I could believe academia is failing both students and those who depend on the results of academia. Academia is succumbing to the same pressures we're all succumbing to. Pressures that keep us working harder for less benefit, that's having us produce short term wealth in exchange for long term environmental costs.

It's fascinating how victimhood culture doesn't spare people from rape culture.

One of Haidt's points is that the US university victimhood culture is actually to the advantage of straight white males. They get years of being given no assistance, no special treatment, getting offended and being told they're shit and that their feelings don't count and having their grievances ignored, and then they graduate and head out into the harsh reality of the real world....

...totally prepared for it.

Right, I'm thinking about the larger more general circumstances, although it's all the same dynamic really.

After all, given Haidt's point, how will these straight white males respond to the pretty interns they come across at the law firm they work at?

One more thin layer to the circumstances that are both the cause and consequence of the concentration of wealth into the hands of largely white men and their families.

Right?

ruh roh
 

holy shit that sounds--

Oh right, that form of violence that isn't violence.

With things like the misuse of social media & fake news I do wonder if the extreme SJW's arising is anything more that a small subsection of students. Extreme (toxic) anti-SJW stuff appears to be more prevalent, or maybe it's just more profitable content. That shits everywhere on youtube, it's like anti-SJW's are the new SJW's. Scratch below the surface of people like Peterson & Sharpiro and you'll find some pretty wacky ideas including religious apologist bs but so many people eat it up.

Voicing an alternative opinion is considered offensive. Repeatedly offending is abuse, and abuse is a form of psychological violence. Violence is a crime. Therefore, your alternative opinion is criminal, and you deserve to lose your job. We're trying to be inclusive, we don't want people like you!

One of the sad consequences of that sort of logic is that it makes sexual assault statistics meaningless. Imaginary example:

It's barely real at all. It's something that happens somewhere else, and we get furious imagining if everyone had to be treated with respect and empathy.

This instantly stands out to me as bureaucratic nonsense.

The threat of a thing is not the thing. If I threaten to kill you, I have not killed you. If I threaten to rape you, I have not raped you. If I threaten to commit violence upon you, I have not committed violence upon you.

If the threat of the thing is the same as the thing, then a threat to issue a threat to do the thing is the same as the thing. And a threat to threaten to threaten to do the thing is the same as the thing. Etc.

Living in a state of constant fear of physical violence can cause you harm, no doubt. But that harm is not violence.

see: fuck social media

Why? What's the difference between violently fucking someone up and non-violently fucking someone up? I don't get it. Do you have a different response to people who non-violently hurt people you care about?

Is it because using political power to fuck someone up is somehow legitimate?

The difference is that one is violence and the other isn't. You can literally tell by the words in the description.

I don't see it. If you're fucking someone up, you're perpetuating violence. There is no "non-violently fucking someone up", that's a nonsense statement.

The word violence becomes meaningless otherwise. May as well just replace it with "physical", the term "physical violence" obviously a redundant statement.

No, if you're fucking someone up you're fucking them up. The fuckingupness does not logically entail violence, unless you're redefining violence to a point where the definition is meaningless.

A person who suffers horrible mentally-scarring things without positive interpersonal acts of force involving injury has not experienced violence. Mental torture, psychological abuse, call it whatever. But it's not violence.

I don't know what kind of absurd clinical term you have in mind.

A parent beating their kid about, the only violence perpetuated on the kid is the knock they got against dresser as they got shoved in their room, the belt marks along their legs. But there is nothing violent about the child's soul being crushed by the full weight of their parent's anger being thrust upon them. Even though from the kid's perspective, both were sudden, shocking and very painful.

I get in some contexts that the word specifically or typically means physical. But words having meaning in their context isn't new, right?

That's a huge stretch. Maybe if they were in a position of power and sent out a 10 page memo claiming the “fact” that men are predisposed to being worse at being teachers than females.

yes because then that would totally be sexual assault.

The WHO definition does have a qualifier/subordinate clause which involves the likelihood of the threat causing psychological harm. I guess the problem is not really about what "violence" is [the definition itself assumes a physical act], but the threshold at which people are claiming to experience psychological harm.

That said, apparently "famous" people (even famous in NZ) receive all sorts of weirdo hate messages saying they/their family deserve to be raped, or that someone knows where their kids go to school, etc. That _would_ be a slight concern if it was a complete stranger that lived nearby with Mongrel Mob pictures, holding guns and cash, puffing a big cloud in their profile pic.

I guess everyone has their own level of tolerance. As a guy, I guess I don't worry about most people, although I wouldn't be too comfortable if nutcase strangers started telling me my home address etc. and threatening me. It's not violence, but it wouldn't be very pleasant. Being told I "nd a fukn hidng" in a comment wouldn't meet my threshold of psychological harm, as it's an illiterate opinion rather than an actual threat.

Heh. Even in this case where dismissal is justified I just can't see anyone getting arrested.

Being stalked by an obsessive nutcase would probably be worse than a lot of kinds of physical violence

But violence is when you get hurt, and snowflakes get hurt feelings? :p

It instantly stands out to me as a definition arrived at after decades of research by multiple disciplines the foremost being science.

I'm violently rolling my eyes at some of the arguments in here, the tone is certainly edging toward hysterical.

A definition of violence that includes "the intentional use of threatened power against a community with a high likelihood of resulting in psychological harm" is simply a nonsense definition. To say that the definition must be right because an organisation as big and bureaucratic and political as the WHO couldn't be wrong something something appeal to authority something something.

The title of the thread is getting more and more accurate.

A force that only destroys my mind but leaves my body untouched is apparently not a violent force. Because we can't be having people claiming to be harmed by violence who haven't had hands laid on them. That would be unfair, and all of a sudden people might start demanding they be treated with dignity if non-physical hurts are called violence too.

That is nuts.

Why is a nonsense definition? Because it includes aspects you disagree with? Because it's more expansive than what's provided in a dictionary?

I'll take the WHO over random internet turds any day - but let me get this clear, you are arguing that the WHO should not be considered an authority, or even knowledgeable in regards to violence?

correct

What has the use of the word "violence" added to the claim? The key elements of the claim are people, harm, and "no hands". Adding the word "violence" to the claim adds nothing other than eyerolling on the part of the listener. It's the fact that harm has been experienced that's the important bit, right? If you want to avoid vagueness, use a word that is meaningful in this context. "Abuse" would be better. Because "no hands" abuse is actually a thing. That's why we talk about "abusive relationships", because the omission of the word "violence" conveys useful information. We know what sort of relationship it is, and we know what sort of abuse it is - abuse that doesn't involve acts of force.

If you want to appeal to an authority on what words mean, I hear this is a good one

PS Hannah Arendt's "On Violence" is the classic text on this subject and I recommend her conceptual analysis.

What has the use of the word "physical" added to the claim?

And yet, there it is, in use, by an apparent authority. So which is it?

Oh lol: Nga Puhi have invited Don Brash to speak on Te Tii Marae at Waitangi.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/pol...-positive-sign

^^Oh - you've been missing every single newsreader taking the opportunity to say "Dildo" again. It's that time of year.

In the interests of equality between the sexes I must agree to this wider definition of violence. Restricting the definition of violence to only acts of physical aggression means that men are unfairly overrepresented in violence stats. Saying things to intentionally cause mental harm, well that's a category that women dominate.

vive la égalité

You've hit the nail on the head.

Violence stats tell a story, but not the only story to be told.

Spotted this article on the Guardian (trigger warning) today. Would the situation described by the subject be violence?

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeands...-abuse-illegal

Sounds like a violent relationship to me.

People who work on helpdesks are victims of violence everyday in that case. Battered helpdesk syndrome

Sounds about right.

But we better not call it violence, it might tip people off to the shit we're expected to put up with because we're not better people.

You know, this whole issue has been weighing on me for a week or so. I was waiting for a bus the other day and found myself at the bus stop with a, um, woman of indeterminate age and significant boganity with a little girl maybe 3 or 4? in your standard little-girl Disney princess outfit. She was a charming little thing, big smile on her face, interested in stuff that was going on around the bus stop. I had my headphones in listening to a podcast and I was kinda powerwalking up and down the footpath (gotta get those steps in wherever you can, right). Little girl comes up to me and starts talking, I pull out my headphones and she's just babbling all the things a chatty little girl would babble - "what's your name? what are you doing? are you waiting for a bus? I like the yellow buses" and I was doing my best to not give off Stranger Danger vibes. She seemed a pretty cool child. Talkative, articulate for her age, the sorts of things that tick boxes for anyone who has tried to raise a kid. I walked with her the 20 metres back to where her (mother?) was standing.

And the chain-smoking woman in the wraparound shades just fucking unloaded on the girl. Just like, "for fuck's sake you little shit, I told you to sit down, don't fucking move, I'm fucking sick of you and sick of your shit!" - to a four-year-old! The little girl, previously chatty and happy just wilted and sat down in the dust in her ragged little Princess Elsa costume and I was going what the hell.

And not only did I not do shit, I didn't even remotely feel like I had the ability to do shit. If the woman had physically bashed the little girl I would have intervened in a flash, called the cops, been the good guy. But this bogan bitch stomped a little girl's mind right in front of me and I didn't feel like I could do anything about it.

Whether physical or verbal, an attack on a child would not go unchallenged in the right community. Her protective parenting style may be the result of a failure to trust and support one another. If the community is full of strangers, the child is not safe, be ever vigilant and make sure the child also learns to be afraid of others.

The village / cul-de-sac no longer raises the kids. I imagine if the community hasn't helped raising the kid by the time they are 4, the community doesn't get to tell her how to be a parent. This woman is being a parent on Nightmare difficulty.

A balance between chaos (play in the mud, talk to strangers, walk home from school alone) and order (never leave my sight, you're not allowed to do that, sit properly at the table). Chaos is rich in formative life experience and is exciting / risky, but too much to bear for some because the downside risk is unlikely but devastating (death, injury, disappearance). Order is predictable / boring but keeps the child safe and protected (coddled).

Sometimes just making sure a child reaches adulthood is good enough.

wat