Category: Cultural Survey

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Creating Fragile Children

Lisa Selin Davis in her recent article continues an ongoing theme of this blog; Coddling Generation Safety Blankey.

Coddling Generation Safety Blankey? Or Affirming Shared Truths?
College Students Demand Protection From Words and Ideas
Young Woman in Profile by Odilon Redon – 1910
National Gallery of Art

Davis, a parent of a gender non-conforming girl, who was frequently mistaken for a boy, has some astute recommendations for “snowplow parents” and the fragile kids they create.

Here are a few graphs.

While some advocates of gender-affirming medicine and gender-identity ideology insist they are saving the lives of vulnerable children, in practice much of what’s taught to kids today about gender—especially the conflation of gender nonconformity with gender dysphoria—suggests to masculine girls and feminine boys that they need to “fix” themselves through medical or psychological interventions that have some irreversible effects, without guaranteed benefits.

There are many possible reasons why this is happening, including the lobbying efforts of transgender and civil rights groups, and the institutional incentives created by federal laws like the recent White House executive order on “affirming care.” But I believe another reason is our national zeitgeist shift toward snowplow parenting, in which parents believe their job is to clear obstacles out of their children’s way rather than to equip them with the skills to navigate those obstacles. We are terrified of our children’s suffering and teach them to be terrified of it, too.

The lessons children are learning about gender in schools, from our culture and on social media, may leave them fragile and thin-skinned, unprepared to withstand pain and conflict and confusion. Take, for instance, misgendering—in the alterworld of Twitter, it’s a worse crime than, say, libeling someone, which is the lifeblood that powers the platform. Children are being taught that misgendering is violence, that every person must be treated exactly as he or she (or they) wishes to be by others or else they’ve experienced discrimination, and that people who violate these rules must be punished, whatever their intent. Children are being taught that feelings are facts. That figurative violence is literal violence.

Most of the time, misgendering means “correctly sexing”—identifying someone by their biological sex, not their gender identity. This can cause a very small percentage of people with intense gender dysphoria deep distress, but doesn’t mean children should learn that they’ve hurt—no, harmed—someone if they misgender them. I don’t want children to be disrespectful, but if they’re disrespected, I don’t want them to melt into a puddle and demand vengeance. I don’t want them to learn that they need to weaken others to feel strong.

Children are learning that sex and sex stereotypes are interchangeable, that rejecting stereotypes means rejecting your body. Or they are not learning about sex stereotypes; the popular gender teaching tool, the Genderbread Person, makes no mention of them. They’re learning that puberty is an aesthetic choice they can make based on their level of discomfort; they are learning that discomfort cannot be withstood.

[emphasis added]

Read the whole thing: The Real Risks of Gender Education

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College Students Demand Protection From Words and Ideas

Thomas Jefferson once said:

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god.  It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.  - Notes on the State of Virginia

Freedom of Religion was an uncomplicated matter. For Jefferson, tolerance of other worldviews would be wide ranging unless it damaged him financially or harmed him physically.

Andrew B. Myers / The Atlantic

The times have changed. In today’s world the psychologized self reigns supreme such that if what you do or say hurts another person’s feelings then you have harmed them. This amounts to a form of oppression. The offender must therefore be silenced. No pockets need be picked. Nor legs broken.

Words and Ideas are enough to cause harm. Identities are thereby marginalized. And legitimacy denied.

Tolerance is passé. Affirmation or silence is required.

Obviously, in such a fragile world, freedom of religion and freedom of speech will be under threat.

Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt were featured in a previous post.

Coddling Generation Safety Blankey? Or Affirming Shared Truths?

Their very fine book, The Coddling of the American Mind offers insight into today’s fragile student psyche. And how we got to this point in our culture.

They wrote a series of articles in The Atlantic which they eventually turned into that book.

Here are some quotes:

In the name of emotional well-being, college students are increasingly demanding protection from words and ideas they don’t like. Here’s why that’s disastrous for education—and mental health.

Something strange is happening at America’s colleges and universities. A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense. Last December, Jeannie Suk wrote in an online article for The New Yorker about law students asking her fellow professors at Harvard not to teach rape law—or, in one case, even use the word violate (as in “that violates the law”) lest it cause students distress. In February, Laura Kipnis, a professor at Northwestern University, wrote an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education describing a new campus politics of sexual paranoia—and was then subjected to a long investigation after students who were offended by the article and by a tweet she’d sent filed Title IX complaints against her. In June, a professor protecting himself with a pseudonym wrote an essay for Vox describing how gingerly he now has to teach. “I’m a Liberal Professor, and My Liberal Students Terrify Me,” the headline said.

Two terms have risen quickly from obscurity into common campus parlance. Microaggressions are small actions or word choices that seem on their face to have no malicious intent but that are thought of as a kind of violence nonetheless. For example, by some campus guidelines, it is a microaggression to ask an Asian American or Latino American “Where were you born?,” because this implies that he or she is not a real American. Trigger warnings are alerts that professors are expected to issue if something in a course might cause a strong emotional response. For example, some students have called for warnings that Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart describes racial violence and that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby portrays misogyny and physical abuse, so that students who have been previously victimized by racism or domestic violence can choose to avoid these works, which they believe might “trigger” a recurrence of past trauma.  

Source: The Atlantic

According to the most-basic tenets of psychology, helping people with anxiety disorders avoid the things they fear is misguided.

Lukianoff & Haidt

Read the whole thing.

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As a Christian I certainly advocate avoiding offensive speech, if at all possible, without denying my worldview.

As a grandparent I bemoan the overall lack of resilience and grit in today’s younger generation.

What are we doing to our students if we encourage them to develop extra-thin skin just before they leave the cocoon of adult protection?

Lukianoff & Haidt

We’ve coddled too far. The weakest person in the room now dictates the discussion. And remains woefully unprepared for life in this world.

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Philosopher Says Stop Linguistic Colonialism

In the U.K. a man of the political Left, philosopher Jon Pike, responds to Labour MP Stella Creasy, and says to Madam Creasy that the word “female” should mean something objective.

Of course most of us believe Sex is objective. Not subjective. Based on all kinds of immutable markers. Gametes (sperm or ova). Chromosomes. Hormones. Genitals (penis or vulva).

Which is to say, reproductive capacities loom large in the definition of Sex, and hence, terms like male and female.

Yet the Linguistic Colonialists among us want to blur important terms to achieve political goals, goals which they say will bring about diversity, equity and inclusion. But by taking the word “female” and turning it into a matter of “gender identity” you’ve distorted beyond hope any further discussion of the meaning of the term. If we say a word can mean whatever anyone wants it to mean, for the sake of inclusion, or any other “noble” goal, then that word is meaningless. And obviously cannot be debated. Which is of course the goal of gender ideologues. No discussion. Just inclusion. And affirmation. Objectivity be damned. Full Stop.

But we are still left with real differences to be explained. Aren’t we? I mean, if we have eyes to see. What language to use then? The redefinition of terms is a standard “trope” within trans activism so that regular folk are left befuddled and unaware of trans activist goals.

What are those goals? A radical, technologically astute, reordering of society that transcends material limitations. What, making us like God?

Well, sorta. Most of them don’t believe in ”God” just “progress.”

Obviously, Christians like myself, who know God created a material world and called it good cannot accept that kind of “progressive” social reordering.

Radicals move us along that reordering line by changing the meaning of essential words in ordinary discourse and debate. Thereby colonizing our language.

“Of course I’m for “females”, and “women” who isn’t these days?”

Well…pay close attention. Don’t assume you know what is being said. Verbal sands are shifting. Entire territories are being ”appropriated.”

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