Oh, FFS.
Classical Mythology Too Triggering for Columbia Students - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "During the week spent on Ovid’s "Metamorphoses," the class was instructed to read the myths of Persephone and Daphne, both of which include vivid depictions of rape and sexual assault. As a survivor of sexual assault, the student described being triggered while reading such detailed accounts of rape throughout the work. However, the student said her professor focused on the beauty of the language and the splendor of the imagery when lecturing on the text. As a result, the student completely disengaged from the class discussion as a means of self-preservation. She did not feel safe in the class.
Ovid’s "Metamorphoses" is a fixture of Lit Hum, but like so many texts in the Western canon, it contains triggering and offensive material that marginalizes student identities in the classroom. These texts, wrought with histories and narratives of exclusion and oppression, can be difficult to read and discuss as a survivor, a person of color, or a student from a low-income background.
Apparently this discussion of Ovid was so threatening it was a matter of self-preservation to ignore it. If that's really true—if the mere discussion of rape causes this student to feel panicked and physically unsafe—than she needs help treating severe post-traumatic stress disorder, not a fucking trigger warning. I say that with no judgment; being raped can obviously be traumatic enough to produce lingering psychological trauma. But that's what that level of reaction represents: psychological trauma. Which, while something professors should be sensitive to, shouldn't dictate the parameters of acceptable education for all students.
That the student physically stayed in the classroom for the discussion and talked to the professor immediately afterward, however, suggests she wasn't as struck with crippling post-traumatic terror as the op-ed makes it seem. Rather, the writers are merely engaging in the malapropism du jour, wherein words can be "violence" and challenging or uncomfortable thoughts make people "unsafe.""
LIFT-RUN-BANG: 8 truths to live (and lift) by: " Be willing to hurt people you care about with honesty. If they care about you, they will forgive you for not bullshitting them. If you care about them, you won't enable their shit behavior by lying to them.
There's nothing worse than enablers.
These are the friends that never make you reexamine how you behave, how you treat people, and what your "weak points" are.
In lifting it's the guy that lets you squat high all the while telling you what a "beast" you are.
In life, it's the same friend that knows you're fucking someone over, yet agrees with all of your fucked up rationalizations as to why you're doing it.
Don't surround yourself with enablers, and don't be one. If someone values your friendship they will also value your constructive criticism. If you lose a "friendship" because of it, then it wasn't much of a friendship to begin with."
Because Men Are Evil®, of course. I blame the patriarchy. A Man Took a Selfie in the Toy Aisle of Target. Obviously, He Must Be a Predator. - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "In an Australian Target store last week, a man stopped to take a selfie with a cardboard Star Wars cut-out. He thought it would be fun to show his kids. Another woman saw him with his camera in the toy department and immediately assumed the he was photographing her children. She snapped his photo, pasted it on Facebook along with what she thought he’d done, and it went viral...
