The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘Trigger Warning’: How Feminism Promotes Harmful Stereotypes

Posted on | May 23, 2014 | 63 Comments

Is there any stereotype of women more harmful than the idea that women are emotionally delicate creatures incapable of handling stress, prone to hysterical crying at the slightest provocation? And doesn’t the contemporary feminist trope of putting “trigger warnings” on potentially disturbing material tend to justify that stereotype?

But we are just too stupid to understand these things, which is why feminists like Soraya Chemaly must explain them to us:

In an article title “Warning: The Literary Canon Could Make Students Squirm,” the New York Times yesterday described ongoing debates on college and university campuses about whether or not trigger warnings should be used in advance of discussions that include, among other things, violent, racist and misogynistic content. This argument is a repeat of a long-standing one about the uses and efficacy of warnings regarding possibly disturbing and re-traumatizing content. Conversations about trigger warnings, however, seem more and more like superficial proxies for ones about deeper problems on campuses regarding diversity, equity, the corporatization of education, and, the dreaded word, privilege.
Triggers, images, sounds, smells and, yes, texts, that provoke specific emotional and physical responses in people, are not about “squirming.” They are complex, unpredictable and highly individual reactions to material that evokes pain and fear. The idea of trigger warnings started in feminist spaces because experiences with, for example, sexual and domestic violence, are so common that it made sense, out of compassion, to warn participants before revealing graphic descriptions of incest, rape, sexual assault, domestic violence, self-harm and suicide.

Let us ask: Is it the case that “experiences with, for example, sexual and domestic violence are so common” universally among women or, rather, is this particularly true “in feminist spaces”? Because “the dreaded word, privilege” may reference, among other things, known correlations of socio-economic factors, e.g., the higher incomes of households headed by married couples, so that the offspring of traditional families are “privileged” in comparison to the children of unmarried or divorced parents. And it can be further demonstrated from social research that women and girls in non-traditional households are at greater risk of “sexual and domestic violence,” and to have “experiences with . . . incest, rape, sexual assault, domestic violence, self-harm and suicide.”

What we may surmise — trigger warning for logic — is that “feminist spaces” are disproportionately populated with women who have suffered such traumatic experiences and who, rather than dealing with their psychological problems through therapy, have instead decided that “the personal is political,” so that their feminist politics are actually an attempt to rationalize their personal problems.

It is not at all uncommon for women who identify themselves as feminists to admit that they suffer from mental illness, without seeming to recognize the significance of these admissions.

Women’s Studies Professor Lisa Johnson wrote an entire book about her borderline personality disorder, an affliction the National Institutes for Mental Health (NIMH) describes as “a serious mental illness marked by unstable moods, behavior, and relationships.” And she is just one of many examples of this tendency: Over and over, when you read the autobiographical writings of feminists, you encounter admissions of psychiatric problems — clinical depression, bipolar disorder, substance abuse, et cetera — so frequently that you wonder if the entire feminist movement is on Prozac.

Crazy is an acceptable synonym for feminist, and “trigger warnings” are evidence that the lunatics are running the asylum.

 

Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot: Trigger warning for Amanda Marcotte.

“I don’t particularly like babies. They are loud and smelly and, above all other things, demanding. No matter how much free day care you throw at women, babies are still time-sucking monsters with their constant neediness. . . .
“I don’t want a baby. . . . Nothing will make me want a baby. . . . This is why, if my birth control fails, I am totally having an abortion.”

Amanda Marcotte, March 14

This kind of bloodthirsty fanaticism — “I hate babies! Kill all the little time-sucking monsters!” — is profoundly abnormal.

Parenthood is often difficult and, even under the most ideal circumstances, parents must deal with unpleasant tasks. (Yesterday, I babysat my infant grandson for several hours and had to change two poopy diapers.) Yet there are more than 6 billion people on the planet, a fact that suggests the vast majority of humans are capable of coping normally with the ordinary duties of parenthood.

So why does Amanda Marcotte have this homicidal impulse, this horrifying hatred of the mere thought of having babies? Even if we could dismiss Marcotte as an extreme example of feminist psychosis, why is it that the feminist movement has such a reverential attitude toward abortion as the ultimate expression of “women’s rights”?

Answers to such questions are possible, and we may speculate why a political movement of women would focus its energies so zealously on the destruction of life in the womb — i.e., despising motherhood as the natural consequence of women’s sexuality. Foregoing speculation about the psychiatric motives behind feminism’s Death Cult, however, we can say simply that women who have such a bizarre revulsion toward their own maternal capacity are emotionally disturbed.

And so . . . trigger warning: The mentally ill feminist writer must warn her mentally ill feminist readers that she is discussing topics that could cause these emotional trauma cases to go spiraling off into the vortex of craziness that swirls around them.

Trigger warning: “You are a victim, permanently damaged by whatever awful things you experienced in your wretched childhood, your unhappy adolescence and your dysfunctional adult relationships.”

Trigger warning: “Embrace victimhood as your identity, and blame all your problems on patriarchy, Christianity, capitalism and the Republican Party, which are all more or less the same thing.”

Trigger warning: “Take another Prozac and vote Democrat!”

So there they go, the Feminist Lunatic Parade, marching toward their delusional utopia of Equality, inviting other women to join them: Kill your babies, become a lesbian and you can be a feminist, too!

And they wonder why normal women won’t sign up for that trip.




 

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Comments

63 Responses to “‘Trigger Warning’: How Feminism Promotes Harmful Stereotypes”

  1. Anchovy
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 11:28 am

    Good way to fill a class that no one is going to take anyway. Just add a trigger warning that this class contains nudity and gratuitous sexual details.

  2. M. Thompson
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 11:35 am

    It’s the return of the trope that women are special flowers who need to be kept away from certain things for their own good.

    You know, these loonies are making the Victorians seem sane.

    And those guys would let a man drink, smoke, and build things, so maybe they were onto something.

  3. Kirby McCain
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 11:37 am

    You’re kidding, right. Women flock to classes with nudity and abnormal sex. Hugo Schwyzer ring a bell?

  4. robertstacymccain
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 11:44 am

    The neo-Victorian aspect of feminism is impossible to ignore, especially their huffy indignation at any expression that is not socially “appropriate.”

  5. Kirby McCain
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 11:46 am

    Feminist need rape, incest etc. to claim victimhood and legitimize their salvation in abortion. Oh come on, who the hell are they trying to fool. Feminism is a culture of hate. http://mobile.wnd.com/2014/03/porn-professor-goes-berserk-on-campus/

  6. Isaac T. (Zeuss)
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 11:55 am

    Next thing we know, they’ll be demanding that we put cloths over our tables to protect women by preventing men from seeing the legs of the table and having rapey thoughts.

  7. RS
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 12:02 pm

    I seem to recall a professor at the Freshmen Orientation of my large, public university telling us that the entire college experience was designed to expose us to new, often uncomfortable things, the purpose of which exposure was to “shake us up” and “get us to look at the world in a new way.” In sense, he provided a blanket “trigger warning” for the next four years, which in my case as a Humanities major, consisted of much arguing among people of numerous political, religious and social viewpoints. Had a student had the audacity to demand that “uncomfortable” material be eliminated or that s/he should be excused from learning a specific topic or reading a particular literary work, s/he would have been politely told that perhaps the university was not the appropriate place for him/her. Nothing demonstrates the shift from education to indoctrination better than this whole “trigger warning” business. We are manufacturing imbeciles with certificates, not university graduates.

  8. Cactus Ed
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 12:05 pm

    Just call feminists what they are: Promiscuous, Post-Modern, PC, Prudes

  9. Dana
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 12:05 pm

    The notion of trigger warnings on college campuses seems strange, because if you are a college student, you are automatically “privileged!”

    Lots of kids don’t get to go to college, lots of kids have to do radical things like try to get a job once they leave high school, lots of kids don’t get to go to off-campus bong parties.

  10. robertstacymccain
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 12:08 pm

    As I have often remarked, the purpose of modern “education” is not to teach facts and skills, but rather to teach attitudes: So long as the student graduates with the politically correct attitudes which the institution aims to instill, everything else is incidental.

  11. Dana
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 12:08 pm

    When I was at the University of Kentucky in the early 1970s, the big debate was about the legal status of UK as in loco parentis. Why, we were college students, we were adults, and we didn’t need no stinking supervision in our lives.

    It seems that the feminists now believe that in loco parentis is needed after all, but it’s just that they get to be the “parents.”

  12. RS
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 12:12 pm

    They discuss something other than basketball at UK?

  13. RS
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 12:16 pm

    I would agree that the Humanities and Social Sciences have “attitude adjustment” as their primary focus. STEM is still largely immune, inasmuch as Feminist Theory offers little help in determining whether that airplane is actually going to fly. (But see, this article from The Guardian regarding Feminist intrusion into the biological sciences.)

  14. 29Victor
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 12:28 pm

    I’m guessing that Ms. Marcotte’s personality acts as a more powerful form of birth control than anything on the market today.

  15. Krebs v Carnot
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 12:30 pm

    I believe, once upon a time long ago, this behavior was termed “hysteria”.

  16. NeoWayland
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 12:55 pm

    Not tablecloths.

    Blindfolds.

    At least for those who are allowed to keep their eyes.

  17. Quartermaster
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 12:58 pm

    No. He’s just trying to camouflage what they really do up there.

  18. Quartermaster
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 12:58 pm

    You’re not allowing for Zeta males who will take anything they can get.

  19. JLconservative
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 1:08 pm

    RT @LADowd: ‘Trigger Warning’: How Feminism Promotes Harmful Stereotypes http://t.co/K5hWqbFAAQ by @rsmccain

  20. JrJacktown
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 1:20 pm

    RT @LADowd: ‘Trigger Warning’: How Feminism Promotes Harmful Stereotypes http://t.co/K5hWqbFAAQ by @rsmccain

  21. yidwithlid
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 1:21 pm

    RT @rdbrewer4: RT @rsmccain: ‘Trigger Warning’: How Feminism Promotes Harmful Stereotypes http://t.co/P3ZSrqCZBg cc @rdbrewer4…

  22. yidwithlid
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 1:21 pm

    RT @rsmccain: ‘Trigger Warning’: How Feminism Promotes Harmful Stereotypes http://t.co/P3ZSrqCZBg http://t.co/htyBzdfogk

  23. maniakmedic
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 1:37 pm

    “So why does Amanda Marcotte have this homicidal impulse, this horrifying hatred of the mere thought of having babies?”

    As a women who spent years saying I didn’t want children I can tell you this: selfishness. I was absolutely not down with having a diarrhea and vomit machine rule every aspect of my life. Even as a person with no social life to speak of, I do have a life. I have things I like to do that would be severely hampered or have to be given up completely were a baby to enter the picture. Now that I’ve actually grown up, I realize those are tradeoffs worth making. Will I ever have children? Now I’d like to think so. But my previous feelings on the matter were driven by narcissism and selfishness; the idea that MY life is FAR too important to interrupt with a shrieking ball of poop.

    As far as the whole “trigger warning” thing goes: these people who are quick to label people like me (religious conservative female who likes men and hates abortion) as science deniers and stupid slopeheads, sure don’t understand much about the healing process. Ever broken or otherwise severely damaged a limb? Remember how uncomfortable and itchy and sometimes painful it was when it was healing? Healing involves pain and discomfort. It is a fact of life. Mental healing is no less uncomfortable or painful, but when you face what damaged you mentally, you can start to heal. It hurts like hell (I know this from personal experience) but the sooner you face it, the sooner you get through it. Keep tiptoing around it and you are just letting the wound fester, making it that much more difficult to deal with when the piper comes calling.

  24. Fainting Flowers | Something Fishy
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 1:51 pm

    […] The Other McCain points out that the eruption of the “trigger warning” from the far reaches of the fringe of the internet into college campuses (!) is merely a reformulation of an older stereotype: that women cannot be expected to handle the full range of the unpleasantness of life, and therefore must be coddled. This is actually not really surprising when you think about the fact that college campuses have been skewing majority female for several decades now – they’re becoming the modern version of finishing schools for privileged women. […]

  25. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 2:40 pm
  26. rsmccain
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 2:40 pm

    RT @LADowd: ‘Trigger Warning’: How Feminism Promotes Harmful Stereotypes http://t.co/K5hWqbFAAQ by @rsmccain

  27. robertstacymccain
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 2:46 pm

    It’s weird: Feminists would have us believe they are engaged in a humanitarian crusade when, as you say, much of their agenda can be viewed as basically selfish, and it has never struck me as “humanitarian” to teach one-half the population to hate the other half.

  28. Rebecca Watson: Women should get paid menstruation leave each month… | Batshit Crazy News
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 2:50 pm

    […] TOM: Trigger Warnings: How Feminism Promotes Harmful Stereotypes… […]

  29. Dana
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 3:14 pm

    Yeah, we really did. Many, many hours were spent at the Student Center Coffee Shop solving all of the world’s problems.

  30. Josh_Painter
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 3:16 pm

    RT @rsmccain: ‘Trigger Warning’: How Feminism Promotes Harmful Stereotypes http://t.co/w7jtcp4Asg cc @rdbrewer4 @instapundit http://t.co/oR…

  31. Greg Hlatky
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 3:24 pm

    I’ve heard it said that if the campus Stalinists took over STEM, courses in Thermodynamics would become courses in Thermodynamics Studies.

  32. Greg Hlatky
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 3:26 pm

    Who are they kidding? The purpose behind “rape culture,” “trigger warnings,” “check your privilege,” and “hate speech” is to shut the wrong people up.

  33. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 3:29 pm

    They fortunately tend to have defective sperm.

  34. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 3:30 pm

    Or the “vapors”

  35. Mark Cuban is Sorry for Being Honest | Regular Right Guy
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 3:35 pm

    […] ‘Trigger Warning’: How Feminism Promotes Harmful Stereotypes […]

  36. ChandlersGhost
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 4:10 pm

    Would the graphic rape stories found in 90 percent of feminist missives be exempt from the label?

  37. Dana
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 4:37 pm

    Is that just a bad angle, or is she really that ugly?

  38. ChandlersGhost
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 4:46 pm

    She has cute potential, but it ain’t worth it.

    http://theothermccain.com/2011/07/07/rebecca-watson-stop-sexualizing-me/

  39. concern00
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 5:00 pm

    I think you have more than ably demonstrated that most women that subscribe to the feminist mindset are damaged goods. It is always refreshing when a strong willed confident woman is willing to step up and declare that they are proud to be a woman and actually love men.

  40. 1FreedomFanatic
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 5:00 pm

    Reading: -‘Trigger Warning’: How Feminism Promotes Harmful Stereotypes : The Other McCain http://t.co/SZoHaKH3TC

  41. Matt_SE
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 7:29 pm

    Feminists are self-haters (sometimes even cutters!):
    Nature made them XX, which automatically implies Y and Z. They don’t like Y or Z, so they deny XX.
    Deniers!!!

  42. Eris1701
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 7:43 pm

    ‘Trigger Warning’: How Feminism Promotes Harmful Stereotypes http://t.co/ogCsCtTvjF

  43. Bob Belvedere
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 11:55 pm

    But the Victorians were quite sane and, unlike the Left, civilized.

  44. The Darwinian Dead End: Feminists Subtract Themselves From the Future : The Other McCain
    May 23rd, 2014 @ 11:56 pm

    […] today, I mentioned Amanda Marcotte’s revulsion toward motherhood — “this homicidal impulse, this horrifying hatred of the mere thought of having babies” — as symptomatic of the mental illness that inspires much of feminism. Meanwhile, Melissa […]

  45. Bob Belvedere
    May 24th, 2014 @ 12:00 am

    You reminded me of one of my favorite remarks by Russell Kirk:

    A people’s historic continuity of experience, says the conservative, offers a guide to policy far better than the abstract designs of coffee-house philosophers….

  46. Bob Belvedere
    May 24th, 2014 @ 12:07 am

    All Leftists are always forced to argue that it is their enemies who are what they themselves actually are.

    I’ve always thought that they did so because they knew their beliefs were unpopular with the un-Illuminated masses, so they had to hide their intentions in the ‘noble’ cause of Immanentizing The Eschaton.

    But now I wonder if they conduct themselves in this way because they are compelled to avoid the kind of introspection that would cause their carefully crafted view of themselves to collapse in a heap of profound FAIL.

  47. Bob Belvedere
    May 24th, 2014 @ 12:08 am

    Yes, to silence those who do not possess THE SECRET KNOWLEDGE [the Gnosis].

  48. M. Thompson
    May 24th, 2014 @ 12:10 am

    That’s what I meant with drinking, smoking, and building things.

  49. One Flew Over The Feminist’s Nest | The Camp Of The Saints
    May 24th, 2014 @ 12:39 am

    […] his latest mini-essay on the subject, Stacy makes an observation about the kind of women attracted to Feminism that is as penetrating as […]

  50. Adjoran
    May 24th, 2014 @ 1:58 am

    Yes, it’s a bad angle, and you really don’t want to stick your hand in the crazy.