Despite a growing perception by the American public that colleges and universities are no longer producing students with adequate skills to enter the workforce, one New York University professor has published a paper on the importance of developing students who are aware of and sensitive to trigger warnings.
According to a new paper by Nirit Gordon, a doctoral student in the Department of Applied Psychology at New York University, many individuals may not understand trigger warnings because they are too “dissociated” from other people’s situations. In order to overcome this level of dissociation, Gordon writes, educators must be willing to confront patriarchy in the classroom.
“Dissociation is used to defend against formulating and acknowledging students’ traumatic experiences, especially minority students, e.g., women and people of color,” Gordon writes. “This dissociation is coupled with a patriarchal order that often frames educational pedagogy, and deems different human qualities as gendered and hierarchal.”
Gordon goes on to accuse society of devaluing “emotionality,” because emotions are perceived by society in a feminine sense. According to her argument, rational thoughts are too often perceived as being masculine and thus given more intellectual privilege than emotional thoughts.
“Rationality is equated with masculinity and valued, while emotionality is equated with femininity and devalued. Hence, educational spaces often privilege rational knowledge and diminish the role of emotion and intuition,” writes Gordon. “This can lead to discussion of the latter becoming unwelcome and inappropriate.”
Despite her concerns about the lack of trigger warnings in the classroom setting and the implications of such practices for higher education, Gordon fails to mention how the classroom language police have succeeded in weaponizing trigger warnings as a method of suppressing free speech against conservatives on college campuses.
For example, Miami University of Ohio was recently sued in federal court after they attempted to implement a policy requiring pro-life students to place “trigger-warning” posters near their display that would serve as a “warning” that material might exist nearby that could be perceived as offensive.
Trigger warnings are nothing more than an opportunity to police rational speech that might offend only those who are looking to be offended. They may appear to serve a purpose in a college classroom, but in the real world, far fewer are likely to be worried about doing something that could possibly “trigger” someone else.
