What happens when a generation grows up being told that nothing is safe enough, not even a walk home from the park?
Or that they should never encounter a bad grade, or mean remark-these
things are too wounding? Or that they didn't lose the game, they are the
"8th place winners!?
Here's what
happens: At least a portion of them become convinced that they are
extremely fragile. They need-they demand-the kind of life-buffers
they've had since childhood.
Which brings us to this Judith Shulevitz in Sunday's New York Times.
She details the demands students are making to feel "safe" on campus.
But she's not talking about physical safety; students want to be safe
from debates. Safe from jarring ideas. Safely situated in a "safe place"
(terminology previously associated with hurricanes and nuclear war)
when some speaker somewhere on campus is even suggesting the possibility
that we don't live in a "rape culture."
So if you haven't read the essay yet-and Robby Soave's rousing take on it-please
do. And then let's start using a term Shulevitz employs, "self
infantilizing," to describe what has happened to our young adults when
they behave as if they are as helpless and vulnerable as babies, and
apparently just as easily entertained. The "safe place" Brown University
provided for its students during the rape culture debate in another
building was outfitted with coloring books, bubbles, and Play Doh. (Did I
mention the puppy video?)
Treating women as frightened children who need soothing would never
be tolerated if it were proposed by a male authority figure: "What you
pretty little ladies need are some bubbles!" But somehow, when it's
proposed by other women on campus, it is an act of solidarity, not
condescension.
This
is awfully familiar to those of us who watch what's happening in the
world of childrearing-and for this I don't even blame parents. I blame a
whole culture bent on protecting kids from almost everything: from Parenting magazine famously
told parents to remain close at hand when even their school-age
children have playdates because, "You want to make sure that no one's
feelings get too hurt if there's a squabble.")
When you have a culture devoted to seeing danger in what used to just
be everyday life, it actually becomes illegal to distinguish between
real risks (letting your 5-year-old swim alone, in a quarry, in the
dark) and negligible ones (letting your 10-year-old wait in the car, in a safe neighborhood, while you run a short errand).
No wonder kids end up at college equally scared of rapists and a
discussion of rape culture! They have grown up under the mantra: Everything is dangerous.
Now we just have to figure out how to help them realize: Nope. It's
not. College students don't need coloring books. They don't need puppy
videos. They need to stop equating umbrage with courage. As Winston
Churchill said: "We have not journeyed all this way across the
centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains, across the prairies,
because we are made of sugar candy."
http://reason.com/blog/2015/03/24/college-students-stop-acting-like-youre
Or that they should never encounter a bad grade, or mean remark-these
things are too wounding? Or that they didn't lose the game, they are the
"8th place winners!?
Here's what
happens: At least a portion of them become convinced that they are
extremely fragile. They need-they demand-the kind of life-buffers
they've had since childhood.
Which brings us to this Judith Shulevitz in Sunday's New York Times.
She details the demands students are making to feel "safe" on campus.
But she's not talking about physical safety; students want to be safe
from debates. Safe from jarring ideas. Safely situated in a "safe place"
(terminology previously associated with hurricanes and nuclear war)
when some speaker somewhere on campus is even suggesting the possibility
that we don't live in a "rape culture."
So if you haven't read the essay yet-and Robby Soave's rousing take on it-please
do. And then let's start using a term Shulevitz employs, "self
infantilizing," to describe what has happened to our young adults when
they behave as if they are as helpless and vulnerable as babies, and
apparently just as easily entertained. The "safe place" Brown University
provided for its students during the rape culture debate in another
building was outfitted with coloring books, bubbles, and Play Doh. (Did I
mention the puppy video?)
Treating women as frightened children who need soothing would never
be tolerated if it were proposed by a male authority figure: "What you
pretty little ladies need are some bubbles!" But somehow, when it's
proposed by other women on campus, it is an act of solidarity, not
condescension.
This
is awfully familiar to those of us who watch what's happening in the
world of childrearing-and for this I don't even blame parents. I blame a
whole culture bent on protecting kids from almost everything: from Parenting magazine famously
told parents to remain close at hand when even their school-age
children have playdates because, "You want to make sure that no one's
feelings get too hurt if there's a squabble.")
When you have a culture devoted to seeing danger in what used to just
be everyday life, it actually becomes illegal to distinguish between
real risks (letting your 5-year-old swim alone, in a quarry, in the
dark) and negligible ones (letting your 10-year-old wait in the car, in a safe neighborhood, while you run a short errand).
No wonder kids end up at college equally scared of rapists and a
discussion of rape culture! They have grown up under the mantra: Everything is dangerous.
Now we just have to figure out how to help them realize: Nope. It's
not. College students don't need coloring books. They don't need puppy
videos. They need to stop equating umbrage with courage. As Winston
Churchill said: "We have not journeyed all this way across the
centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains, across the prairies,
because we are made of sugar candy."
http://reason.com/blog/2015/03/24/college-students-stop-acting-like-youre
