Have you been a teenager any time in the last century or so? It’s hard enough without having to deal with people who explicitly set out to make your life miserable.
Harassment is a form of violence.
You’re right. It shouldn’t just be for newly minted college students.
All humans, everywhere, should have an expectation of that kind of protection.
And they’re all assholes too.
I think satire is about punching up, not down. Displaying “police lives matter” stickers in a multicultural space isn’t satire, it’s being a jerk.
As you say, this is not the first generation to have had to face adversity growing up. But they sure do act like they are and I blame overprotective parents and institutions.
There is far less harassment now than when I was growing up.
No, they shouldn’t. Short of discrimination and violence, people need to learn they can expect no protection from opinions or ideas they find offensive.
I bet they’d defend your right to say so without seeking a safe space from your freedom of expression of opinion.
I think satire is what’s funny and that’s not going to be the same for everyone. Sometimes the joke is not for you.
The fact that young people have been subject to cruelty and harassment in the past does not justify it in the present. “I had to suffer, therefore the next generation should be able to handle it” < “I had to suffer so the next generation wouldn’t have to”.
I could do without their “defense”, thank you very much.
I never claimed it’s justified and the current generation is already better off than the previous one, as those before it. The expectation that they are entitled to a “safe space” is what’s problematic.
No. You couldn’t. Not if you spend any time thinking about it.
Really? You think it’s “problematic” that people should want access to a shared space where they can unwind, be themselves, and relax without having to deal with assholes who think they should be dead or in jail, and seek them out whenever they venture out of their homes for the express purpose of making them miserable? How the hell does it hurt you or anyone else if people can have a place where they don’t have to deal with the kind of people who’d get banned from this board within 24 hours of joining?
“Man up” isn’t an acceptable response when you’re dealing with a coordinated harassment campaign, and “just stay in your bubble” isn’t an acceptable response when you live in a society.
I need Bill Maher and Ricky Gervais standing up for free speech about as much as I need Adolf Hitler standing up for animal rights and efficient mass transport.
As you say, I went to college and I spent time with people completely unlike me in almost every way. Somehow we all managed to come together and exchange thoughts and ideas without needing safe spaces for self-expression. There is an understanding among most functioning adults when you are among friends and when you are not. You adjust your expectations accordingly. You don’t insist on adjusting your surroundings to meet your expectations.
Exactly this. Caucasian isn’t an ethnicity, it’s a category that exists for purposes of conferring privilege. Irish and Bulgarian people are both coded “white” though they have no ethnic commonality.
If you find yourself about to counter with “Irish and Bulgarian weren’t always considered white,” ask yourself if you can really say that there’s any meaning to a category that’s so recent fluid. Ask yourself how those ethnicities came to be considered “white”.
Then surely you learned that there’s some people who there’s just no “coming together” with. How do you “come together” with someone whose worldview is “your lifestyle is an abomination and you should be executed for it” or “you’re a filthy [INSERT_ETHNIC_SLUR_HERE] who’s trying to invade our country, rape our women, and wipe us out”? You don’t. The only proper way to deal with those people in a public setting is to exclude them.
And that’s exactly the kind of “safe space” that these young people are asking for - a place where they’re not expected to “come together” with people who literally want to kill them.
This is very personal to me in a way that you probably don’t appreciate. But I won’t be invited to their house for tea nor would I extend the invitation to them. I’m not forced to associate with these assholes. No one is.
And to the extent that Antifa is an effective way to stand against these assholes, I would (and have in my youth) stood against them.
Then perhaps you could appreciate certain people’s desire for a space that is safe from “these assholes”?
Just posting that video, and having to look at it in order for search for it, makes me sick, but it betrays a special kind of naivete to say that “This is not a thing in the first world, the US in particular”, when these kind of movements exist, have been as open and out-loud as we see here, and have made use of new media in unprecedented ways to target people with harassment campaigns that can and do lead to violence and suicide.
I do not. In fact, I encourage people to face situations that require a certain amount of discomfort in order to understand this is not a problem you can solve through “safe space”.
Perhaps if you are a person who is always spoiling for a fight and like being attacked, this doesn’t make sense. And I’m sure there are people from marginalized communities who want to fight the good fight every single moment from when they open their eyes to when their head hits the pillow.
But for some, they’d just like to eat their damn Froot Loops in peace, without the side of racism/transphobia/sexism/homophobia/etc. To be able to study for a physics test in the lounge for an hour between classes without the people next to you calling you an abomination and debating how you’re not as fully human as they are. Safe spaces mean that people can be as deplorable as they want everywhere else on campus, except for tiny little pockets of respite.
In the “real world,” you can go home and shut it all out, if you want. In a residential college - if you lose the roommate lotto, the only time you’re guaranteed of not being in a hostile environment is when you’re asleep.
I don’t think you quite grasp the way “these assholes” have turned the internet into a 24-hour hate machine. Back in the day, you could “face situations that require a certain amount of discomfort” with the knowledge that at the end of the day you could go home, turn off the lights, and be safe in that space. (And if your safe space at home is a shared dorm, you don’t even have that luxury.)
The world doesn’t work that way anymore, and nobody deserves to be subjected to constant harassment in a world where it’s not possible to fully unplug.
You have no idea of the kind of society in which I was born and spent my early formative years. My ideas are not based on some sort of naive or idyllic privilege.
That’s a heck of a comparison and sadly not unexpected. Such a leap is pretty much a clear admission that you can’t back up your points. Maher and Gervais have absolutely nothing in common with Corporal Hitler. Not politically, not ethically, not morally. They are two people who would defend your right to hold and express the opinions that you have and two people who are very much in the classic mould of “liberalism” as I understand it.
Such liberalism is an ideal of course, do they always match up to that ideal? I bet not. However, I think I’m comfortable with such people trying to do so with the occasional fail along the way.
The alternative of ideological certainly doesn’t bear thinking about.
That seems hyperbolic in the extreme. By far the most common understanding of university “safe spaces” is not protection from a physical threat (that the law already covers and everyone would back) but an ideological one. i.e. the concept that it is preferable to avoid coming into contact with people that you disagree with. I think that is a terrible idea and particularly so for people of university age. A clash of ideas and viewpoints should be encouraged, not avoided.
