We Need More Cushions
Katherine Timpf detects more sorrow among the competitively sensitive:
A student at Harvard University published an op-ed on Wednesday complaining that her school’s “safe spaces” are just not safe enough. According to Madison E. Johnson, her time spent in the “safe space” was really great at first — there were “massage circles,” “deep conversations,” and “times explicitly delineated for processing and journaling.”
Yes, journaling and massage circles. Readers who studied at less glamorous institutions will no doubt feel the ache of deprivation. Don’t you yearn to display undiluted your “more radical views,” free from laughter, contradiction and accusations of pretension? Which is to say, though not out loud, free from other people? All this in a “beautiful” space, one that’s “rife with consciousness.” Though preferably only yours. Is that too much to ask?
But then it all changed.
Ah. It turns out that a fellow seeker of safety needed a space in which to air their “more radical views,” specifically, their radical poetry:
A white poet gets on stage and says the n-word a few times.
A student poet going rogue. And so,
I’m realising “safe space” might mean different things for different people.
It’s a learning curve, that whole reciprocity thing. What with the radicalism and all.
The poetry slam presents the real question. At this point in reality, can there even be a truly safe space?
You see, if it’s even remotely possible that “any facets of your experience or identity… could be mobilised against you,” thereby causing you “harm, panic, anxiety, disadvantage” – or fits of pretentious hysteria – then the space you’re in “is not safe.” “And you shouldn’t call it safe, because that is dangerous.” Despite such complications – complications that no mortal brain could possibly have anticipated – Ms Johnson is clear about what a safe space means to her:
For me, a safe space is one in which I feel that I can express all aspects of my identity without feeling that any one of those aspects will get me (including, but not limited to) judged, fired, marginalised, attacked, or killed.
Yes, killed, as in killed to bits. Possibly by radical poetry. In a safe space that is “dangerous.” On a campus where tuition and board costs $60,000 a year.
Try to think of it as evolution in action. Lacking the social antibodies required for survival in normal life, they’ll likely die off. Quietly, one hopes.
I had a ‘safe place’ at my Uni. It was called the library.
Those are some of the most dangerous, double-plus ungood spaces now … she might be exposed and triggered by dangerous books in there.
Those are some of the most dangerous, double-plus ungood spaces now … she might be exposed and triggered by dangerous books in there.
It sounds crazy, but this is an actual thing that happened.
https://www.thefire.org/cases/indiana-university-purdue-university-indianapolis-student-employee-found-guilty-of-racial-harassment-for-reading-a-book/
Granted, he wasn’t right there in the library; the same book can be found in the student library.
Twenty years ago, the ‘safe space’ was the bar.
I was (and still am) an atheists, and my friends included Christians. I was (and still am) on the left, and my friends included students who intended to vote Conservative (who included a blue-collar, comp-school educated lass who shattered many of my assumptions about who could be a Tory).
Universities are supposed to be places where your ideas and opinions – which may not be ideally and perfectly formed at the age of 18 or 19 – are to be challenged, and where you can meet people who actually disagree with you and have a perfectly valid point of view.
At least that’s what mine was like back in the day.
Dr Cromarty
Pedantry corner: the Cistercians and Carthusians are exclusively male orders, so she couldn’t join them. And, as you say, the Carmelites wouldn’t look at her.
James:
Peak stupid will never arrive. Stupid is an endlessly renewable – and growing – resource as long as so many people are ‘educated’ way beyond their level of intelligence.
I was (and still am) on the left
And yet, shockingly, you roam here with your psyche unmolested. Do let me know if you start to feel panic and anxiety, or in danger of being killed. I keep boiled sweets and a cylinder of oxygen behind the bar.
@Theophrastus
Pedantry corner: the Cistercians and Carthusians are exclusively male orders, so she couldn’t join them. And, as you say, the Carmelites wouldn’t look at her.
That will be news to the nuns of the 45 Cistercian convents in Europe alone and the nuns of the 6 female Charterhouses around the world.
Google ‘Cistercian nuns’ and ‘Carthusian nuns’
Boiled sweets? Is this one of those bizarre British food traditions?
It’s the secret of all British cooking. At least 14 hours of heavy boiling.
I had a ‘safe place’ at my Uni. It was called the library.
Twenty years ago, the ‘safe space’ was the bar.
Maybe it had something to do with the tight quarters and such, but at U of FL the library, especially the older of the two we had…can’t remember which was which, which is a tell itself I suppose…but I digress…the older of the two libraries was notorious for men exposing themselves, occasional sexual assault, and even some (supposedly) consensual public displays of fornication. Funny I don’t recall any such thing being a problem in the numerous bars on or around campus.
damn….i f’d the italics again….apologies.
Fixed. 🙂
When I read massage circles, what comes to mind is ‘circle jerk’. I believe that to be a sexual activity brilliantly developed by the gay community. I also believe that today’s universities are all functioning on that same principal. The snake eating it’s own tail.
I had a ‘safe place’ at my Uni. It was called the library.
Hear, hear . . . although as this film student got settled in among the theatre students, the safe space shifted to being clustered with everyone else in the in house theatre lobby corridor with it’s own telephone . . .
When I read massage circles, what comes to mind is ‘circle jerk’. . . .
See also, circular firing squad.
I also believe that today’s universities are all functioning on that same principal.
Well, there’s a widespread assumption, especially among students of the arts and humanities, that an educated worldview is, and ought to be, a more or less leftist one. Professor Jere Surber is a textbook example. Note the man’s parochial conceit and, in the comments, his casual dismissal of people who challenge his self-flattering expectations.
It’s rather like when George Monbiot waved aside those who disagree with him as mere dullards struggling with racial phobias. In his mind, a non-leftist outlook “thrives on low intelligence” and “appeals to stupidity.” It’s “the critical pathway from low intelligence to racism.” While self-imagined super-intellectual leftists – people like George, in fact – are apparently “self-deprecating” and “too liberal for their own good.”
Dr Cromarty
My sincere apologies. You are quite right. I learn something new every day. Thank you.
Barman, a drink for Dr Cromarty on my tab!
@Theophrastus
C’est pas grave.
Still, thanks for the offer. I’ll have a glass of Birra Nursia.
http://birranursia.com
Cheers!
Forgive my going off topic, but just in case you missed it, David, it seems that taking a selfie is “actually an attack on the moral self”.
Guess where this was said.
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2015/apr/07/selfie-prince-harry-died-in-2015-selfie-stick?CMP=fb_gu
‘Do let me know if you start to feel panic and anxiety, or in danger of being killed. I keep boiled sweets and a cylinder of oxygen behind the bar’.
Fuck off, mine’s a vodka with a chaser. And pour yourself one while you’re at it.
. . . it seems that taking a selfie is “actually an attack on the moral self”.
Works for me, too.
“Lefties and lotion …”
David owes me a new keyboard and a fresh beer.
No refunds. Credit note only.