5 ms·

"Mention of rape" and "discussion of rape in enough detail to cause discomfort" are not the same thing.

by zyxley 10y ago

mikeash 10y ago
I'm sure we can find someone who is uncomfortable at the mere mention of the word. Not that we should necessarily accommodate such extremes, but how do you decide where to draw the line?
- qntty 10y ago
  You guess and invite people to correct you if you're wrong? How is anything that requires judgement decided? Eventually there will be an accepted norm but at the beginning there never is.
  - deong 10y ago
    That's a nice solution if everything is more or less working properly. The problem is, "What do you do when they tell you you're wrong about everything?" 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".
- jpfed 10y ago
  If we try to have a culture that considers trigger warnings a courtesy worth extending, rather than having a policy saying yes/no, then the question of where the line should be drawn can be answered by each instructor as they see fit. 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.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- PhasmaFelis 10y ago
  You work together to find a reasonable balance between accommodating the most common and severe trauma triggers without shutting down general discussion. 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.
- ItsDeathball 10y ago
  I actually know someone who just shuts down and freezes for a few minutes at the mere mention of the word "rape". This person has made their discomfort known to their friends and requested the word be avoided in conversation, which is an easy enough request to comply with out of courtesy. 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.
coddingtonbear 10y ago
That might be true, but there are a variety of cases where we've decided to stop using a word in general in order to avoid causing undue distress; "slave" (i/r/t "master" and "slave") in a computing context is now generally always phrased in another way, for example.
- masterleep 10y ago
  That's the kind of absurd oversensitivity that opponents of trigger warnings are against.
- warkdarrior 10y ago
  > "slave" (i/r/t "master" and "slave") in a computing context is now generally always phrased in another way, for example I need to educate myself. What do people use instead of "slave device" in computing?
  - dri_ft 10y ago
    "Servant". I prefer "slave".
  - barsonme 10y ago
    The projects I've seen have gone with "leader/follower" https://github.com/django/django/commit/8a95b4fca793eeb8adceffe697b55214509019eb https://github.com/django/django/commit/8a95b4fca793eeb8adce...
    - kuschku 10y ago
      So, the solution is to literally use Führer instead of Master? 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.
      - 10y ago

"Mention of rape" and "discussion of rape in enough detail to cause discomfort" are not the same thing.

by zyxley 10y ago

"Mention of rape" and "discussion of rape in enough detail to cause discomfort" are not the same thing.

I'm sure we can find someone who is uncomfortable at the mere mention of the word. Not that we should necessarily accommodate such extremes, but how do you decide where to draw the line?

qntty 10y ago
You guess and invite people to correct you if you're wrong? How is anything that requires judgement decided? Eventually there will be an accepted norm but at the beginning there never is.
- deong 10y ago
  That's a nice solution if everything is more or less working properly. The problem is, "What do you do when they tell you you're wrong about everything?" 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".
jpfed 10y ago
If we try to have a culture that considers trigger warnings a courtesy worth extending, rather than having a policy saying yes/no, then the question of where the line should be drawn can be answered by each instructor as they see fit. 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.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
PhasmaFelis 10y ago
You work together to find a reasonable balance between accommodating the most common and severe trauma triggers without shutting down general discussion. 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.
ItsDeathball 10y ago
I actually know someone who just shuts down and freezes for a few minutes at the mere mention of the word "rape". This person has made their discomfort known to their friends and requested the word be avoided in conversation, which is an easy enough request to comply with out of courtesy. 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.

coddingtonbear 10y ago

That might be true, but there are a variety of cases where we've decided to stop using a word in general in order to avoid causing undue distress; "slave" (i/r/t "master" and "slave") in a computing context is now generally always phrased in another way, for example.

masterleep 10y ago
That's the kind of absurd oversensitivity that opponents of trigger warnings are against.
warkdarrior 10y ago
> "slave" (i/r/t "master" and "slave") in a computing context is now generally always phrased in another way, for example I need to educate myself. What do people use instead of "slave device" in computing?
- dri_ft 10y ago
  "Servant". I prefer "slave".
- barsonme 10y ago
  The projects I've seen have gone with "leader/follower" https://github.com/django/django/commit/8a95b4fca793eeb8adceffe697b55214509019eb https://github.com/django/django/commit/8a95b4fca793eeb8adce...
  - kuschku 10y ago
    So, the solution is to literally use Führer instead of Master? 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.
    - 10y ago