So now the narcissists of political correctness have ordered Nobel laureate Sir Tim Hunt to be tossed out at University College London and the European Research Council because he made remarks intended to be tongue-in-cheek. Dr. Hunt had drolly suggested that males and females should be separated in science labs because, he said, the females cry when criticized.
The subsequent actions against him say nothing about him or his remarks, but they do say a lot about those who wouldn’t even give him a chance to explain himself. And Dr. Hunt certainly isn’t the only victim of the assaults on innocents and their speech being perpetrated by the intolerant.
As I mentioned in my recent article, on the college campuses and at the workplace the political correctness reactionaries can be quite intolerant of different or diverse viewpoints, including humorous remarks, and often
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misinterpret innocent remarks by others. But it mainly has to do with the inability or unwillingness of the intolerant PC crowd to actually discuss or debate whatever issue has caused them discomfort.
In our impatient society, actually thinking about something that was said may take an extra second or two, and on the college campuses actually discussing a matter takes even more time. That also requires patience and listening to the other person. Our whole society has degraded into one of such impatience in which many people just don’t want to deal with hearing someone’s point of view or explanation of something that was said.
This is why there is no debate on climate change, for example, because the climate change/global warming issue is “settled.”
The alleged “rape culture” is also not up for debate. Last November the individualist feminist Wendy McElroy participated in a debate with feminist Jessica Valenti. The open-minded Valenti stated right at the beginning, “I think like a lot of people I’m exhausted of having to talk about rape culture in a framework that assumes its existence is up for debate.”
So that’s that. There is a “rape culture,” especially on college campuses in which the feminists want to redefine “rape” as including consensual, non-forced sex.
Do you disagree? Shaddap!
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And that’s another part of the issue. In addition to the hypersensitive, thin-skinned crybabies who want to report on their fellow students or professors for making clearly innocent remarks, the latest phenomenon is the redefining of certain words to justify the hate-speech squad’s own acts of hate, intolerance and aggression toward others.
For instance, besides the redefining of “rape,” there is also now the redefining of “aggression” to mean something more than just a physical act of actual aggression, but also mere words or phrases which some people have asserted are making them feel bad, or “triggering” certain painful emotions.
Thomas Sowell recently wrote about that new phenomenon known as “micro-aggression,” that has nothing to do with actual aggression, which is a physical phenomenon, but is referring to certain people who overreact to various manners of speech by others, and who perceive the remarks of others (usually unintended) as derogatory or belittling. This supposedly applies to those who are members of groups which had commonly been targets of discrimination, such as people of color or women.
This Wikipedia article on “microaggression” theory refers to one of the theory’s main contributors, a Columbia University psychologist Derald Wing Sue:
According to Sue et al., microaggressions seem to appear in four forms:
- microassault: an explicit racial derogation; verbal/nonverbal; e.g.: name-calling, avoidant behavior, purposeful discriminatory actions.
- microinsult: communications that convey rudeness and insensitivity and demean a person’s racial heritage or identity; subtle snubs; unknown to the perpetrator; hidden insulting message to the recipient of color.
- microinvalidation: communications that exclude, negate, or nullify the psychological thoughts, feelings, or experiential reality of a person belonging to a particular group.
- microrape: Characterized by predatory non-physical prurient communications with the intent to penetrate the victim’s emotional security on the basis of heteronormative impositions.
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“Microrape“?
“Penetrate the victim’s emotional security“?
This. Is. Nuts.
According to Dr. Sowell, one’s merely uttering certain phrases such as “America is the land of opportunity” can be considered a “micro-aggression” against women or people of color.
Huh? Okay, you morons, so America isn’t the land of opportunity. So if you are black, you will have many more opportunities in most African countries, and if you are a woman your opportunities in most other countries are certainly better than in the U.S (especially Hillary’s favorite, Saudi Arabia of course). And if you are in most U.S. cities and you are young, your opportunities are even greater thanks to minimum wage laws and the multitudes of business regulations! (Okay, “sarcasm off,” as they say on the Internet.)
So that is just how irrational things are now. The alleged victims of this so-called microaggression phenomenon just don’t make any sense. They are just not in the world of reality. (Was my pointing that out a “micro-aggression”? Sorry about that.)
And, as I noted in my earlier article, and as Dr. Sowell noted as well, it is these thin-skinned, intolerant ones who are the real aggressors. When you go running to the college Dean or the “Anti-Discrimination Officer” (or whatever) to make a formal complaint against another student or professor for his merely saying something you didn’t like, or to a supervisor in one’s place of employment, and a disciplinary action is taken and goes on that individual’s record permanently, you are being the true aggressor here.
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So rather than the alleged victim (of one’s own insecurity and hypersensitivity, that is) actually thinking introspectively to figure out and resolve whatever issues are going on emotionally with her or him, it is easier to just go blaming some other person whose harmless word or phrase made one uncomfortable.
Speaking of “hate speech,” I think the real hateful ones are these thought-crimes aggressors. They are the ones who truly assault other people’s lives.
The aforementioned Wikipedia article notes that some “victims” can have life-disruptive reactions allegedly caused by their perceived tormentors, such as depression, eating disorders, and sexual dysfunction. I think that’s very sad, that someone is so emotionally weak and fragile that one gives other people so much power simply from their saying various innocent and harmless words or phrases which may not be politically correct.
And, as the psychoanalytical theorist Alice Miller had often noted, especially in her book, The Drama of the Gifted Child, the origins of such insecurities are probably with the earliest childhood moments especially from one’s relationship with one’s primary caretakers. Sometimes as a child, one’s own self-expressions are not tolerated by one’s mother or father or caretaker. The situation is almost certainly worse for the child (and later as an adult) who was the victim of abuse while growing up. The child’s self-expression at whatever given moment is part of who that child is at that moment, and the need for emotional acceptance and mirroring by the caretaker is a very important emotional need. Dr. Miller wrote about a latent reaction to early intolerance that can transform itself into hatred and “deflected onto scapegoats.”
I am applying this latent hatred and intolerance to those who are unwilling to discuss issues, who say that certain issues are not up for debate, and who would rather make formal complaints against innocent people rather than discuss things in a free and open dialogue. Perhaps Sir Tim Hunt’s intellectual firing squad might qualify here?
The complainers are very hyper-sensitive and thin-skinned, in my view, and they overreact to certain words which they have been indoctrinated to believe are making them feel uncomfortable. But I think there is a strong likelihood that these anti-speech control freaks suffered some form of intolerance against them during their earliest upbringing.
In my view, this is similar to all the authoritarians out there who are emotionally incapable of understanding, tolerating and having honest discussions with those who criticized the U.S. government’s wars of aggression and anti-civil liberties crimes following 9/11.
