Why did you not include a trigger warning about the discussion of rape in your comment?
One of the links in the article was to an article by a law professor talking about the difficulty of teaching rape and sexual assault law. The point being made there was that the entire subject has become off-limits -- literally, a large number of her colleagues had simply elected not to teach it anymore.
If your complaint is that, today, students are demanding an abuse of the notion of trigger warnings and safe spaces to effectively prevent exposure to potentially upsetting discussions, and that we are harming the long-term development of students by doing so, then by definition, you believe the corrections you'd get would essentially take the form "bring back all the trigger warnings we had when you started this process".
It's likely that a few obviously triggering things can be labelled as such and good can be derived from that even if we can't or shouldn't label everything.
For example, there are people who were raped by a man with a deep voice and are triggered by men with deep voices. That's a really shitty situation to be in, but it's unreasonably onerous to expect deep-voiced men to warn everyone in the vicinity (perhaps with a sign) before speaking, especially since there are very few people with that particular trigger. Asking people to give a warning before they intend to discuss rape in detail is not onerous, and it helps a rather larger number of people.
Edit: I'd really like to know why this is getting downvoted.
Note that this is a group of people drawn from 4chan and adjacent communities whose primary socialization is voip and online games, all areas known for a "challenging" discussion environment. The line seems to be, in this case, that one can reasonably expect to carve out a "safe space" among family and friends, but not total strangers.
I need to educate myself. What do people use instead of "slave device" in computing?
That’s a great choice, not only reprinting tons of literature, changing tons of code, but also choosing a Nazi analogy instead!
Every word triggers someone, society can’t be expected to adapt to anyone.
And I’ll continue to use Master/Slave, and continue to support the Sinter Klaas and Zwarte Piet tradition in the Netherlands.
There’s something like other languages, which you translate to for documentation or teaching purposes, which means the German material will either have only this one in english (which leads to everyone immediately realizing why), or just using Führer.
That’s not in any way solving the issue.
For every word, there is a context in which it is offensive. Just stop caring about that, instead of trying to do the impossible for no benefit.
The word "master" was also under fire not too long ago. They replaced it with "head". I'm honestly surprised a certain political group haven't jumped at the opportunity to get "head" replaced due to being too phalic.
[0] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3464182/Harvard-Univ...
Source: I am a professional high-volume database guy doing this stuff since the mid 1990's and still deeply embedded with it now.
There are projects that have chosen other nouns, and they have ridden the wave of publicity around this, but by my estimation* more than 90% of database-related projects still use master/slave.
*as in I haven't done any formal record-keeping, nor will I.
One teacher I know was recently asked by a student not
to use the word “violate” in class—as in “Does this
conduct violate the law?”—because the word was
triggering.
[1] http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/trouble-teaching-rap...
1. What's "reasonable"?
2. Does the meaning of "reasonable" change? (E.g., a criminal-law class vs. a computer science class) To me, this could be redefined as "topic appropriateness".
2. You can't rigorously define the boundaries of context.
With those two axioms, we can conclude that the root of the matter, which protecting the feelings of children who have been catered to their whole lives, is not a path worthy of resource or virtue. These are the same overmedicated people who simulanteously hold the belief they are just specks of dust in the universe while screaming about the importance of their feelings. Too many TED talks, not enough TED debates.
They are of zero consequence when you account for these factors.
> With those two axioms, we can conclude that the root of the matter, which protecting the feelings of children who have been catered to their whole lives, is not a path worthy of resource or virtue.
No, the root of the matter is protecting sexual assault victims with PTSD. Certainly some entitled children have tried to hijack that train for their own petty benefit, but we don't eliminate Medicaid just because Medicaid cheats exist. (Well, most of us don't.)
You're quite right that you can't rigorously define the values of context: something can only work with broad guidelines interpreted on a case-by-case basis. That does not mean that they're completely unaddressable and we shouldn't bother. People are not machines.
To elaborate, we have to talk about the nature of neurons and, specifically, neural plasticity.
Trauma is trauma (regardless of mass media campaigns to favor one type of trauma over another on a monthly basis) and neurons adapt accordingly. (Not always optimally in regards to personal development in an industrial context, mind you) Most importantly, they also heal accordingly. VR/AR experiments show the important of the visual cortex in rewiring the neural systems of paraplegics, allowing them to move their feet. This clearly shows the need of people to experience the world beyond what they have already modeled to be a reality to overcome massive trauma.
If people who have literally endured physical destruction of parts of the spinal column can utilize therapy to reprogram massive regions of the neurology to restore some physical functionality to a previously unrecoverable fate, I'm left with no choice but call into question the entire premise of "the safe space" and what function it is actually serving. (Other than unofficial voter turnout rallies)
Neurons are feisty things and to undermine their amazing abilities by claiming an individual's trauma is beyond neural plasticity is ultimately discrediting the fundamental humanness of the people you are aiming to protect. You are effectively saying "This victim is so broken and so subhuman, not even their neurons work anymore." In essence, you are the one saying people are machines because your altruism has concluded they are incapable of engaging in neural plasticity, and thus, must be denied sensory input via safe spaces to reflect that incapacitation.
Protecting the traumatized from what YOU think they should be protected from ultimately deprives them of the experiences and opportunities that neurons need to adapt to the trauma. No one heals in a jail cell of sensory denial, no matter how well-intentioned the warden. Thus, putting rigid borders on context will always fail, even if you are successful in the feat.
Have a little bit more faith that two billion years of biological evolution knows slightly more about itself than a few hundred thousand Xanga/LiveJournal ex-pats who are spending their 30s in one last angsty hurrah on Tumblr.
I realize this conclusion regarding the necessity of novel and unpredictable experiences to assist in trauma recovery contends against the widespread obsession of pathological altruism; the idea that those who mean well must do anything regardless of efficacy. This explains why Medicaid will always exist, no matter how many ill-willed scammers or high-power lobbyists game the system to their respective favors. Pathological altruism dictates that no cancer can ever be large enough, even as it devours the system whole. This just creates an ecosystem of competing parasites that undermines the legitimacy of that altruism via Poe's Law. Eventually, recruitment drives start to fail as essential outsiders and new blood no longer view your altruism as meaningful. Then it's off to the next monthly flavor of altruism, which is the same as the last one, all made up of the same previous players, but now with slick new branding to attract the freshly unaligned and uninitiated!
We need a trigger warning about trigger warnings.