11 ms·

There's a lot to unpack in this phenomenon. The most interesting question is - why now? I think that safe spaces / micro-aggressions may come from the perfect

There's a lot to unpack in this phenomenon. The most interesting question is - why now? 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. I don't want to appeal to gender stereotypes but I remember seeing some research that indicated that while boys in a playground situation were more physically aggressive and directly confrontational during disagreements with each other, girls tended to have higher incidence of shunning and social exclusion - emotional/relational aggression. Maybe we shouldn't be surprised to see safe spaces / micro-aggressions as a strategy to shut down unpleasant situations (ideas) rather than confronting them as ideas. These strategies are essentially forms of shunning and avoidance. Regardless of how one feels about the veracity of these gender stereotypes and how they apply to the sexes, the strategies are real and they are a significant difference from what we've historically had as cultural values in the US and UK: "we're all strong enough for dissent, it's about more than our feelings."

tgb 11y ago
> The number of male teachers has dwindled rapidly over the decades. Citation? World Bank disagrees with you but has only data going back to 1996 (then: 86% female, now: 87% female). http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.PRM.TCHR.FE.ZS/countries/1W-US?display=default http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.PRM.TCHR.FE.ZS/countr... You know who has the highest percentages of teachers being female? Eastern Europe, Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and that region. Just for a point of comparison.
- golemotron 11y ago
  You have to go back further: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/sunday-review/why-dont-more-men-go-into-teaching.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/sunday-review/why-dont-mor...
  - tgb 11y ago
    That article is highly non-specific about trends over time. I found some more specific numbers for Ireland: http://www.irishtimes.com/news/education/the-gender-gap-in-education-at-its-widest-for-50-years-1.1771782 http://www.irishtimes.com/news/education/the-gender-gap-in-e... 1961: 63% female, 2011: 74% female Clearly the trend that you claim, but hardly a staggering rate of change. Meanwhile, my searches still turn up articles complaining that school administration is male-dominant. I'll be frank: I don't think you have anywhere near enough evidence to make the claims (about causes) you're making.
maehwasu 11y ago
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.
- golemotron 11y ago
  Unless people feel start to feel comfortable calling it out as manipulation: "you want to be treated like and adult? Act like an adult." I hope the inevitable backlash takes this form.
  - doubles 11y ago
    The backlash will likely take this form. Then there will be two polar ends of the spectrum and it will turn into another "A vs B" with both ideologies slowly pushing to the extremes. Meanwhile the majority of us will be somewhere in the middle begging for nuance in the discussions and some level of compromise as the loudest voices dominate the conversation.
    - LoSboccacc 11y ago
      it's already happening in some form already in the memenet: https://i.imgur.com/Lo40E5D.png https://i.imgur.com/Lo40E5D.png the problem is mixed in there there are reactionaries which took the opposite extreme stance and are poisoning the ground for constructive criticism
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- RodericDay 11y ago
  This is actually exactly it. It's a power-play. 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.
cs2818 11y ago
The best explanations I've found seem to include "a culture of victimhood" rising in popularity [0]. Though my sociologist friends probably wouldn't agree. [0] http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/15691330-12341332 http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10....
SolaceQuantum 11y ago
>Maybe we shouldn't be surprised to see safe spaces / micro-aggressions as a strategy to shut down unpleasant situations (ideas) rather than confronting them as ideas Is it not confronting to refuse it in your presence because you find the behavior unacceptable? What would you prefer the confrontation to be like? I don't agree with the extreme measures often taken by university kids but I also think criticism of it should be accurate to its state. That is, it is a form of confronting the idea of a social issue by creating a space where certain behaviors are unacceptable to facilitate more productive conversation without someone's ignorance shouting it down, taken too far with too many subjects because it's practiced mostly among young college kids who are really not experienced at all.
- golemotron 11y ago
  Except these strategies are not really about behaviors in many cases, they are about ideas. There have been a number of cases of safe spaces being set up as alternatives for on-campus events where 'unpleasant' ideas are discussed. University professors routinely have to censor material that is 'triggering' merely because of the ideas it presents.
  - SolaceQuantum 11y ago
    > University professors routinely have to censor material that is 'triggering' merely because of the ideas it presents. Source? Is there a wide academic study on this? I know current college kids who sre studying genocide in literature class and rape in societal context. Most of the studies academia has on rape and microagression and so on are from professors on college campuses who presumably teach similar stuff. I find it highly improbable that this safe space issue in universities just sprung out of an aether of the internet into unsuspecting professors. Especially when, as I understand it, it started in universities. To be fair, these are also young adults floundering about with these new ideas. Presumably there's always been kids who complained about the professor in one way or another. Is the 'too hard' criticism of the modern ratemyprofessor.com any different than another young person complaining about a useless perceived microaggression? They're both probably going to be ignored in the greater context of things.
danieltillett 11y ago
You don’t need anything complex here. Humans will optimise whatever is rewarded.
mgbmtl 11y ago
Well, the initial article speaks about an incident in a university, and it's not surprising that "safe spaces" would be popular there. University councils are infamous for being dominated by old white men who are used to shout in meetings. People will find a balance eventually, but having this old white guy telling people to "grow up" really isn't helping.
- golemotron 11y ago
  Funny. Against any other demographic this would be seen as an ageist, racist, and sexist comment. Do you feel good about it?
  - mgbmtl 11y ago
    I'm an old white man.. and it's punching up, not punching down.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
      And you, sir, are becoming the problem you're complaining about. Don't kid yourself that it's fine for you to do because of the targets you're choosing.
      - mgbmtl 11y ago
        It is far from being a level playing field. The message varies greatly depending on the sender, receiver and context, right? I think it's quite OK to call out your fellow stereotype when they're being dicks. And while we're at it, since this thread is going down into "this is reverse racism": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw_mRaIHb-M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw_mRaIHb-M
        AnimalMuppet 11y ago
tveita 11y ago
> I don't want to appeal to gender stereotypes That's what you seem to be doing, though. By that logic, if we had increased the number of male teachers people would be breaking out in violent fights instead?
- erroneousfunk 11y ago
  Well, crime's gone down since the 80's, so maybe he has a point! I'm joking of course, but I think OP's point is similarly ridiculous.
lucio 11y ago
http://www.fredoneverything.net/Feminization.shtml http://www.fredoneverything.net/Feminization.shtml
- onnoonno 11y ago
  Thanks for the interesting read.
mseebach 11y ago
> 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'], I think that's making the phenomenon a bit more rational than it is. Growing up in american middle-class suburbs in the 90s is easily the safest childhood any child every had. I think a big factor is that the baby-boomers in the west was the first generation that were able to focus on individualism and self realisation in a first-class way, and in passing that excitement on to their children, they created a generation of parents who perhaps over-indexed on those values. When everybody is a unique snowflake, the "everybody else is doing it, it's probably going to be fine" approach to decision making get tempered in favour of "oh, maybe that's how my parents approached things and I almost fell out of a tree that one time, and they could have done more to make me practise the violin, but luckily I'm very smart and I have read a lot of books and I took a lot of classes and my child is very special and unique and so I need to work out, from first principles and with great care, exactly under which circumstances going bicycling in the street will aid the specific, carefully laid out plan I have for my child" -- and that's where you end up over-indexing on the dangers and rationalising over-protection, and you remove the mechanisms by which kids learn to make decisions and mistakes for themselves.
acjohnson55 11y ago
> I don't want to appeal to gender stereotypes [...] ...a whole bunch of prose appealing to gender stereotypes. If society is, in fact, "feminizing", it's a far safer place for the vast majority of humans than it was before. And out of that safety come a whole bunch of voices that weren't traditionally given much credence. To the extent that this is a phenomenon that is spilling outward from the US, I think it's simply the fact that a lot of people have platforms that never did before. The discourse is becoming a lot more complex because of it. It's old white men like Stephen Fry that have to grow up and get used to it. Welcome to the great democratization of speech. Let's face it, it's been a white man's world for a long time, where the cultural discourse has centered around the tastes of the dominant viewpoint, regardless of the fact that it might not actually be particularly empowering to people who have identities that are increasingly divergent (and yes, I realize that Fry is no stranger to this). The appeal to Shakespeare rings a bit hollow from that perspective. Shakespeare's great, don't get me wrong, but I don't think it's beyond criticism to say that maybe the elevation of his works and their themes hasn't exactly been democratic. In case you're wondering, I don't advocate for a society that attempts to shelter people. It's fine to push back and say, "no, we're a place where even unpopular, hurtful people are allowed to speak" and "no, we're a place where we're going to deal with tough issues head on". But that's an argument that isn't won in perpetuity, it has to be continually negotiated. And I'm more than a bit amused to see people squirm when confronted with the reality that they now have to negotiate with people whose viewpoints have traditionally been given little to no credence.
- bpchaps 11y ago
  Stephen Fry has bipolar and is very aware of what it means to be "triggered" and the incredibly adverse effects it can have an effect on his well being. Being called something bad or offended isn't always black and white. I'm sure this isn't just as simple as him telling others to "Deal with it." My guess is that it's closer to "Guys, it's really not as bad as you think it is if you just expose yourself to things that offend you!" Source: I have it too, and find the SJW/triggering crowd to be absolutely painful to listen to, especially considering they're usually the crowd that tends to call those with bipolar, "crazy". ;)
- golemotron 11y ago

tgb 11y ago

> The number of male teachers has dwindled rapidly over the decades. Citation? World Bank disagrees with you but has only data going back to 1996 (then: 86% female, now: 87% female). http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.PRM.TCHR.FE.ZS/countries/1W-US?display=default http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.PRM.TCHR.FE.ZS/countr... You know who has the highest percentages of teachers being female? Eastern Europe, Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and that region. Just for a point of comparison.

golemotron 11y ago
You have to go back further: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/sunday-review/why-dont-more-men-go-into-teaching.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/sunday-review/why-dont-mor...
- tgb 11y ago
  That article is highly non-specific about trends over time. I found some more specific numbers for Ireland: http://www.irishtimes.com/news/education/the-gender-gap-in-education-at-its-widest-for-50-years-1.1771782 http://www.irishtimes.com/news/education/the-gender-gap-in-e... 1961: 63% female, 2011: 74% female Clearly the trend that you claim, but hardly a staggering rate of change. Meanwhile, my searches still turn up articles complaining that school administration is male-dominant. I'll be frank: I don't think you have anywhere near enough evidence to make the claims (about causes) you're making.

maehwasu 11y ago

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.

golemotron 11y ago
Unless people feel start to feel comfortable calling it out as manipulation: "you want to be treated like and adult? Act like an adult." I hope the inevitable backlash takes this form.
- doubles 11y ago
  The backlash will likely take this form. Then there will be two polar ends of the spectrum and it will turn into another "A vs B" with both ideologies slowly pushing to the extremes. Meanwhile the majority of us will be somewhere in the middle begging for nuance in the discussions and some level of compromise as the loudest voices dominate the conversation.
  - LoSboccacc 11y ago
    it's already happening in some form already in the memenet: https://i.imgur.com/Lo40E5D.png https://i.imgur.com/Lo40E5D.png the problem is mixed in there there are reactionaries which took the opposite extreme stance and are poisoning the ground for constructive criticism
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
RodericDay 11y ago
This is actually exactly it. It's a power-play. 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.

cs2818 11y ago

The best explanations I've found seem to include "a culture of victimhood" rising in popularity [0]. Though my sociologist friends probably wouldn't agree. [0] http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/15691330-12341332 http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10....

SolaceQuantum 11y ago

>Maybe we shouldn't be surprised to see safe spaces / micro-aggressions as a strategy to shut down unpleasant situations (ideas) rather than confronting them as ideas Is it not confronting to refuse it in your presence because you find the behavior unacceptable? What would you prefer the confrontation to be like? I don't agree with the extreme measures often taken by university kids but I also think criticism of it should be accurate to its state. That is, it is a form of confronting the idea of a social issue by creating a space where certain behaviors are unacceptable to facilitate more productive conversation without someone's ignorance shouting it down, taken too far with too many subjects because it's practiced mostly among young college kids who are really not experienced at all.

golemotron 11y ago
Except these strategies are not really about behaviors in many cases, they are about ideas. There have been a number of cases of safe spaces being set up as alternatives for on-campus events where 'unpleasant' ideas are discussed. University professors routinely have to censor material that is 'triggering' merely because of the ideas it presents.
- SolaceQuantum 11y ago
  > University professors routinely have to censor material that is 'triggering' merely because of the ideas it presents. Source? Is there a wide academic study on this? I know current college kids who sre studying genocide in literature class and rape in societal context. Most of the studies academia has on rape and microagression and so on are from professors on college campuses who presumably teach similar stuff. I find it highly improbable that this safe space issue in universities just sprung out of an aether of the internet into unsuspecting professors. Especially when, as I understand it, it started in universities. To be fair, these are also young adults floundering about with these new ideas. Presumably there's always been kids who complained about the professor in one way or another. Is the 'too hard' criticism of the modern ratemyprofessor.com any different than another young person complaining about a useless perceived microaggression? They're both probably going to be ignored in the greater context of things.

danieltillett 11y ago

You don’t need anything complex here. Humans will optimise whatever is rewarded.

mgbmtl 11y ago

Well, the initial article speaks about an incident in a university, and it's not surprising that "safe spaces" would be popular there. University councils are infamous for being dominated by old white men who are used to shout in meetings. People will find a balance eventually, but having this old white guy telling people to "grow up" really isn't helping.

golemotron 11y ago
Funny. Against any other demographic this would be seen as an ageist, racist, and sexist comment. Do you feel good about it?
- mgbmtl 11y ago
  I'm an old white man.. and it's punching up, not punching down.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
    And you, sir, are becoming the problem you're complaining about. Don't kid yourself that it's fine for you to do because of the targets you're choosing.
    - mgbmtl 11y ago
      It is far from being a level playing field. The message varies greatly depending on the sender, receiver and context, right? I think it's quite OK to call out your fellow stereotype when they're being dicks. And while we're at it, since this thread is going down into "this is reverse racism": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw_mRaIHb-M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw_mRaIHb-M
      - AnimalMuppet 11y ago

tveita 11y ago

> I don't want to appeal to gender stereotypes That's what you seem to be doing, though. By that logic, if we had increased the number of male teachers people would be breaking out in violent fights instead?

erroneousfunk 11y ago
Well, crime's gone down since the 80's, so maybe he has a point! I'm joking of course, but I think OP's point is similarly ridiculous.

lucio 11y ago

http://www.fredoneverything.net/Feminization.shtml http://www.fredoneverything.net/Feminization.shtml

onnoonno 11y ago
Thanks for the interesting read.

mseebach 11y ago

> 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'], I think that's making the phenomenon a bit more rational than it is. Growing up in american middle-class suburbs in the 90s is easily the safest childhood any child every had. I think a big factor is that the baby-boomers in the west was the first generation that were able to focus on individualism and self realisation in a first-class way, and in passing that excitement on to their children, they created a generation of parents who perhaps over-indexed on those values. When everybody is a unique snowflake, the "everybody else is doing it, it's probably going to be fine" approach to decision making get tempered in favour of "oh, maybe that's how my parents approached things and I almost fell out of a tree that one time, and they could have done more to make me practise the violin, but luckily I'm very smart and I have read a lot of books and I took a lot of classes and my child is very special and unique and so I need to work out, from first principles and with great care, exactly under which circumstances going bicycling in the street will aid the specific, carefully laid out plan I have for my child" -- and that's where you end up over-indexing on the dangers and rationalising over-protection, and you remove the mechanisms by which kids learn to make decisions and mistakes for themselves.

acjohnson55 11y ago

> I don't want to appeal to gender stereotypes [...] ...a whole bunch of prose appealing to gender stereotypes. If society is, in fact, "feminizing", it's a far safer place for the vast majority of humans than it was before. And out of that safety come a whole bunch of voices that weren't traditionally given much credence. To the extent that this is a phenomenon that is spilling outward from the US, I think it's simply the fact that a lot of people have platforms that never did before. The discourse is becoming a lot more complex because of it. It's old white men like Stephen Fry that have to grow up and get used to it. Welcome to the great democratization of speech. Let's face it, it's been a white man's world for a long time, where the cultural discourse has centered around the tastes of the dominant viewpoint, regardless of the fact that it might not actually be particularly empowering to people who have identities that are increasingly divergent (and yes, I realize that Fry is no stranger to this). The appeal to Shakespeare rings a bit hollow from that perspective. Shakespeare's great, don't get me wrong, but I don't think it's beyond criticism to say that maybe the elevation of his works and their themes hasn't exactly been democratic. In case you're wondering, I don't advocate for a society that attempts to shelter people. It's fine to push back and say, "no, we're a place where even unpopular, hurtful people are allowed to speak" and "no, we're a place where we're going to deal with tough issues head on". But that's an argument that isn't won in perpetuity, it has to be continually negotiated. And I'm more than a bit amused to see people squirm when confronted with the reality that they now have to negotiate with people whose viewpoints have traditionally been given little to no credence.

bpchaps 11y ago
Stephen Fry has bipolar and is very aware of what it means to be "triggered" and the incredibly adverse effects it can have an effect on his well being. Being called something bad or offended isn't always black and white. I'm sure this isn't just as simple as him telling others to "Deal with it." My guess is that it's closer to "Guys, it's really not as bad as you think it is if you just expose yourself to things that offend you!" Source: I have it too, and find the SJW/triggering crowd to be absolutely painful to listen to, especially considering they're usually the crowd that tends to call those with bipolar, "crazy". ;)
golemotron 11y ago