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PSW's avatar

Let’s subject prepubescent children to complex gender and sexual ideas, but put trigger warnings on classic literature for university students. Brilliant!

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Andrew Wurzer's avatar

"Sadly, it appears that universities in Britain have fallen prey to the kind of corporate logic that is already firmly entrenched in the United States. This growing managerial approach with its customer-is-always-right imperative is increasingly evident in university policies."

I don't really think a "customer is always right" mindset is the primary driver for this; it's a different corporate mindset. I think it's fear of social media mobs (and their on-campus equivalent, student protests). So the corporate response? Figure out some symbolic gesture they can point at in an attempt to deflect criticism. Don't want to get sued / fined over EEOC issues? Create a symbolic "cultural sensitivity training" or similar.

Trigger warnings are easy and symbolic, so we put them in. See? Please don't try to get us fired, or sick a Twitter mob on us, or make our lives annoying by protesting outside our offices. We also put our pronouns and Black Lives Matter slogans in our bios.

I'm sympathetic to their position; there are, unfortunately, real risks for failing to do these things, for being seen as insufficiently pure or radical. However, knuckling under to these ideological demands merely makes them stronger, and the next demand they have may not be one you're willing to meet, and now they have so much power that they get you removed. Because you gave them that power.

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