Content warning: some of this article discusses sexual assault in conversations about speaking up about assault in universities.
A welcome change I’ve seen on the internet recently is an insistence on finally, fucking finally, calling conservative, "anti-PC" doublespeak what it is. That Chrome extension which replaced "political correctness" with "treating people with respect" was a good start, but I've noticed this recently in the Facebook communities for people of color that I'm in: naming the absurdity of people that start a furor over the color of a Starbucks cup telling women calling out powerful men that they're easily offended crybabies. Or of the people that demand institutional retribution over someone's peaceful protest of an anthem telling black and brown folk exercising their right to boycott, or demand the exclusion of, racists from their campuses that in the real world they'll have to see opinions and ideas that differ from their own. And so on.
It’s something we need to start collectively doing, because honestly, seeing the state of the national conversation right now makes me feel like I’m going insane. Do words not have meanings anymore? Did we just get so used to abuse that we just never bothered to tell these people that what they're saying about us makes no fucking sense? Does nobody really notice how fucking bizarre it is to have people so clearly projecting onto us, and why don't more people call it what it is? The people that can't handle a remake of a 80s movie with a different cast without completely losing their shit are the ones talking about feminist women having thin skins. People that get apoplectic about Islam or alternative gender identities so much as being mentioned in their classroom syllabuses are the ones talking about how the world isn't a safe space, and that in the real world you have to face opinions that you don't agree with. The alt-right are touchy, oversensitive, giant fucking babies: watch how they can’t even handle being called this without completely losing their shit.
Please stop leaving this unchecked and just accepting this as normal, instead of calling it what it is: complete nonsense.
In this weird fucking universe, people using their freedom of speech to criticize racism and misogyny are told they're shutting down free speech, and people try to "defend free speech" by shutting down or punishing this criticism. Ethnic or gender minorities using the platform of the internet to amplify their speech are doing a great service to democracy, in expanding discourse in the public sphere to people for whom establishment mouthpieces have long been denied. They’re broadening the marketplace of ideas, so that what we all say has to stand up to stronger scrutiny in order to survive as defensible. Why can't we say so? If you need protectionism to survive in the marketplace of ideas, your arguments need to either evolve and get stronger and engage with those critiques, or they're just not very good.
The most powerful argument for the necessity of freedom of speech in a functioning democracy is that only speech which can stand up to criticism will end up being accepted. If the criticism is valid, the thinking goes, then those in the public sphere will see it and take it on board- if the criticism is valid and discrediting, the original idea will end up being discredited. On the flip side, if the criticism is poor, then people will be able to judge that for themselves and discard it- and people are free to argue why that criticism is poor, and so on.
Things are no better in academia, among the very same people claiming to stand up for clear and rigorous thought. The bodies of academic thinking which to critique establishment ideas and question fundamental assumptions- feminist and postcolonial interpretations and reinterpretations, their questioning of methodologies, their examining of possible biases and blind spots- are reframed as the academic establishment. Having students consider a plurality of views, learn different perspectives from which to challenge the ideas they learn, is framed as brainwashing. The reassertion of unquestionably following historical establishment in academic fields, is reframed as not just brave but intellectually rigorous, as what's actually in the spirit of inquiry. This is pushed by folks so coddled they're threatened by having to face critiques that may challenge the ideas they're comfortable in, that may ask of them to look at things from other perspectives unfamiliar to them.
Milo Yiannopoulos or Pamela Geller or run-of-the-mill colonial apologists pushing brands of misogyny and racism that are just less sugarcoated versions of the misogyny and racism present in society are described as intellectually challenging or provoking thought, are invited to college campuses to ostensibly challenge students. The reality is that speech like this is nothing new, and isn’t challenging but exhausting: we’ve always had racists and Islamophobes and misogynists in our midst, we’ve heard speech like that before all our lives and find it old hat, and find it absurd to have universities, once again, give it a platform. That this is the case when such things as asserting the long history of racism in America and American institutions through to our founding fathers, or even merely pointing out the existence of white or male privilege- critiques of a status quo in which people are deeply invested enough to respond with violence to it being threatened- is not acknowledged as the daring, challenging speech that it is? It makes no sense.
"Safe spaces", a concept to ensure an environment conducive to talking about controversial things like misogyny or racism or the institutional and cultural enabling of sexual assault by ensuring that students are given a forum to discuss them in a space moderated to remove obstacles that aim to shut down such speech, is reframed as people being unable to deal with the difficulties of reality. (And yes, talking about the misogyny or racism of our society and institutions is controversial in our society, and something that invites a lot of defensiveness and pushback, which is something everyone who has ever talked about them knows. the only way you could believe that speaking up about misogyny or racism or rape culture faces no pushback from society is if you live in a right-wing filter bubble where you think that the real world is a much nicer place, united around the condemnation of things that should be condemned, than the very sexist, racist, rape culture promoting place that it actually is.)
A powerful accessibility tool like content warnings to allow the full participation of people who may suffer from PTSD, allowing them to mentally prepare so as to engage with material instead of marginalizing them by ignoring the possibility of something physically distressing being sprung upon them, is reframed as a way for people to just avoid challenging things. Taking it away is framed as boldness when in fact the conservatism of institutions in refusing to embrace inclusion is as old as academia itself, and smirking agreement to keep things as they are between self-satisfied professors and wealthy donors (looking at you, University of Chicago and your safe spaces letter) is framed as courageously standing up to- what, the powerful establishment of poor undergraduate women? Universities ignoring criticism of their intellectual traditions or their pedagogy by their students is many things, but brave and bold isn't one of them.
People in the position of privilege have been allowed to co-opt the language that criticizes the softness and fragility of privilege, absolutely unchecked. Women taking on certain professional censure and harassment to call for inclusion in their video games aren't the ones that are soft, men for whom two hundred games with male central characters every year isn't enough to feel secure against the possibility of any women in their spaces are. Black and brown people jostling for recognition in a country clearly not centered around them aren't the ones showing fragility, people so threatened by the presence of minorities that they feel their entire culture, way of life, and western civilization itself are at risk from plurality or multiculturalism are. That we don't acknowledge this is, I repeat, fucking insane.
Every time you hear any of the following words or phrases: "coddled", "easily offended", "silencing free speech", "the world isn't a safe space", “triggered” used in a derogatory manner, or anything about "the real world", stop giving it a free pass. Don’t just let it fly, shut it down right there. Call out the absurdity and hypocrisy. It’s poor speech, and it deserves the level of scrutiny that will show it to be poor speech. Our public discourse deserves that.