Are we going to admit Universities are producing thin-skinned people?

[Guest]

44 minutes ago, eyeball said:

Its just a symptom of that echo-chamber confirmation-bias bubble-thingy that's going around these days. I hear it leaves you stuffed up with a hollow feeling in the middle of your head.

Thats awfully prescient of you.  I'm off work with a head cold.

[Moonlight Graham]

3 hours ago, TimG said:

I say it is an subjective (a.k.a. psychiatric) diagnosis because the only way it could be an objective (a.k.a. medical) diagnosis is if there was some way to medically distinguish between the 'mind of a woman' and the 'mind of a man'. Everything I have read says the brains and brain activity patterns of men and women are identical to the instruments we have today which would make an objective diagnosis impossible.

Generally I am in favour of live and let live for adults. What I object to the attempts to normalize psychiatric problems to the point where confused children are being put on hormone replacement to delay puberty because they might want to transition. I object to laws that prohibit parents from encouraging kids to accept their biological sex based on the ridiculous notion that 'gender disphoria' is some immutable constant that can only be resolved by rejecting ones biologic sex. I also object to laws that tell me I have enable narcissists who obsess about their gender to the point where they demand that others use special words to refer to them.

That said, if someone asked me to use 'he' or 'she' I would honour their request and I certainly would not call people mentally ill  in order to be insulting (I would not do that to a schizophrenic either). I simply think trying to deny the obvious by pretending that people who seek sex changes are not mentally ill is absurd.

I think calling them "mentally ill" and "psychiatric problems" is goddamned ignorant and absurd.  That label infers that they are somehow "broken" or "damaged".  If they're "mentally ill", how can you possibly treat it...to "cure" someone who feels like they're something that doesn't fit your narrow definition of gender, or sex?  Do you think being gay is an illness too?  Do they need therapy too?  Maybe these trans folk aren't narcissists, maybe they just want to be called who they feel they are. Maybe trans people aren't "mentally ill" or have a version of "body integrity identity disorder" as you claim, maybe their natural sexuality and personality are such that they don't neatly fit into current society and the binary roles we've entrenched so these people are really damned confused and trying their best to fit in, in a way where they can still feel themselves while being somewhat acceptable socially.  Like holy hell man, have some damned empathy for these people!  Imagine the fear, confusion, pain, isolation they feel, we can't begin to relate to.  Do you understand the suicide rates among these groups?  I had a college-age hetero friend who had to check into a psychiatric hospital for depression/anxiety and one of the first questions the psychiatrists ask you when you 1st walk through the door is "are you gay"?

Different parts of the DSM psychiatric manuals are also complete BS.  Kids, mostly males, have been labelled ADD or now ADHD because their personalities and behaviour aren't "normal", and over the decades have been put on inhuman drug restraints like Ritalin to try to "normalize them".  Medically labeling young boys who have great amounts of energy and don't like to sit still in a classroom chair and listen to boring female teachers and instead want to get up and explore the world with rabid curiosity as a "disorder" and restraining this "unwanted and disorderly" behaviour to "calm them down" is damned child abuse.  The classrooms/education techniques and parenting techniques should adapt to the child's needs and not the other way around.

I agree with you that putting children on hormone therapy might not isn't right as well.  And I think that if you are born as a male sexually and feel like a female in terms of identity or personality, well that's fine that's who you are and maybe people's natural born physical appearance doesn't always have to match their gender identity...but if you want it to then go nuts.  Gender identity and sexuality are very complex parts of the human psyche that we yet don't yet fully understand, and as we do understand them more then yes OMG!! we may have to create new words to label new concepts.  And traditional stereotypes of what a male or female should be or how they should behave are BS & only serve to make people feel ashamed of who they are in order to satisfy ignorant & intolerant people's preconceived expectations of "normal" or "healthy", including some of yours. Dare someone ever be something other than white, male, heterosexual, cisgender (OMG scary new word!!), english-speaking, Judeo-Christian, Western and omg do some of them freak out!!

Edited December 1, 2016 by Moonlight Graham

[Guest]

At least there are some students who don't take it lying down.  They take is standing very, very still.

 

http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/city-students-fight-back/19017#.WECrqWfFB9A

[TimG]

17 minutes ago, Moonlight Graham said:

I think calling them "mentally ill" and "psychiatric problems" is goddamned ignorant and absurd.  That label infers that they are somehow "broken" or "damaged".  If they're "mentally ill", how can you possibly treat it...to "cure" someone who feels like they're something that doesn't fit your narrow definition of gender, or sex? 

So it wrong to say a schizophrenic is mentally ill? How about someone with extreme OCD? The term mental illness is a necessary descriptive term whether you like it or not. People with psychiatric problems that prevent them from living a normal life are mentally ill. Gay people who are perfectly happy being gay have no problems and are therefore not mentally ill. A transgender person who accepts their biology and but lives their life as their preferred gender is not mentally ill. A transgender person who seeks radical non-reversible surgery because they can't accept their biology is mentally ill. Someone that needs other people to validate them by using a made up word is a narcissist. If necessary we could add *one* new pronoun like we added "Ms" in the 70s. It only the designer pronouns that I object to.

 

[The_Squid]

7 hours ago, Moonlight Graham said:

I don't know if I'd go so far as to punish the U of T professor for calling the trans woman a "he", but holy crap is that being disrespectful.  It takes such little effort on his part to make someone going through some tough things to feel somewhat normal.  Even if you don't believe in it, just humour them then holy geez!

That's not what's happened....

[Moonlight Graham]

6 hours ago, TimG said:

So it wrong to say a schizophrenic is mentally ill? How about someone with extreme OCD? The term mental illness is a necessary descriptive term whether you like it or not. People with psychiatric problems that prevent them from living a normal life are mentally ill. Gay people who are perfectly happy being gay have no problems and are therefore not mentally ill. A transgender person who accepts their biology and but lives their life as their preferred gender is not mentally ill. A transgender person who seeks radical non-reversible surgery because they can't accept their biology is mentally ill. Someone that needs other people to validate them by using a made up word is a narcissist. If necessary we could add *one* new pronoun like we added "Ms" in the 70s. It only the designer pronouns that I object to.

I don't have any issue with the term "mentally ill" if somebody is in fact suffering from a mental illness.  Schizophrenia and extreme OCD can seriously negatively affect a person's day to day functioning.  I'd say chopping off your leg/arm would do that too.  Wanting plastic surgery via boob job, nose job etc doesn't.  Some people might think those things a bit odd, even I do.  Are all hetero persons wanting a boob job or nose job because they aren't 100% happy with their physical appearance mentally ill?  Maybe some are, I'm sure many aren't.  Is a person who gets in an accident and wants plastic surgery mentally ill?  We'll let the psychiatrists decide.

I reject most of the designer pronouns too, for practical reasons.

[Bonam]

31 minutes ago, Moonlight Graham said:

Wanting plastic surgery via boob job, nose job etc doesn't.  Some people might think those things a bit odd, even I do.  Are all hetero persons wanting a boob job or nose job because they aren't 100% happy with their physical appearance mentally ill?  Maybe some are, I'm sure many aren't.  Is a person who gets in an accident and wants plastic surgery mentally ill?  We'll let the psychiatrists decide.

"Wanting" a boob job is different than feeling like you NEED to have your biological sex surgically changed to be able to live the life you think you are meant to live. If someone is having an existential crisis about needing a boob job, one might question their mental health as well. Personally, I'm fine with adults choosing to do whatever they want to do to their own bodies, but it is not wrong to stop and think about whether a person's problems with their born gender are a result of things going on in their brain. Given that it has to do with how one feels and thinks about oneself and one's gender, it seems more than likely that the issue is a neural one. I don't think it's so far fetched to contemplate the possibility that the reason we "treat" transgender people through gender re-assignment surgery is because adding and removing body parts is easy and understood, but messing with brain function and chemistry isn't. 

Using the term "mental illness" provokes hasty reactions from people, but what I believe TimG is trying to say is that if there is nothing wrong with an individual's body - that is, for example, if it works fine in the biological functions of being either a female or a male, but the individual feels that their biological sex doesn't suit them, it might be worth asking - is the discrepancy really caused by their body, or is it their brain? How many people who feel that their only possible solution to feel right is to transition their gender would consider, for example, taking a pill that would permanently make them feel "at home" in their current body? Would developing such a treatment be inherently immoral? Would offering it to people be a transgression of some sort? I don't think it would be. 

[Moonlight Graham]

10 hours ago, Bonam said:

Using the term "mental illness" provokes hasty reactions from people, but what I believe TimG is trying to say is that if there is nothing wrong with an individual's body - that is, for example, if it works fine in the biological functions of being either a female or a male, but the individual feels that their biological sex doesn't suit them, it might be worth asking - is the discrepancy really caused by their body, or is it their brain?

I feel similarly, but I don't think there's anything inherently "wrong" with these people.  The sexuality of their body biologically doesn't match the gender they feel they are.  This then causes them to seek to look like the gender they feel like expressing.  So I don't think the issue is in their body, or in their brain (physically/chemically), but in their psyche, as these people try to wrestle with very complex issues of identity.

Society is traditionally based on binary sex and binary gender, and gender roles are also determined very much by social pressures and are subjective unlike biology.  When people are born outside those rigid norms, they face serious identity issues with themselves because they don't fit these norms, and one of the ways some people deal with this is to have surgeries or take hormones to make them feel "normal" or to fit in to how society sees male vs female, masculine vs feminine.  I think society and social norms make them feel like something is "wrong" with them as much (or more) than they themselves do.  So are they "mentally ill", or is society ill and they have to suffer because of that?  We also have no idea what these people feel or what go through, so we shouldn't judge them.

[-1=e^ipi]

12 hours ago, Moonlight Graham said:

The sexuality of their body biologically doesn't match the gender they feel they are.  This then causes them to seek to look like the gender they feel like expressing.

 

Uh, no. It's possible to be, for example, a transwomen who is sexually attracted to women, or a transman who is sexually attracted to men. It is important to distinguish between sexual attraction and gender expression (as well as gender identity).

[Moonlight Graham]

4 hours ago, -1=e^ipi said:

 

Uh, no. It's possible to be, for example, a transwomen who is sexually attracted to women, or a transman who is sexually attracted to men. It is important to distinguish between sexual attraction and gender expression (as well as gender identity).

Not 100% sure the misunderstanding, i agree with you,  When I said " The sexuality of their body biologically" i just meant biological sex.

[Argus]

A good summary of the kind of educational malpractice in many of today's univesities which allows ideological zealots to build identity politics into universities and produce the kind of snowflake generation types we see who are so desperately traumatized at hearing contrary opinions.

University campuses have always leaned a little left. But in the 1990s, as the previous generation of academics was replaced by baby boomers, they began to lean dramatically left. The humanities and social sciences were colonized by an unholy alliance of poststructuralists and Marxists – people who believe that Western civilization is a corrupt patriarchy that must be dismantled.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/academic-extremism-comes-to-canada/article33185073/

 

[eyeball]

57 minutes ago, Argus said:

people who believe that Western civilization is a corrupt patriarchy that must be dismantled.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/academic-extremism-comes-to-canada/article33185073/

That's right and righties believe that western society is a corrupt patriarchy that must be maintained.

At least we all know where we're coming from, now we just have to bash each other over the head until one side or the other submits. 

[Rue]

I have taught at community colleges and university. Please believe me when I say students control their marks. Today if they get below a 90 they rush to the program coordinator who brings me or other lecturers, professors into an office and we are given heat to change the mark.

The students do popularity surveys of us and will say in class if I do not give them a 90 I get a bad write up.

Students claim they have a disability and now do NOT I repeat do not have to medically document they are disabled anymore, we are supposed to take their word for it.

Students feel self entitled and they are rude. They skip classes all the time and then complain what is on an exam because they missed the class.

Students don't listen. They play on the computer or on their cell phones. If we say turn it off and pay attention they file complaints.

I have had students swear at me, have tantrums over exam marks and if you correct a spelling mistake or grammar mistake they call you racist because English is not their first tongue.

I have had Muslim students openly start screaming at me over the Middle East and how I can' teach them. I have had specific ethnic groups battle each other.

Then again, I have had Muslim students openly defend me against other Muslim students who accused me of being unfair. I have gad to defend Muslim women being harassed over what they wear. I have seen all kinds of rude, intolerant crap between students.

Now I have had one transgender in the class and people stared at him but he handled it. He handled it all.

Me personally, I just call a transgender student whatever they ask me to call them, simply because I just feel I should treat them with the same courtesy I want them to treat me. I realize students are milking the system. I also realize there are good students out there, real good people and some of them dress or look strange lol. 

Hey when I was young I had long hair, etc., and people called me a freak.

Transgender is strange in only one sense. Its liberals, knee jerk liberals who are actually not comfortable with it, freaking out and pretending they are by making all kinds of displays about it. Most campuses today have gay-LBGTQ whatever those initials are groups and they give peer support to each other.

They are mostly cool they don't shove anything in your face. There are angry militant students of all groups sure.

I am not sure what to tell all of you other than it really should not be an issue. Sheeyat man, its just common courtesy. I don't need a policy to tell me to treat someone in a way they are comfortable with. I never let the militant angry wackos or the ones milking the system get to me. However they have power. They are taking away seniority and  union protection and phasing out all full time faculty and putting everyone on contract like me subject to the students' popularity polls.

The schools are business. They want every student happy and passed. The marks are all inflated today believe me.

Now I am not talking about graduate schools. That becomes an environment where professors steal the new ideas of the graduates. There is a lot of nasty nasty politics. I had an openly anti semite professor in front of 45 people in a law class at the Master's level go into a tirade about Jews and half our class were civil servants int he Dept, of Justice in Ottawa and one joined in with the comments, and I repeat this is from a graduate law student" what's with these Jews thinking they can have a country....they should just shut up...".

I have been on both sides of the table, prof and student.  I have seen BDS students engage in loud open bigoted statements in the name of progressive leftist politics.

I have also had Muslim students not just other gentiles, challenge BDS and others for certain words they said. I still remember an engineering student who was female and one of only 3 and openly Muslim in her appearance with a head covering being treated rudely. I got on the Go bus with her and people avoided sitting with her. I sat with her and told the damn bus she was my daughter. I don't get people sometimes. I don't.

On a basic level we can all be jack-asses but geez how hard is it to be polite.

One last thing because I sort of understand what Moonlight Graham is saying. The DSV Psychiatric Diagnostic Manual is a hot bed of debate for the method in which it defines mental illnesses. Its a fluid manual. Its supposed to change every 6 years or so and it lags behind just like we don't update the Criminal Code.

In the area of sexuality yes in the past it defined homosexuality as a mental illness. It changed to reflect the morality of the day.  The Bible defined people who were mute or deaf as mentally ill. Hell up to the 60's if you were autistic, schizophrenic, manic depressive, what-ever you were just thrown in a large institution and forgotten and and we had some horrible treatments. They used to take a huge water hose of cold water and spray people with it. They'd cut chunks out of peoples' brains. They would medicate them with drugs that masked the symptoms. We often did not know the difference between mental illness caused by a brain tumou or something else.

Medicine is not perfect. Today though psychiatrists, and yes some of them are not up to date, but the new ones, they are more aware of the tie in between body, mind and soul.  The problem is under medicare the average psychiatrist has too many patients and they no longer provide talk therapy. They are limited to montly check ups on people and giving them anti-depressants a lot of times.

Yes ADD, ADHD  can be misdiagnosed but mostly by psychologists not psychiatrists, pediatricians or neurologists. Most pediatricians and neurologists and child psychiatrists don't misdiagnose it.

As fore sexuality, its very subjective in how its diagnosed. Some feel to this day, and I mean physicians, that if you can't accept your body as you were born with, then the best a physician can do is help you learn to accept yourself as you are. Now many believe if there is technology to go the next step and change your body, then that's o.k.

Its a complex issue and its divided the gay community. Many gays argue a transexual or transgender is someone who loathed themselves for being gay and changed their body and see them as self hating gays who sold out who they were spiritually and mentally. Others say do what feels right.

It can be damn confusing because some physicians will tell you the compulsion to change your gender is not the same at all as being gay, one is a sexual preference, the other is a different feeling that goes further and preoccupies every living breath of the person.

I don't claim to know neither should any of you what it is like to be so compelled to want to change your body.

I say its a private matter between the individual and their physicians and its none of my business.

Personally I would like to think if someone is gay they learn to accept that but if their compulsion to change their body is of such an issue then its their business in private with their physician. People who change genders in Canada can't just do it. Its complicated. They have to spend years in therapy dealing with their issues first. Its not as easy as some people think.

i am an old fashioned man. I believe men should burp and fart and woman should perspire not swet but hell the world is changing and I am not going to swet it or perspire or whatever. To hell with what word we use. Its not the words, is the common courtesy we need to show not all this politically proper mumbo jumbo.

So I just say to Moonlight, psychiatry has a ways to go yes, too many doctors over prescribe, but that's the overburdened system.

Also as patients, people should never be afraid to ask questions and contrary to popular belief psychiatrists will listen and treat you with respect. You get a bad one get rid of them like you would any rude person.

As for the professor who got into hot water, I think he made too much out of a little thing. There are far more important battles on campus. Professors need to fight back because of many things but how some student wants to be called, hell that is not as important as say some of the left wing politically correct crap being shoved down students throats as bad as right wing stuff used to be.

Universities are supposed to be arenas of debate and open discussion cultivating a balancing act of all  views, not just some as too many are doing today. 

[eyeball]

3 minutes ago, Rue said:

I have taught at community colleges and university. Please believe me when I say students control their marks. Today if they get below a 90 they rush to the program coordinator who brings me or other lecturers, professors into an office and we are given heat to change the mark. 

And do you just cave and do as you're told?

If so, why should this be the student's fault?

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, eyeball said:

And do you just cave and do as you're told?

If so, why should this be the student's fault?

Because they are lazy and would rather play on their cellphones than study, and because they know that if they complain people will take them seriously instead of telling them to get a bloody grip?

just a guess. 

Edited December 3, 2016 by bcsapper

[eyeball]

That seems a little too circular a reason. Students learn, where did they learn this was acceptable and what does it have to do with catering to it?  That's the greater failing here I would argue.

Edited December 3, 2016 by eyeball

[Guest]

56 minutes ago, eyeball said:

That seems a little too circular a reason. Students learn, where did they learn this was acceptable and what does it have to do with catering to it?  That's the greater failing here I would argue.

There must have been a point when teachers and professors became afraid of their students.  I have no idea when that was.  I only know it was after I finished school.

[eyeball]

I bet it's more a case of administrators caving in to teachers and professors and the administrators are probably taking their cue from their political masters.

Shit runs downhill not up.

[Rue]

22 hours ago, eyeball said:

And do you just cave and do as you're told?

If so, why should this be the student's fault?

1. Your first question is illogical. The fact that students now can manipulate the system and appeal their marks to get them pushed higher and the fact they are given the power to change their marks, does not mean I or any other professor or teacher cave or do anything else you suppose. You project that on us.

2. Your second question is as illogical as the first. Why would you absolve students of any responsibility for playing the system to increase their marks if that is what they do?

Yah I know you were given 95 in Logic.

 

 

 

[Rue]

21 hours ago, eyeball said:

I bet it's more a case of administrators caving in to teachers and professors and the administrators are probably taking their cue from their political masters.

Shit runs downhill not up.

Again you make no logical sense and are absolutely wrong. Teachers and professors don't dictate to administrators, its the other way around. Your sense of direction is hilarious. You also haven't a clue who implements and imposes educational curriculum, policy and marking schemes and how they do it.

" a putz tries to ski uphill and says its the mountain going in the wrong direction "

Rue 1016

Edited December 4, 2016 by Rue

[eyeball]

8 hours ago, Rue said:

1. Your first question is illogical. The fact that students now can manipulate the system and appeal their marks to get them pushed higher and the fact they are given the power to change their marks, does not mean I or any other professor or teacher cave or do anything else you suppose. You project that on us.

They're not illogical questions at all, they're apparently just making you uncomfortable.

Quote

I have taught at community colleges and university. Please believe me when I say students control their marks. Today if they get below a 90 they rush to the program coordinator who brings me or other lecturers, professors into an office and we are given heat to change the mark.

It was your admission that you're called to the program coordinator's office and 'given heat' that prompted my question. You didn't indicate anywhere else in your post what happens after that. After you're 'heated' do you give your students what they want or not?

Quote

 

2. Your second question is as illogical as the first. Why would you absolve students of any responsibility for playing the system to increase their marks if that is what they do?

Yah I know you were given 95 in Logic.

 

Well, if you look closely you'll see my second question is entirely dependent on the answer you provide to the first question so... Like I said, what happens after the coordinator brings down his heat on you?

Edited December 5, 2016 by eyeball

[eyeball]

8 hours ago, Rue said:

Again you make no logical sense and are absolutely wrong. Teachers and professors don't dictate to administrators, its the other way around. Your sense of direction is hilarious. You also haven't a clue who implements and imposes educational curriculum, policy and marking schemes and how they do it.

" a putz tries to ski uphill and says its the mountain going in the wrong direction "

Rue 1016

I know perfectly well how a normal chain of command works, but you're describing a situation in which the students are calling the shots so why would it be illogical to wonder if this isn't how it works all the way to the top of your university?

You're basically saying the mountain is upside down.

Who's fault is it when the inmates are running the asylum?

[cybercoma]

10 hours ago, eyeball said:

It was your admission that you're called to the program coordinator's office and 'given heat' that prompted my question.

I'm more curious what prompted the dressing down. In all my years of both teaching and grading courses, I've never been questioned ever about the grades that I give. Most people create a clear rubric as not just documentation for how they're grading, but as a method for being fair and consistent. Frankly, the only time I've heard of someone being "spoken to" was when a part time instructor gave her entire class As and Bs. The administration found that inconceivable and wanted to be sure that she wasn't inflating grades, but all she had to do was provide the documentation on how they were graded and that was it. She just had a particularly good class that term. So literally the only example I've ever seen personally is of the administration being concerned the students' grades were too high. I'm not saying Rue's story isn't true because every institution has it's own unique politics and bullshit. I just find it surprising.

[eyeball]

To me this thread seems like another case where universities are cast as bastions of leftist insanity characterized by pampered students that everyone is constantly being forced to cater to. And along comes a teacher who describes a situation that sort of explains why things are seemingly out of control. Like I said who's fault is that?

I recall my last days of school in downtown Toronto in the early 70's...over 50 students per class...spitballs and paper airplanes all day long and shell-shocked teachers hiding behind their desks.

I quit and went logging and fishing. The chain of command in these working environments helped me I think. 

[Smeelious]

I didn't expect much out of this thread,

But honestly, this has been some of the best discussion on these boards in a while.

Cheers