Student traumatized by maintenance workers

[marshwiggle]

You can't make this up.

Student at $80Gs college left 'scared and confused' by cisgender construction workers

The student at US$80,000-per-year woke nirvana Oberlin College in Ohio penned an op-ed in the student newspaper declaring his outrage and that he was "angry, scared and confused."


The reason? "Cisgender men" installed a radiator in his dormitory that is labelled a "safe space." In fact, he asked if he could be exempt and felt "mildly violated" when the contractors showed up.

And here's the op-ed he wrote:

In general, I am very averse to people entering my personal space. This anxiety was compounded by the fact that the crew would be strangers, and they were more than likely to be cisgender men.

This seems like some clinical level anxiety disorder.

[dismalist]

Ah, yes, the Oberlin College of Gibson's Bakery v. Oberlin College.

From Wikipedia: In 2016, Oberlin faculty and students staged large demonstrations urging a boycott of the Gibson's Bakery and Market, a downtown Oberlin business, following a shoplifting incident involving an African-American student, on the grounds that the store was racist. In June 2019, the college was found liable for libel and tortious interference in a lawsuit initiated by the store; the bakery was awarded damages of $44 million by the jury, but the judge reduced the value of the award to $31.5 million. In October 2019, the college appealed the case to the Ninth District Court of Appeals in Akron, Ohio.

I am glad some of that tuition or endowment money is going to deserving people.

[Caracal]

You can't make this up.

Student at $80Gs college left 'scared and confused' by cisgender construction workers

The student at US$80,000-per-year woke nirvana Oberlin College in Ohio penned an op-ed in the student newspaper declaring his outrage and that he was "angry, scared and confused."


The reason? "Cisgender men" installed a radiator in his dormitory that is labelled a "safe space." In fact, he asked if he could be exempt and felt "mildly violated" when the contractors showed up.

And here's the op-ed he wrote:

In general, I am very averse to people entering my personal space. This anxiety was compounded by the fact that the crew would be strangers, and they were more than likely to be cisgender men.

This seems like some clinical level anxiety disorder.

1. It is an op-ed in a college newspaper. Anybody can write an op-ed. I would bet a lot of money that if one were to ask the other people living in the building about this person, you would probably get a lot of eye rolls.

2. Obviously, this is silly. But mostly it strikes me as silly in the sense that this is a person who hasn't figured out that something can make you uncomfortable without anybody doing anything wrong. I don't like hanging around while people do work in a space I'm in either, but the pretty obvious solution is to just go take a walk, or run an errand, when you don't need to be there.

3. All that said, you're misrepresenting what the author is saying. They aren't saying they are are terrified of cis men. They are just saying that it added to their anxiety. Easy for you to think that's silly, but transgender people are subject to horrific levels of violence. There's nothing absurd about the ideas that it would make someone anxious to have a bunch of men come in their room.

4. That brings us back to point two. Is there some silly stuff going on here about what it means to have a safe space? Sure. 19 year olds are often silly and have a hard time figuring out when they have a reasonable complaint. Is this actually important? Does it represent some larger movement? Is it worth getting outraged because some student at Oberlin is having a hard time figuring out boundaries between themself and the rest of the world? Is this actually more important than the hundreds of editorials students write complaining about bad food at the dining hall?

[Parasaurolophus]

Well said, Caracal.

[mahagonny]

I don't know why the student assumed they were cisgender men. I am gender non-binary, but you might not know it to look at me.

[marshwiggle]

2. Obviously, this is silly. But mostly it strikes me as silly in the sense that this is a person who hasn't figured out that something can make you uncomfortable without anybody doing anything wrong. I don't like hanging around while people do work in a space I'm in either, but the pretty obvious solution is to just go take a walk, or run an errand, when you don't need to be there.

3. All that said, you're misrepresenting what the author is saying. They aren't saying they are are terrified of cis men. They are just saying that it added to their anxiety. Easy for you to think that's silly, but transgender people are subject to horrific levels of violence. There's nothing absurd about the ideas that it would make someone anxious to have a bunch of men come in their room.

Are you seriously suggesting that any group of people are in danger whenever they interact with service people in ordinary situations? Plumbers, electricians, meter readers, appliance repair people- the list is endless. The incidence of any of these people assaulting anyone is extremely rare; if it were common it would be all over the news.

As you said, what most sane people do, especially when they're in rented accommodation (so someone else can give access to their space), is to vacate the space (go for a walk, to the library, etc.) until they're done. The fact that someone has gotten to "adulthood" and can't handle this kind of relatively common situation suggests pretty extreme social anxiety.

[Hibush]

I don't know why the student assumed they were cisgender men. I am gender non-binary, but you might not know it to look at me.

One of these days you will try out We as your pronoun. Capitalized. If you do, please report back on how it changes your interactions!

I was going to say that We in non-binary, but some linguist will find the obvious flaw in that argument.

[Caracal]

2. Obviously, this is silly. But mostly it strikes me as silly in the sense that this is a person who hasn't figured out that something can make you uncomfortable without anybody doing anything wrong. I don't like hanging around while people do work in a space I'm in either, but the pretty obvious solution is to just go take a walk, or run an errand, when you don't need to be there.

3. All that said, you're misrepresenting what the author is saying. They aren't saying they are are terrified of cis men. They are just saying that it added to their anxiety. Easy for you to think that's silly, but transgender people are subject to horrific levels of violence. There's nothing absurd about the ideas that it would make someone anxious to have a bunch of men come in their room.

Are you seriously suggesting that any group of people are in danger whenever they interact with service people in ordinary situations? Plumbers, electricians, meter readers, appliance repair people- the list is endless. The incidence of any of these people assaulting anyone is extremely rare; if it were common it would be all over the news.

No, obviously I wasn't suggesting that at all. I was saying that it might be more than just social anxiety and that for someone who has had traumatic experiences, it could be an understandable anxiety, which is not the same as a reasonable one.

[mahagonny]

I don't know why the student assumed they were cisgender men. I am gender non-binary, but you might not know it to look at me.

One of these days you will try out We as your pronoun. Capitalized. If you do, please report back on how it changes your interactions!

I was going to say that We in non-binary, but some linguist will find the obvious flaw in that argument.

As soon as I am enrolled in your course you can give me homework assignments.

[Hegemony]

I think the problem here is that the student put his (?) objections in an op-ed, as if they were a norm or a template.

People do have all kinds of objections to things, some silly, some less so. I once worked in a place where a co-worker went ballistic because the maintenance people had opened the package of toilet paper and left some sitting in the bag while waiting to be put on the roll. My co-worker thought that this would pollute the toilet paper and make it unsafe (but not when it got put on the roll — don't ask me, I'm just reporting).

If people have anxiety on this level, we can't stop them; but generalizing it and reporting it as if it were the norm is a serious lack of awareness. Of course college-age students are just coming into larger awareness generally. I think the sense of entitlement expressed by the student is misplaced — as someone on the twitterverse said, "This student is paying $80,000 a year for an education, and is saying that he is oppressed in relation to the workmen?" And I do think that people in this particular climate are quick to see themselves as oppressed. No question. And the fact that the student feels such overwhelming anxiety is a matter of concern, even if the immediate solution seems quite simple ("Go for a walk"). I imagine that there are professionals involved somewhere in this student's life.

But in the long run, as far as the bigger picture, the whole thing is a tempest in a teapot. "College student expresses immaturity." Headline news?

[Wahoo Redux]

This sounds like mental illness to me.

How is this fella going to function in the world?

[dismalist]

This sounds like mental illness to me.

How is this fella going to function in the world?

Easy: Politicize everything! 

The personal becomes the political by writing an op-ed instead of taking a walk.

That's the problem, and that's why it's better to look at institutions rather than individual, sad, people.

[mahagonny]

But in the long run, as far as the bigger picture, the whole thing is a tempest in a teapot. "College student expresses immaturity." Headline news?

[/quote]

Agree with this, thing is though, while you can't blame the students that much, there are certain academics who are contributing to the insanity of certain people being encouraged to go around being hyper-sensitive through identity and then pontificating at length like it's a general concern.
Reserving the right to be crazy sensitive through group identity is a status symbol. Not having that right is a negative status symbol, reserved for the heterosexual, the white, the 'cisgender' and the male (if you combine all the loser traits into one person). 'Some of us are more equal than others.'
If a person were this sensitive and vocal about it based on individual identity, for example, being a movie star, we'd simply say he's a primma donna.
Example: there was a thread on the old forum where a heterosexual person was going on a group academic conference trip or some such. When Professor X found out he would be rooming at the hotel with a homosexual person he tried to say, politely, that he would not be comfortable doing this, and could he please be relocated to the company of another hetero male. Well you can imagine the disapproval. Homophobic.
So intelligent people can disagree. And some did.

[marshwiggle]

2. Obviously, this is silly. But mostly it strikes me as silly in the sense that this is a person who hasn't figured out that something can make you uncomfortable without anybody doing anything wrong. I don't like hanging around while people do work in a space I'm in either, but the pretty obvious solution is to just go take a walk, or run an errand, when you don't need to be there.

3. All that said, you're misrepresenting what the author is saying. They aren't saying they are are terrified of cis men. They are just saying that it added to their anxiety. Easy for you to think that's silly, but transgender people are subject to horrific levels of violence. There's nothing absurd about the ideas that it would make someone anxious to have a bunch of men come in their room.

Are you seriously suggesting that any group of people are in danger whenever they interact with service people in ordinary situations? Plumbers, electricians, meter readers, appliance repair people- the list is endless. The incidence of any of these people assaulting anyone is extremely rare; if it were common it would be all over the news.

No, obviously I wasn't suggesting that at all. I was saying that it might be more than just social anxiety and that for someone who has had traumatic experiences, it could be an understandable anxiety, which is not the same as a reasonable one.

I'm curious. If a student or someone they know had been attacked by a black gang member, and expressed in print anxiety about being around all black men, or if the student or someone that they knew had suffered or died due to Islamic extremists, and the student expressed in print their anxiety around all Muslim men, would you be so supportive?

This sounds like mental illness to me.

How is this fella going to function in the world?

Indeed. Greg Lukianoff, one of the authors of "The Coddling of the American Mind", points out that as he himself suffered from mental health issues, what he learned during Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) was basically the exact opposite of what students like this are being told as part of "victimhood culture". By encouraging, or at least not trying to challenge, their irrational fears, they become more anxious and stressed.

[mahagonny]

If someone wrote a letter to the student newspaper that was schizophrenic word-salad, shouldn't
they decline to publish it?