Paul Cantrell
Apropos of several things floating across my TL, I just want to say as somebody who teaches college:
Yes, absolutely, politically conservative students on campus end up feeling uncomfortable in their views, constantly challenged. 100%.
So do leftists.
So do centrists.
So do students who attempt to be apolitical.
Nobody gets to hang out on campus feeling comfortable and cushy in their worldview. That is…you know…kind of the point of the place.
1/
Paul Cantrell
I can guarantee that a student who is…I don’t know, say, a devoted communist…feels •far• more uncomfortable expressing their full views on campus at a college in the US than a student who believes in Milton-Friedman-style economics as a force for good.
Complaints about whose political views need special protection are less rooted in who’s actually oppressed than in who thinks they’re entitled to never being questioned.
2/
Paul Cantrell
But there’s a wrinkle here, one that’s crucial to unwrinkle: the word “conservative” has long had a double meaning.
Many of our political terms do. In the US, for example, “liberal” means “left” unless you’re a leftist in which case it means “laissez-fair” or “neoliberal” or something incoherent but Definitely Bad. (I refuse to even use the word “socialism” anymore without specific clarification about its meaning in a given conversation.)
It’s the double meaning of “conservative” in particular that muddies this discussion about views on campus.
3/
Paul Cantrell
In •public discussion• about conservatives supposedly being oppressed on campus, people act like that means free markets, minimal government, centering religion, etc.
But the •actual experience• the loudest complainers are talking about is very often (not always, but •very• often) that they were ostracized for being transphoic, queerphobic, racist, and/or religiously bigoted.
“Conservative views” gets to mean something polite and acceptable in op-eds, but then gets to mean outright fascism on the ground.
4/
Samuel Smith ✅
@inthehands this ambiguous meaning has frustrated me to no end. It's why I tell people, "the Democratic party is the conservative one."
They always disagree with me but I hope it starts them thinking about what words mean and whether they're in a party because of identity or because they believe in the party's principles.
Paul Cantrell
@Jirikiha
That’s a miserable fight to fight, but I applaud your efforts.
Paul Cantrell
And this is where the discussion gets hard.
There are some mission-based things that are not up for negotiation. Our mission is to create an environment where students can learn. We create a bubble of personal safety within which students can become intellectually uncomfortable. That latter •requires• the former. That is our job.
If one student makes another unsafe — not intellectually challenged, but in actual danger — that is not OK. It does not magically become OK because we deem the threatener’s threats “political.”
5/
(((Thinkaholic))) is antifa
@inthehands Ah, yes, the classic:
Conservative: I have been censored for my conservative views
Me: Holy shit! You were censored for wanting lower taxes?
Con: LOL no...no not those views
Me: So....deregulation?
Con: Haha no not those views either
Me: Which views, exactly?
Con: Oh, you know the ones
(Edit to make it clear this is not original to me; I first saw it on Twitter in 2018 posted by @ndrew_lawrence)
Paul Cantrell
@mothninja @pooserville
And then there’s the poor handful folks (yes, they exist, I’ve talked to them) who really •did• mean lower taxes, and they are so sad and confused by the whole discussion.
Anna
@pooserville @inthehands came here to post this. It's funny because it's true :/
Kim Scheinberg
@inthehands
Took three years but I've finally been subtooted. Now I know I'm home...
Paul Cantrell
@kims
Ha, I think you did post one of the things that started me on this, didn’t you? But if so, it was a friendly subtoot!
Paul Cantrell
@kims
Yup, it was you! Will I ruin it if I unsubtoot by linking to your post?
Kim Scheinberg
@inthehands
I was just being playful with my subtoot comment. I know it was in good faith
You should do whatever best helps you communicate what you're trying to say. I put stuff out there for people to engage with how they choose. Link or not as you see fit
Paul Cantrell
@darth_hideout
This is definitely true about a lot of sub cultures; it’s true in much of the upper Midwest regardless of political alignment. And it’s disorienting for students to come to college and find this is no longer true.
It’s similarly disorienting for students who’ve grown up with political homogeneity to be challenged for the first time about assumptions they never even realize they held. All of this is the good kind of discomfort, as long as it happens in that necessary context of personal safety.
Darth Hideout 🏳️🌈
In many conservative circles, especially among families, it’s considered impolite to discuss politics because it’s uncomfortable. I think about this a lot recently: the idea that challenging anyone’s worldview is considered impolite. Telling anyone they’ve made a mistake is considered impolite. Telling the truth is considered impolite. Feelings are unchallengeable in a great many circumstances because it’s impolite. Definitely doesn’t do much for personal or intellectual growth.
Paul Cantrell
@kims
OK! I realized the link would be good, but I didn’t want to ruin your moment! 😄
Paul Cantrell
@Uair
I suspect it’s ahistorical to even view “conservative” as a single coherent political movement across many centuries; there’s a whole mishmash of stuff that the modern conservative movement has tried to retcon into a hisotically coherent philosophy.
Poloniousmonk
I'm not a historian and haven't made a comprehensive study of this, but a more-than-cursory reading of history shows that "conservatives", anywhere and anywhen, never actually believed the bullshit they peddled. They are just mouthpieces for the ruling class.
Paul Cantrell
@iris
The struggle you’re describing here is what I was alluding to downthread with this post:
> This is messy and complicated in practice. Keeping each other safe is real work, and hard work. None of us (including me) get it right 100% of the time. All that’s required is that we try, that we believe we are •supposed• to try. That is not negotiable.
Like…for example, it’s a valid and subtle question whether there are biological human brain differences based on X/Y chromosomes. It’s also a super fraught question, because gender-based socialization is such an incredibly powerful force in human society that it’s damn near impossible to establish a connection — and societal context means that getting this wrong or creating misunderstanding has the potential to do incredible harm. Valid zone of scientific inquiry! Also zone of extreme danger! How does a biology prof venture into those waters? Very carefully!!
But I think all of this is tending a bit toward the natural academic instinct to come up with corner cases and split hairs. For the purposes of the public debate, I think we have a reasonably clear north star:
→ Students should feel personally safe enough at school to learn. ←
So your example of throwing around hypothetical “should” statements about annihilating people? Don’t get hung up on whether it’s hypothetical! Focus on two things:
1. Do students •experience• a sense of threat that interferes with their sense of personal safety, and thus their learning?
2. If so, is that feeling rooted in a credible sense of danger given the larger social context?
(1) indicates a problem. (2) determines how we address that problem. If a student experiences a sense of threat because they are, say, experiencing a schizophrenic episode, then addressing the problem means getting them the help they need. However, if the sense of threat is because that “hypothetical” statement is about a real social reality, then addressing the problem means addressing the words and behavior of other community members.
Iris Young (he/they/she) (PhD)
@inthehands I've been struggling to articulate how I perceive and react to this boundary, and this thread feels like progress, so I wonder if I could iteratively make a bit more progress with your input?
You seem secure in the assertion that displaying transphobia, racism, ableism and so forth are violations of the pact to keep each other safe while we interrogate what we believe on an intellectual level. I agree with this, and automatically shift into a defensive posture when this is questioned, but once in that posture, I find I can't describe what form of safety is being violated by someone throwing around "should" statements that anniilate people, but only theoretically. If I'm arguing with someone who, for the sake of argument, genuinely believes trans people should be excluded from public life and denied appropriate medical care, and that this doesn't cause them harm because they can just choose to be "normal", how does an observer determine whether those views are threatening? I take it as an axiom that people deserve self-determination, and that any top-down description of people without their input is flawed, exploitable, and potentially harmful. But I can't expect everyone to share that view with me, and if we do away with that, I'm not sure on what basis I can claim that forcing people into assigned genders constitutes harm, especially if what we're immediately dealing with isn't physical grab-someone-by-the-arm forcing.
If it takes the form of philosophizing about the nature of gender, there are shapes and forms of that kind of discussion that feel safe, if not necessarily comfortable, and others that feel unsafe. It feels unsafe when I have to explain what civil and human rights are and why they extend to trans people, why it doesn't solve the problem to declare we don't actually exist, and so on. But I don't know how to explain where that shift happens or why my experience of it should carry any weight.
0xC0DEC0DE07E8
@inthehands @mothninja @pooserville they’re so sad. Like, “oh, sweetie, those policy positions are downstream of the racism, you really don’t know what’s going on here, do you?”
Guy on the run
Part 1 of this thread is enough for me.
Paul Cantrell
@philleu
Ought to be enough for all of us, but current social context makes the rest of it essential.
Paul Cantrell
@mothninja @pooserville
One of my best friends is an honest-to-god actual libertarian in the original sense (pacifist capitalist anarchist, roughly speaking). I could do a whole thread about him, but the gap between him and the people who now call themselves “libertarians” is just eye-opening. In brief: he loathes Trump. He voted for and phone-banked (!!) for Biden, a person whom he despises running for an office he thinks should not exist, because MAGA are fascists and when there are fascists you fight the fascists, •period•. He calls Doge the “Hitler youth squad.” He fought his own neighbors to allow the construction of a public housing project in his neighborhood because even though he gov-funded public housing shouldn’t even exist, if there are laws they should apply absolutely equally to everyone — and he called out his own neighbors for being racist in their opposition to the housing project. It goes on.
Anna
@inthehands @pooserville right, exactly - I have a longstanding but not particularly close friend who falls into this very niche category, and he spends his time alternating between being deeply confused and utterly horrified. I really hope he wakes up just that last little bit more asap
Larry Garfield
@inthehands The "Motte and Bailey" fallacy is one of the most pernicious, because it can happen without even conscious intent or coordination between two different people.
Paul Cantrell
@Crell
Thank you, I knew there was a name but I’d lost the term!
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