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I'm not going to say those people don't exist because I'm sure they do, but when people in this thread and elsewhere complain of authoritarian leftists they are invariably doing it about people who are not actually advocating any kind of authoritarian positions. There are no calls for legal...

1984 had an actual Thought Police. But that's beside the point: yes, culture enforces cultural norms. This is how any culture works, and the only way a culture can work. What you're complaining about is people reacting against the existing cultural norms and enforcing their own. The point is not...

Will the moral panic never stop? Oh noooooo, people are critical of your actions, this is "deadly to the perpetrator." People being critical of insensitive bullshit is not oppression. It is doubly ironic because the insensitive bullshit is often part of a discourse that justifies actual, daily...

Not actually a claim I (or anyone, really) ever made. Video games, TV shows and other media both reflect and contribute to the social environment. They reflect it because they're a product of that environment, and they contribute to it because they reinforce certain norms and standards and not...

The point is twofold: 1) It allows students to decide whether or not they want to participate in a specific course. So if they see a course they like but they're not prepared to deal with their specific trauma, and that trauma repeatedly comes up as subject matter in that course, they may choose...

That's exactly what's happening already, though. Students can't handle a class, then they can leave and not participate. No one's giving them a pass. Teachers are already given leeway to exclude disruptive students. Trigger warnings are only there to warn them and allow them to decide whether...

As I said: "Just a lot of whining about the perceived differences of young people these days." Also, perceived. All this stuff is based on a handful of out-of-context incidents with no consequences spaced out over two decades and the rise of the discourse of trigger warnings. Which do not ask...

Once again: nothing was changed about the actual content of the education the students were receiving. All that happened was that a few students complained about content, and the teacher added trigger warnings. That's it! Should those students maybe be a little more willing to engage with the...

So you're saying a few students talked to a teacher about things they thought could be done differently, and then the teacher listened -- and the teacher had the option of not listening, too. No one forced her to do anything. There were no complaints lodged against her. Her bosses didn't speak...

No one's right to expression was curbed here, though. She didn't stop class. She didn't even alter class in any real way, nor the content she was treating. A few folks got upset, and that was about it. Big deal?

"I assumed everyone had done the reading." Hah. Treating trigger warnings as standing in the way of therapeutically dealing with material is pretty messed up, though. You don't treat people without their consent, and you especially don't do so if you're not actually a therapist. College is not...

Four-option dialogue system with single-word descriptors. That sucks.

Sometimes it functions that way, but I generally don't see it used that way -- and when it is, there's always criticism and backlash precisely because that's not how privilege works. At least in my experience. The understanding of privilege as not a linear scale but a collection of axes is...

Sure. That article was stupid as fuck. It's also four years old and gained zero traction because, well, it's stupid. No one's defending that bullshit. But you made a much wider statement about the general use of privilege, to which I reacted.

Dismissing the word "privilege" has predictably become the go-to means for people to close their eyes to the real effects of the various axes of privilege. And yes, class privilege is one of those axes.

How to get rich quickly: 1. Convince other people you have the secret to getting rich quickly. 2. Get them to pay you for the secret. 3. Tell them some hokey, generic self-help bullshit spruced up with "it happened to this guy" examples ripped out of context. 4. $$$

I don't get why you're so obsessed with finding fault with a victim for just living her life, honestly. What you're saying is "don't do this thing you really like to do because other people are assholes."

Because none of this is about "sensitivity" to mature content. It is not about being shocked by content, but about the realization that every bit of content reflects and reproduces societal norms. And some of those norms reflect harmful power relations like racism and sexism.

The internet is a central part of people's personal and professional lives. You can't "step away from the computer" any more than you can just not go out on the street because of harassment. Not to mention that the location isn't the problem, but the behavior of others. Anonymity is only a tiny...

I have looked for examples before. Every time I do, I run into the same thing: symbolic actions (like 'banning' Blurred Lines) and student protests. What I don't find is banning of speech, and what I certainly don't find is examples of campuses banning a "non-leftist news outlet" or a "leftist...