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“Safe Spaces” are unsafe for free exchange of ideas

“Safe Spaces” are unsafe for free exchange of ideas

And “Trigger Warnings” are just another way of saying “Shut Up”

College campuses are meant to be a place where students engage in new perspectives and critical reasoning. Or so they say.

But by labeling conservative points of view as “extremist,” “anti-feminist,” and “racist,” feminists are shutting down the dialogue on their college campuses before it even begins.

To the leftist student activists, it seemingly doesn’t matter whether or not these labels are deserved. They’ve realized that all they need to do is to stigmatize a talk by a conservative speaker is to condemn the speaker as an oppressing force.

For instance, last Thursday, I facilitated a lecture at the Georgetown University on behalf of the conservative organization I work for, the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute, and the Georgetown CRs.

As soon as the campus feminists caught wind of the event, they immediately began protesting and demanding trigger warnings in order to silence the talk.

Image credit: Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute

Image credit: Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute

The lecture, given by author and Luce Institute speaker Dr. Christina Hoff Sommers, was entitled ‘What’s Right (and Badly Wrong) with Feminism?’ It was set to take a critical look at the failures and good points of feminism.

But from listening to the campus feminists, you would inaccurately think Dr. Sommers was gearing up to give a lecture on ‘Rape Apology.’

Image credit: Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute

Image credit: Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute

One student organizer sent out the following email to the campus group Sexual Assault Peer Educators (SAPE):

Hi SAPE,

Tonight, Republicans are hosting an extremist anti-feminist speaker that dismisses and denies survivors of sexual assault and the real harm of rape culture. Current College Republicans leadership has not been willing to do simple things like add a trigger/ content warning, or clarify why they felt it was appropriate to bring this speaker into our community.

If you’re available and up for it, I’d strongly encourage you to attend. Students that are educated on the real facts of sexual assault and able to provide information on resources should be in the room.

https://www.facebook.com/events/411533625687428/418114945029296/

Thanks,

Sarah

Protestors showed up to the event with signs like “Trigger Warning: anti-feminism” and “Feminists against RAPE Apology!”

Image credit: Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute

Image credit: Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute

These students also advertised safe spaces in another building – as if to suggest that Dr. Sommers’ lecture was somehow unsafe.

The activists believed that because the talk might make them feel uncomfortable, it shouldn’t be allowed at all. Posters on the Facebook event even brought the Georgetown “Code of Conduct” into play.

Fortunately, the activists were unsuccessful in deterring attendance. In fact, turn-out was even higher than expected, likely due to the campus buzz.

But this is a real problem on college campuses:  liberal attempts at stigmatizing speakers such as Dr. Sommers.

Why should the leftist students control the conversation, and keep out other perspectives?

Conservative students can’t give in to this liberal pressure, and must stay strong, unabashedly attending and hosting conservative events.

Georgetown CRs with Dr. Sommers after the controversial lecture. Image credit: Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute

Georgetown CRs with Dr. Sommers after the controversial lecture.
Image credit: Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute

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Laurel Conrad is the lecture director at the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute, an organization that prepares and promotes conservative women. She is a recent graduate of Cornell University and a former Legal Insurrection student intern/contributor.

[WAJ note: I’m so proud that Laurel is still facilitating the legal insurrection!]

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Comments

More evidence for the theory of relativity in a social space.

Rather than “safe spaces,” perhaps it’s time to resurrect Romper Room.

legacyrepublican | April 21, 2015 at 4:30 pm

Georgetown University has a 45% Male to 55% Female ratio.

Apparently hearing a woman talk about why women are increasing their majority on campus merits a trigger warning.

I find smart, rational ladies extremely attractive.

Heh…!!!

The really sad part about the protesters is that if the speaker had set up exactly the same ‘Safe Room’ concept, they would have been criticized for infantilizing their opposition. I am Woman, hear me whine.

Great to “see” you at LI again, Laurel and great post! It’s funny, when I was minoring in Women’s Studies (ugh! the shame!), I seem to remember that part of the feminist message was against the homogeneity of culture and society. Apparently, this is no longer a rallying cry for today’s feminists (who are really femisogynists) and has been replaced with a demand for homogeneity in thought, word, and deed.

theduchessofkitty | April 21, 2015 at 5:10 pm

They need to go – and stay – in daycare. That’s where they belong!

Yes. Daycare.

One thing we should all take a lot of heart from…

When you see these flop-sweat defensive paroxysms around Collectivist “ideas” or claims, you are seeing the fragility their adherents know to be inherent in their nonsense.

They are AFRAID, and many times downright guilty about the falsity of what they have embraced, and the claims they themselves have made to each other in a self-reinforcing mass hysteria (yah. I went there!).

Sexism, racism, whatever-old-ism, it is all BS, and they know it, somewhere. They are legitimately terrified, but only of having their own illegitimate delusions pierced by reality. Being a baseless “victim” is hard. Every day is a new threat that a valid idea will make all your victimhood simply vanish. And you’ll be left a naked as a newborn, and made the enemy of your ruthless, vicious former in-group.

They are weak and vulnerable, and their behavior shows it.

We are strong, and we insist on what they flee from: reality.

These college campuses must be a hot bed for a bunch of whiney cry babies!

Henry Hawkins | April 21, 2015 at 5:44 pm

I would like to request that LI pin a post to stay always at the top of the page, a Safe Place Post, where I can go to feel safe when people disagree with me and stuff.

I would also like to point out that my stomach gets all squishy, you know, like when you’re about to get a shot, whenever I look at the up and down thumbs because the negative one is red, a direct insult to Native Americans, Pakistanis, and sunburned people. It makes me feel bad. I demand it be removed and its originator be publicly castrated.

Actually, the Conservative students are just fine. It’s the apolitical ones attending for a purpose that need to beware. While they aren’t looking the radical nuts are pulling stupid stunts, like harassing Jewish students, voting the ban the flag on campus, and trying to brainwash the girls.

“Safe spaces” serve the same purpose as “Whites Only” signs did more than half a century ago.

In the spirit of the Lord High Executioner in The Mikado, I have a little list of colleges and universities which never would be missed. I have just added Georgetown.

I know about trigger warnings. And these people are misusing it for their own purpose of shutting down discussion.

For the record, triggers can be highly individual. A person may be triggered by a certain odor, sound, or phrase; something that was present during a traumatic event. Even by someone that resembles someone that caused the trauma.

Sites such as http://www.MaleSurvivor.Org do use trigger warnings extensively, when a subject matter may cause anguish for some of its members. But the idea that you can assert the need for trigger warnings constantly – well, people like that don’t need to be going anywhere strangers are. They need to be receiving disability income and visiting their therapist every week. 🙂

Many years ago, Animal House nailed this with Emily Dickenson College. A century earlier we had an epidemic of Vapors.

As a psychiatrist with more than 30 years experience, I can assure you that the notion of “trigger” events is purely a socio-hysterical phenomenon. The purported “traumatic” responses to such experiences are totally bogus and have been trumped up for purely political, agenda-driven purposes. They have been given a false psychological “reality” for nothing but leftist purposes. Any time one reads “unsafe” one should ask the complainant, “Do you mean ‘dangerous'”? If the answer is “yes” then ask how. If the answer is “no” then tell the person to go away.

    legacyrepublican in reply to nomadic100. | April 22, 2015 at 4:02 am

    Thanks a lot. You comment triggered this weird scene in my mind where all of those women in the back holding signs are humming the Top Gun tune “Danger Zone.” 😯

    I may need serious counseling now. 😆

    Not A Member of Any Organized Political in reply to nomadic100. | April 22, 2015 at 2:15 pm

    Oh, you mean like the New England and Boston Witch Hunts?

What ever happened to “I am strong. I am invincible. I am Woman. Hear me roar?” These bimbos need to retire to their fainting couches. They are making the moslems case for them. “Women are too flighty and irresponsible to be let out alone. They must be kept in purdah, and only go out in a burkah under the supervision of a competent male.”

Henry Hawkins | April 22, 2015 at 10:03 am

I repeat, this ‘safe place’ nonsense and hypersensitivity is a symptom, not the disease. It is the product of leftist indoctrination in our university system. It’s almost like leftist faculty and administrations are playing a game of “let’s see just how crazy a concept we can get these kids to swallow and promote”. They are training a generation to accept leftist ideology uncritically, without any checks or concern over whether it holds any merit or truth to it. They are making obedient leftist sheep out of the teenagers they receive as freshmen, leftist political cannon fodder.

“or clarify why they felt it was appropriate to bring this speaker into our community.”

Man, that is just idiotic. It is pretty much appropriate-by-definition to invite any speaker to a college campus.

Feminism has now advanced to where words cause special snowflakes to have the “Vapors.”

Henry Hawkins | April 22, 2015 at 1:21 pm

It’s an insult to feminism to call this feminism. It’s infantilism.