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Critics of the politically correct thought police need to get off their high horse

Today, it’s incredibly popular to be a misguided critic of the politically correct thought police that allegedly patrol university campuses. If you are a columnist, you can make a stable living by presenting a gross and insulting caricature of university students; portraying them as thin-skinned, weak minded, and psychologically frail over the use of trigger warnings of classrooms.

Back in August, the University of Chicago decided to stand firm in the fierce war against academic freedom. “Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so called ‘trigger warnings,’” writes U of C’s Dean of students Jay Ellison. Since then, the opinion sections of every news site you could name, from the New York Times to the Globe and Mail, have been filled with pieces berating students for being a bunch of crybabies who need safe spaces because they can’t handle criticism. Margaret Wente writes in the Globe and Mail that trigger warnings “foster identity politics, grievance, extreme thin-skinned-ness and the stifling of free inquiry.” Also in the Globe and Mail, Konrad Yakabuski writes, “The most offensive thing about the modern university campus is just how easily the people on it take offence… More than ever, campus politics is dominated by a minority of activists who deem any expression of an opposing point of view an act of aggression that must be prevented.

Wente, Kakabuski, and others like them have managed to frame this whole debate about students being closedminded when in fact they entirely missed the point about political correctness. They argue that trigger warnings shut down difficult discussions when they actually make the classroom more accessible by letting those with traumatic experiences participate in a safe environment. As psychologist Erika Price asks, “How can someone be a proponent of intellectual freedom and not want to make their classroom a space where everyone feels free from emotional harm?” 

Zoom forward to the latest skirmish in this outrageous war against the crybaby university student, which started from the shots fired by Jordan Peterson, a professor at the University of Toronto who refuses to use genderless pronouns. In a CBC interview he said “(non-binary people) might have a point but I’m not going to say their words for them… I’m not going to mouth words that I believe put me in the position of an ideological puppet.” The fact that he acknowledges his critics might have a point goes to show how even he is aware that his stance lacks substance. He isn’t refusing to use genderless pronouns just because he really thinks you can only be a he or she, but because he feels that his freedom of thought and speech is somehow being impeded by the politically correct thought police. But as someone once said, “the ability to speak doesn’t make you intelligent.”

Also, why is the burden to learn and be open-minded strictly being applied to left-leaning students? Shouldn’t that burden also apply to those who are ignorant about LGBTQ rights or other ideas they might find challenging? Instead, in the name of intellectual freedom, Peterson and people who think like him should have their cis-gendered worldview challenged. So why is the sword of free thought and free speech strictly being pointed at liberals when it should be pointed at everyone?

[pullquote align=”full” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]For everyone who thinks they’re fighting in the name of academic and intellectual freedom, is this really what you’re fighting for? So that someone like Peterson can publicly make incredibly ignorant statements?[/pullquote]

So much hay has been made about encouraging debate and not trying to shut it down, but if this is the debate you’re fighting for, where it’s one educated opinion against an incredibly ignorant one, or so that Professor Peterson can go out and deny the existence of the gender spectrum and claim his right to be disrespectful to gender minorities, you’ll have to wonder at some point if this battle is worth fighting. If the goal here is to foster greater academic freedom, what we should really be doing is actually understand what trigger warnings really do and how they actually advance learning by addressing the needs of students, not buying into the myths and stereotypes about fragile millennials.

Nathan Fung

Nathan Fung is a sixth-year political science student and The Gateway's news editor for the 2018-19 year. He can usually be found in the Gateway office, turning coffee into copy.

6 Comments

  1. A question that no one in this debate seems to be raising is whether or not individuals will receive trigger warnings once they leave the “safety” of the university and go out into the real world. If so, how will that work and who will decide what requires a trigger warning?

  2. Is this a real article or just satire? If you are too emotionally fragile to handle certain topics you don’t belong in that class. Not everyone can participate. Real intellectuals go after dangerous topics using reason and logic and facts. Things our white western ancesters learned to do. That is the only way our society moves forward. Keep the crybabies out of university and fire/expel every rabid professor. The Marxist ones need to be shot or at the least put into gulags in the Yukon. They are barely fit to feed polar bears.

  3. “presenting a gross and insulting caricature of university students; portraying them as thin-skinned, weak minded, and psychologically frail over the use of trigger warnings of classrooms.” Errr. I think most people are reacting to video evidence of exactly this, I don’t think caricaturing is necessary. These people caricature themselves.

  4. You have been totally brainwashed, you should sue your university because now you’re broken and nobody will want to employ you long term.

  5. Nathan, I think you misunderstand the perspective of Dr. Peterson. When you say that he makes “incredible ignorant statements” keep in mind that Dr. Peterson’s is a leading expert on the psychology of personality. He doesn’t doubt the gender spectrum, he is literally a prof who lectures about it. Please watch some of his youtube lectures. His ideas on gender are not something radical, they are probably pretty similar to what is taught in a UofA psychology class. In the article that you linked he literally says:

    “CO: You have said that you don’t believe that there is enough evidence that non-binary gender identities even exist?

    JP: No. I didn’t say that actually. If I’m going to be accused of saying things I have to be accused of exactly what I said. There’s not enough evidence to make the case that gender identity and biological sexuality are independently varying constructs. In fact, all the evidence suggests that they’re not independently varying constructs. I can tell you that transgender people make the same argument. They make the argument that a man can be born in a woman’s body and that’s actually an argument that specifies a biological linkage between gender identity and biological sex. I’m also not objecting to transgender people. I’m objecting to poorly written legislation and the foisting of ideological motivated legislation on a population that’s not ready for it.”

    1. But that also highlights exactly where science can be limited or where we’re literallly still attempting to establish sound facts. Methods to elicit differences in biological sexuality and gender identity are hardly developed and certainly not developed enough to make claims.

      Sure, does his cry for change in policy make sense? Maybe. Maybe it deserves all merit if we think policy should always be based in science (which it isn’t), but he doesn’t stop there. He goes on to further make the claim that because the policy is misguided, it actively harms him. That’s purely ideiological and not based in evidence whatsoever.

      Even if there is no evidence, generations of people have constructed meaningful dialogue and livelihoods through the exercise of gender identity. Just because you haven’t definitively explained how that works, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. I think we ought to treat this as more than a simple ideology because creating at atmosphere for someone’s acceptance has a net benefit. It also can begin to treat some symptoms of flawed policy that will continue to marginalize communities.

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