Political Correctness

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Yale Safe Zones. Thoughts?

[Excited Penguin]

This fucking thing will be the end of us. Mind my words.

[Homeless Nutter]

Yale Safe Zones. Thoughts?

What are those? Is it the same as "Safe Spaces"? I'm under impression, that most people don't realize what those are, or what they're for. 

If recovering alcoholics and junkies can have support groups, where they're allowed to seek help and understanding without being openly judged, if religious nuts can have their churches, where they can do the same thing - what's wrong with young people, struggling with - say - their gender identity or sexuality, having similar option - a place where they can talk about what they're going through, without some f***nut yelling out bible quotes? 

Vitriolic reaction to this seemingly innocuous social initiative puzzles me. Yeah, sure - let's have a number of large tax-exempt and/or governmentally funded organizations, that help people deal with their fear of bogey-men under their beds, but let's make sure university students don't have such an option, because they might grow up to be mummy's little sissies...

EDIT - Of course, I'm not advocating for the entire universities, becoming "safe spaces", so if the expansion of the concept is what people have the problem with - I can kind of see it.

[Fidel_Castronaut]

For kids having identity issues or confusion over their sexuality, I can see a point, and indeed I think that's a separate point. . But when you hear of them being used to prevent the voicing of political and/or social commentaries then I think 'what?'

South Park did a great job in their reality sketch of exposing the utter political, social and philosophical bankruptcy of such a stance. People are never always going to agree, on anything, and shielding out those dissenting voices to which you disagree with is not going to make them go away. It's like the whole banning of Donald trump nonsense that went on in the UK for a while. The best way to challenge those views you disagree with is to welcome them into the open sphere of public critique.

What those safe spaces at Yale are a symptom of is the increasingly pervasive discourse of silencing anything which remotely sounds like dissent. Like what's happening at my old university with Cecil Rhodes:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/educat...83691.html

It's just such utter bunk. I must stress my issue is not win the safe spaces per se, but the larger burgeoning discourse of removing/ silencing things people don't 'like'. Cecil Rhodes may have been an imperialist but he was apart of Oxford's and South Africa's history. He wasn't Hitler, as some People seem to want to suggest.

Overall I think the economist did a great piece on them:

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21...ile-campus

[Edwardo Piet]

South Park did an awesome job indeed. PC Principal is an awesome character.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I actually think that opposition to political correctness is becoming a dangerous force in this country.

Let me clarify what I mean by that before it's misconstrued. Clearly, if someone limits what they say to the point where they say practically nothing at all, that is a bad thing. But it should also be a given that terms like "illegal alien" are unseemly -- knowing full well that the term "undocumented immigrant" would not hamper the ideas you are trying the communicate in any way. But people like Donald Trump are harping off of the fact that politeness often frustrates those with bigoted mindsets by limiting what is socially acceptable to say, even to the point where "Merry Christmas" ends up being an extremely politicized phrase.

"Illegal" is a perfectly apt descriptor. Changing it to "undocumented" is exactly how PC goes overboard, insofar as it clouds meaning in order to appear more polite. I agree that "alien" is a charged word, but "illegal" is exactly what it is; and it describes the nature of the act that brought illegal migrants to this country.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Yale Safe Zones. Thoughts?

One bit of fallout to be expected from the Entitlement Society.

[Thumpalumpacus]

People are never always going to agree, on anything, and shielding out those dissenting voices to which you disagree with is not going to make them go away.

As the SF author Frank Herbert put it, "Those who see only what they wish are doomed to rot in the stink of their own perceptions."

[henryp]

I think the big difference is the acquisition of knowledge has become so tailored to support what you already believe. It's not surprising people now find it jarring when a different perspective is thrust upon them to the point they need safe zones.

The goal seems to be for people to take it a step further and live their lives entirely only hearing what they want to hear.