What's not clear to me is whether students who suspect that the content of a given book might offend or upset them are given the option of not reading it. I'm assuming they are not being given that option. If I'm right, then I suppose a "warning" wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, but it also seems to be rather pointless since the student will presumably still be offended or upset upon reading the book, even with advance warning. If a student is so sensitive that a warning is needed to mentally prepare for the anticipated experience of reading something that is potentially upsetting, the student can always make it his or her own practice to Google all reading material in advance to learn what may lie ahead. Forcing the teacher to be the one to characterize the book in advance, and to say things about the book that could influence the way the book is read, seems unnecessary and intrusive on the teacher-student relationship.

It also strikes me that giving these warnings is to treat students in a way that is more patronizing than movie or television ratings. On TV, many shows begin with the warning "Viewer discretion advised," but rarely do these warnings go into the sort of detail that "trigger" warnings apparently contemplate. And on TV, it's appropriate because the audience does not consist of people who have signed up for a course in which they have agreed to submit to a teacher's curriculum. There may even be parents who are watching with young children. In a college course, everyone is an adult and everyone has agreed to be guided by the professor's judgment when it comes to required reading and viewing.

I am very much against the language warnings used on this site. There is no logic behind them. And I hate with utmost muster political correctness.

Meredith Raimondo and Bailey Loverin don't understand literature or art. They don't understand cathartic reading. They don't understand that a book without triggers would be a book without words.

Discontent Warning
 

Discontent Warning : this thread contains aerobatics by Allen Tice that may upend sensitive people on topics including the eardrums of Roman deities; the Third Paeon ('opalescent')*; Research and Development of a hyperreal badger, and whether pigs have wind.

* Above all it is necessary to conceal the care expended upon it so that our rhythms may seem to possess a spontaneous flow, not to have been the result of elaborate search or compulsion. -- Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, 9.5.147.

Wall Street Journal article on William Bowen's commencement address yesterday at Haverford College, at which he scolded the students who had pressured the first-choice graduation speaker to pull out.

Time's account of the reaction from the student who had organized the protest against the original speaker.

Full text of Bowen's commencement speech here.

(Of course, such situations are always far more complicated than they appear in the press, but it's undeniable that there's been a real epidemic of university students pressuring graduation speakers to bow out this year.)

What Rick & Orwn said.

Nemo

I beg to differ. But it's a nuanced difference, so I would appreciate it if guys with Mommy issues would hold off on calling me a schoolmarm, an emasculating feminist, a controlling female, etc., etc., without reading what I'm actually saying, as happened in a previous thread that I have no desire to resurrect.

Consider, if you will, the following two scenarios:

Scenario #1: To communicate my abhorrence of something, I employ a Holocaust or slavery or lynching metaphor--i.e., I casually invoke a form of victimization that people of my ethnicity were rarely on the receiving end of. My audience informs me that my use of this metaphor is offensive. I whine and complain that this is cramping my style.

Scenario #2: To communicate my abhorrence of something, I employ a sexual violence and humiliation metaphor--i.e., I casually invoke a form of victimization that people of my sex and sexual orientation are rarely on the receiving end of. My audience informs me that my use of this metaphor is offensive. I whine and complain that this is cramping my style.

Why do so many male Sphereans who find Scenario #1 unflattering seem to think that Scenario #2 is entirely praiseworthy?

Yes, there's a magnitude difference, but both scenarios show trivialization of suffering that does not harm you, plus an arrogantly adolescent attitude that "I can say whatever I want to, and you can't stop me, so who cares if you don't like it?" Trust me, this combination is not attractive.

It seems to me that poets--wordsmiths, if you will--should be able to express themselves effectively without overusing certain words, be it "shards" or "limn" or the eff-bomb. Although I don't think any word should be removed from the toolbox--sometimes a charged word is exactly what's needed--I reserve the right to tire of words that aren't used judiciously, whether in poetry or prose. And I get so sick of encountering certain demeaning swearwords everywhere else that it would be nice if, at Eratosphere, this low-register diction were reserved for, say, helping to develop and nuance a character in a poem--or to communicate that a poem persona has really lost emotional control, like the first-person narrator of a recent sonnet of mine posted here (with a language warning).

I would hope that people expressing differences of opinion here will be able to maintain emotional control while doing so.

If Samuel Clemens were alive today and was a member of the Sphere, would he:

1. revolt
2. agree that not all language is henceforth usable
3. take his lumps for being a racist bigot (he clearly wasn't)
4. wait for the "lynch" mob
5. be a captain on a fishing boat in Alaska (where every word is in play)
along with men&women who possess very sharp knives and gaffes
6. be content to read in underground venues

7. suddenly become enlightened...

Mark Twain wasn't writing any kind of poetry; he wrote narrative fiction.
I think he might thoughtfully loose some wind.

I am a native Missourian, Allen. I assure you that Clemens wrote poetry. He was not a prolific writer of such. He wrote many books on travel which sold in the thousands. Maybe you are talking of someone else. It would be easy to look it up.

Fiction and travel books will generally have an immediate representational voice. If I seemed hasty (I am often hasty), I would be happy to read Twain's poetry at least once, and maybe more times. Abraham Lincoln also wrote poetry.