It's not a result of coddling (or only a bit).
Certain groups realized they could gain power by being offended. Once you create that incentive, unchecked, it's game over.
Certain groups realized they could gain power by being offended. Once you create that incentive, unchecked, it's game over.
The most recent outrage seems to concern transsexuals using something other than the cisnormative bathroom.
You did mean to include those forms of outrage, right? Because to me those still look like "game on".
As a tactic it seems to have been quite successful so it's not surprising that disparate groups are using it.
Pick a random decade and you'll hear exactly the same things.
Christopher Hitchens in 1994, for example, defended David Irving when St. Martin’s Press "de-platformed" (to use the modern term, that is, canceled its contract to print) Irving's edition of the Goebbels diaries.
Look at the generations of people who insisted on the "right" to not hear certain racially charged slurs in casual conversation. Just watch 'Archie Bunker' episodes if you want a reminder of what that was like in the 1970s.
I propose that it's only "increasing" because things that are recent, and which affect us and challenge us most directly, appear more important than things in the past. Even more so where we implicitly accept the views of the winning side - eg, woman's suffrage - as being correct, and don't think that those on the losing side also thought themselves as being correct.
Censorship simply because you don't like what someone says has been around forever.
When it's the government, is easy to say that censorship is when the government goes beyond time/place/manner restrictions on free speech.
But with the migration of the public commons to private areas, is it censorship to prevent a Black Lives Matter protest at the Mall of the Americas? Occupy Wall Street managed to survive so long because Zuccotti Park was on a privately owned public space which was required to stay open 24 hours a day, and thus avoid city curfews in public parks.
It's even less clear that a private entity like St. Martin’s Press must never change their mind about publishing a book, should they decide that doing so will give a Holocaust denialist the ability to use their name in support of his cause.
When HN users flag a spam comment for maid services in London, and it's later deleted, is that censorship?
We know all know of HN posts which cry out censorship for receiving downvotes.
The few times I've looked into one of these controversies, it seems more like people are using "censorship" as synonymous for "criticism I don't like." (Certainly not all cases! Just a boringly common majority of them.)
It's also a massive problem with the internet in general. After all, the internet doesn't have public property, ever. Every site is privately owned, so theoretically every site can choose what to allow. But without a public platform, that also means perfectly valid ideas can be basically banned from public view by way of large gatekeepers and popular communities banning them, regardless of their legality.
Either way, it's a tricky thing to answer, since any 'solution' wil cause a lot of problems in one case or another.
Once the slurs are banned, to use the PC example, the movement doesn't stop, but instead the focus moves onto the next thing so that now the debates are about how to label someone who suffers with mild myopia, or whatever today's campaign is.
The right is just as guilty of this outrage game as the left; in some areas the coalitions are such that they gain power from it. In more left-leaning situations, the outrage power swings left.
I detest both. I want people to be able to say things without constantly being threatened with firings, no-platformings, and blacklists.
Any serious talk about free speech should focus on the core issue: people in power abuse their power to punish the powerless when they express themselves in the wrong way. Students have practically no power or influence in society. So even if these "SJWs" are entirely unjustified in their actions the impact on society is utterly negligible. This is why the panicky reaction in the linked article about student activists repressing free speech is so comical. If anything, the student activists increase free speech by giving a platform to those people who would otherwise go unheard.
What happened at this university is no different from a secretary deliberating forgetting to book a hotel room for the person they like least in the group. No different from the clerk at the DMV sending you to the back of the line because you made a paperwork mistake.
Where is the moral panic about this type of petty nonsense? Nowhere! Because we recognize it's petty nonsense, and not worthy of hand-wringing commentary or a national conversation. But when it comes to students and free speech and safe spaces every news channel and every major magazine is talking about it like it signifies the end of Freedom itself. It's totally absurd.
I think the difference is that petty nonsense on college campuses is publicized and quasi-institutional. If, somehow, a DMV employee was publicly and proudly making people they don't like go to the back of the line, and they had powerful people aligned with them, there would be some outrage.
While a few overzealous activists are not going to end Freedom itself, I (and apparently many others) still want to confront petty nonsense when it begins to institutionalize (by being supported by faculty/admin or influential media members).
What about a county clerk refusing to sign legal marriage certificates for gay couples?
It makes no sense to blindly apply free speech principles based on majority/minority. By that logic we ought to amplify the voices of neo-nazis and other undesirables simply because they're a minority that would otherwise go unheard. To the contrary, I believe we're better off banishing them from the campus instead.
I completely disagree with your characterization of hate speech as speech that causes "subjective discomfort". Specific types of speech can do a lot of harm to e.g. individuals who suffer from mental illnesses or PTSD. So organizations have to choose. Either you ban the speech that will predictably harm individuals or minority groups, or you allow all speech (including hate speech) and the more vulnerable people will be forced to leave to protect their mental health. That's the reality of the situation. I don't think this is a difficult choice.
In practice free speech restrictions on college campuses don't restrict scientific work or scientific debate (in the broadest sense), so I don't think there is any cause for concern.
There would be some hope of that if university students and admin had the slightest awareness of the 'Streisand effect.' They don't and they end up raising awareness of speakers and ideas they are scared of. It's comical. Free speech wins eventually, and that's net positive.
In reality, people protest because it works, even though they have to draw attention to the behavior they want to put an end to. The hope is to persuade the majority that they are righteous and the other side is in the wrong. That's how you get change. Sometimes the protesters mess up and end up looking bad. Then they lose credibility. That's OK, because then a different group of activists will stand up and continue pushing forward.
Safe spaces, micro-aggression theory, and other progressive concepts are quickly becoming mainstream, and they're definitely here to stay.
Until the next generation rebels against them. It's already happening.
The Streisand Effect relates to things someone doesn't want others to know about. If a protest isn't about supressing ideas or information then the Streisand Effect is not relevant.
It's true that a lot of people are only hearing about this because of the protest, and that some of the public reaction is negative, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they would have been better served staying quiet.
Maybe hate groups are perfectly capable of getting the attention of their targets and supporters already, and getting the public's attention is the best way changing the status quo and reducing silent acceptance.
How about just blindly applying free speech principles? That's kind of how the "free" part of that is supposed to work.
Would it change anything if the left were 1/5th as guilty as the right? Or 1/50th? Or 100x more guilty?
If your views don't change, then you give more power to those who are most guilty. As another example of sarcasm, "Look, one person on welfare once bought drugs so it's okay for big banks to illegally foreclose on mortgages!"
I'm certain that you do want people to be fired for saying some things. If a geology teacher at a public university were to only talk about Young Earth Creationism then they should be fired. No?
If a professor or reporter should plagiarize - plagiarism is NOT illegal - then they should be fired. No? If further investigation shows a 20 year history of plagiarism across scores of publications, do you seriously propose there mustn't be the functional equivalent of a blacklist which prevents that person from working again a prestigious institution?
If an invited speaker for "How to be Moral" is accused in federal court of sexually abusing boys when he worked as a wrestling coach at a high school, then he should be de-platformed. No?
De-platformers presume to be protectors from ideas that they find bad or dangerous. The reason why it won't survive as a strategy is because it seeds resentment among the people who have to go along with the platforming choices of their 'betters.'
It's becoming obvious that not everyone agrees with PC/call-out culture, but they don't feel comfortable saying so. We're in a preference falsification bubble now. It's going to pop.
You objection has another easy out - most places are neither fully public nor fully private, so the distinction "public sphere" vs. "private sphere" doesn't really apply. For example, if Y were invited for a private conversation with the university president, then is that public or private? What about if it's only limited to university staff? Only to university students? What if it's a private university? A private, for-profit university?
A third easy out is to couple the invitation to the number of ticket buyers or attendees. If there are many protests then the host can say "our analysis says that fewer people than we thought would attend the event so we have decided to exercise our option to cancel the invitation."
In any case, my third example, which is obviously based on the current news about Hastert, was constructed to let you explain why that Hastert-like figure should be allowed to speak on how to be moral, rather than being uninvited.
Finally, your statement "De-platformers presume to be protectors from ideas that they find bad or dangerous" is at best incomplete. Some protests are from students who are upset that their student fees are being used to pay speaker fees for someone who they disagree with. For example, I think that Kissinger is a war criminal. I wouldn't want some of my student fees and tuition going into his wallet, even if Clinton might be right by saying he has excellent insights about global politics.
When haven't we been in a "preference falsification bubble"?
People get lost in the argument that the First Amendment only applies to the government. To be fair, you didn't. You sidestepped it entirely in your examples.
This issue is whether people consider themselves strong enough to allow a marketplace of ideas. The answer for this fragile generation appears to be no.
That's the one that says you aren't forced to include people you don't want to include. It's the reason why a private club can legally exclude Jews.
The objections I raised all had to do with including that aspect of the First.
This generation is no more fragile than the previous ones. In my generation, we were the weak ones because we were too fragile for the corporal punishment - beating by wooden boards - that previous generations received as children.
You should expect outrage about gun ownership in california. Because you're saying that you are for taking people's rights away, or in general prevent them from something where the model isn't proven to necessarily be correct.
I was thinking specifically of http://www.salon.com/2013/05/22/tornado_survivor_to_wolf_bli... . The news reporter Wolf Blitzer asked a tornado survivor if she "thanks the Lord" for her survival. Quoting that article:
> Vitsmun hesitates for a moment and smiles. “I — I’m actually an atheist,” she said, laughing off the awkward moment.
This brought her into the spotlight, with Rush Limbaugh declaring she must be the only atheist in Oklahoma ( http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/05/22/media_elites_co... ) and Glenn Beck saying it was a setup (http://www.salon.com/2013/05/23/glenn_beck_cnn_interview_wit... ).
A better example would be teacher-lead mandatory school prayer, which has been illegal for decades, but it still occurs. Here's an example of a family which sued the school over mandatory prayer http://www.rawstory.com/2015/02/georgia-public-school-teache... . They did so anonymously for fear of retribution.
Again, this is not someone who goes around saying "I am an atheist" but is instead someone who will likely face retribution for saying "I am an atheist" even once in public (or in private to a school official) in order to complain about illegal school practices.
Neither of these two occurrences are "kind of immature" nor the result of an activist speaking to people.
the problem is mixed in there there are reactionaries which took the opposite extreme stance and are poisoning the ground for constructive criticism
The amount of think-pieces that have been dumped over the internet psychoanalyzing "the medal generation", talking about the ways in which kids have had their self-esteem massaged by lack of bullying, or beating, or suffering, or how "America has been pussyified" or whatever, all part from the premise that when a student says "take this down, it offends me", they are actually being honest in this weak way.
On some level I suppose it makes it easier for the person making the critique, they get to brag a bit about how they have a "thicker skin". But that's not what's going on at all.
The equivalent would be if we all just flagged every post we disagreed with and it was removed by mods as long as you we include text saying that it triggered us.
I guess I'm in a relatively rare position around these parts of usually agreeing with the radical students' aims (demolishing certain kinds of speech, like "race realism" and "sex realism", taking down statues honoring unworthy figures from the past) and not their methods (legalizing em out of sight and squashing dissent vs taking them down via argument).
>>> I think that safe spaces / micro-aggressions may come from the perfect storm of a) a generation that was conceived after a period of widespread crime and social uncertainty, leading parents to coddle them and try to protect them from the world [see 'helicopter' parenting'], b) the self-esteem movement [everyone wins prize], and c) increasingly feminized primary and secondary education. The number of male teachers has dwindled rapidly over the decades.
> People aren't belittling students for being offended
As you can see, there is a strong identity component here.
As in all things in life there are nuances. This problem isn't even tied to this generation in particular, the only issue to contend today is that in this generation sensationalism breed views and views breed consensus, all in all this situation isn't that much different from people fighting against the N* racial slur in the last century, only the communication channels and consensus rules differ, especially regarding diffusion speed.
This is a part of a bigger problem: modern society ethics diffuse and segregate groups at a pace that has no precedent while not sporting the same mediation and dialectics needed by living in close physical social groups.