Safe spaces are an expression of the conviction, increasingly prevalent among college students, that their schools should keep them from being “bombarded” by discomfiting or distressing viewpoints. But the notion that ticklish conversations must be scrubbed clean of controversy has a way of leaking out and spreading. Once you designate some spaces as safe, you imply that the rest are unsafe. It follows that they should be made safer.
Hahahaha, you can't make this stuff up. It must hurt to have that much common sense while being surrounded by special snowflakes. I don't envy him. Feminism: it's totally not about hating men, guys. Today we also learned that two men having a debate on abortion are a "physical and mental" threat to the safety of students.At one point she went to the lecture hall — it was packed — but after a while, she had to return to the safe space. “I was feeling bombarded by a lot of viewpoints that really go against my dearly and closely held beliefs,” Ms. Hall said.
“I don’t see how you can have a therapeutic space that’s also an intellectual space,” he said.
At Oxford University’s Christ Church college in November, the college censors (a “censor” being more or less the Oxford equivalent of an undergraduate dean) canceled a debate on abortion after campus feminists threatened to disrupt it because both would-be debaters were men. “I’m relieved the censors have made this decision,” said the treasurer of Christ Church’s student union, who had pressed for the cancellation. “It clearly makes the most sense for the safety — both physical and mental — of the students who live and work in Christ Church.”
I'd hesitate to use the term 'feminism' in such a way. By the Webster's definition: : organized activity in support of women's rights and interests I share the former, and might partake in various forms of the latter. I have a daughter. Disagreeable activities conducted by some that consider themselves to be feminists shouldn't reflect upon all that hold the belief that equal rights and opportunities between the sexes is a goal worth striving for. 'Feminism' is a broad term with a noble goal. Not all feminists are noble, and not all actions by feminists work towards the same ends.: the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities
The problem with believing in feminism, the ideal, is simply that the actual product of the movement's efforts have only led to female empowerment. And while female empowerment, especially back when females were anything but empowered, is a noble goal to strive for, the actual results have led to an increasing breakdown in intersexual relations. With the rise of third wave feminism, the focus has shifted from a focus on gender equality to a focus on victimization and sensationalized dissection of toxicity in culture. Most feminist rhetoric nowadays focuses on a pointless tirade against potential misogyny that exists within what they claim to be every facet of media today. What you see out of it is exactly what this article describes: people become too afraid to face anything that is objectionable to them, and they feel that, in the name of safety for victims and the oppressed, this speech should be demonized and suppressed.
The dictionary fallacy. What matters is not what the "official" definition of feminism is, but what feminism actually is; and in the real world, feminists hate men. Therefore, feminism is a hate movement. I'll change my mind when feminists stop trying to hurt men and start helping them (but they'll never do that, because their whole philosophy can be reduced to "men are the problem").
That's not my personal experience with feminists. It is a fallacy to apply a definition over evidence, but that's not what I am suggesting. I am suggesting that in order to speak of a group in a meaningful way, you need to define that group in some manner. It is also fallacy to generalize your own experience as a definition, especially when it runs counter to that of others. I can imagine that you have had a certain kind of experience with feminists, but your experience is different than my own. To me, it's not surprising. Every 'ism' that is widely practiced and espoused is muti-faceted and has contradictory elements. It's human nature.
Isn't that how life's supposed to work, though? Aren't we supposed to take things we see and hear, feel somehow, and use them to shape our personal worldview? If you hear something that you find offensive for whatever reason, you, as a discerning human being, can label it as something you disagree with and strive to conduct yourself by your own standards or morals or whatever you want to call them. Just like with allergies or your immune system, the more you are exposed to conflicting ideas, the more you can protect your sensibilities from them, but, more importantly, you can use them to solidify your own ideas. By "protecting" people from being offended, universities and educators are doing the exact opposite of their jobs (these are college kids, for God's sake; they're supposed to be learning about the world, not being protected from everything outside their pillows, cookies, and Play-Doh). Life is struggle, and if these people aren't allowed to experience discomfort and confrontation, how can they hope to survive in the real world?Feminist and anti-racist legal scholars argued that the First Amendment should not safeguard language that inflicted emotional injury through racist or sexist stigmatization. One scholar, Mari J. Matsuda, was particularly insistent that college students not be subjected to “the violence of the word” because many of them “are away from home for the first time and at a vulnerable stage of psychological development.” If they’re targeted and the university does nothing to help them, they will be “left to their own resources in coping with the damage wrought.” That might have, she wrote, “lifelong repercussions.”
These are problems of privilege. Most of the world can only dream of such consideration of their individual humanity. We do a disservice to all that are less privileged than we to put our sensibilities on such a pedestal. People have a powerful ability to scrutinize and learn from adversity and pain. Our ability to hope, heal, communicate, and love in the face of ugliness and violence is what leads to less ugliness and violence. Willful aversion and ignorance creates 'safe places' for a few at the expense of many.