An Unopinionated Introduction to Philosophy

Fourth Edition

An Unopinionated Introduction to Philosophy

Fourth Edition

M. A. Istvan Jr., PhD

DO NOT OPEN IF YOU ARE TRIGGERED BY LARGE SWATHS OF WHITE SPACE, MULTIPLE PAGES, OR SEVERAL WORDS STRUNG TOGETHER

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Catering to the entrenched and ever-growing sensitivity of students beyond even the well-to-do West, Safe Space Press is a not-for-profit publisher dedicated to providing Trigger-Minimal™ introductory textbooks for courses in various disciplines: philosophy, psychology, economics, mathematics, sociology, race studies, physics, music theory, and beyond. Written by world-renowned researchers and educators, and edited by an international council of therapists and censors, each textbook—or, as we at Safe Space Press like to put it, companion—serves as a vital resource for those encountering the field for the first time. Although with much less chance that readers will face challenges that they are entitled never to face, each companion aims to encapsulate the central ideas, arguments, and areas of research in the field while at the same time introducing original perspectives that delve beyond the basics. Since we generate revenue in order to publish (rather than the other way around), we are able to offer our textbooks free of cost as well as to provide scholarships and grants to students and researchers who prioritize making every sector of academia a safe space—a space where all identities are able to enjoy recognition and feel at home.

Forthcoming companions from Safe Space Press

An Unopinionated Introduction to Astrobiology

An Unopinionated Introduction to Chemical Hygiene

An Unopinionated Introduction to Mortuary Science

An Unopinionated Introduction to Gunsmithing

Also available from Safe Space Press

Trading Equality (by A. D. Aliano)

Excerpt.—There is a tension between comfort, on the one hand, and diversity, on the other. It is clear which side has to go. Your exceptionality exists in violation of the principle that no one should be offended. It has long been said, of course, that our differences from other people make us valuable. After all, bartering would be impossible if everyone had nothing unique to bring to the table. But the deeper question is: why assume, in the first place, that bartering is desirable? All trade is inherently violent. Aside from the extreme violence we have witnessed in the massacre-full histories of the drug and spice trades (where armed forces compete for control of production and territory), any give-and-take is going to involve contact, the meeting of boundaries, and so at least micro-aggression.

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Praise for An Unopinionated Introduction to Philosophy

The most reader-friendly textbook ever conceived. Dolores Umbridge has won the day!—New Guard Media

No other textbook is as pro-student. It is essential for any instructor who cares to protect all students (rather than merely those arbitrarily deemed to be worthy of protection). Dr. Istvan says it all. “The days of being exclusionary in our protection of students are done. . . Just imagine the horror of seeing your classmate allowed to skip the Greek mythology readings because of their incest-references whereas you must push on through repeated mentions of hair, glorious heads of curly hair, that leave you sobbing in desperate struggle not to let your hair-pulling disorder reawaken. Just imagine being in a law class where your professor has cut discussion of rape law as a courtesy to those sensitive to rape and yet has the audacity to go on to discuss food law even when there are students in the room who know people, loved ones even, who have developed cancers from certain additives.”—The Emancipated Student

A straightforward answer to what has proven to be the most abusive trigger for students in recent decades: that merely some of them were being granted protection from triggers!— The New Academy

A one-stop-shop textbook sensitive to the fact that the aggrieved are entitled to recompense and that no aggression is small enough to fail to be macro-aggression.—Counselor Riot

However diligent one is at padding table corners, the only way to ensure no one gets hurt is to remove the tables! Thanks to Safe Space Press we can now say, “If you’re not happy, you’re not paying attention.”—Cancel

Until now I would have said that no single-volume could ever be a one-size-fits-all college textbook. Had I such a textbook when I was in school, a blankness of subtle and soothing cream, my therapist would be out of a job.—Mercy Ott, English professor at Joliet College

The excellence of the fourth edition, which includes a bonus chapter on how to report your professor to authorities, is summarized in the following lines from Dr. Istvan’s moving introduction: “To expose students, in the very safe space of the classroom, to what they might find displeasing is, point blank, for teachers to be unfaithful to their academic obligations. . . A student triggered, triggered in any way, is a student whose attention is being harassed away from learning and reflective thinking.” What is novel about this new edition from Safe Space Press, a press that prioritizes inviting students rather than challenging them, is that it honors an obvious truth that for so many decades educators have lacked the courage to honor: that students deserve to be protected from all triggers if they deserve to be protected from some.—Bipartisan Correctness

I had to report my professor. Hearing the word “scatological” in the classroom, especially from a heterosexual cis-gendered man in red, made me feel unsafe. Traumatized as I was by the word (and not to mention by being made out to feel like officer Karen of the PC police when I found myself so affected by hearing it), I was able to craft an effective letter to administration thanks to the advice laid out in the much-appreciated bonus chapter “Turn Them In NOW.” Let’s just say that my “professor” will no longer be spreading his “teachings.”—Devona Zing, business student at Scarsdale College

My teacher is, or I should say, was a rape-apologist. After I told her how much her classroom environment triggered me, she suggested I was being overly sensitive (or even manipulative). When I kept complaining (out of personal dignity and self-care), she asked me why I continue to stay in the class if it is such a violent place. When I told her that was my business, she suggested that I might be secretly enjoying it. “Some of the most traumatized do stay in the class despite the trigger warnings,” she had the audacity to write, “because—much like the rough-sex penchant some develop from early abuse—they are subconsciously turned on by, and seeking out ways to relive, the trauma.” Dr. Istvan’s textbook gave me the voice to report my professor. More importantly, it reminds us all that, personal as triggers are, we should never let trigger-warning professors say that our peculiar triggers do not count. Unless it is just a flagrant ploy to enforce certain norms and values over others—if person A is allowed to opt out of coursework because its talk of Islam triggers person A, then person B is also allowed to opt out of coursework because its sheer difficulty triggers person B.—Anne C., student at McGovern Academy

Dinosaur professors who enabled systemic abuse to continue under the banner of “exposing students to what unnerves them” and of “changing the victimizing language of ‘safe space’ into the empowering language of ‘brave space’” turned out to be right about one thing: censoring offensiveness is a slippery slope. And in the fourth-edition textbook from Safe Space Press, which has slid down all the way to the bottom, students have finally been put first. The only potential negative about the book is that it will undercut so many livelihoods. I am not just talking about the livelihoods of abusive professors (go to michaelistvan.com to see a growing list of such professors, by the way). A book like this purges so many members of the victim category, and so severely bars entrance to the victim category, that those who have been profiting for so long on victim culture—litigators, university officials, and so on—are going to be facing some tough times.—The Invalidated

For decades academic institutions have failed to honor the precedent that students are to be sheltered from what unsettles them. Yes, some textbooks were censored just as some speakers were cancelled. The keyword here is “some.” The exclusionary practice of doing away with merely some textbooks and with merely some speakers, which we have tolerated long enough, is insensitive to the fact that what survives such halfhearted censorship is bound to unsettle someone. The new release from Safe Space Press, a ray of light that boldly strips away practically all course content, is a giant leap toward cancelling the unjustly exclusionary practice of sheltering merely some students. One can only hope that those in positions to invite speakers to campus will get the hint!—Aggrieved Daily

Rocketing beyond all competitors with a mere 100-page textbook that removes virtually all possible sources of trauma, Safe Space Press has brought into reality the full implications of coursework-opt-out practices. And with its bonus chapter, “Turn Them In NOW,” the latest edition goes beyond simply protecting students: it arms them! Providing both a sample letter of grievance as well as a pep talk for those under the misimpression that their grievances are too mild to be worthy of retribution, the bonus chapter will help ensure the termination of all professors failing to prioritize students (not just the adjuncts). The chickens have come home to roost.—Higher Education Network For Welcoming Climates

Never stand for someone trying to invalidate your experience. Your trauma is a trauma. No one has to sanction it as worthy enough for it to count as trauma or for you to be entitled to retaliation. “Fragility is grounds not for embarrassment but for entitlement.” That is the message of the fourth edition. As professor Istvan makes clear in the bold and therapeutic chapter “Turn them in NOW,” “Your professor does not have to defend Palestine . . . or show you the secret parts of the human anatomy to be destroying your life! Just as the freshman who was raped a few weeks ago is not ready to face course readings that mention rape, the freshman who witnessed her mother on the deathbed a few weeks ago groaning ‘and and and and and and’ is not ready to face course readings where the word ‘and’ is thrown about as if no big deal (insensitively appearing almost in every sentence).” We are ready for the message. We have been ready for a long time.—Me Too, You Too

This year has proven to be the twilight of dysfunction. First, we learned that Pennsylvania will rename its offensively-named cities (Blue Ball, Intercourse, Climax, Virginville, Moreheadville, Reamstown, Coon Hunter, Honey Hole, Honey Pot, Nazareth). Second, we learned that both New York’s Museum of Sex and Los Angeles’s Museum of Death have been shut down. Third, we learned that Lego, notorious for its insensitivities to various groups, has stopped production of pretty much all sets. Fourth, we learned that even the medical writings of white supremacist John Locke have been banned from higher education along with the disgusting likes of Twain and Melville. Fifth, we learned of a new amendment that will repeal the due process clauses in earlier amendments and so allow more immediate cancelation of offenders. And now the cherry on top: a college textbook from Safe Space Press that leaves nothing to offend our future world leaders. Nothing upsetting is safe from cancellation, even the most entrenched aspects of our cultural legacy!—Margin Wise

Stickering everything with trigger warnings not only failed to protect students (for various reasons expressed in Dr. Istvan’s introduction), it became too cumbersome for professors. How are professors, to give just one example, to warn those students who are triggered by trigger warnings themselves? I do not doubt that there are ways: staging a scenario, for instance, where such students can overhear the professor tell someone else how traumatic some found the course content. But surely that is just too much work for professors, work that is unnecessary with thoroughgoing censorship. Besides, how are professors even to know which students are triggered by trigger warnings? The new textbook from Safe Space Press, which goes so far as to blunt the borders of each page so that no one gets cut, streamlines everything.—Susan DeMann, author of Accusations and Perceived Wrongs Spell G.U.I.L.T.: Gutless Uncaring Intellectuals Loving Trauma

The left tried to cancel this. The right tried to cancel that. What was excusable for students to opt-out of according to one faction was not excusable for students to opt-out of according to the other faction. The result? Like bawling children in urine-leaden pampers clutching stuffed animals while their parents warred about how best to raise them, students were forgotten in the middle of enraged disputes concerning how best to shelter them from classroom trauma. Still vulnerable to so many harms and not to mention further traumatized by all the warring taking place “on their behalf,” it was students who lost in the end. That was until a social-worker voice of reason swooped in. “Enough,” Dr. Istvan yelled, directing the factions to look down at their feet to the little child now so desperate to be picked up that its raised arms have let the teddy bear fall to the floor—neglect breeding neglect. But Dr. Istvan does not simply implore us, “Think of the child!” Backed by Safe Space Press, he also supplies the antidote—the very motto of Safe Space Press: censoring, silencing, shaming (taken to the limit)!—Rated Never

Some of us are old enough to remember the days when the efforts to protect students failed to go beyond using euphemism to cover over the unpleasantness of certain realities: “assembly centers” instead of “extermination camps,” or “innovative love” instead of “child abuse,” or “material liberation” instead of “looting,” or “the x in your care” instead of “the x in your possession,” or “manifold glazing” instead of “bukkake,” or “self-loving and self-respecting and self-caring” instead of “sissy and hypersensitive and prudish.” These proved insufficient, of course. Euphemism—as in using the innocuous term “depression” to describe an extreme mental state of destructive darkness, or as in simply calling the ready-to-strike scorpion “buddy”—can make a horror stand out even more forcefully. After pressures to recognize that “student” is a protected category, trigger warnings entered the picture. But these too, even when they successfully alerted students to material that might not be aligned with their own values and ways of speaking, proved to be insufficient. These proved to be insufficient, mere bandages on a deeper problem, since even trauma for which one is prepared is still trauma, and since there are bound to be triggers for which trigger warnings fail to prepare students, and since there would have to be a trigger warning for everything since everything is a potential trigger. Things drastically improved by allowing students to opt-out of triggering material (instead of being merely notified of it beforehand). Opt-out practices, of course, also proved insufficient at protecting students. After all, students were not allowed to opt-out of everything and, besides, mere description of the material that students were allowed to opt out of, even when augmented with the evasive tool of euphemism, still exposed students at least to the abstract idea of what they were allowed to opt-out of, which was traumatic enough. Professor Istvan’s new textbook, cocooned with the blessings of Safe Space Press, is the fourth step: elimination of almost anything that could offend students. To be sure, there is still room for offense. Istvan himself admits that this textbook is not a cure all. “Short of the ‘final solution’ of altogether snuffing out . . . humans,” the textbook must be coupled, so he tells us, with the appropriate painkillers and antidepressants to be thoroughly effective.—Offense Culture

Understanding that even competent revision of materials would leave something offensive in its wake, Safe Space Press has effectively burned it all.—Moral High Ground

A true safe space, which only Dr. Istvan’s textbook makes possible, is a safe space for humans, not for ideas and speech. Dr. Istvan has brought us miles ahead to realizing the beyond-mere-lip-service empathetic classroom environment that bell hooks envisioned so long ago in Teaching to Transgress. “Any radical pedagogy must insist that everyone’s presence is acknowledged. That insistence cannot be simply stated. It has to be demonstrated through pedagogical prac­tices. To begin, the professor must genuinely value every­ one’s presence. There must be an ongoing recognition that everyone influences the classroom dynamic, that everyone contributes. . . . To teach in a manner that respects and cares for the souls of our students is essential if we are to provide the necessary conditions where learning can most deeply and intimately begin.” —Sue Beatty, author of The Infinite Risks of Higher Learning

Serious emotional reactions to course content is not a signal that the student needs to go to therapy or prioritize “getting mentally tougher” over “getting an education.” It is a signal that something is wrong with the course content! “Truth should never interfere with justice!” Thank you Dr. Istvan.—Juan Campbell, student at Northsouthern College

Just as a jogger is prone to take routes other than her preferred one if she is frequently catcalled by construction workers, students harassed in class are prone to avoid participating—or even coming altogether! And guess what such exclusion allows? It allows business to go on as usual: the classroom policy of abuse remains unchallenged when the abused keep their heads low. Dr. Istvan, however, has eliminated all the construction workers and thereby even the mere threat of catcalls!—Humanity Confirmed

Professor Istvan does an excellent job at ridding the classroom of as much mental discomfort as possible. Comfort, however, is not just a mental-emotional matter, but also a physical-spatial matter. In light of the fact that students are not pure spirits, we still have much work to do when it comes to the physicality of the classroom. How can there be just one style of chair for every student, for example? A chair that is comfy for you, may be unfit for me: too small, too big, too unsupportive, too supportive, or so on. In a classroom setting, students should not be paying attention to their bodies above everything else. And yet when the chair does not fit, when I keep squirming to ease the sciatica pain the chair is causing me, guess what? My body comes to the fore in its awkwardness, backgrounding any educational information. Just as much as an uncomfortable course topic, an uncomfortable physical space not only distracts from learning, but also sends the wrong message to students. It sends the message that they are unworthy of being recognized and protected. It sends the message that they are being merely tolerated rather than truly wanted. It sends the message that they are the ones who should be grateful to be there.—Dominant Spaces Down

Thinking it would be impossible to remove all threats of challenge in the classroom, I figured it would be best to call my classroom a “brave space” instead of a “safe space.” The hope in shifting the language was that (1) students would be less on the lookout for what might offend them and (2) that they would be inspired to rise to the challenges that could not be removed. Unfortunately, this strategy backfired. Those who could not handle the topics in the classroom, and the conversations with diverse peers, ended up feeling doubly bad. For according to how I had set things up, they were not only threatened by the learning environment, they were now also not brave—they were now also not good enough. Istvan’s textbook made clear to me that my presumption about it being impossible to remove discomfort from the equation was terribly wrong. The textbook alerted me, furthermore, to the fact that the language of “brave space,” as well intentioned as it was in my case, simply allowed me to hide from myself that I was abusing students. It was a moving experience to hear Istvan describe, in his wonderful introduction, how he too was an inadvertent (although, like me, chronic) abuser. It made me feel that my journey as an educator was not doomed. We can all change.—Anonymous teacher at a community college in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

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Message from the Council at Safe Space Press

Our “Unopinionated” textbook series is the culmination of decades of thought and practice dedicated to fostering welcoming climates in the college classroom. Each thoughtfully-designed volume serves as a model for the pro-student textbooks that other publishers, still enamored of the challenge-the-student-at-least-in-some-way model, are soon enough going to be forced to produce. The people themselves demand it!

Aside from tempering the edges of each page to make paper cuts impossible, the major improvement of the fourth edition of the companion you are now reading is that it has deleted all the words that remained in the previous edition. A much-needed bonus chapter, “Turn Them In NOW,” provides a boiler-plate letter of complaint against your professor. Electronic resources are available as well. Anyone who simply signs the pledge to report experiences of classroom trauma will get lifetime access to our new app: TTI-NOW. The app continuously updates the “Turn Them In NOW” chapter and, perhaps most importantly (since it is so often difficult to express how unsafe a professor makes you feel), the app includes editing features for both video and audio so that you can construct the best case possible against your professor!

Remember: safety excuses all inhumanity.

Peace for eternity,

Safe Space Council

A. D. Aliano

M. Shaw

C. Cimmino

V. Velilla

B. Ishmael

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Table of Contents

Reviews and Praise ……………………………….………………..….………….……….i

Message from the Council at Safe Space Press ….…………..……....viii

Chapter 1: Introduction (Preferably for Teachers Only)….……….1

Chapter 2: Logic………………………………………………………………….…..……..26

Chapter 3: Knowledge …….………………………………….……………….……….32

Chapter 4: Mind-Body Problem …………….………….……………..…………40

Chapter 5: Personal Identity …….……………………………..………..………..48

Chapter 6: Ethical Theories …….……………………….……………….………..56

Chapter 7: Moral Freedom …….………….………….….…………….………....62

Chapter 8: God …..…...……………………………….…….………………………….…66

Bonus Chapter: Turn Them In NOW ……..………………...…….…..….73

Closing Affirmations ….……………………….……………………….………....….82

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Chapter 1: Introduction (Preferably for Teachers Only)

When I began my precious journey as an educator, I knew very little about how to help others learn what I knew so well. No one told me how to speak properly to students, evaluate their work, construct a syllabus, set course objectives. As a result my students suffered. The problem was not that I was unconfident. My lack of confidence was actually a benefit. Research has consistently shown, after all, that anyone who conducts a classroom with confidence cannot help but adopt aggressive postures and intonations that demoralize students and undercut their learning.

What was my problem, then? My problem was that students were aggrieved. However woke I felt my consciousness was, however much I knew to avoid the usual triggers that turn classrooms into danger zones, however much I was aware of the high-profile cases where students were brutalized in the name of academic freedom and free speech, however much I reflected on how a colleague of mine was removed for insensitively telling a Chinese student that she had something on her “chin,” however much I knew that “off-duty” speech (even if merely reporting the speech of someone else) could get me fired at any point (and would, if it upset the institution’s consumer base), however scared-straight I thought I was having witnessed even the chair of my department get terminated and doxed for calling a black student “street smart” (and then having the audacity to claim he was a centrist), however much I softened the horrors of reality with euphemism (“content forecast” for “trigger warning,” “borrowing” for “stealing,” “No-No America” for “The Southern Confederacy,” “comfort collaboration” for “booty call,” “dream center” for “gas chamber,” “water therapy” for “waterboarding,” “selfless service” for “chattel slavery,” “air questioning” for “strangling torture,” “pink sock from the love cloud” for “rectal prolapse from the gang bang,” “feather name” for “euphemism”), however many hypnosis-and-prayer steps I took to atone for having cisgendered associations, however many electroshock sessions I endured to snuff out my original sin of heterosexuality, however many racial reassignment surgeries I underwent, however much I pleaded on my knees for students to forgive me for having so many privileges, I was still undermining the learning environment by unknowingly harassing my students.

My students were being downright abused by me. As much as I let the students themselves pronounce their own names (in fear that what I said would not match what they hear in their heads), as much as I acknowledged my experiential limits (as non-Appalachian, non-Asian, non-pedophilic, non-the-endless-list-of-everything-me), as much as I made sure that course readings echoed student values, as much as I made sure not to enter into controversial topics, as much as I encouraged a learning environment where students were empowered to vilify and belittle and censor whatever was unsympathetic to their standpoint (even great works of art), as much as I reassured students that I myself was opposed to the free exchange of ideas that throughout history has left countless victims in its wake, my students were being downright abused by me. Yes, even by me: one of the first teachers to stop giving out tests and essays (since such assignments make demands that actively discriminate against black and poor and disabled and first-generation and immigrant students).

My students were being abused by me for reasons that I never anticipated: the color and weight of the textbook, the lack of structure as to when they should study on their free time and for how long, my word choices and cadence, the masculine form and hardness of the chairs, my underclass gait and posture, even the very fact of my having the power to assign grades based on what they say. It chronically slipped my mind, backwards as it paints me to admit it, that clapping—despite its close likeness to the glucking sounds of rough sex—was a microaggression of toxic masculinity. And there I was, tactlessly clapping after each guest speaker when it would have been no skin off my back to use more peaceful gestures of applause, such as finger snapping or jazz hands or spirit fingers. It chronically slipped my mind, insensitive as it paints me to admit it, that negative emotions occur when confronted with things we do not understand. And there I was, trying to teach material most students did not already understand! It chronically slipped my mind, cruel as it paints me to admit it, that not wearing makeup was traumatic for students. Everyone on social media and reality TV and news programs have their imperfections caked over with foundation and filters. My students, in fact, dealt with each other primarily in cyberspace through the mediation of avatars. Avatars do not have wrinkles or liver spots! And there I was, indecently dishing out shock and awe throughout the lecture hall flashing my crow’s feet at wincing students forced face what they should never face: knowledge of decay and death. The list goes on and on. Simply wearing Levi’s Wokes everyday turned out to be not good enough. Do you know how many women were assaulted by men wearing the Nautica musk or the goatee or the elbow-patched sports jacket that I flagrantly wore every day to class? Apparently that just slipped my mind. Is there any wonder why, faced with such a trauma barrage, so many students were unable to concentrate no matter how intense their willpower?

For such oversights I no doubt ruined countless lives. Especially in light of the asymmetrical power relationship between students and their professors, my behavior did not have to reach the level of overt aggression or bullying (or telling a Chinese student that she has something on her “chin”) to create a harassing classroom. A student triggered, triggered in any way, is a student whose attention is being harassed away from learning and reflective thinking. That is what I failed to see. How could I have called myself a “teacher” in all honesty?

Even many professors who passionately support censorship of problematic content (content that exposes students to challenging ideas, language, and figures), even many professors that go the extra-mile in finding alternative assignments and coursework for students who want to opt-out of what will be difficult for them, might look down on this textbook. Even such allies, however, fail to come to terms with the fact that—since triggers are deeply personal reactions that are in no way a choice of the afflicted but rather are “felt in the joints” (as one of my own former damaged students so succinctly put it)—anyone can be triggered by anything.

An example will drive the point home. A student once vomited right in class, an embarrassing event that no doubt damaged her as much as, if not more than, what brought her to nausea in the first place. What brought her there? My insensitive words. I mentioned, merely in passing, how senior citizens are often treated like babies by nursing home caretakers. Having made it a point to clarify that I was categorically not condoning that they be treated that way, I thought I was in the clear. What damaged the student was something I did not anticipate. “How dare you speak for them! How dare you deny their lived experiences!” Because of the vomiting she said little more. Her point was clear, nevertheless. I was neither a senior citizen nor a baby (nor a nursing-home caretaker for that matter) and so I had no right to speak for them.

Anyone can be triggered by anything. You might think that jazz hands, for example, is always better than the patriarchal bullhorn of old-school clapping. Not always. What about those people who have no hands? How might they feel seeing the rest of their peers ableistically flaunting their privilege? Or what about students who cannot help but call to mind blackface performances when they see such a gesture?

The duty of an educator is tough. A central reason why it is tough is that anyone can be triggered by anything. It is important to say it again. Anyone can be triggered by anything. That axiomatic slogan is the foundation from which I have built the edifice—the companion—you are now reading.

Let us tarry a bit on our axiom. Let us circle around it. What counts as a trigger is relative to the individual. Seven is unlucky for the Chinese student but divine for many others. In the Southern US, homosexual behavior and miscegenation is more likely to be a trigger than in the North. Dead-naming is more likely to be a trigger for well-to-do young white people than it is for poor black people. For those in group A, a pro-life pamphlet is a trigger that can hurl them into the months-long clutch of chronic fatigue. For people beaten all their lives with a belt, a belt is a trigger that can make them void their bowels in front of everyone as if they were suddenly lynched. For a person who always heard her father crack open beers until he got violent, the crack of the can is a trigger that can awaken involuntary hiccupping or orgasms uncured by drinking water upside down. For my partner, a victim of intended suicide, the phrase “trigger warning” is so rife with violence that she cannot help but feel the cold barrel of the handgun against her teeth again, along with the breathless weeping. It gets her so upset that each day she scours the internet for syllabuses and confronts any professor who uses the phrase “trigger warning” instead of more caring expressions like “content forecast” or—to give her preferred way to neuter the metonymic bully that is the phrase “trigger warning”—simply “safecast.” In my case, although I refuse to be retraumatized by going into the reasons why, sailboat wallpaper and pronouncing “harassment” as “HAR-ass-ment” instead of “ha-RASS-ment” are the absolute worst. We must be careful, in this case, who gets to define what a trigger is.

Never stand for people telling you what is genuinely harmful to you! Such gatekeepers of whose pain gets recognized, such enforcers of what counts as a genuine trigger, are ultimately serving their own ambitions at the expense of students. Never. Stand. For. It. What presses your buttons is a personal matter. Just think of how much violence there is in a history professor allowing students to opt out of assignments that talk about the Nazis (because of the terror they inflicted), but not allowing students to opt out of assignments that talk about the British or the Comanches (despite the terror they inflicted).

Even if one insisted, absurdly, that what counts as a trigger is not relative, we can all agree at least that novelty, diversity, is a basic trigger for all of us. Anything new makes us uneasy. That is not a choice. What is new, what is alien, sends our blood pumping and our adrenaline coursing. It is felt in the joints. It can cause headaches and vomiting. It can trigger an autoimmune flareup.

Even the most zealous about censoring offensiveness have suffered from myopia, allowing students to choose alternative readings or topics to avoid merely some—“the sanctioned,” “the approved,” “the official,” “the reasonable”—triggers. Such professors have in common much more than they might think with those now-extinct dinosaurs who cared so little for students that they refused to do even the ineffectual minimum of putting trigger warnings on course content. Both sets of instructors, as oppugnant as they are to one another, fail to recognize that students carry with them into the classroom personal histories and struggles. It is as unreasonable to expect students to forget their personal histories and struggles as it is unreasonable to expect professors to be privy to those personal histories and struggles.

I invite you, please, to pause to reflect on the point. Breathe in for five seconds. Hold for five. Breathe out for five. Breathe in for five seconds. Hold for five. Breathe out for five. Breathe in for five seconds. Hold for five. Breathe out for five. Breathe in for five seconds. Hold for five. Breathe out for five.

The Safe Space textbook you are now reading recognizes the extreme violence implicit in the very gesture of expecting students to enter an environment where the professor is just going to do what he planned to do regardless of the possibility of students having traumatic experiences in light of their personal histories and struggles. The Safe Space textbook you are now reading reflects an approach, in short, that is truly pro-student. It respects the fact that feeling unsafe in a space, that is, feeling vulnerable to being abused while in that space, is a matter of perspective. It respects the fact that triggers are involuntary, deeply personal, and relative to each individual depending on their inherently unstable moods, interests, hunger, intelligence, and so on at any particular time. It respects the fact that novelty in general is triggering. In effect, it respects the fact that the “victim card”—to utter a phrase that is hereby freed of its pejorative connotation—has no limits. All lived experience counts, not only if it is of the approved kind. 

The impossibility of preventing situations in which no one is triggered used to be cited—once upon a barbaric time—as grounds to ridicule our censorship movement. We know better now that harassment is not something to take lightly. It is commonly said that lobsters live much less traumatized lives than we do, even despite the horrors they no doubt experience, precisely because they do not fret over anticipated traumas. Humans, however, are heady creatures. Students, human through and through (despite how they have been treated for centuries), are anxious about all the harassing situations they might be subject to in the future. Anxieties arise in the mere expectation that merely perceived violence might make an intrusion into their day. The more severe the past trauma, the more students will be rigid and fragile in their personalities as well as jumpy and hyperaware about the all the possible persecutory irritations that could arise: words, imagery, perspectives, values, attire, scent, look, whatever. In effect, the mere likelihood of being in classrooms made miserable by the careless decisions of backward professors means that these classrooms are right now hostile environments that limit a student’s full participation in the academic community. Pre-TSD is all-too-real! (And if that were not bad enough, we are all to some degree empathetic, which makes EVTSD—Empathetic or Vicarious Traumatic Stress Disorder—an unshakable reality as well! Why do you think people who encounter suffering all the time—dentists, EMTs, tattoo artists, hospice nurses, oncologists, and so on—have such high suicide rates?)

The least we educators can do, in light of all this information (which is itself traumatic), is to minimize the chance for triggers and, thereby, take away as much grounds for worry as possible in the precious heads of our darlings (who unfortunately come to us already as damaged goods). The only fair-minded course textbook, in light of this, should have next to nothing in it. The only way to fulfill the promise to protect students from triggers, if a promise means anything anymore today, is to censure it all!

At the beginnings of our movement to protect the student, it was typical merely to remove common triggers: those concerning race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and disability. But clearly that was a cowardly compromise to honor the abusive system in place, allowing countless loopholes for professors to abuse students in other ways. It is insensitive—downright violent—to base textbook content merely on the common triggers. What about uncommon students? Surely they count as well. To say they do not is itself triggering to many students—and to me. That is why, as important as the early stages of our movement were, they were not good enough. Just excising the common triggers made sure that students were protected only if they fit a certain description, had a certain set of experiences, and so on. It is unreasonable and downright cruel to cherry pick the triggers from which we are going to protect students. If they deserve to be protected from some (and they do, even if only because our national culture has said they do for so long), they deserve to be protected from all. The work educators do, whether one-on-one or in the lecture hall, needs to reflect a concern to set everyone at ease—everyone: from the Christian offended by arguments in favor of abortion rights to the Equity-Warrior offended by arguments against affirmative action.

The old guard tried to draw fine distinctions to enable their failure to protect all students. “In evaluating claims of triggering environments, it is important to consider whether a reasonable person would find the environment triggering.” Reasonable. That is the rub. But that can never work. Triggers are not choices. They are involuntary reactions. Who gets to decide what makes a trigger reasonable in this case?

Is a reasonable trigger simply what often—of course, not always—triggers the left: police, comedians, whites (in idea and sometimes in person), Christianity, capitalism, prolife, mansplaining, colonialism, gender binarism, IQ tests, conservative correctness, hierarchy based on merit, golfers, male pride, guns, creationism, Trump, fossil-fuel dependence, “Christmas,” cultural appropriation, patriarchy, death penalty, masculinity, confederate statues, gluten.

Or is a reasonable trigger what often—of course, not always—triggers the right? Drag queens, vegans, blacks (in person), Islam, socialism, anthem kneeling, participation trophies, unions, universal healthcare, pride parades, identity politics, compelled gender pronoun speech, affirmative action, human global warming, bathroom choice, social justice warriors, COVID facemasks, IRS, liberal media, feminism, abortion, hypersexual rap acts, welfare, black lives matter, liberal correctness, Starbucks, professors, gender reassignment surgery, electric cars, “happy holidays,” Pelosi, vaccinations, vibrators?

Or might a reasonable trigger be what often—of course, not always—triggers both left and right: philosophers, scientists, Mexicans (in person), supporters of bipartisan civil liberties, bestiality, critical thinking, dog-eating, incest, female serial killers, gender denial, those opposed to censoring opponents and doxing, evidence instead of passion, sex with minors, conspiracy-theory skepticism, genuine diversity, those who aim to judge individuals on a case-by-case basis instead of through the lenses of stereotypes, Nazis, atheism, internet trolls, racial reassignment surgery, independents, people who cannot be put in boxes of left and right, people who cannot be put in boxes of oppressor and oppressed, public defecation, kidnapping, Internet Explorer?

Even if reasonable triggers are simply the most bedrock triggers (intense, grotesque, drawn-out, and pointless suffering of the most innocent human creatures), how is someone going to tell me that my being traumatized is unreasonable whereas someone else being traumatized is not? You do not know my past. It might be reasonable for me to be upset by x even if no one else is! The reasonable-card is a joke!

“We are not talking about someone squirming at certain content that sickens them,” it was typical to hear the old guard say, “but rather someone who feels truly harmed and threatened, someone who gets hysterical or blacks out or feels compelled to leave the room.” But what constitutes a true harm or a true threat? Who gets to decide? Do these dinosaurs mean to say that I have to be hysterical or faint for my abuse to be recognized? People handle trauma differently. Someone can be stoic on the outside and yet dismantled to the point of murder-suicide on the inside!

“But there is a huge difference between being made uncomfortable by topics or challenged by course material,” it was typical to hear them say, “and having a grand mal mental crisis.” So students need to have category-nine earthquakes in their inner world to be recognized as having been violated? No way. Absolutely no way! Trauma is trauma: that which pushes our coping skills to the limit. So where do we draw the line? And on the basis of what? Who gets to decide what counts as a severe-enough trauma? Student A gets to decide what is severe-enough trauma for student A. No one else. Student B gets to decide what is severe-enough trauma for student B. No one else. 

Back then they did draw the line, but without even consulting the particular traumatized student. Talk of child abuse, for instance, was cut from books. Mention of the holocaust was banned in classes. Statues of racists were torn down (and demolition men found to have taken souvenirs were doxed). Did that honor the broad range of lived experiences in the classroom, a range more encompassing than just the professor or the so-called “average student”? No. Was that empathetic to the educational journey of every student? No. No no no. Guess what still was allowed? Talk of food, for one. No big deal, huh? What about those students for whom mention of food is just as painful as mention of Auschwitz? What about those students close to relapse of binging and purging from exposure to the countless feasts in the halls of Odysseus and Hogwarts? Just because my phobias are not typical does not mean that they are not devastating enough to be recognized!

The days of being exclusionary in our protection of students are done! Think of the trauma felt by excluded students. Put yourself in their position. Just imagine the horror of seeing your classmate allowed to skip the Greek mythology readings because of their incest-references whereas you must push on through repeated mentions of hair, glorious heads of curly hair, that leave you sobbing in desperate struggle not to let your hair-pulling disorder reawaken. Just imagine being in a law class where your professor has cut discussion of rape law as a courtesy to those sensitive to rape and yet has the audacity to go on to discuss food law even when there are students in the room who know people, loved ones even, who have developed cancers from certain additives.

“Oh but students are allowed to retreat from course content so long as they have diagnoses substantiating why they would be so affected by that content.” That was something abuse loyalists would say. How backwards it sounds to our ears now! Just because Post-TSD, for example, was recognized only in the 1980s does not mean that people were not really suffering from Post-TSD before that. Triggers, it seems ridiculous to have to repeat, are personal. What seems suitably mild to you may be a horror show of absolute abuse to me. Walking barefoot on sand may be no problem for you. But try telling that to someone whose feet were sheltered all their lives. There is a lived-first-person feel to experience. No one can tell me, from the outside, what I find traumatic. The approach of the old guard was flawed at its very foundation, ignoring both that triggers are subjective and that students cannot simply turn off their historically-shaped consciousnesses when they open the textbook.

The emptiness of the pages of this companion might provoke one to wonder whether there might have been a better way to foster learning while at the same time ensuring a safe environment. For example, why not cater versions of the textbook for each particular class? Perhaps the teacher could take a poll at the beginning of the semester to find out what triggers students have and then censor a beefier textbook in light of that information. It sounds all well and good at first blush. But it fails miserably upon scrutiny.

Aside from the great effort demanded by such a procedure, the following must be kept in mind. (a) It is likely traumatizing for many students even to say what triggers them. Why make the student revisit the trauma? Are we sadists? Gone are the archaic days of trying to toughen students, allow them to move through difficulty. The job of educators is to explain to students how to take each step while holding their hands and—if it comes to it (however much it might drain the energy of the educator)—to take each step for the student. (b) Even if the entire class reveals all their triggers and, as a result, all their triggers are excised from the textbook, some triggers are bound to be missed, and new ones are likely to be stumbled upon in the remaining material. That there might be unforeseen landmines is not laughing matter. As the American Psychological Association made clear even in the days of rampant abuse, triggers are more distressing if they occur without warning. Unprompted triggers, the statistics have shown again and again, are more likely to result in panic attacks of greater intensity than prompted triggers, which are bad enough.

In the early days of our movement it was common to hear, from those who uncritically held that developing resilience in students was a worthwhile goal, that students can become more resilient to being traumatized only through exposure, that exposure to defeat and to challenge builds up some sort of “psychological immune system.” First of all, never buy into that PTS-Growth bunk still going around in some circles. It is not cool to be traumatized! And being sheltered from trauma is not countertherapeutic. How could promoting avoidance of trauma and triggers of trauma be bad for those suffering from PTSD? Second of all, even were it the case that exposure toughens us, which our statistics say is not true, why should we want to be tough? Think of a child deadpan to the domestic violence around him. That image is even more horrible than the one where the child is screaming. Why? Well, it means that the child has been through such hell that, as a defense mechanism against the hellfire, it has had to go cold. Third of all, even if by some magic it were worthwhile to be toughened by exposure to trauma, it is ultimately up to the student to decide when they are to face triggers so that—if we buy into this exposure-therapy bunk—they can “improve.” Empowering students to confront challenge on their own terms, when and how they want—that is what makes the current edition of this companion so special. It is the most thorough attempt to put into the hands of the students themselves when, if ever, to expose themselves to trauma.

That is all that perhaps should be said. But it might also be important to understand the ways in which the current edition makes up for the problems of the earlier ones. I have used earlier editions in my own classroom with success, to be sure. Each suffered from drawbacks, however, that required extra planning and intervention on the teacher’s part to ensure that students were never blindsided.  

The first edition, while more progressive than any edition up to the current one, suffered from two main problems. First, it was too progressive for its time, having nothing but pictures at a time when students—or at least their parents, helplessly locked in the old-guard mindset—still demanded words. The resultant turmoil in homes, on campuses, and in courts necessitated its quick cancellation. Second, and aside from the overlooked fact that not everyone regards flowers and bunnies as warm-fuzzies, it was easy for these images to call to mind cold-pricklies (even among those who regarded them as warm-fuzzies). How easy it is, after all, to slip into thoughts of the heinous obliteration of even the fluffiest puppy!

The second edition, which brought back verbal content but packaged as singsong rhymes in lullaby meters, was better received by students, parents, and officials. But students, in particular, still thought it had too many words and so too many opportunities for offense. My colleagues and I agreed. (How could we not? The customer is always right.) We also noticed that the trancelike rhythms provoked panic attacks, especially when read aloud for long periods. Students did not like the feel that they were being hypnotized, a feeling that comes with spiraling undertones of being manipulated.

There was great support for the third edition among students, although I admit I was wary about it being too broken, too jarring, in cadence. Too flowing is a no-go, as we saw with the second edition. But too shattered—the compensatory extreme of the third edition—I worried was too aggressive, sharp. Between a circle and a triangle there are other shapes! The students were not wrong, of course, to take to it as they did. The customer, again, is never wrong! The theory behind it was great, I do admit. Each chapter was reduced to a series of fortune-cookie statements sparse enough to welcome onto them the cuddliest of interpretations. That said, for many semesters I chose to use a trimmed version of the second edition, which I reworded in places to prevent that vertiginous feeling of being hypnotized. Many of these snippets, so I worried, read like riddles or koans. Struggling to understand something means feeling intellectually inferior. That is a no no in my book. And as is evident from the textbook you are reading, I mean that literally! It was not the best decision, moreover, to include links expanding on these sparse lines. Students can be too curious for their own good!

Shortsighted as I felt the third edition was, it turned out that I was even more shortsighted in not using it. As the council at Safe Space Press were kind enough to alert me, not adopting the third edition into my course sections was a major aggression against not only Safe Space Press but also the students. My action made students feel different from their peers who were walking around with third editions.

We all have room to improve. And this is a perfect place for me to offer my sincerest apologies for my shortsightedness, which I promised the council that I would do. So here goes.

*             *             *

Allowing students to be triggered when I am supposed to be sheltering them is not something I take lightly. Just one challenge faced by a student, putting a student in just one uncomfortable spot, can be life-altering. I did not understand the impact of assigning an older companion when a new one was already in wide circulation. My beyond-disappointing behaviors carried on a disgusting legacy of challenging students, a practice that it has been my life’s purpose as an educator to eradicate. It was never my intention to be violent or demeaning to anyone in any way. But it does not matter that my intentions were pure. Intentions never matter when it comes to being triggered. Villainous behavior is villainous behavior, even if well-meaning. If anyone knows that, I do. How could I not respect that students have lives beyond my classroom? The very things I did to protect students exposed them to more trauma outside of my classroom. I did not realize then the narrowness of my definition of a “trigger.” Anything can be a trigger. I understand that now.

I wish I had the chance to live those semesters over again. Unfortunately, I cannot. I can promise one thing, however: to attempt with all my heart to evolve, to eliminate what makes me so toxic. I cannot stress enough how grateful I am to Safe Space Press. The council has given me a new lease on life. It has allowed me to go on as a teacher. And—how can I even say it without crumbling in tears—it has given me a platform to offer my apologies and to bring some of my mental progress into a new edition! Thanks to the council I have learned from my mistakes and now apologize for my wrongs. Not every student negatively affected will hear these words, but their souls hopefully will rest assured that future generations will be cocooned by my more-informed methods of shelter.

And for those closest to me (Maggy, Johnny, Lynn), I am sorry for letting you down. You are all already suffering the trauma of living in a home of white culture and white people. I am sorry for the added hurt and shame my neglect has caused. I am the one who went through with the actions without consulting either the council or my own better judgment. There is no one else to blame but me. Because I have always attempted to be the most pro-student man in the room, I managed to convince myself that normal rules did not apply to me. I managed to convince myself that all the hard work I was doing to make the second edition even more reader-friendly meant I could never be the source of the problem. I was way out of order. I am not better than anyone else. I have been disturbed by my actions too. Had I been more open to the fact that I am not above being an abuser, I would have avoided being so egregiously abusive.

Thank you for everyone who called me out on my privileged-teacher behavior. Please find room in your heart to trust me again. My indiscretion has jeopardized many people. I am grateful for the second chance. No teacher deserves a second chance. Triggering anyone, I understand, means instant cancellation. That I am still teaching, let alone getting a chance to edit the fourth edition of this priceless series, I recognize as nothing short of pure grace. What else can I do but go on my knees in gratitude? Saying “I’m sorry” is not enough. Expect lifelong atonement as well as the sincerest corrective action. Because of this experience, because I am so disgusted by how I have suppressed the right of our college customers never to be triggered, I am even more aware of my platform. I will use this platform to do the best I can to eradicate anything traumatizing. My aim is to bring us all together, not to tear us apart.

*             *             *

This fourth edition, which gets rid of everything (although it adds a much needed “Turn Them In NOW” chapter), is the most effective yet. If the sparseness of the third edition allowed students to project their own safe meanings onto the topics, imagine the safe climate the new version fosters!

Of course, in the second edition there were reports that the sparseness compelled some students to project traumatic meanings into the chapters. A similar problem might very well result here, I do admit. With its blank pages, after all, one does wonder what horrors from the past might appear. But careful as it is even to place the hegemony of page numbers under erasure, still: this textbook is no cure all. It is just a textbook. Just as professors all by themselves cannot guarantee a safe classroom, neither can the textbook all by itself. Technological advancements, particularly in the domain of feel-good pharmaceuticals, should help in this regard. Please do not hold this textbook to a standard that it alone cannot meet. (There is a reason, after all, why trauma is called “the invisible epidemic”: it is all around us, the very air we breathe—there is no helping it. The serpent of chaos always rears its head no matter the infantilizing lengths we go to shelter people from all danger—yes, even in sealed padded rooms where, for example, one’s thoughts ring louder.) Supplemented by the proper numbing cocktail, however, I could almost guarantee there will be no traumatic projections onto the blankness. Short of the “final solution” of altogether snuffing out the anticipating-and-worrisome sentience that humans are, this is the best we can do. 

The progress we have made is clear. To illustrate how far we have come, consider the disclaimers of the first edition: “It is likely that this is NOT your textbook if you are an international student” and “If you are a US student (even if you are not a socioeconomically secure woman who is liberal and white), then it is likely that this IS—or at least should be—your textbook.” How could we have been so exclusionary? How could we have been so insensitive to the fact that everyone is triggered?

However much it was mainly well-to-do whites that were the torchbearers of our censorship movement (both for themselves and for those too oppressed to know how much they were oppressed or to have the voice to complain even if they did), however much it was statistically almost never the students from Spain or France or Ecuador or China or from marginal groups in the US who voiced how offended they were by course content, that does not mean that the offense was not widespread. We have arrived at a new day, however. Consciousnesses have been raised. Even those who would never have thought that they were abused understand now that they were abused—and, in fact, are being abused at every turn!

To drive the point home as to how far we have come, I invite you to consider the poem at the end of this introduction. The poem was included at the bottom of the syllabus for my Ethics course back when I was an eager but innocent freshman. The poem was extremely progressive for its time, allowing students in theory to opt out of triggering content. Still to this day, in fact, it is a major source of inspiration for me. The problem, however, was that these were mere words: good words, sometimes great words—but still mere words.

What do I mean? First, and most importantly, this was an inconsistent epoch where coursework was, to quote the last stanza, “still an administrative mandate.” Students were not allowed, even in theory, to opt-out of whatever triggered them. Second, students were not allowed in practice to opt-out of even what we were allowed to in theory. Traumatized as many of us were by the mere titles of the articles, the professor nevertheless spoke in class as if we had read them and he even built exams around them. Disempowered just by being students, we did not have much choice but to endure his teachings. Put yourself in our shoes. How would we make up the test? How were we to go about finding other material where we would not be traumatized? It was traumatic enough agonizing over the ways to evade the trauma. We just had to white-knuckle it through.

Our professor, yes, was careful to be liberal with his trigger warnings. But in such an unsupportive environment, the trigger warnings only intensified our misery. First, the trigger warnings were themselves triggers: saying that there will be rape in the reading is bad enough, not to mention that such a warning creates a sense of ominous foreboding and invites us to project even potentially darker—more penetrative—scenarios onto what the warning was warning us about. Second, the trigger warnings made us feel like we had some sort of illness, that we were failures, that we were—to use a term that was only just starting to die out at the time—snowflakes. Third, the list of trigger warnings current at the time concerned only the most egregious of the common sources of trauma: sexual assault, suicide, kidnapping, incest, racism, sexism, colonialism, police brutality, mansplaining, bestiality, homosexuality, whitespeak, and the like. Those of us with less-recognized triggers were blindsided by words for which we were unprepared and, to boot, were made to feel like second-class citizens since our triggers were not even worthy of mention.  

Despite how deeply I want you to appreciate the educational environment you enjoy today by contrasting it to the hellish world that the poem foregrounds, perhaps you should not read the poem. Perhaps you should just take my word on it—on how much we have made look downright backwards, and methodologically confused, what was considered (only yesterday) a radical piece of progressivism.

I am torn, however. The council is too. For maybe there is one trigger that is worthwhile: the trigger that ultimately encourages the fight to eradicate triggers. Those who read the poem will be sickened enough, sickened enough by where we once were, to keep the fight alive. That is at least the redeeming hope. Besides, those who read it will no doubt also enjoy the feel-good experience of knowing that they are living in a much better time. For these reasons, the council has given me their blessing on making it available. Still, you have been warned.

Trigger Warning: 1-800-APE-TALK

If things get too bad, when reading this 
or whenever, contact the number in the title
(the number for the national suicide hotline).

Do not read the following warning
if you are prone to being triggered.
If you do not know if you are, please
just err on the safe side and back off.
If you think you are not prone, fine.
But just to be safe it should be said 
that the typical creature reading this
is human and humans are fallible. 
If you are a human (or any non-god),
just err on the safe side and back off.
In fact, likely it is best to drop the class,
out of school, and perhaps even—best
to stop reading here—out of life itself. 
  
Class materials describe scenarios—
torture, racism, abortion, gay sex— 
that threaten to skew what should be 
our safe space into a traumatic space. 
Those sensitive to such matters—
or even to any matter whatsoever—
can choose to avoid any materials,
any lectures even, suspected to be 
triggers of unwanted emotions.
So long as we find alternative work,
you can choose to avoid anything 
for any reason whatsoever: parents 
shielded you, you have experienced
racism, you are a victim of torture, 
you are crippled with nausea and pity
just thinking of men holding hands.

Concern with your overall well-being,
concern for protecting any fragility
in each of the university’s customers,
trumps all else. Such concern is king
not just in this class, but in each class—
or at least it should be. And on that note,
by the way, you have a right—indeed, 
an obligation—to report to authorities 
any activities perceived to be at odds 
with that concern (see student handbook). 

Words like these are given a lot of lip-service
by many professors in the university. Few,
to be honest, truly endorse them. Some
even voice them merely out of fear, fear 
for their jobs in an era of both PhD poverty
and growing desire to “de-disempower” students.
That is not true here in my class. Understand that.
Breathe in my words, please: you are safe here.

Students, the lifeblood, the customers 
of this great university should never
meet words, ideas, peoples, lifestyles
that might make them uncomfortable.
You pay a lot of money to attend here.
Surely you would refuse to pay the bill
if the restaurant’s food was unpalatable
or the look of the waiter was unsettling!
Same here. Professors, if they had a mind
for business (which no doubt not many do)
should grasp the point. Professors serve
the university’s main customers: students.
Employees should be fired if they fail
to take care of customers. Obvious
as that is, some of my colleagues still resist. 

“Yes, the desire to protect our students
from uncomfortable learning experiences 
is quite laudable,” they say. “But doing so
is no good for them. Coddling disempowers.
And learning without hardship is impossible.
College is a time to encounter diversity:
foreign worlds and attitudes and peoples,
cultures that do not share our own taboos,
ways of being that do not echo our own.
It is not a time to encourage the maligning
of whatever does not match our viewpoint.
Do we want our students to become bigots
disguised—even to themselves—as voices
of justice and progress and anti-bigotry?
Views unsettling to students are those 
with which they need to come to terms.
While we should not force them to support 
ideologies, practices, outlooks, or figures
confronted in their study, it is still crucial
for them to understand what is out there 
and to employ reason to communicate 
any reservations they may have about it and yet
be open to being moved by the reason of others.
A body sealed off from all contagion, we know,
becomes weak and unwell, unable to flourish.”

Cultures that do not share our own taboos? Huh?
What is the point of learning, say, that the penis
for some epochs was so un-taboo that little girls
who tugged until penny-payers shot “curdled milk”
felt no more hint of violation than had they tugged
a finger? It damages. How many young students,
hearing of such backward times, will be forced 
to rethink how to frame their similar experiences?
Such reports threaten their narrative as victims!
Exposure to alien ideas threatens our identities!

Most of these professors, to be quite frank,
are excusing their own laziness. Regulating
what gets exchanged in the classroom
so that no one gets hurt is tough business.
Censoring speech, or at least tailoring it, 
to protect each customer’s God-given right 
to be comfortable—how can that not be hard?
Comfort, after all, is a subjective-personal matter.
Walking around with Mein Kampf creates,
we all agree, a harassing space. The kicker,
though? Doing so with Nietzsche’s Gay Science
can have the very same result (despite the text
having nothing to do with homosexuality). 
We need to be sensitive to how the students 
see things. Are they not our chief focus? 
Think about it. Insinuations of gay sex
are for many students unwelcome. In fact,
such insinuations may even rile up PTSD.
Both good sense and the Department of Ed
should regard them as harassing, then. QED.—
How is that for communicating with reason?

Yes, yes, yes—some materials, “great works,” 
are too “valuable” to avoid in school (despite
all their slaughter, incest, bestiality, rape).
But these materials should be made optional.
Great works or not, they should at least be 
covered up, grade-school-math-textbook style,
if their titles might suggest what is unwelcome.
It is a moral obligation! And we need to adopt
a low standard, to be safe. You might find
nothing at all wrong going around holding 
Infinite Jest tucked under your arm. But others 
in its line of sight might know that its author 
committed suicide. Do you want to advertise 
a book that might evoke suicidal feelings?

Other professors, you should be aware, feel 
it to be their jobs to help students “overcome” 
what makes them uneasy. On what grounds?
That coddling thin-skins ill-prepares them 
for “real life,” that shielding them is “unhealthy.” 

“The goal of people tormented by PTSD,”
so they like to analogize, “is not to shield them 
from living a normal life no doubt chock-full 
of potential triggers. Rather, it is to help
boost them to lead robust lives of freedom.
Just as PTSDers should be treated (not shut off),
our students should be made equipped to handle
a challenging world of multifaceted threats
to their security. Coddling weakens them
into a self-pity state of perpetual adolescence.
It leads to low life satisfaction and anger.
It reduces the chances of career success.
It increases susceptibility to depression.
Allowing students to opt out of everything
triggering, has that not become too much?”

No. The opt-out practice is crucial when students 
are seen not just a delicate but as consumers!
Aside from the moral duty to shelter innocence, 
what brain would want to lose good business 
by exposing students to dissenting ideas!

Some of these dinosaurs, you should know,
try to alarm us back to old-guard ideas.

“Are we to censor the horrors of the bible?
Are we to ban courses on human physiology?”

“Killing the memory of Nazism is exactly what Nazism 
would want: it gives it another chance to take hold.”

“It is profitable to be a victim: litigators get work
and students get purpose, lighter workload—power.”

“Perhaps offensive mistypes on word processors will be
grounds for cancellation, as private speech already is.”

“Teaching women to faint like Victorians at the horrors
of the patriarchy is exactly what that patriarchy would do.”

“Big brother will not be the result of some takeover: 
it is exactly what an infantilized citizenry will call for!”

“Soon even nonwhites might be stripped 
of the privilege to transgress PC norms.” 

We progressives see through these words. 
And even were there something to these words,
we each have still only one life to live. One.
And it goes by fast. So if something
makes you uncomfortable (bad words,
men holding hands, airplanes, dogs),
then is it not best to avoid it? Even if
you find it important to endure pains
to conquer what makes you uneasy,
that is not what you pay professors
to help you do. You have a right
to be comfortable, to be shielded 
from what you dislike. A contract
has been violated if you experience
discomfort. Of course, work itself
might be unwelcoming, harassing,
to you. This class does have work. Yes,
it is still an administrative mandate
that students do work in school. Hear 
the words, then: if work makes you feel
uneasy, then it is best to drop the class,
out of school, and perhaps even—best
to stop reading here—out of life itself.

Chapter 2: Logic

Chapter 3: Knowledge

Chapter 4: Mind-Body Problem

Chapter 5: Personal Identity

Chapter 6: Ethical Theories

Chapter 7: Moral Freedom

Chapter 8: God

Bonus Chapter: Turn Them In NOW

Silence is complicity. It is not your choice that you are sensitive. It does not matter why you are sensitive. Whether you are sensitive from repeated rapes, or from having been brought up with bumpers on every corner to ensure the most sterilized play, or from growing up under the reign of social media algorithms that encourage sensitivity to encourage outrage to encourage clicks, it does not matter. We are here now. Do not let people who are not as sensitive make you feel bad. Fragility is grounds not for embarrassment but for entitlement. And never let professors too lazy to protect you from oppressive words and ideas insist that it is better for you to develop fortitude than for them to do their damn job! As a paying customer of the university, you should never have to tolerate violence. It is the responsibility of each of us to root it out, nip it in the bud. And sometimes that means speaking on behalf of others who are affected but too intimidated to say anything.

Report your teachers! To ensure a world where the social and institutional repercussions of discussing jarring topics are costly enough to make all such discussions eventually go extinct please: report your teachers! Turn them in NOW. The trauma does not have to be based around gender, race, ethnicity, or sexuality. It does not matter if the aggression was intentional. Turn them in. Get that dopamine hit of schadenfreude. Turn them in. Stand together as a community.

Do not think that your trauma does not count. Trauma is trauma. For so long students have swallowed their trauma, thinking that it was not worthy of recognition and retaliation. Termination and censure is warranted not merely for the wildest extremes of abuse. To deserve public denunciation and career loss, your teacher does not have to be as disgustingly abusive as, say, Ward Churchill, who exposed students to the traumatic idea that one of the biggest acts of terror in US history was at least partly a retaliation for violence that he dared to claim—with absolutely no consideration of his audience—the US inflicted on people in the Middle East! Your professor does not have to lay out the horrors endured by chickens and cows for our sustenance. Your professor does not have to defend Palestine, or describe what was done in the holocaust, or expose you to political cartoons that mock religious figures, or show you the secret parts of the human anatomy to be destroying your life! Just as the freshman who was raped a few weeks ago is not ready to face course readings that mention rape, the freshman who witnessed her mother on the deathbed a few weeks ago groaning “and and and and and and” is not ready to face course readings where the word “and” is thrown about as if no big deal (insensitively appearing almost in every sentence). 

Does your trauma count? It is a judgment call. Did your blood pressure shoot up seeing the color of the professor’s shirt or smelling his predatory musk? Was your disability, obesity, addiction, queerness, marginality, or so on not respected? Were you exposed to difficulty? Did you not get your way? Was the abuse you suffered at the hands of your parents for getting any other mark aside from an A not honored with an automatic A in your current class? Were you displeased in any way during the educational process that you pay for? If so, you have suffered psychological damage. Remember: It is the perspective of the victim, not the perspective or intent of the alleged harasser, that is considered in evaluating complaints.

It is a Twilight-Zone nightmare that, still to this day, I must continually remind students that they are being victimized. Have you ever found yourself giggling at what is strange? That is textbook trauma denial! Ever wonder why you are depressed? You might not be able to put your finger on the explanation. But I will. You have been, and continue to be, a victim of violence and persecution. Focusing only on the high-profile cases of the most egregious abuse—teaching evolution in a biology class, meeting with students outside of class, condemning abortion, discussing religion—has blinded us to the systemic victimization of students across the globe.

The victimization starts in school so early that we all have been groomed to accept the abuse. It goes back to elementary school recess when a classmate scored a goal on you. The teachers all said that you would be okay, right? These teachers were abuse loyalists. Understand that. You are never going to be completely okay if someone scores a goal on you. How can you be okay if you lose? The culture has been shifting for some time, slowly but surely. Why do you think we had the wherewithal to buck the system by establishing the participation-trophy program?

Do not let the feel-good drugs of gratitude or inclusivism or laughter or mantras (“sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me”) numb you to how much you have been traumatized. Those who love and respect themselves will pay attention to what gets under their skin. They will be ever awaiting to be offended, relentlessly monitoring their spaces for any degree of persecution, so that they can jump up and protest right away! Never stand for someone trying to write you off as a “cry bully” or as a “bigot in disguise” just because you have the strength of character to shout down what is jarring to your manner of being. To fail to shout down and cancel whatever disrespects you is to fail to respect yourself, love yourself. The research is clear. The more you see yourself as a victim, the more you see the world as owing you something. And the more you see the world as owing you something, the more you are prioritizing self-care. A professional victim is not a bad thing. You simply take self-care seriously! But this is not a pure matter of being self-oriented. Those whose livelihoods you ruin for offending you will walk on eggshells not just around you but other would-be victims. You are protecting all the silent voices in protecting yourself!

Do not think that your reporting will have no impact. Mere complaining, even with absolutely no substantiating evidence, not only will give you that dopamine hit, but also will result in your professor being sent through investigatory procedures invasive enough to make their lives a living hell. Even if you do not get the absolute win of termination, the toil on your professor’s finances, marriage, health, and so on will be payback enough for increasing the extent to which you are damaged goods.

But keep your head up. Most likely you will get the termination. Gone are the days where your teacher had all the power. Gone are the days of reluctance to fire instructors whose actions, verbal or nonverbal, fall short of preventing students from being aggrieved. Administrators and equity officers have had enough of any of the university’s customers being agitated in any way. It is not just if your teacher’s political views offend you. It can be the aggressive body language, their unusual dialect. You should not be made to suffer. No behavior or words are allowed to interfere with ensuring the safety of those who pay to attend classes. Gone are the days where professors merely get the slap-on-the-wrist of mandatory sensitivity training or paid leave. Any professor failing to ensure the safety of the university’s customers, let alone those who perpetrate harm, will receive disciplinary action. Gone are the days of the vague language of “subject to disciplinary action,” language that has given perpetrators safe haven. Perpetrators will receive disciplinary action! Reporting that someone said a bad word is the bad word, despite what picky semantics—with its talk of the “use-mention distinction”—might lead you to believe. A professor quoting from an article, even one with which he does not agree, means spreading and so means endorsing the article. If it quacks like a triggerer, it is a triggerer! Gone are the days of cloaking abuse under the euphemistic veil of “the marketplace of ideas” and “academic freedom” and “intellectual diversity” and “free speech” and “being authentic to one’s own historically-contingent style of teaching” and “how history classes need to tell the truth about the past” and “how advanced mathematics is bound to be hard for some people” and “how humans are sexual-fallible-diverse-whatever-excuse beings” and so on! To expose students, in the very safe space of the classroom, to what they might find displeasing is, point blank, for teachers to be unfaithful to their academic obligations.

As an indication of how good of a place we are in, recognize that professors have been terminated outright, no conversation, for the following derelictions of duty: saying that all humans are innocent since it was not their choice to be thrown into this like this and since they are completely determined by forces ultimately not up to them; having a tab for “Hot College Girls” exposed on the computer during a screen-share section of a Zoom lecture; offering to bail out protesters; presenting homosexuality in a positive way; refusing to lower grading standards for Korean students after a police shooting of a Korean man; shouting “Westward Ho!” in the middle of a lecture; depicting capitalism and meritocracy in a sympathetic light; falling asleep at a sensitivity training workshop; advocating in print that surgeons should be selected on the basis of skill as opposed to sexual orientation; teaching about a Chinese word that sounded like the n-word but means something like “um”; using swear words; expressing disgust that Disney only depicts lesbian relationships in their films to pander to their market base; tweeting against pc-culture; saying that we are not born a completely blank slate; merely mentioning bad things that other professors have done to get them fired.

You are not alone. Your report will have an impact. Our grass-roots movement has ousted tenured professors and made sure that they were not simply passed on to some other institution. Appreciate how far we have come. When I was growing up there was a country in Africa called “Niger.” It was on every grade-school map for students—students not even of double-digit years—to read. Traumatic, right? Guess what it is called now. “Tranquilaria.” Yes, the Tranquilaria on your home globe was once called something wicked. That has all changed due to our movement. Would you believe that there was once an “Anus, France” or a “Fucking, Austria” or a “Blue Ball, Pennsylvania” or a “Long Dong, China” or an “Erect, North Carolina” or a “Threeway, Virginia” or a “Hooker, Oklahoma” or a “Three Cocks, Wales” or a “Cocktown, Ireland”? There were. Not now. If we can force cities and countries to change their names, we can dismantle the reputation and livelihood of your professor! Never forget: victimization demands vitriol!

Below I will give you an example letter of complaint. All you need to do is fill in just a few words. In conjunction with the audio-video editing feature on the TTI-NOW app, as well as with a growing number of victims ready to stand together, the boiler-plate letter makes going through with the report a cinch. Plans are in the works, in fact, for paying customers to have all this work done for them. It will be as simple as sending in the unedited footage and the name of the professor. An expert team will take it from there.

*             *             *

<Addressee>

My teacher, <name>, has no concern for anyone’s opinion around how or what he teaches. We all are paying customers at this great institution of learning. And as someone suffering from <insert some condition testifying to your vulnerability: complex PTSD is standard>, I have been triggered in class on countless occasions. Because of behaviors (both verbal and nonverbal) that have provoked new traumas in me and have forced me to relive old traumas over and over again, I feel safe neither in person nor through email with <name>. Molecules of his supremacist hate would seep into my blood even over Zoom.

We all have a choice of whether to take a class, but no one deserves to be victimized in any class that we pay for. What I get from <name>’s class is nothing but a load of trouble: <consider inserting some symptoms like nightmares, flashbacks, brain fog, anxiety, depression, isolation, autoimmune flare ups, avoidant behavior, difficulty concentrating, decreased interesting in things once enjoyable, headaches, heightened startle response, nausea, negative feelings about reality, engaging in risky behavior, drug use, self-harm, harm of others>. It is all too much to deal with, especially with my other responsibilities: <insert responsibilities like child care, work, classes, extracurricular activities, maintenance of some illness, dealing with the various injustices of the day (cite a case in the news)>.

The reason I do not feel safe is not a decision I make. It is a physiological reaction sparked by a web of past events that have established a framework in the core of my neurophysiology. I have had physical and emotional flashbacks (which are quite difficult to comprehend for someone who has them, much less someone who never has) even in rather benign situations. The hurt that <name> has exposed me to is tremendous. <Insert some more issues, as in the following example. Being in the class has affected my ability to think clearly for weeks at a time. My fibromyalgia has flared up. My daily mood has turned extremely dark and I am seeing the world in a negative light. I lack so much energy to sustain relationships that I had to get rid of my helping animal. I have trouble sleeping and concentrating. I get startled so easily now. I need to have my back to the wall at all times. I have only bathed once in the last two months. It has become next to impossible to take care of my children.> Until now I have been a stranger to <insert something major to reveal how much pain you are in: cutting, suicidal thoughts, illegal drugs are great examples>. But because of the chronic abuse I experience having <name> as my teacher, they are strangers no longer. Either he goes or I go.

Footage enclosed will give many examples indicative of a widespread history of abuse. Even the most mild of these examples, because they are chronic, are alone devastating to my wellbeing. But not all of them are mild by any standard.

The worst for me was when <insert description of the most severe offenses. Here is a good example. After I told Professor Johnson that every student in the class should get an A on the exam if everyone agreed that every student should get an A, he said “What if every student in the class agreed to kill all the trans people in the school? Should we go through with it? Absolutely not. What the majority says does not suffice.” When my classmates and I told him we were devastated by his brazen bias against trans people, he engaged in his typical picky semantics. He said, “Philosophy classes are so important especially given the growing tendency of plucking phrases out of context and twisting them in order to condemn the person who spoke them. Philosophy classes, which showcase the power of reason to settle disputes, teach us to be critical thinkers willing and able to empathize with where someone else is coming from.” I do not care that he is married to a trans person. No one is entitled to reason their way out of having violated someone (especially when reason, we well know, is nothing but a constructed tool of oppression). “I want to hear an argument. I want to hear an argument.” That is what he would always yell. An argument!? He was actually encouraging us to get into arguments! How can this bullying stand in a logic class, a class—as he himself admits—to teach us how to think correctly?>

Professors, first and foremost, are public servants. It is their duty not to trigger unwanted emotions in us. They should not be confronting us with potentially upsetting topics or with jarring ways of being. They should not be “helping” us use reason to gauge the plausibility of alternative positions. They should not be “helping” us to understand what positions are “bankrupt” or are “unjust” or are “indefensible” or are “causes of major harm.” Since we come from a wide variety of backgrounds and represent a wide range of thinking, many positions said to be “ruled out by reason” are those we most cherish. Such “help,” therefore, is bound not merely to alienate but to downright destroy several of us at the very core of our being.

Professors have been deservedly shamed and fired in the past for much less than what <name> has done. For example, professors have been fired for <pick three examples from the list I gave in the opening to this section that, in your estimation, are less egregious than what the professor has done—for instance, repeatedly failing to use the correct gender pronoun>. Surely <name> deserves full penalty.

The environment would be so much more peaceful and calmer if <name> were gone. We would be able to focus on the class material rather than on our trauma!

I am not alone in noticing these things. Unfortunately, many of my peers are highly intimidated and would rather, so as not to be retraumatized, avoid talking about the repeated abuse. 

There is no way to reconcile <name>’s position as a professor with his status as a known triggerer. Such a disgusting fascist, who has failed in every area that matters to the mission of an academic institution, has no right to express opinions, assume body positions, or mention words that upset paying customers. Let him behave that way in the privacy of his own home. The students are upset and are fearful of predators continuing to work at <institution>. No more will we hide in the shadows.

Since <name> appears to be too cruel to see it as his duty to censor himself and resign his position, we demand not only immediate termination but also public denunciation so that he is not just passed along to some other institution where he can continue his reign of terror! At the end of the day, are you prepared to say that <name> is not accountable for his behavior, no matter how much harm he has caused?

I am happy to discuss this matter further.

Distraught and devastated,

<insert your name>, anti-fascist student

Closing Affirmations

Anything can be a trigger

I stand up for myself and have a right to be recognized

I have been victimized and the world needs to adapt to me

I acknowledge my self-worth in making absolutistic demands!

Thought should be policed—suppressed—for anything jarring

I am more worthy than anyone can know

I am entitled to shout down what is alien to me

I deserve to be heard and be confirmed as a human

I do not need permission to feel safe

I am not a cry bully: vilification is the best way to express dislike

Let ruin befall whatever triggers me; safety excuses inhumanity

All minds, not just American minds, deserve coddling

I am allowed to censor art and people if it makes me feel better

My story matters: I am a survivor and my trauma is valid

Yes, even teens get to dictate what even doctors can say!

Yes, even redacted you-know words are traumatizing!

Comfort over engagement—comfort über alles

Truth should never interfere with justice!

Free range in speech means free range in trauma

Peanut butter jars that say “separation is natural” are racist

My trauma is trauma; it is perfectly fine to be a “snowflake”

I am not alone in being abused; I do not have to “go with the flow”

Faking injury for power means I lack power, which is an injury

Positive self-affirmations are not narcissistic

I am enough: I do not deserve to be criticized or challenged

School should shelter me from harm, not build my resilience to it

For the anosmic, newscasters need to tell us what they smell like!

Revision will not satisfy everyone: burning is the only way

I will not let intent untrigger me!

It is okay to emphasize my victimization: it is sacred to me

As a victim, I am oppressed and blameless—and thereby owed

Ban problematic “art” before examination; it only gives us pain

Being a victim means I deserve sympathy and power

“Where are you from?” is an attack

“Hell0,” is not an ice-breaker, it is a peace-breaker

To be uncomfortable is to be persecuted

Being a victim entitles me to make demands

Alien opinions are hate speech and hate speech is real violence

I do not hope, I demand, that you harmonize with me!

All aggression should be illegal: burn Twain (and all problematics)

Power and status to the victims: they deserve it

I am depressed because I have been and continue to be abused

It is an offense if someone I am attracted to does not talk to me

It is an offense if someone I am not attracted to talks to me

Jokes do not help handle trauma: trauma is not a joking matter

No context in which a harm is spoken ever excuses the speaker

Downplay of my trauma threatens my narrative as victim

Statistics that do not support what I believe are immoral

Tantrums give me control, the power to get my way

Discomfort does not “enrich” my life—it rapes me

My trauma is not faked as some manipulative ploy for power

There is no good in people who disagree with me

Even exoticness is no guard against cancellation

I deserve to feel good at all times, even while learning

I will do whatever it takes to avoid being offended

I take pleasure in cancelling sources of trauma

I love myself too much to accept being challenged

The more easily I am offended the more I respect myself

I deserve a trophy and I deserve to be sheltered

I trust myself and I demand a safe space, not a “brave” space

Being able to tell me what I do not want to hear is antiliberty

I am too big of a gift to the world to tolerate triggers

My fragility, my hurt, does not embarrass me, it entitles me

My disgust gives me special rights: Zyklon-B elicitors of disgust!

I give up the habit of self-criticism (and schadenfreude is okay)

I am worth not being abused in the name of intellectual diversity

I am worth not being abused in the name of free speech

I am worth not being abused in the name of comedy

I am worth not being abused in the name of education

I am worth not being abused in the name of American ideals

I will not tolerate exposure to the hurt of so-called “great art”

Meltdowns are okay to get what I want: they mean I deserve it

I decide what I learn and I deserve to be safe at all times

I am arbiter of what is offensive and so what is worthy of death

Colleges are places where anything upsetting is to be censored

Speech I hate is hate speech; what I find inconvenient is racist

Even the “off-duty” speech of professors needs to be monitored

Suffering kills blessings; it does not teach us to count them

I wake to sleep; I am worth too much to witness anything jarring

Make the crucifix illegal: it is more brutalizing than nipples

Academic freedom is no excuse to brutalize students

The usual triggers are not the only triggers worthy of censorship

Controversial topics are not allowed in my space

A mention of a mention of a traumatic subject is traumatizing

Your advantages and talents are your attacks upon me

I am too much of a gift to be exposed to different perspectives

It is reasonable for me to be upset by x even if no one else is

No one else but me gets to decide what truly harms me

My phobias are to be respected even if they are unusual

One discomfort is one too many—and worthy of revenge!

It is not my choice that, and it does not matter why, I am sensitive

The victim’s perspective is the only perspective

I am entitled to be sheltered, especially in spaces I pay to enter

Triggers are involuntary and deeply subjective

One trigger is not more worthy of respect than another

I deserve never to be blindsided: I am a protected category

Meritocracy is oppressive and so needs to be cancelled!

Intentions never matter when it comes to being offended

Jokes are microaggressions and represent real beliefs of the joker

Fire people for what they said even in literal past lives

Abuse is abuse, even if well-meaning

Even ancient texts have a duty to reflect our values today!

The answer to bad speech is not better speech

Triggering anyone means instant cancellation

Anything can be a trigger