College: How Do You Deal with the Politically Correct?

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Hi,

In my school, I have to deal with people who are social justice warriors and try to shout me down or falsely accuse me with buzzwords that I'm not when I act kindly in tone and it seems they don't listen to rationality or logic especially with what we encounter outside the college campus. It just seems that safe spaces and trigger warnings take over higher education in the United States and I want to know how to deal with it as a person with Asperger Syndrome. Any tips?

The best way to deal with people you find toxic to you is to just not engage with them.

As far as I'm concerned, if fighting for equal rights for everybody makes me a "Social Justice Warrior", then I'll embrace it.

I'm not going to talk too much about politics here but as an aspie woman I had real trouble with Cixous. As far as I could tell, she was saying women were better than men because women are illogical. I'm not illogical.

I was 18 and I haven't gone back to reading her in 12 years so if you're still in uni and studying her, bear this in mind before you get back to me with some sort of intricate point. Can't even spell her name anymore.

It comes from a good place initially all this PC stuff. On the streets it tends to end up in one too. But in academic discourse it can end up with a lot of waffle. True of a lot of academics, though.

Safe spaces and trigger warnings are a good idea and might even help you if you have mental health problems*. I'm not meaning the stupid way they're used online but the way they're used in the classroom (my stepdad's a lecturer, I know it's different in the States but the horror stories are just that and sometimes it's nice for someone who's had a hard time to be allowed to read the stuff in a separate space. So if you were severely bullied at school for eg, they'd let you read about the hatred kids have of autistic kids at home where you feel comfortbale and then come to class and talk about it instead of it being sprung on you).

So in that regard I'd agree with the other posters. If someone who's been in a genuinely horrific situation reading about their own situation in a fictionalised form first at home and then coming into uni to talk about it bothers you then stop being an arse. But if someone's able to be using it to get out of work entirely, they're either very ill and on their way out and you haven't picked up on it like the uni has or they need to quit being molly coddled.

* which I don't consider being aspie but it makes us more prone to other things. I've got social anxiety and I'm pretty sure I'd have more if I opened up to a doctor about it because I get recurring nightmares from my past

I don't mean to sound rude, but my aunt always had a kind tone, and she could say some horrible things; also my only encounter with safe spaces is from the people who make fun of them. With that said, what are you hoping to accomplish with school? Does taking part in those discussions get you closer to those goals? If not, let them waste their time and energy on fruitless discussions, you have better things to do.
I know that left or right, both sides often have a skewed perception of the world and can act nasty to anyone who doesn't agree. If you must take part in those discussions, the best you can do is stay calm, diplomatic, and explain your views, short of physical assault or threats, you can't expect a lot of decency when it comes to arguing politics.

I personally appreciate trigger warnings as I am a sexual assault survivor and certain things do trigger me. I also believe there is a use for safe spaces; ... There, however, is a difference between being considerate of other people's pain and attempting to censure to avoid it all together. The recent Little House on the Prairie controversy reveals this complete disregard for history, for not recognizing that different times have different measures for progressivism. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" produced a modern day slur in the black community ("an Uncle Tom), yet it brought the abolitionist movement to a boiling point, allowed people to sympathize with what slaves suffered by following the story of a woman trying to find her child sold from her...

Susan B. Anthony and Andrea Dwokin and Angela Davis, revolutionary during their times, are controversial now... Deemed racist, sex work hater, and a defender of a murderer... This sort of scrutiny is, however, more likely to be applied to women in history... The Social Justice Movement both refuses to see the complexity of history, yet it also simultaneously partakes in cultural relativism in reference to the Middle East... We must deconstruct injustice within its context-- recognizing the interplay of culture and ideology while also recognizing that the world and its history is not black and white...

As an autistic person, as I had previously joined ranks with the social justice movement, I became terrified of talking to people of color for fear I, in my whiteness, may do something to hurt them... Now I realize that true Progress should not occur through fear of offense, but a love that is deep enough where you will defend others, those who are not there to defend themselves...

I am in the Progressive Student Union and often they do misrepresent facts, such as police killings-- which do very much happen, but not in the way they express it... I have, honestly, been growing distant from the club because it feels like we are offering more of a victimized reality than a progressive future... Honestly, it depresses me... I am usually quiet unless, as I am the main woman in the club, womens' issues come up... however, mostly I am quiet because though I enjoy arguing, I am not the best at confrontation and social justice warriors are very good at making you feel like a horrible person and I have a very high guilt complex... I would probably just begin hating myself and maybe start crying if I was confronted as I did when a school therapist did...

Something that may offer insight on how autistic people are not included in the social justice movement... I had gone to my community college counselor, before my diagnosis and before I transferred to university, as I had become very distressed on an argument in one of my classes that revolved around how it was apparently transphobic for a lesbian to refuse to have sex with a trans woman who still has a penis... This sounded like sexual coercion to me... and the arguments on the SJW sides were stupid, but being raised by lesbians and in the gay community, I felt that I would be betraying one side of myself or the other and I felt like a horrible person and I had become suicidal... So I go to my counselor -- who, by the way, is a cis straight white male, to use the language of social identity-- and I try telling him how I am feeling and how it has been several days and I still cannot get the weight of this class discussion out of my head and he tells me-- and he knows that I am a multiple sexual assault survivor-- that I must not know what it is like to suffer, that I have no idea what transgender people experience, and that is why I cannot understand transphobia.... I left his office in a meltdown and my boyfriend at the time had to find me and calm me down... I did not see the counselor again after that...

Drop out. Higher education is lost on you.

A 'social justice warrior' is an individual who promotes socially progressive views, including feminism, civil rights, and multiculturalism. 'Social justice warrior' (SJW) as a pejorative term gained popularity with the malignant misogynists and incels of "Gamergate" and the racists and neo-Nazi trolls of 4Chan to denigrate and dismiss people who believe in equal rights; when you use 'SJW' in that context, that's the type of people you're associating yourself with.
If you feel that you are in constant conflict with people who believe in and support social justice for all, rather than focusing upon them, your time might be better spent trying to get to know people who are different than you, and contemplating the roots of your own chauvinism and bigotry.

The important thing to recognise is that these people, by and large, aren't genuinely humanitarian in their convictions. Their motivation, in my experience, is simple attention seeking; the so-called "SJW" phenomenon is a particularly attractive route to take for attention-seeking orally fixated (Freud's term) personalities because it provides them with the buzz that they need while giving them the plausible deniability of being part of a supposedly progressive movement - it permits them to be shallow and unthinking while claiming the bragging rights of being heir to a liberal movement which, having historically been noble and progressive, retains a vestigial air of having those qualities today. Such people are best ignored; this is the only way of teaching them to seek attention through constructive means. By reacting with indignation (justified with respect to their more ridiculous predilections) you're, quite perversely, giving them exactly what they want.

On the other hand, there are a few people who fall into the SJW category who are genuinely liberal and progressive. The best way of telling the difference is that these types, as well as obsessing over inane things like gender neutral pronouns also have some serious, genuinely humanitarian preoccupations, such as being anti-war, socialist, environmentalist and so on. They're also generally a lot older. The best way of dealing with the minority that fall into this category is by pointing out how by focusing on rubbish like what toilets people urinate in, they're neglecting topics that could actually improve people's material welfare.

Why would people be shouting these things at you?

At college I got my head down and did my work. Can't go wrong if your purpose there is to learn and not to debate random things.

Those who cannot bear any offensive speech do not believe in free speech. The truth has become an insult.

The term "political correctness" has always appalled me, reminding me of Orwell's "Thought Police" and fascist regimes. There's an even greater irony about political correctness, which is that it purports to be the dialect of progressive reform, when it is in fact a vastly more help to conservatives and to the US status quo than traditional nit-picking grammatical errors ever were -- in its Orwellian substitution of the euphemisms of social equality for social equality itself.

The road to chaos is filled with political correctness.

I deal with the PC crowd by being a plain talker -- one who expresses what is really going on without engaging in hyperbole or soft-peddling a situation to make it seem less embarrassing or unpleasant than it actually is.

He is not "Economical With the Truth"; he is Lying.

She is not "Expecting"; she is Pregnant.

The kid is not "Stocky"; he's Fat.

Those people are not "Urban Survivalists"; they're Homeless.

Those other people are not "Chemically Dependent"; they are Addicts.

And those people way over there are not "Financially Challenged"; they are Poor.

Finally, we are not "On the Spectrum"; we are Autistic.

Last edited by Fnord on 05 Feb 2019, 1:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I think this is probably the best post of yours I've read on this site to date.

Right now I’m only in highschool, but my literature class has a lot of “political correctness” students. Every discussion in our class ultimately ends up being about misogyny. If they really cared about the issues, then, okay. But it’s like they just repeat the arguments from the politically correct standpoint, and then don’t care much for the issues.

I occasionally mention people/events that seemingly go against the politically correct narrative, but try to be neutral about it.

They may be “Virtue Signalling” — the conspicuous expression of moral values that are empty or merely superficial support of certain political views — in an attempt to seem “cool” or to better their chances of being accepted by feminist women.

Men do this to get dates, while other women may do this to present themselves as part of a united front against misogyny and thus one of the popular girls themselves.

College discussions, sadly, are like going into battle. You have to be able to defend your position, to enjoy the discussion (the fight), and to have a healthy and unshakable sense of self worth. The discussions are portrayed as if everyone gets their say and all points are respectfully considered. That is not true at all.

If you are not naturally sure of yourself, well prepared, and a good debater, you really should stay quiet, for your own protection. These jerks (other students, professors, etc) nowadays will ruin kids in classes for just trying to participate in their own education. It’s not worth it. Read up, do your work, move on.

People hated me in class, and could not win against me in a discussion. Mostly because they were lazy drinkers who didn’t read the material and didn’t know what they were talking about.