If you are so weak that words hurt you, that the mere speaking of words makes you damaged, I am afraid that you need psychological help. I feel for men and women who face real dangers. I don't feel for Yale students who must listen to scary ideas.
But hey, words don't hurt right?
But do you, vacri, see a huge gap between completely destroying a professor's life, i.e. forcing them to resign their position, give up their salary, tenure, and reputation (which is what these students were asking), and going to prison? Going to prison implies all of the former, it's just an extra debasement on the other penalties, although an extreme one.
Basically you're trying to force a false dichotomy, where the options are "nothing at all" and "complete destruction of life". Someone's opinion on such a ridiculously polarised fantasy isn't going to grant any useful insights.
So you can hardly argue that speech is actually hurtful and that you shouldn't be punished for it.
I remember being called a "white monkey" by a black girl in school when I was a kid. In that class, I was the minority, the only white kid. I don't think that experience affected my life negatively. Roll eyes, move on with life.
How many times did it happen? Once? Twice? A few? A few thousand?
How many years did it go on? One? Two? A decade, at least?
How many people? Just that girl? Just the kids in your class? Random people walking down the street, or sitting next to you in public?
Sitting in public was not an option in that area. Walking down the street wasn't really something that ever happened either. You might get shot doing that. We had drills in school for what to do when, not if, but when gun shots were reported in the neighborhood.
Here's my tip - when someone does or says something that hurts you, examine why you feel the way you feel and treat it with amusement. I'm a minority that has dealt with racist comments. It is what it is. Do the words hurt me? No. I'm amused at how ignorant some people can be, and I move on with my life and write some code.
'Padmasambhava said that when a stick is thrown to a dog, the dog will chase the stick. A dog’s gaze follows the object, the stick. The lion gazes steadily at the source, the thrower. We need to look at our mind, the source of the emotion. An emotion like anger is the stick. The source hurling that emotion is our mind. It is the mind that projects. The source of our experience is our own mind.
Dzogchen [Buddhism] turns our gaze inward toward the source of experience, which is mind. Pristine mind is our lion's gaze.'
But it's important to acknowledge there's a huge difference between singleton one-off insults -- where it's easy to take a "sticks and stones" attitude -- vs. being immersed in an environment where you frequently hear insults from a wide variety of people around you. Which also inevitably comes coupled with equally if not more non-verbal slights, ranging from the subtle and physically harmless (locking car doors, being followed by store security guards) to the economically painful (statistical disadvantages in the job market or justice system) and even physically dangerous (e.g. the recent spate of police shootings).
Not being a minority I can't directly identify with that experience, but I have to imagine the "laugh it off" argument doesn't really apply well to a life filled with such experiences.
Some people are assholes. Some assholes are white and some aren't. We can't rid the world of assholes but it would sure be nice if they reformed themselves. In the meantime, there are no safe spaces in the real world. We should ask people to be polite where we can but that's as far as it goes.
I just laughed it off (which probably didn't help), and I didn't feel threatened by it at all (but my coworker didn't, so we went out next station, which looking back was probably a good idea).
To get to the point, I don't think insults from someone (words) can hurt unless one of the two conditions is satisfied:
(1) The words (or circumstances) indicate that the insulting person may escalate from words to actual physical attack
(2) The words may cause the bystanders to stand with the insulting person
In my case, I didn't felt threatened by (1), which was probably a little risky. It seems to me that we consider case (1) hurtful because it's a potential risk and we want to avoid it. The real emotion here is fear of being attacked.
In case of (2), I didn't worry about that either (in fact, there was a girl sitting next to me who was apparently very sympathetic to me laughing it off), because the person that did the name calling had obviously low social status.
But I think the reason we find (2) hurtful is a slightly different one; it's a status problem. If we want to be part of some group, we may be disappointed by that group rejecting us. It's not just a question of pure survival as in case of (1), it's our own emotional projection (of our status) that makes it hurtful.
Another example, I can imagine a girl being more hurt by somebody criticizing (with a sexist insinuation) her at work than somebody low status catcalling her on the street. The latter is much more risky, but the first can hurt lot more because that's where her aspirations are.
I wonder if you agree or not and what you think context of your situation was?
To sum up, I think there are two very different reasons why we consider words "hurtful", and each only happens in specific circumstances, which should be recognized (although they might be subjective). And while I do think people should be protected by law from potential risk in case (1), I am not sure if people should be protected from finding that they have low social status in the group they want to belong, as in (2). If anything should be protected at all then it's the potential to gain social status.
Abstractly, I see the idea that words are intangible and can't possibly hurt you. But we are social animals and it doesn't work that way in reality. Words can get you loved or hated, married or fired, can put you in jail or set you free, start wars and end them, destroy someone's ego and life or elevate it. Words are the most hurtful things there are. The pen is far mightier than the sword.
I understand what you're getting at, but that is hilariously untrue and a perfect representation of the delusion that the social justice movement operates under.
The pen is mightier than the sword because a pen will move armies with swords. Not because someone might get their feelings hurt.
Addendum: Speech is probably more thoroughly weaponized by calling for censorship that it is by calling someone by offensive phrases.
And that is exactly what the right words will do. If it's seen as socially acceptable to insult someone, then it's not far from that to having it be socially acceptable to commit physical violence against them. Historically, that's the way it's always worked. I've never once seen or read about an instance of a marginalized group where the insults stopped at racial or ethnic slurs.
Adults don't need institutions to protect them from name calling and hurtful words. Children do.
That's a remarkably naive way of looking at the history of hate speech and hateful rhetoric both in the United States and globally.
(I'm not saying what happened at Yale approaches hate speech, but the idea that "words can't hurt you, and if they do you're just a child" is, well, pretty child-like in its understanding of social forces.)
Meh, divorces happen over words, massive conflicts happen because of it, etc. "Just words" is not a great counterargument for anything.
Saying we don't need safe spaces is basically exactly the same as saying reddit doesn't need moderation. Or a community doesn't need a code of conduct. Sure, you don't need it, but the words used end up forming the cultural base of the group, and I really don't need to go to University 4chan.
Conversely, adults don't need assistance to empathise with other people. Children do.
I'd rather lose my arm than here that :)
Spoken like a true first world child who has never experienced the sectarian violence, highly infectious diseases like TB/malaria/hiv, starvation, lack of clean drinking water, and the psychological effects of practically insurmountable poverty. These arent theoretical possibilities but facts of life experienced by billions of humans, the vast majority of whom have practically zero chance of escaping the cycle unless they happened to be born to well educated or wealthy parents.
I apologize for how offensive my comment is to you and your PC Principal, but christ, how can you think a perceived verbal assault on American college students (who are supported to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars a year by their parents and/or Freddi Mac) can even possibly compare to the life and death situations experienced by billions of people in the world on a daily basis?
You can't dismiss the lived experiences of people simply because someone has it worse.
It doesnt matter if theres a genocide going on in every single country in the world - its still going to hurt when you get dumped, cheated on, fired, break your leg, get in a car accident, suffer a loss in the family, etc
[1] http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372
[2] http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2012/drinking_w...
Actually, in contrast to what you're saying, words hardly matter at all. What's important is intention of the communication, not necessarily it's form. You can be the nicest-spoken lady/gentelman and have a vicious effect on the well-being of people or whole communities, by being hypocritical, judgemental or manipulative.
For a concrete example, black people are usually OK with being called "niggers", as long as it's by other black people; I assume that's because they assume different intentions than when a white person says that word (which is quite racist, ironically).
I realize it's an inflammatory article (Harvard and Yale having their differences, what else is new) but it's definitely a unique take on this phenomenon from a historical perspective.
Nobody really gives a shit until you start policing others so you can't get offended.
However, in this case, it is obviously some moronic brainwashed stormtrooper-students.