Tsundoku, on 19 August 2018 - 10:52 AM, said:
"Ironically, the self-same things she's now accusing the universities of the world of doing."
Fair point, looks like she definitely overstepped her boundaries. It's crappy no matter who does it IMHO. Information and debate are one thing, leading people by the nose with a view to indoctrination is another.
However if she was doing it from the other perspective she would probably been applauded by the groupthink at her Uni.
The main guy interviewing her on the recording certainly comes across as a snivelling twerp though.
OTOH she did know she was being recorded, so how much of her reactions are with that in mind as opposed to genuine?
Still, all this BS over eleventy thousand forms of gender identification definitely needs to GTFO already. Unless I can have a preferred pronoun that is "Lord Most High Grand Poobah God Emperor"?
But insisting that everyone call me that simply because I preferred it and for no other measurable, scientific, provable reason would be just silly, right?
I always struggle to get past the false equivalence of "Lord Most High Grand Poobah God Emperor" or "attack helicopter" and 'they, zi, ze, or whatever" lol......
*Cough**Health researcher [scientist] here
**Cough* (admittedly I'm a public health researcher, so small scale experimental stuff isn't really my bailiwick, so bare(bear?) with me here)
I'm pretty confident I could design a study (/find multiple within the existing literature) with measurable outcomes that would demonstrate the link between pronoun adoption and positive well-being. Truthfully, the MOST interesting and impactful would be a counterfactual where-in you see if positive well-being decreases as latent (e.g. the implied ) personal pronouns for cis (not trans) individuals is abandoned [e.g. Take a bunch of cis folk, do a baseline well-being measure, toss em in a meeting for a few hours where research assistant plants are ignoring their pronouns in some way, do another well-being measure at the end of it, see what shakes out]
BUT I doubt that would ever get past an ethics board LOL....because the possible harm(e.g. the possible outcomes) to the human subjects would too be great.
I do find the concept of micro-aggressions frustrating, as the idea implies malice when really ignorance is probably to blame. E.G. When I meet a non-binary person for the first time who presents as male, I will probably initially think and refer to them as male. This is out of ignorance to their personal preference, not an aggressive act on my part to re-establish the dominant hierarchy or some such. It always feels to me that in trying to emphasize the humanity and individualism of marginalized groups with micro-aggression rhetoric, we (being social activists like myself) de-emphasize the humanity and individual nature of 'micro-aggresors'.
RE: Lindsay Shepard,some clarification (from my readings of the issue):
She wasn't fired or anything, and the only reprimand was the meeting she recorded. After that meeting went viral, academics across the country (even people in dusty ol NB were talking about it) decried her treatment (academics have academic freedom that is generally protected as fiercely as freedom of expression), Laurier (the university in question) publicly apologized, and I believed made some kind of commitments to protecting academic freedom and freedom of expression. Her supervisor publicly apologized as well. She got justice, and a win for freedom of expression.
But Shepards been riding the firestorm ever since--after the recording, she continued tweeting about basically every interaction she had on campus, started a Laurier free speech group (whose first guest was Faith Goldy), continued riding THAT firestorm until she started getting video interviews and sessions like the one here, and now is suing Laurier for 3.6 million, claiming they damaged her reputation so severely she'll never get a job in academia (ignoring the fact that SHE released the tape of a private meeting that would never seen the light of day otherwise; ignoring the fact shes on record shitting on her field (communications) and the people in it; etc; etc.). I mean...maybe I'm misconstruing things here--I've not been following it super closely, but from the outside.....it seems a tad..... suspicious.
I'm not saying she's a opportunist, but if she quacks like an opportunist, walks like an opportunist, and bathes in publicity like an opportunist, shes probably an opportunist.
Help
