When a college feminist decided, one cold night in 2014, to burn her personal copy of pseudofeminist Christina Hoff Sommers’ book The War Against Boys, the internet’s antifeminists responded as if Hitler himself had risen from the grave.
“Universities bring book-burning back, one page at a time,” declared a blogger at TheRebelMedia. After an extended comparison with the infamous book burning campaigns of the literal Nazis, he declared that “[t]he burning of Hoff Sommers’ book is a striking visual synecdoche for the malaise afflicting free expression across not only North American college campuses.” In a featured article, A Voice for Men described the burning as a “disturbing” example of “misandry in academia.”
On the Men’s Rights subreddit, meanwhile, one angry dude declared that
If you’re burning a book, you’re basically admitting to being not just a bigot, but one who doesn’t even have enough confidence in the strength of their own views to believe that they can stand up for themselves without needing to silence and censor those that oppose them.
If we set aside the fact that, unlike the Nazis, who confiscated the books they burned, a person burning their own copy of a book that is readily available to others is not actually censoring anything, he’s got a point.
So it’s interesting to see how many of the Internet’s antifeminsts and Anti-Social-Justice-Warrior-Warriors are embracing a proposal from one of their own to literally censor all academics who teach stuff they don’t like.
On Change.org, professional feminism-hater Carl Benjamin, known on YouTube as Sargon of Akkad, has started a petition demanding that “UNIVERSITIES” — presumably, every single one of them — immediately “Suspend Social Justice Courses” because he thinks that “social justice” professors are up to no good.
In vague but melodramatic language Benjamin proclaims that
Social justice has become scientifically illiterate, logically unsound, deeply bigoted and openly supremacist.
He doesn’t specify exactly what kind of supremacism he’s complaining about here; presumably not white.
Nor does he ever define exactly what courses count as “social justice courses.” There aren’t any departments of Social Justice that I’m aware of. [EDIT: Oops! Turns out there are.] Does Benjamin mean a tiny handful of, say, women’s studies courses taught by radical feminists? Or does he hope (at least in his wildest dreams) to take down the humanities and social sciences as a whole?
Social justice professors are indoctrinating young people into a pseudoscientific cult behind closed doors that is doing damage to their health, education and future.
Well, technically, I guess, virtually all college courses are taught “behind closed doors,” since the doors of lecture halls generally do get closed before class begins. Technically, I’m writing this post behind closed doors, because I don’t leave the doors of my apartment wide open. (People might wander in; the cats might wander out.) I suspect that Benjamin himself wrote up his petition behind closed doors!
Benjamin goes on to declare that
[s]ocial justice … has become another ideology fit only to pave the road to Hell, so it is time to turn around and choose another path that is concerned with reason, science and improving the lives of every human.
If only some evil Social Justice English professor has indoctrinated Benjamin in the devilish art of writing without resorting to hackneyed cliches.
But that’s pretty much all there is to Benjamin’s petition. Somehow, thought, the vagueness of Benjamin’s plan hasn’t stopped 9,878 people — so far — from signing the petition.
It is, however, possible that some of the signers are a little bit confused as to what exactly they’re signing.
Indeed, the top two most-liked comments on the petition, for example, were written by people who seem to think that Benjamin’s proposal to peremptorily censor all college courses that he thinks are excessively social-justicey is, somehow, a defense of free speech?
Benjamin has posted a video in which he explains his crusade in a little more detail. It’s possible that somewhere in it he answers the question of how exactly his plan to drive all professors he doesn’t like from all the college campuses in the world is actually a crusade for free speech.
Here’s the video in question:
Oops! Wrong video. Let me try again:
Huh. I don’t think that was it either.
No, that’s clearly not it.
Ok, ok. I found the real one here.
But it’s 40 minutes long. I sampled the first 2 seconds, and that was about all I could bring myself to watch. So I guess I’ll just have to resign myself to a life of servitude under the jackboots of the Social Justice warlords. Still, that’s a far better option than actually watching a Sargon of Akkad video all the way through.
I misread his name as “Aaron Carter,” which…is kind of fitting, in terms of how immature, unrealistic, annoying, and forgettable he is.
I can never tell which threads are destined to be necro’d. Apparently, this is one of them.
I don’t see how it’s censoring free speech when it’s the SJWs that censor anything that offends them. I guess they think when they are on the receiving end of the censoring it’s a bad thing. I for one am glad to see someone standing up for what they believe in. I’ve been on a few forums and SJW chat rooms and you wouldn’t believe how these people operate. They can’t keep a straight thought going without deviating into a completely unrelated topic, bouncing from one idiotic idea to the next.
What’s even more outrageous moderator is your own use of censoring ideas YOU find bigoted or offensive.
If someone finds your ideas to be bigoted or wrong, you get all defensive and immediately disregard the matter as a joke or smut. You never give the thought of another person, to whom you disagree with, as being a being of reasonable intellect. I personally feel most of these people have a sound mind, I just think their intentions are misguided.
Have a nice day.
@Mr. Via,
Hello Sir! Pleasure to meet you. I’m not sure if you’re watching this thread or if you just decided to post and run; I’ll assume that you’re watching for the sake of the audience. I’ll try to be brief, to save everyone’s time.
http://orig12.deviantart.net/ed97/f/2013/078/9/f/fluttershy_dance_by_heilos-d5ymglw.gif
First! You aren’t addressing the central questions of the article, you are using a tu quoque appeal to hypocrisy. We can even assume that everything you’ve said here is true (it isn’t) and you still haven’t defended Sargon’s ideas as being appropriate. So, if you came here to try to defend the idea of “auditing” “s.j.w. professors”, you have yet to start down that road.
Feel free to do so, I could use the mental exercise. Cracking apart arguments is like eating lobster; a little hard work gets you to the tasty meat.
Second! Examining what you are addressing … sure, there are certainly communities on the internet which are misguided, unfair and close-minded, and who censor a lot. Humans, and their associations, exist in a spectrum, after all. Some people who are sympathetic to men’s rights are very reasonable – you will even find some here! – and some people who are sympathetic to feminism are bigots. That’s how people work.
However, just because some communities are terrible doesn’t mean that they all are. Even the ones you’re calling censorious! Some people aren’t at a place in their lives where they can face hard truths or uncomfortable realities, and it’s not up to you to decide when they get to face those things. They do, along with their loved ones and the people they trust.
We laugh at bigoted, wrong ideas, yes. The reason we think they are wrong is because we have never been shown good evidence that they are right. The reason we laugh is because it is important to confront hate with joy and misery with laughter.
Looking forward to your reply!
Yeah, but some of these colleges Sargon mentions sound like complete echo chambers. I get not everyone is able to except reality and toughen up to the sad world we sometimes live in.
The notion of safe spaces with coloring books and puppies was very off putting, instead of preparing young adults for the real world it seemed like they were sheltering them from it.
I don’t want academia to be wideled away to the point of people unable to debate topics that might be offensive to other people. Their are uncomfortable topics that are discussed, and we need to address them.
I think college should be a growing expierence, hearing ideas that challenge their own. Social Justice does sound like one of those ideas, however the intolerance “some” have put forth has been off putting. Being the white cisgender heterosexual male, it seems as though some groups are targeting me and I don’t like that. I don’t want professors teaching children they are oppressed and born racist.
Again, actions of a few, I’d wager to bet most social justice courses are not as bad as Sargon makes them out to be.
What’s that saying? When you’re privileged, equality feels like oppression. You are being the embodiment of that. Nobody is targeting you.
And isn’t it a little hypocritical to be complaining about how colleges these days are coddling students and protecting them from the harshness of the world while simultaneously complaining about how very mean it is for marginalized people and their allies to point out the system is set up to unfairly advantage people in your demographic? I mean, really. You think whole fields of study should change because you, personally don’t like them?
Also, you should probably learn about what safe spaces and trigger warnings are and how they work before you start clutching your pearls about how they’re ruining academia.
D’you know, I would not have described universities’ mission as “preparing people for the real world.” They’re -part- of the real world, and their mission is to provide educational facilities, resources and guidance so that students can become qualified in various fields.
Professors aren’t teaching children that they’re oppressed or born racist – in fact, they’re not teaching children at all. They’re teaching adults – adults who have chosen, and worked hard, to be there. If those adults have chosen to pursue classes that analyse and criticise social structures, then that’s their prerogative – and whatever the professors’ own views, there’s no shortage of diverse texts and schools of thought for students to read about.
(An aside: you know who wants to convince people they’re “born racist”? Racists. Certainly, one might find a social justice-minded academic arguing that some folks are “born privileged”, because, well, they are. But that’s not nearly the same thing, and working out that the term “privileged” isn’t used to mean “irredeemably evil” seems to be a stumbling block for the “anti-SJW” crowd.)
Richard, I’m assuming you’re here in good faith, so I’ve tried to respond to your post as best I can. If you think it’s too long, I’ve bolded some questions I have for you, so even if you ignore the rest of my post, I’d still very much like to hear your thoughts on them. Thanks in advance.
Of course they would, coming from Sargon. He makes money off of drumming up faux outrage among his fans. So, he’s going to do his best to make these classes sound like they’re taught by Lucifer himself, because that’s going to drum up outrage and get his fans to pay him attention (and money).
Let’s be honest, Sargon’s biased as they come when it comes to social justice. He’s made a living off of shouting about it on YouTube.
May I have some clarification on this? What do you mean by “accept reality”?
Asking for a place where you don’t have to hear about things you don’t want to hear about isn’t asking to “shelter” young adults. It’s asking for a break from them.
I’ve suffered trauma in my past. Therefore, I don’t want to hear about what traumatized me (abuse and rape) all the time. There are times where I can’t, or won’t handle it, and asking me to do that is a really shitty thing to do, because it’s only going to lead to a deterioration of my mental state. I already suffer depression and anxiety from what I survived, and I don’t need it shoved in my face all the time because you feel like they need to be talked about.
I’m not a coward for not wanting to talk about it, and I don’t really appreciate the insinuation that I can’t “face reality” when I’m currently living with my traumas the best damn way I can.
Asking for a space where I can get away from that kind of discussion and focus on other things isn’t asking to be “sheltered from the real world”, it’s asking that I have a break for my own mental health.
No one should have to face their traumas 24/7 just because it’s “the real world” or “reality”. We already stigmatize and harm people with mental health issues enough without this sort of mentality that people can just “get over” their traumas.
Hell, even people who haven’t suffered traumas can benefit from a room full of coloring books and puppies.
Why do you think that people shouldn’t have a way to get mental downtime in college when dealing with stressful topics or classes? Or, if you think that they should, what would you suggest as an alternative?
I agree. There are plenty of things that are unpleasant that need to be discussed. Can you provide examples of things you don’t think these classes are covering properly and/or things you personally feel are ignored or are deemed “offensive”?
Hell, this site is dedicated to discussing unpleasant things. David mentions in the site’s description that this blog cannot possibly be a safe space due to the subject matter we deal with daily. We deal with sexism, racism, homo/transphobia, other bigotries and disgusting violence on a regular basis.
However, I don’t feel like that these discussions need to be done at the expense of people who don’t need or want to talk about them for whatever reason. I wouldn’t force people to read this site just so they’re aware of the kinds of things that we talk about. I don’t feel like I need to force everyone to talk about sexism or other kinds of bigotries all the time so they’re being addressed.
To callback to my previous example: Yes, we need to discuss child abuse, because it’s a horrendous thing that happens way too often to too many kids.
However, sometimes I don’t want to discuss it because I will start to have flashbacks and I will either start to dissociate, or have a panic attack, complete with hyperventilating and out-of-control sobbing. Or in layman’s terms: I’ll be really fucking triggered by it.
“Triggering” isn’t “Oh, this makes me feel really uncomfortable and I don’t like that”, it’s “I’m literally having a mental breakdown that’s going to take me a few hours to recover from”.
Should I be forced to sit down and have a discussion about something that’s traumatized me like that, because you feel it needs to be addressed? Should my mental health be ignored so you can have your discussion?
Again, I agree. But I think you should elaborate once more: What do these classes that Sargon wants to “audit” not do to challenge their student’s ideas, in your opinion? What do you think that these classes should teach or discuss to challenge those ideas that you feel aren’t being addressed?
No one’s targeting you, as WWTH mentioned. No one automagically hates you solely for being a cishet white dude. People just point out that you have advantages that no one else has. True, you didn’t ask for them, but you’re still afforded them, and pointing that out doesn’t do you, or other cishet white dudes, one iota of harm.
You are not profiled or stereotyped negatively for being a cishet white dude, you are not denied work because of your cishet white dude-ness, you do not suffer any sort of society-wide disadvantage from it, therefore you are not harmed one bit by it.
It’s like the difference between “cracker” and the N-word. One is fucking harmless, and only references the bad things that white people have done to black people, and the other has a history of being used to degrade, dehumanize, and otherwise oppress black people.
Telling young adults (because we are talking about college here, remember?) that they can suffer from systematic oppression isn’t news to them. All of them have lived in the system for all their lives, and most of them have “woken up” to it.
For instance: Black kids are told to always be weary of, and hyper-courteous to, police officers, from the moment they’re old enough to go to school. You, as a white kid, were not.
Women are always told that they have to be on their guard 24/7/365 or else anything that happens to them will be blamed on them for some reason. You, as a man, are not.
LGBT people are constantly worried about coming out to family, friends, or other loved ones because they’re worried about being treated like shit for their sexual orientation/gender identity, something they have no control over. You, as a cishet person, have never had to worry about this.
So, since most oppressed kids are already aware of it, no one is “teaching” them they are oppressed.
However, I do have a question: What is your objection to children (or young college-aged adults, for that matter), learning about oppression and how it affects people? Why do you think it’s a bad idea that children are taught that racism, homo/transphobia, sexism, etc, exist, and that it could affect them?
And no, no one is “born” racist. We are, however, taught racism by society as a whole. For instance, I’ve personally had to unlearn lots of racist behaviors as a white person, and I understand that media, other people, and stereotyping all conditioned me to believe this, until other people pointed out to me that I was wrong and why it was wrong of me to believe these things.
Back to my first point: I’d wager that none of them really are, considering Sargon is hyper anti-Social Justice, regardless of the context. He doesn’t give a s’wit if the classes aren’t as bad as he thinks they are, he just wants them to be harassed and singled out because he doesn’t like the fact that they exist.
So now you feel that you have some insight – if only a tiiiny bit – into the daily life of an oppressed group, and are going to channel that insight into being a good person or even a good ally?
Oh, no, wait. You’re going to piss and moan about nonexistent “Misandry” and “Reverse racism.” Because MRAs think “Irony” is the aftertaste of chewing on a golf club.
As are a few others, I’m going to assume that you’re here in good faith.
Here’re my two cents:
Agreed.
How would you define the idea of social justice?
I’ll say that there are some who, flush with concepts new to them, misuse ideas. I’m not going to tell you that there’s no one out there who uses the term “privilege” as a cudgel. I’ve run into them.
And they’re wrong.
Not just as in “what they’re doing is wrong” but that “they’re wrong in that what they’re doing misses the point of the definition”.
This is a pretty useful cartoon. I especially like it because it touches on intersectionality in privilege (that is, that there’s more than one thing that defines how we approach the world and how the world approaches us).
There may very well be some individuals who make assumptions about you as a person based upon your identity. That sucks. They shouldn’t.
We all make assumptions about others based upon such things and we all have assumptions made about us based upon such things.
Recognizing and working through this is a struggle and it’s something that we must do every day.
I’ve never met a professor who’s done either of these.
That’s not to say that there are none, but I think that you may be conflating a few things here. I’ll see if you respond to any of the above before addressing this last bit, though.
Oh! But one thing (I’m working backwards through the comments):
If you’re addressing this site in particular, yes – we do both tend to find humor where we can and monitor the civility of conversation. Since David pays for and maintains this site without the benefit of US Government funding, he may direct its rules and guidelines as he sees fit free of the fear of falling afoul of laws regulating the right of free speech.
There are many other places on the internet with a much lighter hand in the comments section. Any commenter is welcome to seek out those if they find the terms here objectionable.
Thank you, you’ve all given me a lot to think about. To answer one question, I think it’s good to learn about oppression as long as it’s in context of overcoming that oppression and ways to put everyone on a more equal footing.
I think the notion of privilege is genuine, so long as it isn’t a crutch for someone to use. Life certianly isn’t equal for everyone, race, sex, gender, income all come with varying levels of privilege. For example, being born in America immediately affords you citizenship in a first world nation.
One thing that I seemed to take particular discomfort with was seeing protest from groups of social justice activist against people who spoke ideas at colleges that were deemed sexist or racist. People should be able to agree or disagree with any speaker, but the impact of the presence of these people seemed overdramatic.
Take Christina Hoff Sommers, sure many take offense to her feminist positions. I actually like to listen to her, I wouldn’t want to be called a misogynist for wanting to listen to her. That’s a bit unfair don’t you think?
CHS has feminist positions?
Listening to her does not make you a misogynist. Agreeing with her misogynist statements might make you a misogynist, though.
No, but who cares?
I’m the kind of person that loves to debate, so if it’s an issue like the gender wage gap, I love looking at data and variables and looking at the real evidence on both sides of the argument. It’s fun to me, same goes for issues like abortion, prison statistics, anything the FBI puts out. I never lean on one side too much without going back to the other. Which is why I’m hear now. I’ve lavished on one side for a while so now I will march on this side for a while. Each side says the other is incompetent and wrong about the issues, using them for attention and censorship. This helps me to view a well rounded opinion on a subject, usually I find neither side is entirely correct. There’s usually a solid middle ground both sides agree on. That however never gets the views or makes the news.
I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself, but do please take to heart that for a lot of people, this isn’t an abstract debate, or even a search for truth – it’s a fight for their rights, their health, even their lives. It’s fine to recognise your own distance from the issues, but for some, the issues are so close to home that they can never get away from them, no matter how hard they try.
So, what’s the solid middle ground between “ZOMG SJW PROFESSORS ARE RUINING FREE SPEECH” and “what’s that guy yelling about”?
I think there is a fair understanding that the overall premise of social justice means well and can do good. Their is some ridiculous sensationalism surround it currently, mostly what Sargon reports on.
The other side has outliers screaming patriarchy this and offened by everything. Maybe certain individuals like Anita Sarkesian saying everything is sexist, everything is racist (I know that’s not what she met) but it can be pretty funny at times and I don’t know whether to take it seriously.
I think Sargon and his followers are threatened by that group of people who don’t speak for the whole. Honestly some of them portray themselves as the totalitarian selves that would be scary if put in charge, luckily those types never do.
^Obvious bad faith. I’m not bothering.
You know, this is true when both sides have valid points to make, but honestly, I have done a lot of reading in the altright and the manosphere, and most of the points they seem to be interested in defending are ‘women are all manipulative cunts’ or ‘black people are lazy shits who don’t want to put in the hard work’ or ‘minorities are too stupid/submissive/aggressive to do anything as well as white people’ or ‘women are too stupid to work in STEM and too weak/emotional/hormonal to be in leadership roles’.
What I don’t see is a whole lot of ‘DV shelters often cater exclusively to women; let’s gather our resources and build some DV shelters for men.’ I don’t see a whole lot of ‘Our transgender and gay brothers face a lot of discrimination, let’s band together and see if we can’t make our local leaders see that we don’t support discrimination’. I don’t see a whole lot of ‘Let’s work hard on making sure our African-American brothers live without fear of being gunned down for no reason by organizing a protest’. In fact, I don’t see the alt right or the manosphere making any active, positive changes to the world. Please feel free to correct me if I’ve missed out on anything they’ve done.
I don’t doubt that to be true, however not everyone subscribes to that alt right mindset that follows him. Their seems to be a critique of his work within his own chatter of people.
Certainly the issue you discussed are problem each group has to face. I’d like to add to black people being gunned down, crimes that happen within their own neighborhoods are starting to change. The act of speaking up without being called a snitch or getting involved in other people’s problems, community problems. I follow black issues and crime in black communities closely.
You’re right, I don’t see the alt right doing anything in the way of that. Starting conversations like that could be a way to pave a new path for everyone to start working together, reaching the olive branch across and finding common interest to work on.
Richard
Fun? Solid middle ground? On abortion! Or prison statistics.
I realise you’re trying to put your pov in favour of “debate” and “argument”, but this was pretty clumsy. Most of us would see both of these two issues as less than fun – more along a spectrum from life changing through life threatening to life or death. Not fun at all.
Where?
@IP:
The man’s either arguing in bad faith or is an idiot. There is no sense in engaging further. He’s simply here because masturbatory sophism is a thing that he enjoys, and you’re helping him indulge in it.
Thank you for your replies, Richard (and thank you to everyone else who’s written, too!). You’re by far the most reasonable passer-by to hit this board in awhile! I appreciate it.
http://orig12.deviantart.net/b1ce/f/2013/006/0/0/fluttershy_skips_by_eeglfethr-d5qpka8.gif
I’m going to reply to some bits and pieces – others have already done some of the points far better than I could.
Sargon is not painting a complete picture for you. One reason he’s being unfair is that the professor has a certain amount of time (not enough) to communicate the ideas in the course outline. If she’s being confronted in each class by students who haven’t even yet read the source material, she can’t get through the content that the people in class have paid for. She’ll answer questions and encourage debate, but at the end of the day she’s still got to get through the content, so sometimes she has to cut discussion short.
This is doubly a problem in courses that deal with societal forces, because a) everyone feels qualified, since they all live in society, and b) everyone feels that their viewpoint is representative, since that’s how brains work. So the “social-justice’y” courses get challenged a lot by students who feel more qualified to speak, even though they aren’t.
Paradox’y said it best. Safe spaces aren’t to block out ideas you don’t like, they’re to give you a place where you can be relatively sure you aren’t going to be traumatized or re-traumatized. Society at large doesn’t provide that assurance. It’s a place for people who have suffered to re-center and re-focus before confronting the world again.
The term “safe space”, like so many others, is misunderstood, misappropriated by MRA’s and their adjacents, and used as a generic slur. If you learned those words while on that side of the fence, you can safely assume that you’ve learned a bad definition of them.
Good! Hold on to that discomfort! It’s important to remember that feeling of discomfort. Try to discard the outrage, but try to hold on to the feeling of being singled out as inferior, as a problem. It’s not true – you aren’t inferior, and you’re not a problem. But society does have subtle cues that inform women and minorities that they are inferior and problematic. Keeping a hold on that feeling will help you understand the sort of lens that they see the world through, and might help you understand some of the outrage and despair.
As was said before, they’re teaching adults, not children. I’ll assume you also don’t want this taught to young adults?
Unfortunately, just because something is uncomfortable, doesn’t mean it’s not true. Racism and sexism are systematic and unconscious. The only way to actually beat these things is to bring them into the conscious level and explicitly oppose them within ourselves. It takes discipline and awareness. That’s what education is about. It can feel uncomfortable to bring into conscious knowledge the fact that you’ve got advantages others lack, but it’s an important tool in being able to fight societal bigotry.
(And, before you ask, I’d be okay with setting up a space for white, cishet males to digest the things they learn without fear of being confronted. Everyone needs a quiet ground to prepare themselves for the world.)
“SJWs” don’t so much protest because CHS and others are being given a platform to speak, it’s that they’re being given a bully pulpit. Generally in these things it’s a talk, where the speaker isn’t confronted until the very end, and even then is only confronted by audience questions, which can be ignored and filtered, and relies on luck of the draw. CHS and the like come to their conclusions by fabrication and lies-by-omission, and to give them a stage to do so on is irresponsible.
“SJW’s” generally relish the opportunity to confront opposing ideas. They’re just rarely given the opportunity to do so, and have to resort to protest instead.
Oh, good. I love breaking it down to evidence. Our trolls tend to run away when I do that, so I so rarely get to really get into the numbers.
You mention the wage gap, it’s one that keeps coming up and it drives me batty when they say the wage gap isn’t real, because they factor out things like individual career choice and hours spent.
You can’t do that! It’s begging the question! Career choice is determined by societal pressures as much as individual choice; educational opportunities are influenced by the same factors. By removing covariates which are entangled with sexism, the querant is making an assumption that sexism is not a factor in wages earned. It’s dishonest on its face, and any knowledgeable querant who does it should be ashamed of their deception (at worst) or lack of rigour (at best).
It is true that in any confrontation, both sides are wrong to a degree. This is simple probability.
It is also true that in any confrontation, one side will be more right than another. This is also simple probability.
Confrontation, therefore, involves determining the side which is less wrong.
Other things have been posted since I’ve been able to reply; I’ll get to them later.
BZZT. Logical fallacy. Please hand in your STEMLogic™ card at your nearest False Neutrality Troll Copypasta Talking Points Depot and try again never.