Tag: political correctness

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On PC and Censorship: “Why This Radical Leftist is Disillusioned by Leftist Culture”

 

 
credit: blog.baladi.com
 

I like this essay, succinct and vehement about non-censorship, two qualities I cherish. As a college instructor and mother of two socio-politically conscious teenagers, I flinch at shutting anyone out, up or off. My job as teacher and mother is to foster thinking and feed young people a steady diet of food for thought. Censorship directly conflicts with those efforts whether the censor’s intent is benevolent or malignant. 

Most censors simply want to craft a world better conforming to their own comfort level, and many believe protecting the sensibilities and exposure to harm of the vulnerable–children, the wounded, or ill–outweighs prohibiting thoughts/words/symbols of the able, a seemingly charitable and compassionate endeavor. But though well-intentioned, intolerance and censorship buds from the well-meaning as well as the malicious, and from the right and the left, the latter with their pretensions of superior tolerance, disregarding opinions of others on the grounds of sensitivity, i.e., controlling words that hurt others’ feelings or trigger traumatic memories, is no less intolerant and censorship than right wing fascists trying to outlaw the words “global warming.”

Noam Chomsky and Bailey Lamon, who quotes Chomsky in “Why this Radical Leftist is Disillusioned by Leftist Culture”, say it best:

“If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.”

Encouraging my children to seek the heights of compassion and sensitivity respecting others’ sensibilities somehow ran aground when they interpreted that as outshouting or blocking others they deem insensitive on social media, or even in real life. One of my daughters quit her boyfriend over his disbelief that a disproportionate number of African Americans are incarcerated in America. 

They, like their peers, go too far. And like Lamon concedes, no one advocates racism and bigotry as acceptable. But opinions should not be feared and those who differ shunned just because they are not leftist-approved. 

History, something few college kids remember, teaches us that freedom of speech is the very embodiment of U.S. suffering, rebellion and founding ideals. Better to hurt someone’s feelings than give up that battled-for right.  

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“The Coddling of the American Mind” in the Atlantic

  
I have taught college students to write, read and think for over 15 years now. Before that, I did the same for high school students. My job–teaching–particularly skills for college, and more importantly, life, impresses me as one of mind crafting. I teach students how to think, using the medium of the word. Others teach the same through other media, such as art, music, math or computers, to name a few.

Since writing starts with the word, that is where I start my classes each semester. I compare grammar to life. It starts with the word, which has an essence and a function, depending on its relationship to other words. I try to illustrate this by pointing to a student and defining the student as presumably human, male or female, but also in context of a classroom, a student, peer, son or daughter, just as a noun is a noun until it is placed next to another noun and then functions like an adjective.

It has always been a hit–until recently. In the last couple of years, I hesitate to use the example because once I get past presuming a student is human, I get tangled up in words trying to be respectful of gender identification. I now find myself saying the person appears as this gender or that but may actually identify some other way…and then it gets complicated for me. I start thinking that maybe it is wrong to even presume a student represents as human, now with people going bionic by choice, according to an article I read this morning.

I am the last person to be the most sensitive in any situation. I am not a clod or a jerk (at least I don’t think so), but I can be absorbed in my own world, the material I am teaching and not notice the effect of my natural expressions. I sometimes use profanity to make a point. I reference all kinds of beliefs and politics and history, my class encompassing words and ideas. The constant running through my classes, lately, however, is my fear of others’ sensibilities. I am wary of the trap of my own words.

A true gift, the recognition of these fears in the Atlantic article entitled “The Coddling of the American Mind,” which is a thorough investigation of the temperament and tendencies of the American college student as well as some reasonable suggestions to change the trends toward litigation and censorship based on what the author identifies as distorted thinking often bordering on psychological disorders, including adapting sensitivities on behalf of other groups and identities.

The authors define and exemplify micro aggressions, catastrophizing and trigger warnings, topics, words and imagery taught in classrooms or presented in the world that trigger traumatic experiences personal, racial or historical. For example, students object to the mention of rape and rape cases in a law school class for the emotional triggers to some students’ traumatic experiences. This is merely one type of behavior that crowds the classroom’s content and censors speech.

However, as the authors assert, shielding students from offense runs counter to the exposure students should be getting to new ideas in school, including ones that offend. Schools are not bubbles but training grounds for the world beyond school, as world inhabitants, of which there is much that offends.

Attempts to shield students from words, ideas, and people that might cause them emotional discomfort are bad for the students. They are bad for the workplace, which will be mired in unending litigation if student expectations of safety are carried forward. And they are bad for American democracy, which is already paralyzed by worsening partisanship. When the ideas, values, and speech of the other side are seen not just as wrong but as willfully aggressive toward innocent victims, it is hard to imagine the kind of mutual respect, negotiation, and compromise that are needed to make politics a positive-sum game.

The article is a fair treatment of the causes and effects of this educational and social phenomenon, including a recommended list of twelve distortions (reproduced below) to identify and teach in the classroom based on cognitive therapy practices that help individuals focus on a reading of reality that is not merely emotional. I know my falll class opener may start with this article for discussion.

 Common Cognitive Distortions
A partial list from Robert L. Leahy, Stephen J. F. Holland, and Lata K. McGinn’s Treatment Plans and Interventions for Depression and Anxiety Disorders (2012).
1. Mind reading. You assume that you know what people think without having sufficient evidence of their thoughts. “He thinks I’m a loser.”
2. Fortune-telling. You predict the future negatively: things will get worse, or there is danger ahead. “I’ll fail that exam,” or “I won’t get the job.”
3. Catastrophizing.You believe that what has happened or will happen will be so awful and unbearable that you won’t be able to stand it. “It would be terrible if I failed.”
4. Labeling. You assign global negative traits to yourself and others. “I’m undesirable,” or “He’s a rotten person.”
5. Discounting positives. You claim that the positive things you or others do are trivial. “That’s what wives are supposed to do—so it doesn’t count when she’s nice to me,” or “Those successes were easy, so they don’t matter.”
6. Negative filtering. You focus almost exclusively on the negatives and seldom notice the positives. “Look at all of the people who don’t like me.”
7. Overgeneralizing. You perceive a global pattern of negatives on the basis of a single incident. “This generally happens to me. I seem to fail at a lot of things.”
8. Dichotomous thinking. You view events or people in all-or-nothing terms. “I get rejected by everyone,” or “It was a complete waste of time.”
9. Blaming. You focus on the other person as the source of your negative feelings, and you refuse to take responsibility for changing yourself. “She’s to blame for the way I feel now,” or “My parents caused all my problems.”
10. What if? You keep asking a series of questions about “what if” something happens, and you fail to be satisfied with any of the answers. “Yeah, but what if I get anxious?,” or “What if I can’t catch my breath?”
11. Emotional reasoning. You let your feelings guide your interpretation of reality. “I feel depressed; therefore, my marriage is not working out.”
12. Inability to disconfirm. You reject any evidence or arguments that might contradict your negative thoughts. For example, when you have the thought I’m unlovable, you reject as irrelevant any evidence that people like you. Consequently, your thought cannot be refuted. “That’s not the real issue. There are deeper problems. There are other factors.”

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Taking the High Heels Road

  
Do we really need feminism any more? I mean, women work outside the home when they choose to, are protected by laws against discrimination in the work place and other places, and can vote. Isn’t feminism more about choice now–for both men and women–and the freedom that comes with choosing each his or her own happiness?

Just last week I brainstormed with my college student daughter for her speech class presentation over this very question. Together we offered instances beyond the blatant: sex trade and slavery, genital mutilation and pornography. Yes, we concluded, right here in the U.S., where genital mutilation and a thriving sex trade do not lurk in every corner of the country, feminism has work to do. Sure, equal pay for equal work slogans, body image and slut shaming come to mind as battlegrounds for feminism, but the more insidious poisons that preserve patriarchal prejudices work more subtly. 

Take language, for instance. Something as simple as “Hey, you guys!” may seem harmless as an expression. But most unconsciously respond to that call without thinking how the phrase beckons males and females alike while there is no feminine counterpart. “Hey, you gals!” would not turn a single male head. 

And then there are high heels. Given that most anyone can merely look at a pair of high heels and foresee the long-term damage of daily wear or even the short-term calamity that could befall a novice wearer, forcing women to wear them to suit the tastes of a few male gatekeepers smacks of sadism let alone sexism. That such footwear would be prerequisite to female attendees of such a prestigious event as the Cannes Film Festival, upon which some fates and finances depend, can be perceived no other way but sexist–wittingly or unwittingly.

However, I cannot imagine the headline, “high-heels gate”, to a BBC news story about flat-wearing females turned away at Cannes a few days ago–even if one of the refused flat-wearers (though later admitted entry) had a partially amputated foot too unstable for heels.

Ironically, one of the headliners of this year’s Cannes festival was ‘Carol’ the story of a 50-something lesbian.

Although the festival director denied a “ban on flats,” apparently the festival has a history of ‘partiality.’ 

The festival opened with a female-directed film for the first time since 1987, and organisers have endorsed a series of “Women in Motion” talks by stars such as Isabella Rossellini and Salma Hayek.

One former attendee noted the fashion bias existing for decades:

Wendy Constance, a children’s author who attended Cannes in the 1970s, tweeted the festival had a less than stellar reputation when it came to women’s clothes.

“Back in 1971, when I started work I asked for [the] rule about women not wearing trousers to be changed. It was. Forty-four years later.”

“It’s ridiculous that women are still being expected to conform,” she added.

Those subtler forms of sexism perniciously pervade, permeate a society and motivate conscious or unconscious acts of sexism that may seem small but, in their accumulation, grow large in the long-term consequences. Sexist attitudes have been known to influence the line of questioning by a male detective to a female rape victim or a male judge’s sentencing (two positions empowered with a great deal of discretion within a realm of rules), actions with far-reaching effects to that victim and women generally.  

So what if Cannes bans flats? Aren’t we being too sensitive? Nothing to get our undies in a bunch over, right? Wrong. 

Conduct of a nation, including its laws and commerce–daily practices–are predicated on the stuff fed to our brains sometimes in blasts of shocking information and trauma, sometimes in long steady courses of study and living, but mostly in imperceptible increments–like subtly sexist language, pictures, and gestures, such as silly dress codes at Cannes. 

Feminism means freedom; freedom means choice. We cannot choose if the knee-jerk reactions of our conduct are pre-programmed, unconscious and unchanging. We must question our behaviors, the reasons for rules we set and how they are enforced, not take accepted practices for granted. A simple start? Ban the arbitrary bans on women’s fashion choices.

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