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To clarify, I didn't mean to disagree with you about the severity or suffering of PTSD patients. > PTSD is not Tumblr-fairy disease; it's the thing you get fro

To clarify, I didn't mean to disagree with you about the severity or suffering of PTSD patients. > PTSD is not Tumblr-fairy disease; it's the thing you get from being interned in a POW camp or locked in someone's sex dungeon for months/years. People do have a right to avoid reliving that sort of experience. It doesn't even take something that severe, I have a friend who was working at a convenience store at the time when he got PTSD after going through two robberies in two nights, both times from people he knew. My understanding is that PTSD is triggered by episodes of severe, debilitating stress. PTSD sufferers deserve the freedom of not reliving those episodes, and there are treatments available to help them. They don't have to avoid going to university altogether, they don't even have to wait until they're better thanks to the many online education options available these days. > But making an allowance for rape survivors to leave the room when there's going to be a live screening of Salò isn't all that hard, is it? Perhaps there was a miscommunication, but I agree with you on that. That's what I meant in my previous comment when I said 'if you don't like what someone is saying, walk away'.

derefr 11y ago
> That's what I meant in my previous comment when I said 'if you don't like what someone is saying, walk away'. Ah. See, I figured that with something like a graduation speech, 'just walking away' might be a bit fraught: - First, you won't know what the content is until you're already there and hearing the things that could be PTSD-triggering, and by that point you already might be mentally "gone" and unable to escape; it would be preferrable to catch such things before then, which is what all that "Trigger Warning: pictures of torture" stuff is about; - And second, things like grad speeches are usually put on loudspeakers and carried along across the internal campus PA and video-channel to PA speakers and TVs in various places, etc. It's hard to get away from such a thing, even when warned that it will contain something that might trigger your condition, especially if your life is effectively isolated to the campus (you live in the dorms, etc.) It was under those two requirements that I saw the idea of a "safe space" as being possibly useful: it gives such people a place to go where they know the content won't follow them. Under any other conditions, it's a horrible idea. :)
- ams6110 11y ago
  Are we not really reaching here with the graduation speech examples? Every graduation speech I've heard has been little more than encouraging platitudes. Hardly likely to trigger PTSD. When was the last time graphic torture or rape was recounted in a graduation speech?
  - derefr 11y ago
    I guess I am reaching. But like I said, I'm looking for a "steelman argument"[1] in favor of the idea of a "safe zone"—a worst-case one-off emergency scenario where it might be warranted to have one. If we can agree that it's warranted in that case, then it becomes a matter of agreeing exactly when it becomes unwarranted—which is a much more fact-based debate to have than one where one side just shouts "Freedom of Speech!" and the other side just shouts "Freedom from Persecution!" and neither side believes the other's bullshit one iota. [1] http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Steel_man http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Steel_man (Also, I think this is the most I've ever been downvoted for speaking in the classical hacker-vulnerability-probing "but what if a tornado of Hitlers hit the school?" style on HN. I'm not even using any inflammatory language or anything, whereas all the replies to me are acting as if I was some social-justice type spouting off about "my right to not hear some white cis male talk about the time he went to Vegas" or somesuch. It's interesting; is this one of those "if you try to take an orthogonal position then you're supporting neither side, so both sides see you as supporting their opponent and hate you" effects?)
    - angersock 11y ago
      We see what you're trying to do--the problem is that the general "think of the one terrible case" has been tarnished rather heavily in the last decades by people talking about "well, what if it stopped 9/11", or "well, what if it stopped the OKC bombing" and so on and so forth. The idea of "well, in this one specific extraordinary case it's totally reasonable" is kinda played out among anyone with half a brain, because it's been used to justify so much bullshit. Also, the entire dichotomy of warranted/unwarranted is suspect, but that's a different rabbit hole altogether.
    - 11y ago

derefr 11y ago

> That's what I meant in my previous comment when I said 'if you don't like what someone is saying, walk away'. Ah. See, I figured that with something like a graduation speech, 'just walking away' might be a bit fraught: - First, you won't know what the content is until you're already there and hearing the things that could be PTSD-triggering, and by that point you already might be mentally "gone" and unable to escape; it would be preferrable to catch such things before then, which is what all that "Trigger Warning: pictures of torture" stuff is about; - And second, things like grad speeches are usually put on loudspeakers and carried along across the internal campus PA and video-channel to PA speakers and TVs in various places, etc. It's hard to get away from such a thing, even when warned that it will contain something that might trigger your condition, especially if your life is effectively isolated to the campus (you live in the dorms, etc.) It was under those two requirements that I saw the idea of a "safe space" as being possibly useful: it gives such people a place to go where they know the content won't follow them. Under any other conditions, it's a horrible idea. :)

ams6110 11y ago
Are we not really reaching here with the graduation speech examples? Every graduation speech I've heard has been little more than encouraging platitudes. Hardly likely to trigger PTSD. When was the last time graphic torture or rape was recounted in a graduation speech?
- derefr 11y ago
  I guess I am reaching. But like I said, I'm looking for a "steelman argument"[1] in favor of the idea of a "safe zone"—a worst-case one-off emergency scenario where it might be warranted to have one. If we can agree that it's warranted in that case, then it becomes a matter of agreeing exactly when it becomes unwarranted—which is a much more fact-based debate to have than one where one side just shouts "Freedom of Speech!" and the other side just shouts "Freedom from Persecution!" and neither side believes the other's bullshit one iota. [1] http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Steel_man http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Steel_man (Also, I think this is the most I've ever been downvoted for speaking in the classical hacker-vulnerability-probing "but what if a tornado of Hitlers hit the school?" style on HN. I'm not even using any inflammatory language or anything, whereas all the replies to me are acting as if I was some social-justice type spouting off about "my right to not hear some white cis male talk about the time he went to Vegas" or somesuch. It's interesting; is this one of those "if you try to take an orthogonal position then you're supporting neither side, so both sides see you as supporting their opponent and hate you" effects?)
  - angersock 11y ago
    We see what you're trying to do--the problem is that the general "think of the one terrible case" has been tarnished rather heavily in the last decades by people talking about "well, what if it stopped 9/11", or "well, what if it stopped the OKC bombing" and so on and so forth. The idea of "well, in this one specific extraordinary case it's totally reasonable" is kinda played out among anyone with half a brain, because it's been used to justify so much bullshit. Also, the entire dichotomy of warranted/unwarranted is suspect, but that's a different rabbit hole altogether.
  - 11y ago