I am a survivor of rape (during my childhood). I do know that it can, and does, leave lasting psychological and spiritual damage. I can empathize, to a certain point.
That point was pole-vaulted over when this whiny little speshul snowflake insisted that classical mythology is no longer suitable to be taught in a fucking literary humanities class because it hurt her little feelings.
I read the myths in question. I read them when I was about eight or nine years old, just a year or two past the point of the worst of the abuse, and before it had totally halted. They never triggered any flashbacks. There were things that did (like the idiot psychologists, forced visits over weekends with my abuser, running into my abuser unexpectedly in the town where we lived, etc.), but instead of whining about it, I pushed past it and dealt with it as best I could.
Some people don't understand that these works of art have been a part of the curriculum for longer than their grandparents have been alive, and should not be removed due to the oversensitive sensibilities of one fucking person who does not have the right to never be offended by anything.
Some people should drop out of college, go wrap themselves in cotton batting so tightly they can't move, see, or hear anything that might "trigger" them, and go live in their parents' closets.
I'd even be willing to pay them to remove themselves from society, and from the gene pool.
21 minutes ago
Sometimes I wonder how much of it is the person having been told "You're special and fragile and things can hurt you" and their internalizing it, and how much of it is "If I complain loudly enough I won't have to do the work." I admit that's a cynical view but what do I do if I get a student in one of my upper-level classes where we do mathematical models coming and and giving me some story about how math is "triggering" for them or something, and they even get an admin to back them up? (One semester I had someone who was very impaired, and one of their impairments was "no sense of time" which led them to claim it was perfectly okay for them to hand stuff in way late....and they got an admin to back them up.)
ReplyDeleteIf people give in to the whole, "I'm gonna bubble wrap the world for these students," we might as well shut down the universities because no one will be learning anything any more. I mean, already, some departments and some schools are that way, but.....
My response is "Tough. You can drop my class and take it with someone else." I've had students try it before, with admin backup.
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