feature of today’s progressivism. And I’m left as this sad old 33 year old teacher who no longer has the slightest fucking idea what to say to the many brilliant, passionate young people whose only crime is not already being perfect.

 

[Wreav]

Beautifully written.

It's really just a lot of words for the "young people are liberal, old people are conservative" mantra.

In general, it's a fantastic piece that highlights the worst part of any social community, GAF included.

 

[appaws]

I don't really care about the internal battles of the left, but I did find the piece interesting.

My overall take is that whatever view is in the ascendancy will always become intolerant and hostile to differing views. We are seeing this now with the current form of secular social leftism, just as the right has done the same thing in the past.

I personally don't care about PC culture because I am simply so far beyond the pale in all of your eyes (I mean most Gaffers) as a practicing traditionalist Catholic and a monarchist. I am sure I am a racist, sexist, homophobe and a million other bad things by your standards. The author of the piece would probably revel in the personal destruction of a person like me, but is bummed that other effete liberals get caught in friendly fire.

 

[Tesseract]

i call it janeane garofalo syndrome

 

[Deleted member 20415]

This quote is fucking staggering:

"A theater group at Mount Holyoke College recently announced it would no longer put on The Vagina Monologues in part because the material excludes women without vaginas."

Holy hell. You've got to be kidding me.

 

[Enduin]

Read the original and Slate article. Both are pretty great and sum up things very well. I'll try and read the other articles later.

 

[Averon]

Going to read a bunch of these article. I'm left-leaning, but I've certainly noticed the "We Are All Already Decided" effect on NeoGAF and elsewhere. I really don't like where discourse on the left is drifting online.

 

[The Technomancer]

I think a lot of people on these issues have given up on education and dialogue, and after some of the things I've seen its hard to blame them at times. Its easy to be baffled at the seeming dismissive exasperation directed at "well intentioned" people, but I've also seen how maddeningly frustrating it must be to try and raise attention to, say, transgender issues in a sea of "well intentioned" people who think their uninformed opinions about the issue are actually informed

I haven't given up, I think we should always strive to talk to each other, but I can empathize with the frustration a lot of people feel that leads to this dismissiveness

 

[Cagey]

It's really just a lot of words for the "young people are liberal, old people are conservative" mantra.

But that's not quite accurate. Young people who are conservative and politicaly active to a similar degree would and likely do suffer from the same problem that the liberal young people the Slate writer describes: overzealousness, overeagerness, lack of nuance, and being blind to those weaknesses.

I don't think the political leanings are the issue. I think youthfulness is.

 

[Faiz]

This quote is fucking staggering:

"A theater group at Mount Holyoke College recently announced it would no longer put on The Vagina Monologues in part because the material excludes women without vaginas."

Holy hell. You've got to be kidding me.

I'm not at all surprised :/

 

[Lambtron]

This quote is fucking staggering:

"A theater group at Mount Holyoke College recently announced it would no longer put on The Vagina Monologues in part because the material excludes women without vaginas."

Holy hell. You've got to be kidding me.

They're not wrong. Also Eve Ensler kind of sucks, so...

Anyway, I vehemently disagree with Chait's article and felt that Jessica Valenti's response was pretty much spot on. A couple good quotes:

Chait conflates real incursions on speech – a University of Michigan student who was harassed and intimidated after he published what was seen as an offensive newspaper column, for example – and simple forms of activism like signing a petition to keep a speaker off campus. Most of the acts that Chait says are “perverting liberalism” are acts of free speech themselves: discussions of racial microaggressions, hashtag campaigns, and even complaints from women of color about racism on a Facebook group. It seems the only kind of speech Chait thinks should be “free” is the kind he agrees with.

His willful ignorance about why he (a white, hetero, cisgender man) might not be able to use all the words or claim authority on every single topic is also why his, er, mansplanation of “mansplaining” – “all-purpose term of abuse that can be used to discredit any argument by any man” – falls flatter than his argument that it would be more equitable for women to live in squalor than demand that their husbands do a fair share of the housework.

 

[MHWilliams]

Some of its expressions have a familiar tint, like the protesting of even mildly controversial speakers on college campuses. You may remember when 6,000 people at the University of California–Berkeley signed a petition last year to stop a commencement address by Bill Maher, who has criticized Islam (along with nearly all the other major world religions). Or when protesters at Smith College demanded the cancellation of a commencement address by Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, blaming the organization for “imperialist and patriarchal systems that oppress and abuse women worldwide.” Also last year, Rutgers protesters scared away Condoleezza Rice; others at Brandeis blocked Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a women’s-rights champion who is also a staunch critic of Islam; and those at Haverford successfully protested ­former Berkeley chancellor Robert Birgeneau, who was disqualified by an episode in which the school’s police used force against Occupy protesters.

How can you talk about free speech and then decry protests? That seems odd.

The real issue is this, the entire thing allows Chait to eventually swing back around to cultural Marxism. Remember that? It's the GamerGate buzzword. Chait just took longer to get there.

The Marxist left has always dismissed liberalism’s commitment to protecting the rights of its political opponents — you know, the old line often misattributed to Voltaire, “I disapprove of what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it” — as hopelessly naïve. If you maintain equal political rights for the oppressive capitalists and their proletarian victims, this will simply keep in place society’s unequal power relations. Why respect the rights of the class whose power you’re trying to smash? And so, according to Marxist thinking, your political rights depend entirely on what class you belong to.

The modern far left has borrowed the Marxist critique of liberalism and substituted race and gender identities for economic ones. “The liberal view,” wrote MacKinnon 30 years ago, “is that abstract categories — like speech or equality — define systems. Every time you strengthen free speech in one place, you strengthen it everywhere. Strengthening the free speech of the Klan strengthens the free speech of Blacks.” She deemed this nonsensical: “It equates substantive powerlessness with substantive power and calls treating these the same, ‘equality.’ ”

Regardless, even those who talk free speech, tend to dislike those who they feel are wrong having platforms. Look at our thread about The Nightly Show and Anti-Vaxxers. Generally, we have this open idea of "free speech" up until people say something we don't like, which is the direction of the protests above. In reality, no one is assured any speaking platform and as such, those platforms tend to go to those in power and those who conform to societal norms.

Many who talk about "PC culture" are struck by the fact that societal norms have shifted around them and away from their personal views. That they have to listen - thanks to social media - those that disagree with them. In our Cumberbatch thread, the disagreement with his "Colored" comments was so incredibly light, and yet certain posters still took it as an attack. Why?

Ultimately, the Slate article is a better take on the idea, setting it in its proper scope and scale. This part illustrating the point I just made, that platforms are generally given to those who conform to norms (classically, straight white dudes):

I won't be that dismissive, but Chait’s myopia about his own ideology does make you wish someone with more perspective had taken on this worthy subject. In a particularly galling moment, Chait quotes Salon’s Brittney Cooper as if she were being absurd or frightening in suggesting that the applicability of “reasonable debate” might be tempered by histories of power. “The demand to be reasonable is a disingenuous demand,” she wrote. “Black folks have been reasoning with white people forever. Racism is unreasonable, and that means reason has limited currency in the fight against it.” Interestingly, he leaves the following sentence from her original piece—“Black folks understand, just like white folks do, that reason should be wielded as a tactic, not adhered to as a rule”—out of his essay.

Chait does not like the idea that reason might not be equally appealing or accessible to all parties at all times, so he presents Cooper as “extreme.” She is not extreme; she is merely stating facts.

There is a lot to unpack in that paragraph, such as the notion that oppressed groups must patiently and cordially “persuade” their oppressors to treat them decently or Sullivan’s ignoring the fact that identity politics—in the sense of getting gays to buy into the idea that they have a shared identity—was a necessary step before the kind of argumentation-from-identity that he worships was even possible. But vis-a-vis Chait, the most important question is one of style. What does a good argument look like to these men? And what does it take for an argument to be deemed “reasonable”?

Now, consider that arguments about race or gender justice—which, given that gays only became legible as a political class in the 1960s, are made in the context of much older and more deeply embedded histories of oppression—must by demographic necessity be more sweeping and more profoundly radical (see, for example, the perennial freak-out over the suggestion of reparations). When all the institutions with whom we must valiantly argue for our legitimacy are inherently racist and sexist and do not really want to hear from us (or only in unthreatening, file-your-complaint-in-triplicate ways), and when all evidence suggests that such efforts have been only marginally successful at best, it is not difficult to understand why calls to “be reasonable!” are met with an increasing amount of side-eye.

He also correctly describes the idea that many who are loudest use the terms wrong, but they still retain use. You are equally at fault if you tune out because you read "trigger" and someone who completely dismisses your argument because you're white.

And the capper:

The problem with identity politics—in this particular manifestation, anyway—is that it assumes that just because a person claims a certain identity label, that person is necessarily empowered to be judge and jury on all issues pertaining to that category. The truth is, identity grants experience (and experience should be valued to a point); but it does not automatically grant wisdom, critical distance, or indeed, unassailable righteousness. To forget this is to turn individual people who possess a range of intelligences, backgrounds, self-interests, and flaws into two-dimensional avatars for the condition of humanity in which they happen to share. And, by corollary, to assert that it is impossible on some fundamental level for those who don’t share that condition to ever relate or speak to that person as merely another human being with ideas and opinions.

That logic is real, it is ridiculous, and it is truly tiresome. It deserves all the criticism it gets.

As for Chait’s larger “exhaustion” with political correctness, I can only say I empathize—writing about issues that pertain to social justice (especially from a position of privilege) is exacting, taxing work, and sometimes you mess up. Sorting out the criticisms that are fair and productive from those that are extreme or pedantic can be draining. But it’s part of the gig. And, for what it’s worth, I can assure Chait that occasionally hearing the complaints and critiques of the oppressed people we earn a living writing about is far less exhausting than actually having to live under that oppression—a negative tweet here and there is hardly unreasonable.

 

[Kinyou]

The students, who were recorded on a building surveillance camera wearing baggy hooded sweatshirts to hide their identity, littered Mahmood’s doorway with copies of his column, scrawled with messages like “You scum embarrass us,” “Shut the fuck up,” and “DO YOU EVEN GO HERE?! LEAVE!!” They posted a picture of a demon and splattered eggs.

This is literally the same shit just from the opposite side.

 

[Tinfoilhatsron]

They're not wrong. Also Eve Ensler kind of sucks, so...

Anyway, I vehemently disagree with Chait's article and felt that Jessica Valenti's response was pretty much spot on. A couple good quotes:

Lol I was wrong.
Also: She doesn't even fucking respond to anything it seems like. Though I just skimmed.
Also what is a strawman, Valenti?
Edit: I will admit when I'm wrong, actually read the article. The first part was based on the quotes. Is she arguing about being in favor of PC and not? I'm not sure.

 

[Lambtron]

So basically the response is
"NUH UH! Your just white and you just won't understand!"?? Not that I agree with the original article.

That's not even close to what the response was?

 

[Somnid]

I think of it as the new vocabulary word effect. You learn something new and you try to apply it to everything but you often don't understand the nuance well enough. It's just bad that people need to fuel their own ignorance with vitriol.

 

[kirblar]

This is literally the same shit just from the opposite side.

The Sanchez piece (4th down) does a good job placing this in a perspective of toxic group behaviors in general.

 

[Tinfoilhatsron]

That's not even close to what the response was?

Sorry I was just reacting quickly and skimmed over the article. Just didn't like the second quote without any context lol. Will read the article and these thoroughly on break. I agree with the first one Freedom of Speech and all that jazz.

 

[Simply Sarah]

I'm honestly very puzzled by the rallying around this piece here, along with some of the other pieces above. Yes, they do point out some real issues with sections of the modern left where mob mentality and single-mindedness can rule to the determent of everyone, but some of the stuff (I'll limit myself to the piece by Mr Chait) goes far beyond that into basically, well, dismissing the thoughts of some of these leftist movements out of hand.

This isn't to say these authors are awful people or don't have some good points, just that what I'm seeing tends to be far too broadly generalized. It's taking real issues and then tossing the baby out with the bathwater.

Just to list a few things that stand out to me:

- In the talk about Charlie Hebdo seems to work from the assumption that free speech means speech can never be negative. I personally haven't bothered to research enough of what Charlie Hebdo has printed to have any opinion, but the idea that we can't potentially discuss whether or not what they put out does more harm than good, while acknowledging free speech lets them say it regardless, seems downright bizarre.

- What El_TigroX found so ridiculous:

A theater group at Mount Holyoke College recently announced it would no longer put on The Vagina Monologues in part because the material excludes women without vaginas.

Yes, how dare the group decide, rightly or wrongly, that The Vagina Monologues is exclusionary towards us trans women and any other woman that may lack said body part. Haha, those wacky ladies attempting to be thoughtful.

- My favourite:

Trigger warnings aren’t much help in actually overcoming trauma — an analysis by the Institute of Medicine has found that the best approach is controlled exposure to it, and experts say avoidance can reinforce suffering.

which touches on a valid issue, trigger warnings and such being overused and abused, but missed the forest for the trees. One of the points of trigger warnings is to make sure exposure is controlled and people don't stumble randomly onto stuff. The idea of total avoidance isn't inherent in the concept, only the idea of knowing what you might be dealing with. But the article completely ignores this and only treats them as if they have to be super extreme.

 

[boiled goose]

Meh. Sounds lIke what every poster on GAF says about these issues without actually knowing what they are talking about.

whenever I hear someone call out political correctness see it as an extreme form of projection. I'm not saying it because I'm afraid of saying something politically incorrect or offensive I'm not saying it because I think it is not correct.

Think of it this way.
Black people are violent.
No.
Stop being so politically correct.
No I actually don't believe that.

 

[Draft]

Finally I can stop checking my privilege.

 

[cubicle47b]

I'm honestly very puzzled by the rallying around this piece here, along with some of the other pieces above. Yes, they do point out some real issues with sections of the modern left where mob mentality and single-mindedness can rule to the determent of everyone, but some of the stuff (I'll limit myself to the piece by Mr Chait) goes far beyond that into basically, well, dismissing the thoughts of some of these leftist movements out of hand.

Perhaps people agree with the general idea behind the article(s) and ignore details they don't agree with because they feel it's important regardless. I think articles like this are a long time coming.

 

[Kinyou]

Perhaps people agree with the general idea behind the article(s) and ignore details they don't agree with because they feel it's important regardless. I think articles like this are a long time coming.

Yeah, I'm still reading it, and for example do I feel a lot less strongly about the anti-charlie Hebdo hash tag than about the described environment of fear that one of the professors describes, which I believe is a real problem.
Perhaps he equals just too much stuff, but he definitely hits a nerve.

The Sanchez piece (4th down) does a good job placing this in a perspective of toxic group behaviors in general.

Thanks, I'll put that one on my reading list as well.

 

[The Elite]

the easiest thing to fix this is to just not talk to people.

That would be disappointing.

There really needs to be a discussion on a great deal of topics that we may feel uncomfortable with. Unfortunately, I find that engaging in those types of discussions lately will either vilify me when I say something even marginally off base with what the loudest audience believes or make me feel excluded because my thoughts don't fit uniformly with some precise agenda.

As someone who wants to engage in discussion regarding sexism, racism and many other subjects I find myself feeling rather disturbed by some of the dialogue in threads on GAF and in the greater Internet.

This quote is fucking staggering:

"A theater group at Mount Holyoke College recently announced it would no longer put on The Vagina Monologues in part because the material excludes women without vaginas."

Holy hell. You've got to be kidding me.

I was sadly not that surprised by this.

 

[cubicle47b]

Thanks, I'll put that one on my reading list as well.

Yeah, I love the Sanchez piece.

 

[Timeaisis]

I think many people are frustrated with Chait because they see his criticism to some of these extremes as an attack on his version of "free speech". Like a college pushing away speakers because the student body spoke up. Sure, this is freedom of speech, and he is criticizing it, which looks hypocritical.

While I am very much pro freedom of speech in every aspect of life, I do consider it interesting that people can be so aggressive towards others that share different views than them, and, instead of discussing reasonably, paint them as racists, bigots or extremists. True, they are within their right to do so, but do they not realize that they are antagonizing their potential allies? It's funny how a group of feminist writers can be torn apart through political correctness, for example. Do they not realize that these very same proponents of p.c. are, instead of promoting equality, making enemies out of everyone? And everyone is laughing at them as well.

I think Chait's article is more a reflection on the modern left. It's literally eating itself from the inside with political correctness. People can't discuss things out of fear, for example. The minority opinion in the left space must be silenced or ridiculed. Meanwhile, conservatives look on a laugh, caring little about criticisms over what they say. They are winning the war of the minds by shrugging and saying "I don't give a shit". People respect that. I respect that.

Personally, I'm no liberal, I have little fear of ridicule from the masses for my opinions. It seems, though, that much of the left now speak in hushed voices or none at all in fear of being targeted by the rage of those they would once called their allies.

 

[Simply Sarah]

Perhaps people agree with the general idea behind the article(s) and ignore details they don't agree with because they feel it's important regardless. I think articles like this are a long time coming.

I see more value in some of the responses than in Mr. Chait's piece. His piece is a mess and outright misrepresents a ton of things. He hits on some valid concerns, but it mostly seems to only be on the way well past them on his way to god knows where.I have some minor qualms with parts of the others, but the praise of the initial piece is what really gets to me. Main of the issues people are mentioning aren't just the details, they are the general idea behind the article.

I think many people are frustrated with Chait because they see his criticism to some of these extremes as an attack on his version of "free speech". Like a college pushing away speakers because the student body spoke up. Sure, this is freedom of speech, and he is criticizing it, which looks hypocritical.

While I am very much pro freedom of speech in every aspect of life, I do consider it interesting that people can be so aggressive towards others that share different views than them, and, instead of discussing reasonably, paint them as racists, bigots or extremists. True, they are within their right to do so, but do they not realize that they are antagonizing their potential allies? It's funny how a group of feminist writers can be torn apart through political correctness, for example. Do they not realize that these very same proponents of p.c. are, instead of promoting equality, making enemies out of everyone? And everyone is laughing at them as well.

I think Chait's article is more a reflection on the modern left. It's literally eating itself from the inside with political correctness. People can't discuss things out of fear, for example. The minority opinion in the left space must be silenced or ridiculed. Meanwhile, conservatives look on a laugh, caring little about criticisms over what they say. They are winning the war of the minds by shrugging and saying "I don't give a shit". People respect that. I respect that.

Personally, I'm no liberal, I have little fear of ridicule from the masses for my opinions. It seems, though, that much of the left now speak in hushed voices or none at all in fear of being targeted by the rage of those they would once called their allies.

No, not really. It's mostly because he paints with a comically broad brush as to what is "extreme" while misrepresenting things left and right.

 

[The Technomancer]

I think Chait's article is more a reflection on the modern left. It's literally eating itself from the inside with political correctness. People can't discuss things out of fear, for example. The minority opinion in the left space must be silenced or ridiculed. Meanwhile, conservatives look on a laugh, caring little about criticisms over what they say. They are winning the war of the minds by shrugging and saying "I don't give a shit". People respect that.

Personally, I'm no liberal, so people can berate me for my opinion as much as they want, and I'm not going to apologize for it. It seems, though, that much of the left now speak in hushed voices or none at all in fear of being targeted by the rage of those they would once called their allies.

People can discuss things. But conversations that start from " I have nothing against black people but if they stopped committing crimes and killing each other and just went to good colleges like I did" are off to a rocky start to begin with

 

[JesseEwiak]

Chait should stick to tearing apart Paul Ryan’s bullshit on the budget and the GOP’s bullshit on health care. He’s fine doing that.
But on this, and on race, and many other cultural moments, he just sounds like a sheltered nitwit. Sure, take his argument to an illogical extreme so far on the end of the slippery slope you can see Alaska from your house, and free speech is chilled by an army of PC thugs wearing pink. OK, it could happen.

But, ya’ know, a few ancedotes of frankly, college students being college students, and old PC wars from when many activists were in preschool, along with dismissal of the value of shorthand like “mansplaining” aren’t really a glittering edifice of an argument, and his continued insistence this was some damaging new/old trend wasn’t very convincing. I mean, ya’ know why the reason why “mansplain” took off? Because it happens to women, a whole hell of a lot.

Only recently has it become possible for women, people of color, or other marginalized voices to say, to people beyond their living room or workplace, “actually, these people are assholes,” like say, when Rand Paul tried to educate students at Howard that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. Yes, some take it too far, because in everything, there are asses who take it too far, but Chait takes thousands of words bemoaning this particular outrage

I mean, I’m a straight white male, so maybe I’m a traitor to my tribe, but I’m happy that social media and other forms of communication have allowed voices that were previously unheard voices to have the ability and opportunity to tell straight white guys to kindly sit down and shut up about stuff they don’t understand. For centuries, straight white guys have had the cultural megaphone to themselves, and Chait’s article is largely a wounded cry those days are ending, especially on the liberal side of the ledger. And frankly, I don’t have a problem with a social cost being affixed for spouting ignorance or bigotry. It’s not a 1st amendment issue when people think you’re an asshole for saying assholeish things.