Up from the depths I come, after a bit of a hiatus. I might even go on another hiatus. Do not fret dear reader. All is flux and flow in the constantly seething unity that is the living universe. While I was out and about I noticed something very interesting. People not much younger than I1 seem to think that it is a totally cool and good idea to restrict freedom of speech on college campuses. They also think the best way to do this is to act like a bunch of toddlers throwing a temper tantrum. All sorts of things are triggering for them, as if today’s millennial students have decided they are collectively Bruce Banner. It’s funny that the role usually reserved for the up-his-ass dean in all those old College movies has now flipped to the students themselves. But where did all this triggering come from? It is a strange and fairly sudden movement that I do not recall being present when I was in college2, but somehow in the last ten years students have lost their way. They support a diffuse form of fascism and clamor for it without considering the consequences. I guess this is me upset; I am up in arms over these dang kids today!
The thing that really pushed me over the edge was Trigglypuff (see right), a comically rotund 21 year old woman flipping her shit in an audience of students at a talk on several subjects, including Third Wave Feminism3. Internet memes are pretty funny, if a bit juvenile, and when I came across her I think I would have just chuckled and moved on except what she said really struck me. If you watch the video,4Trigglypuff, or Cora Segal as the internet leads me to believe is her real name, can be seen rhythmically convulsing while screaming “Stop spreading hate speech! We wouldn’t be here if you weren’t spreading hate speech!” Now, this in itself isn’t the worst sentiment. I don’t see myself as pro hate speech. But what she is asking for is ridiculous. Mostly because, of course, who would be responsible for deciding what constitutes hate speech? She is at a public forum where students, academics, authors, and the occasional pundit are debating contemporary issues and concepts. Who can claim to legislate their expression? It is a classic moral problem, where you essentially need a morality czar to police speech5. I don’t believe Cora is evil or un-American6, and she is not a ‘Hitler’ as people who impinge on free speech are often called, but she is a) misinformed b) misled (the difference I will explain) and c) stubbornly fitted with blinders7. Worse, Cora is representative of an attitude held by many undergraduate students.
I say Cora is misinformed because she is under the mistaken assumption that hate speech is at fault in and of itself, and that banning the vocabulary of hate speech8 would solve the issue. She does not understand the concept of speech. Speech is not capable of transmitting hatred without there being an actor, or hater. And we all know, haters gonna hate. If you restrict the voice of hatred, if that really is what is being produced here, the hate does not magically disappear. Instead, the hatred would grow, because a ban would start oppressing the haters by taking aware the vocabulary to vocalize their anger. Sometimes people don’t like each other, and the reason is often unfair or misunderstood. Hating can be both legitimate and cruel, which is something we often forget. Hating is just as much a normal part of the human experience as everything else, and sometimes it is good and useful. Racism and sexism in policy and action should be fought; the source of these hatreds should be studied and alleviated. But speech in the US is legally free speech and must be reasonably permitted.9 Oppression, on the other hand, is universally reviled; human beings, haters or not, are loathe to relinquish freedom willingly. People who are not permitted to make hateful statements will continue to do so illegally, with invigorated strength and a persecution complex. Consider oppression on a larger scale – a government entity with the capacity to declare speech is hate speech. We already have hate crimes, something that was viewed skeptically for a long time for fear that it would introduce unfair punishments10. Laws for hate crimes are very carefully written, and are often still debated for fairness. The fluidity of language versus the relative concreteness of physical action would greatly increase the difficulty of crafting similar language into a ban on hate speech.
Cora is also misled. As I said before, this is different from being misinformed. I say Cora is misled, because she seems to possess a fairly awful entitlement complex, which is a form of being misled. I know I am an old man, but I think this has some real legitimacy beyond the standard trope that all generations find the subsequent generation entitled. Cora has the expectation that hate speech should no longer be on a college campus. But what she is implying is that [what Cora deems] hate speech should no longer be on a[her] college campus. I think Cora fancies herself the Czar. Cora observes behaviors that she does not like, and wrongly assumes that her ethical impulse applies to all. Note how in the video she uses “We”, not ‘I’ when making statements about banning hate speech. She really thinks her ethical issues are why everyone in the room is there, and everyone is just as upset as she is, and that she is merely the mouthpiece for their rage. Now for probably close to 500 years we have lived in a world where academic places receive special dispensation to consider new, unusual, and disagreeable thoughts. Cora would like to subvert that long and proud history of academic discussion by putting some mystery person or group in charge to filter ideas and discussions so that another unnamed authority can punish the speech which famously Triggered her. Or put plainly, Cora is mad that someone doesn’t agree with her. Specifically, Cora is mad that the feminist on stage in the video is espousing a different brand of feminism. And Cora, being entitled, feels that she deserves more than her fair share of consideration and participation, and more Rightness. Cora is demanding Acceptance, Inclusion, and Attention from an academic as a balm for being Triggered/disagreed with.
Incidentally, ‘Triggering’ itself is a bad and stupid term. To trigger someone, originally, was to set off a specific series of behaviors in someone that were cued by the particular mental illness from which they suffered. You triggered an autistic person, or someone with borderline personality disorder. Developmentally disabled people could be triggered. It signified an overload of a particular kind of stimulus/ideation which set off usually undesirable behaviors. The point of saying someone is triggered is that, like a gun, a trigger is something that sets in motion an action that is no longer fully controlled. You are going to flip the fuck out if you have BPD and you are exposed to certain triggers. It can be mitigated with time and therapy, but it’s just the way it is. The impulse is always there; only the reaction can be diminished. There is a circuit of sorts in your brain where if you input perception/idea X with criterion Y, result Z comes pooping out. And so, this was how triggering was used, until one day a bunch of people, I suspect ironically, co-opted the word to describe people who were set off on the Internet. 11 Over time, it was then borrowed by the social justice movement to describe the condition and sensation of being exposed to your particular brand of evil with respect to said movement. That proceeded for awhile as the primary definition in mainstream, until it was then reversed as a sort of false double irony you could only find in this, the Ironic Age, as a means to mock the social justice movement. It is my opinion, truthfully, that to use the word ‘trigger’ as people like Cora use it, diminishes the legitimate suffering of people with serious mental conditions. Someone with PTSD now has to feel the added shame of explaining triggers in the workplace and elsewhere, knowing full well that triggering also applies to loudmouthed and entitled internet people who use the word as an excuse to misbehave.
In closing, I assume Cora has parents. I also assume Cora has parents who did not raise her to violently tantrum to the point that she becomes the object of the ridicule of millions. And yet here we are. What Cora is doing is what many do, and that is assuming she has license to behave in that way, in a formal discussion setting, because she learned from the internet that she has been Triggered, and that means Everyone Else is wrong and must respect her and everything she does until they soothe her ego. She must don her blinders and run the circuit until she achieves the desired result 12. This is misuse of the automatic component of Triggering – by mentioning anything about feminism or body positivity13 that does not conform to what is Cora approved, we are in violation and now a price must be paid to initiate coping. It isn’t just the internet at fault – it is endemic to the parenting approach which I assume provided Cora with an otherwise decent behavioral foundation. Her parents likely drew from the helicopter parenting school of thought which even now afflicts many of our contemporary brothers and sisters. Many of us grew up privileged, white, (even male, yuck), and were rarely exposed to challenges we did not voluntarily seek out. Cora -and this is my judgement but damnit it’s my website and I will judge what I want here (!!!) – Cora seems and looks like someone who is used to to instant gratification and things being presented to her already formatted to her liking. At 21, as an undergrad, this is the first time where Cora has really had an opportunity to “leave the nest” for awhile and act as an adult where she is not shielded from conflicting views. With no coping mechanisms under her belt for such situations, her body convulses with rage and she spouts off like an asshole. Perhaps rightfully so, since if she was not afforded the possibility of challenge and argument as a child, she would of course be expected to still react as a child. So too her less graceful peers. Where there were once the great academic principles of debate, discussion, and dialectic leading to greater knowledge, there is now just a fat chick flailing and yelling and her weird jiggly arms made people name her after the Pokémon Jigglypuff. And nothing changed, and everyone laughed, and no one cared. This is the world I live in. This is all our world.
Notes
- I am 28, yikes!
- I graduated in 2006.
- I am very aware this is the first bit of moving media I have ever posted on this site. Bravo, everyone.
- I do believe this is also my first video link. Break out the champagne!
- Which is then, of course, not free speech.
- lol at me as I inadvertently imply these things are synonymous.
- Horse comparison optional.
- were it possible without the Czar looking over our shoulders
- This is a huge topic I can’t even begin to touch here, but greatly simplified, hate speech is the “Canary in the Coal Mine” of political and personal life. Understanding what people hate and why does a great deal in explaining the direction and constitution of our governing bodies, societies, and each other. Of course, this is whether we like it or not, since real hatred will be there no matter what as part of the human condition.
- And this was for comparatively clear situations!
- I really, truly believe the original intent was to denigrate in a sarcastic manner people who were overreacting.
- I am still loving the horse metaphor. I’m lovin’ it. Brand recognition bitchesssss
- or whatever else she celebrates on her hilarious publicly doxxed OKCupid profile