Young Democrats/Republicans clubs at school

[brimstoneSalad]

So now I have a meeting Monday with the woman who manages all the clubs.

They can't do that. They can't kick me out like that, it's not like I was being disruptive. I literally just walked in and they told me to leave. I wasn't being disruptive.
This is a public school. It's like if a Bible studies club kicked out Muslims/Jews/Atheists/Hindus/Buddhists etc..

So... That happened.

This is great news.

Once they rule to close the club and disallow him from leading clubs anymore, you should contact the ACLU and see if you can get the teacher fired (don't do it until after they rule on it).
That was absolutely unacceptable.

[EquALLity]

So now I have a meeting Monday with the woman who manages all the clubs.

They can't do that. They can't kick me out like that, it's not like I was being disruptive. I literally just walked in and they told me to leave. I wasn't being disruptive.
This is a public school. It's like if a Bible studies club kicked out Muslims/Jews/Atheists/Hindus/Buddhists etc..

So... That happened.

This is great news.

Once they rule to close the club and disallow him from leading clubs anymore, you should contact the ACLU and see if you can get the teacher fired (don't do it until after they rule on it).
That was absolutely unacceptable.

I totally agree that it was absolutely unacceptable, obviously.

I don't know about getting him fired, though... I don't want to destroy his life or anything.

[brimstoneSalad]

I totally agree that it was absolutely unacceptable, obviously.

I don't know about getting him fired, though... I don't want to destroy his life or anything.

This isn't about him, this is about precedent. Teachers need to understand that this behavior is not OK, and will result in termination, otherwise it will be repeated in other clubs to bully other students and create more ideological safe spaces.

The ACLU doesn't do this stuff to ruin particular people's lives, but to establish precedent and prevent it happening again. This isn't vengeance, it's protecting others from the same abuses, which if not confronted can become widespread.

Most students wouldn't stand up to this behavior like you have, most would just let it happen. You have to let them know that the consequences are serious if they engage in this kind of discriminatory bullying against students.

[EquALLity]

I totally agree that it was absolutely unacceptable, obviously.

I don't know about getting him fired, though... I don't want to destroy his life or anything.

This isn't about him, this is about precedent. Teachers need to understand that this behavior is not OK, and will result in termination, otherwise it will be repeated in other clubs to bully other students and create more ideological safe spaces.

The ACLU doesn't do this stuff to ruin particular people's lives, but to establish precedent and prevent it happening again. This isn't vengeance, it's protecting others from the same abuses, which if not confronted can become widespread.

Most students wouldn't stand up to this behavior like you have, most would just let it happen. You have to let them know that the consequences are serious if they engage in this kind of discriminatory bullying against students.

Yeah... You're right. People need to know that discrimination isn't ok, particularly in a (public) school environment.

It's unfortunate that it has to happen this way, though. I don't think he's a bad person. I'd hate for someone to lose their job (especially since he's apparently the teacher who has been in the social studies/business department the longest), especially over discrimination. But you're right about the precedent. It's just really sad.

And I agree about ideological and political echo chambers. But safe spaces, IMO, can be a really good thing. Places for, for example, people who've been raped to discuss what happened to them in a safe environment can be really helpful and therapeutic. Or a place for students who are LGBTQPA+ to discuss bullying and their general struggles relating to that. But a political 'safe space' just stifles dialogue.

[brimstoneSalad]

But safe spaces, IMO, can be a really good thing. Places for, for example, people who've been raped to discuss what happened to them in a safe environment can be really helpful and therapeutic.

That's called therapy, and should be overseen by professionals.

Therapists also agree that the concept of triggering and "safe spaces" in the world at large is very dangerous to recovery, because people with PTSD need gradual exposure to desensitize them. Giving them permission to be sensitive and encouraging them to recoil from society causes more harm.

If somebody is afraid of spiders, that person may want to live in a 100% free spider free environment, but that's only going to reinforce the phobia. What the person actually needs is gradual and increasing exposure to spiders to unlearn the fear (ideally supervised by a professional).

Or a place for students who are LGBTQPA+ to discuss bullying and their general struggles relating to that. But a political 'safe space' just stifles dialogue.

They need peer support networks, not safe spaces. They need people to back them up and yell down the bullies. Removing exposure just increases sensitivity and can make them more prone to depression, fear, suicide, etc. What they need is exposure to the bullying in situations where they WIN, and they beat the bullies. That builds courage, character, and long term unassailable confidence.

It also helps destroy bullying by creating these experiences for the bully too, where they learn it's not socially acceptable. Safe spaces for LGBT mean that the homophobes get safe spaces too, since you've just divided them one from the other, and it will only increase fear and hate.

It's a slippery slope to allow ANY group a safe space, particularly in a public school.

[EquALLity]

That's called therapy, and should be overseen by professionals.

What's wrong with it happening like this? It can be good to talk to other people who are dealing with the same thing even if it's not group therapy. It's additional help.

Therapists also agree that the concept of triggering and "safe spaces" in the world at large is very dangerous to recovery, because people with PTSD need gradual exposure to desensitize them. Giving them permission to be sensitive and encouraging them to recoil from society causes more harm.

If somebody is afraid of spiders, that person may want to live in a 100% free spider free environment, but that's only going to reinforce the phobia. What the person actually needs is gradual and increasing exposure to spiders to unlearn the fear (ideally supervised by a professional).

1) What's wrong with them being sensitive about it? It's a sensitive issue. Of course they're going to be sensitive about it, you can't just expect them to immediately be over it. It's a process.
2) Do therapists actually think that, though?
3) That analogy doesn't make sense to me. All I'm talking about is people discussing their experiences with each other in a safe place. How is that stopping their recovery? It's a good thing.

They need peer support networks, not safe spaces. They need people to back them up and yell down the bullies. Removing exposure just increases sensitivity and can make them more prone to depression, fear, suicide, etc. What they need is exposure to the bullying in situations where they WIN, and they beat the bullies. That builds courage, character, and long term unassailable confidence.

It's a slippery slope to allow ANY group a safe space, particularly in a public school.

Safe spaces ARE peer support networks. That's what I'm talking about. I don't understand how you're defining safe space.

1) It's not removing exposure. They're still in school, they just have a place where they can talk openly.
2) I disagree anyway, it's good to remove exposure. You know what increases depression and suicide? Bullying. The avoidance of bullying isn't hurting anyone.

[brimstoneSalad]

What's wrong with it happening like this? It can be good to talk to other people who are dealing with the same thing even if it's not group therapy. It's additional help.

"Trigger warnings" and victim mentality are what's wrong with it. That's not necessarily a guaranteed outcome, but this is what we've seen come out of these unsupervised attempts and peer therapy. Very often they just enable each other's sensitivity and fear of society.

A professional should be present to prevent this from happening and make the sessions more effective.
Without a therapist, it could be good, OR it could be harmful. It's more likely to be harmful than helpful.

You wouldn't want kids running around with dangerous chemicals without a chemistry teacher present to make sure they're not accidentally filling the classroom with chlorine gas by reacting the wrong things, would you?
This isn't unrealistic.
Imagine you get a bunch of suicidal people together without supervision, and they end up talking about good ways to kill themselves, or make a suicide pact. Or a bunch of addicts together who end up just enabling each other into more drug use.
The same happens with victims.

Human psychology is no less volatile or unpredictable than a chemical explosion to people without appropriate experience and expertise. Doing so would be tantamount to practicing medicine without a license. Just don't do it. If people have serious mental health problems or are at high risk, they need professional therapy if they're going to go in a group, or relationships with NORMAL people (not people with the same issues they have), or in the very least only fully recovered people. It's good to have perspective, but the blind can not lead the blind unless you're perfectly fine with them all walking off a cliff.

This is serious, and what you're advocating here is dangerous.
There must be a professional present in these settings.

1) What's wrong with them being sensitive about it? It's a sensitive issue. Of course they're going to be sensitive about it, you can't just expect them to immediately be over it. It's a process.

Because it's harming them. The goal is to become desensitized.
Yes, they are sensitive because they were hurt, but physically they are healed; the sensitivity itself is the ONLY thing causing ongoing psychological pain and preventing them from functioning properly.
The sensitivity is something to cure, not protect.

We don't expect them to get over it immediately.

If you take somebody with a fear of spiders, and you throw a spider on that person, you will probably make it worse.
You have to introduce it gradually, and it really needs to be done by an expert who is NOT afraid of spiders and who has experience treating phobias.
A professional can help somebody overcome trauma and phobias very effectively. Research in this field is actually pretty good, since it's a practical application of psychology with pretty clear success metrics.

2) Do therapists actually think that, though?

YES. I've said it many times. Professional consensus is that all of these "safe spaces" and "trigger warnings" are psychologically harmful.
Advocating or defending these ideas hurts the very people you're trying to help.
http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/conditions/post-traumatic-stress-disorder

Certain things seem to set off my symptoms of PTSD. What can I do to control these triggers?
For people with PTSD, it is very common for their memories to be triggered by sights, sounds, smells or even feelings that they experience. These triggers can bring back memories of the trauma and cause intense emotional and physical reactions, such as raised heart rate, sweating and muscle tension. Because these memories and feelings are unpleasant, you may have the urge to avoid the triggers. Avoiding things that make you uncomfortable is normal and will make you feel better in the short run. But in the long run, this avoidance will make things worse. If the pattern continues, you can make your problems worse. Instead of avoiding triggers, it is probably better to learn how to manage your reactions when they are triggered. Many forms of therapy are effective in treating PTSD. Cognitive behavioral therapy, in particular, can help you learn ways to reduce and manage your reactions to triggers.

3) That analogy doesn't make sense to me. All I'm talking about is people discussing their experiences with each other in a safe place. How is that stopping their recovery? It's a good thing.

I explained this above. It doesn't help them, it hurts them. They need professional therapy.

Safe spaces ARE peer support networks.

They're toxic support networks than enable victim mentality and encourage people to recoil from threats and triggers rather than leaning to deal with them appropriately.

I don't understand how you're defining safe space.

A place where people are protected from triggers by excluding them, including certain people or critical opinions or speech.

There's nothing good about them. They only benefit indefensible dogma by protecting it from criticism. They don't help people with legitimate problems heal, and they don't help bullies and those with hate or fear overcome that by exposure and criticism since they've just been locked out.

It's also a huge freedom of speech issue, and it's unacceptable in a public school (just as the Republican safe space is unacceptable).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe-space#Criticism

1) It's not removing exposure. They're still in school, they just have a place where they can talk openly.

They can talk openly anywhere they want. If a conservative hears it and is offended -- great. Let's desensitize conservative students to this stuff and make them less hateful and afraid.

2) I disagree anyway, it's good to remove exposure. You know what increases depression and suicide? Bullying. The avoidance of bullying isn't hurting anyone.

And Durianrider disagrees that people suffering from obesity should avoid sugar. The Sprite diet is the best weight loss tool, according to him.

What do both pieces of advice have in common? They are unqualified opinions that are recommending the exact opposite of professionals in therapeutic psychology.
You could not possibly be more wrong about this.

In academics, the tide is quickly turning against these student demanded safe spaces:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/more-mortal/201605/when-safe-spaces-become-danger-zones
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/happiness-and-the-pursuit-leadership/201511/how-making-colleges-safe-spaces-makes-us-all-less
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/

However, there is a deeper problem with trigger warnings. According to the most-basic tenets of psychology, the very idea of helping people with anxiety disorders avoid the things they fear is misguided. A person who is trapped in an elevator during a power outage may panic and think she is going to die. That frightening experience can change neural connections in her amygdala, leading to an elevator phobia. If you want this woman to retain her fear for life, you should help her avoid elevators.

But if you want to help her return to normalcy, you should take your cues from Ivan Pavlov and guide her through a process known as exposure therapy. You might start by asking the woman to merely look at an elevator from a distance—standing in a building lobby, perhaps—until her apprehension begins to subside. If nothing bad happens while she’s standing in the lobby—if the fear is not “reinforced”—then she will begin to learn a new association: elevators are not dangerous. (This reduction in fear during exposure is called habituation.) Then, on subsequent days, you might ask her to get closer, and on later days to push the call button, and eventually to step in and go up one floor. This is how the amygdala can get rewired again to associate a previously feared situation with safety or normalcy.

Students who call for trigger warnings may be correct that some of their peers are harboring memories of trauma that could be reactivated by course readings. But they are wrong to try to prevent such reactivations. Students with PTSD should of course get treatment, but they should not try to avoid normal life, with its many opportunities for habituation. Classroom discussions are safe places to be exposed to incidental reminders of trauma (such as the word violate). A discussion of violence is unlikely to be followed by actual violence, so it is a good way to help students change the associations that are causing them discomfort. And they’d better get their habituation done in college, because the world beyond college will be far less willing to accommodate requests for trigger warnings and opt-outs.

The expansive use of trigger warnings may also foster unhealthy mental habits in the vastly larger group of students who do not suffer from PTSD or other anxiety disorders. People acquire their fears not just from their own past experiences, but from social learning as well. If everyone around you acts as though something is dangerous—elevators, certain neighborhoods, novels depicting racism—then you are at risk of acquiring that fear too. The psychiatrist Sarah Roff pointed this out last year in an online article for The Chronicle of Higher Education. “One of my biggest concerns about trigger warnings,” Roff wrote, “is that they will apply not just to those who have experienced trauma, but to all students, creating an atmosphere in which they are encouraged to believe that there is something dangerous or damaging about discussing difficult aspects of our history.”

Bullying is just another trigger, unless it's literal violence (punching, kicking, putting their heads in toilets). Physical violence is unacceptable, and in that respect the entire school is a safe space (from physical violence).

It's inability to cope with and properly respond to and resolve bullying that's ultimately the problem with depression and suicide. You aren't going to eliminate bullying that way, and safe spaces are only going to make people more sensitive to it.

This article is specific to bullies:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/when-a-bully-targets-your-child-1473789440

There is new understanding of bullying as a complex, multifarious problem that doesn’t lend itself to one-size-fits-all responses. Educators and psychologists are placing more emphasis on teaching students coping skills, encouraging children to tell adults when they’re bullied, and having parents work with teachers and school administrators to resolve problems.

Jacqui DiMarco and her husband first advised their son to ignore bullying on the playground years ago, when he was in first grade, but ignoring it only made the teasing worse. By fourth grade, her son began resisting going to school, says Ms. DiMarco, co-author of the book “When Your Child Is Being Bullied.” She soon discovered that the same bully had created a YouTube channel ridiculing her son.

Ms. DiMarco left two phone messages for the bully’s parents, asking respectfully that the page be taken down, and got no response. She called the principal at her son’s school, who said she couldn’t help because the online bullying originated off school grounds. When Ms. DiMarco called her son’s teacher, the teacher brought the bully and her son face-to-face to resolve it, and the bullying stopped, Ms. DiMarco says. By fifth grade, her son could assert himself against bullies.

Parents who discover a child is being bullied should stay calm and encourage him or her to talk about what happened. Listen closely and take notes. Invite your child to figure out what she wants to happen. It is essential to work with the school if the bullying is intense, frequent or prolonged, but not every case is clear-cut.

Many children avoid telling their parents because they’re afraid Mom or Dad will contact the bully or the bully’s parents, sparking further embarrassment and retaliation, research shows. Most children who are bullied don’t report it to their teachers either, according to a National Academy of Sciences report on preventing bullying, released in May.

For a child, asking a bully to stop is hard. He may fear—sometimes rightly—that it will lead to retaliation. Still, when the bullying isn’t severe, some children are able to stand up to bullies themselves, with a little coaching and encouragement. Solving the problem on his own can increase a child’s self-confidence.

Encourage your child to think critically about how to respond. If he suggests firing back, “Leave me alone, you jerk!” ask how he thinks the bully might respond to name-calling.

Have your child practice in front of a mirror or role-play the bully while your child speaks up. Coach him on standing tall, looking the bully in the eye and speaking in a confident voice. Ask if your child has friends at school or a trusted older student willing to stand by him.

This is how bullying needs to be addressed, often with professional advice and intervention. NOT by avoiding bullies.

The absolute best time for LGBT students to encounter bullies is during their meetings, when they have peer support and can feel safe in confronting the bullies together. But that's not how bullies operate; they won't put themselves in that position. There's no need to block people who disagree from attending and learning; since they're outnumbered they'll be on their best behavior and they might learn something.

Anyway, the point is that you're advocating precisely the wrong kind of intervention. Avoidance doesn't solve the problem.

[EquALLity]

Look... The topic isn't really about this. So can we please try not to turn this into one of those huge extensive debates?

"Trigger warnings" and victim mentality are what's wrong with it. That's not necessarily a guaranteed outcome, but this is what we've seen come out of these unsupervised attempts and peer therapy. Very often they just enable each other's sensitivity and fear of society.

A professional should be present to prevent this from happening and make the sessions more effective.
Without a therapist, it could be good, OR it could be harmful. It's more likely to be harmful than helpful.

You wouldn't want kids running around with dangerous chemicals without a chemistry teacher present to make sure they're not accidentally filling the classroom with chlorine gas by reacting the wrong things, would you?
This isn't unrealistic.
Imagine you get a bunch of suicidal people together without supervision, and they end up talking about good ways to kill themselves, or make a suicide pact. Or a bunch of addicts together who end up just enabling each other into more drug use.
The same happens with victims.

Human psychology is no less volatile or unpredictable than a chemical explosion to people without appropriate experience and expertise. Doing so would be tantamount to practicing medicine without a license. Just don't do it. If people have serious mental health problems or are at high risk, .

That's not true based on my experience.

There's this club in the middle school called PIP. It's considered a safe space by the teacher who advises it (an amazing teacher and person, btw). The club is about bullying, particularly related to LGBTQPA+ students, and we do activism to try to stop that type of bullying, but students also share their experiences. There are no suicide pacts. In fact, I remember a long time ago when I was in the club, we modeled ways to stand up to people being bullied.
There is another club (run by the same teacher, because she's amazing). We've had a lot of personal topics where people talk about their stories, not just related to bullying (like financial problems). That club is so necessary, because it gives people an OUTLET.
Not everyone is in a position where therapy is an option (e.g. for poorer people). Safe spaces is schools can really help students. And with a responsible adult there, it doesn't delve into suicide pacts, so I see no downside to it for students who can get therapy.

Not ONCE have either of these clubs become what you've suggested.
Have you actually been to a safe space? Or are you just speculating?

they need professional therapy if they're going to go in a group, or relationships with NORMAL people (not people with the same issues they have), or in the very least only fully recovered people. It's good to have perspective, but the blind can not lead the blind unless you're perfectly fine with them all walking off a cliff.

This is serious, and what you're advocating here is dangerous.
There must be a professional present in these settings

I don't think you meant it that way, but you just implied that people who've been raped etc. aren't 'normal', which really isn't helpful if you want them to heal. It's language that further isolates them, and THAT is truly counterproductive.

It's not 'the blind leading the blind'. Clubs have advisers.

Because it's harming them. The goal is to become desensitized.
Yes, they are sensitive because they were hurt, but physically they are healed; the sensitivity itself is the ONLY thing causing ongoing psychological pain and preventing them from functioning properly.
The sensitivity is something to cure, not protect.

We don't expect them to get over it immediately.

If you take somebody with a fear of spiders, and you throw a spider on that person, you will probably make it worse.
You have to introduce it gradually, and it really needs to be done by an expert who is NOT afraid of spiders and who has experience treating phobias.
A professional can help somebody overcome trauma and phobias very effectively. Research in this field is actually pretty good, since it's a practical application of psychology with pretty clear success metrics.

I agree with you, confronting (gradually) things like this is a good strategy. Maybe we're defining sensitive differently.

YES. I've said it many times. Professional consensus is that all of these "safe spaces" and "trigger warnings" are psychologically harmful.
Advocating or defending these ideas hurts the very people you're trying to help.
http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/cond ... s-disorder

I agree with what you quoted, but I don't think it addresses what I'm saying.

First of all, I didn't mention trigger warnings, but I think those are a good idea too. See this explanation (please read the whole article though)

Imagine someone only interested in geology, who only reads geology books and neglects all the other interesting fields of science, history, and art. In a sense, we’re enabling this person by putting titles on books – it helps her avoid all the other interesting things she could be reading that challenge her monomaniacal focus on geology and open her mind a little. If books didn’t have titles, then instead of heading straight for the geology books, maybe she’d pick up something that looked like it was a geology book and end up reading Don Quixote and be better off for it. Our decision to title books anyway assumes that we care less about denying people the ability to avoid things they don’t want to read, and more about trusting people’s judgment and making it easy for them to choose and obtain what they want. This is the philosophy behind trigger warnings as well. If you don’t like it, then I accuse you of not liking capitalism. You may prefer a country with a military draft; those are really good at making sure people are involuntarily exposed to the harshness of reality rather than sheltered from it.

This part relates to what you said about spiders:

They say that “Confronting triggers, not avoiding them, is the best way to overcome PTSD”. They point out that “exposure therapy” is the best treatment for trauma survivors, including rape victims. And that this involves reliving the trauma and exposing yourself to traumatic stimuli, exactly what trigger warnings are intended to prevent. All this is true. But I feel like they are missing a very important point.

YOU DO NOT GIVE PSYCHOTHERAPY TO PEOPLE WITHOUT THEIR CONSENT.

Psychotherapists treat arachnophobia with exposure therapy, too. They expose people first to cute, little spiders behind a glass cage. Then bigger spiders. Then they take them out of the cage. Finally, in a carefully controlled environment with their very supportive therapist standing by, they make people experience their worst fear, like having a big tarantula crawl all over them. It usually works pretty well.

Finding an arachnophobic person, and throwing a bucket full of tarantulas at them while shouting “I’M HELPING! I’M HELPING!” works less well.

And this seems to be the arachnophobe’s equivalent of the PTSD “advice” in the Pacific Standard. There are two problems with its approach. The first is that it avoids the carefully controlled, anxiety-minimizing setup of psychotherapy.

The second is that YOU DO NOT GIVE PSYCHOTHERAPY TO PEOPLE WITHOUT THEIR CONSENT.

If a person with post-traumatic stress disorder or some other trigger-related problem doesn’t want psychotherapy, then even as a trained psychiatrist I am forbidden to override that decision unless they become an immediate danger to themselves or others.

And if they do want psychotherapy, then very likely they want to do it on their own terms. I try to read things that challenge my biases and may even insult or trigger me, but I do it when I feel like it and not a moment before. When I am feeling adventurous and want to become stronger in some way, I will set myself some strenuous self-improvement task, whether it be going on a long run or reading material I know will be unpleasant. But at the end of a really long and exasperating day when I’m at my wit’s end and just want to relax, I don’t want you chasing me with a sword and making me run for my life, and I don’t want you forcing traumatic material at me.

The angry article above with all the talk of “spoiled brats” annoys me as an amateur politics blogger, but this Pacific Standard article pushes my buttons as a (somewhat) non-amateur psychiatrist. This is not your job to meddle. If you are very concerned about helping people with PTSD, please express that concern by donating to PTSD USA or one of the other organizations that will help those with the condition get proper, well-controlled therapy. Please do not try to increase the background level of triggers in the hopes that one of them will fortuitously collide with a PTSD sufferer in a therapeutic way.

If, like me, you think the social justice movement has a really serious kindness and respect problem, then you know that it’s really hard to bring this up without getting accused of unkindness and disrespect yourself. I don’t know how to best respond to this problem. But I’m pretty sure that the very minimum one can do is not to actually be unkind and disrespectful. And I worry that some of these arguments against trigger warnings are failing to clear even this very low bar.

http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/30/the-wonderful-thing-about-triggers/

They're toxic support networks than enable victim mentality and encourage people to recoil from threats and triggers rather than leaning to deal with them appropriately.

I seriously doubt you've ever been to one.

A place where people are protected from triggers by excluding them, including certain people or critical opinions or speech.

There's nothing good about them. They only benefit indefensible dogma by protecting it from criticism. They don't help people with legitimate problems heal, and they don't help bullies and those with hate or fear overcome that by exposure and criticism since they've just been locked out.

It's also a huge freedom of speech issue, and it's unacceptable in a public school (just as the Republican safe space is unacceptable).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe-space#Criticism

What the hell? Dogma? What dogma? We're talking about people who have been raped etc.. It has nothing to do with some type of political ideology.

They can talk openly anywhere they want. If a conservative hears it and is offended -- great. Let's desensitize conservative students to this stuff and make them less hateful and afraid.

Nobody wants to talk about how they were raped in a totally public place.

Anyway, the point is that you're advocating precisely the wrong kind of intervention. Avoidance doesn't solve the problem.

I don't disagree with those quotes. They just don't address what I'm saying.

[EquALLity]

Update (read from bottom top):
So, basically I emailed the adviser for the Young Democrats, and she emailed the principal, and the principal emailed the young repubs adviser.
I wonder how this will develop. o_O

According to my friend at the young dems, if the young repubs adviser doesn't report what happened within one school day, he is responsible (if it's considered discrimination). Not sure how that will work now that they'll probably contact him over the weekend.
That seems to be true based on some documents on the school website, though I'm not sure where he got that the club would be shut down and the teacher couldn't associate with it.

[brimstoneSalad]

That's not true based on my experience.

You can't disprove a social trend with an anecdote.

There's this club in the middle school called PIP. It's considered a safe space by the teacher who advises it (an amazing teacher and person, btw).

That's not a "safe space" if anybody is welcome to come and speak his or her mind.
Would a Christian be allowed to come and communicate his or her belief that homosexuality is a sin?
If so, it's not a "safe space", it's just a club open to everybody and all ideas, as long as they aren't disruptive. This is normal.
Calling it a "safe space" is inaccurate.

In fact, I remember a long time ago when I was in the club, we modeled ways to stand up to people being bullied.

That's good if they're teaching victims of bullying coping mechanisms, and how to stand up for themselves. It's not a "safe space" though, unless this teacher is violating school policy and excluding different opinions.

There is another club (run by the same teacher, because she's amazing). We've had a lot of personal topics where people talk about their stories, not just related to bullying (like financial problems). That club is so necessary, because it gives people an OUTLET.

If there's a teacher there who has gained some experience in counseling youth, that's a little different. She's almost a therapist. I would say it could be a little irresponsible if she doesn't have any professional experience, but I don't know her background.

And with a responsible adult there, it doesn't delve into suicide pacts, so I see no downside to it for students who can get therapy.

You mean who can not get therapy.
And you're right, IF there is a teacher there acting as a therapist, this is a complex issue.

It's similar to the issue of whether people not trained in medicine should be allowed to act as doctors and give medical advice to people who could not afford to go to a doctor.
SOME people can give good medical advice without credentials. And THIS teacher may be good at it, but for every one who is good at it without professional experience, there may be many who are bad at it and do more harm.
You can't look at this as a case-by-case, you have to look at it in a social sense and see if it's doing more harm than good.

I don't think you meant it that way, but you just implied that people who've been raped etc. aren't 'normal', which really isn't helpful if you want them to heal. It's language that further isolates them, and THAT is truly counterproductive.

If somebody is suffering from PTSD that prevents normal function in society, that person is not normal. It has nothing to do with having been raped or not, but the response to it (or another trauma).

It's not 'the blind leading the blind'. Clubs have advisers.

And it's Russian roulette. Sometimes the adviser may be competent despite lack of professional training. Sometimes not, and the adviser may do more harm.
This is why it is illegal to practice medicine without a license, which is very nearly what this teacher is doing.

I agree with you, confronting (gradually) things like this is a good strategy. Maybe we're defining sensitive differently.

The way you're using all of these words is very different from how they're being used in the media and the SJW left.

Read the Wikipedia article on it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe-space

Is this what you're talking about?
Because that should not be allowed in a public school. Any student should be free to come, join, and speak his or her mind. That doesn't mean throwing insults and disrupting, but it means tolerance for free speech. "Safe spaces" are fundamentally opposed to free speech when that speech disagrees with the group dogma.

First of all, I didn't mention trigger warnings, but I think those are a good idea too. See this explanation (please read the whole article though)

That's completely unrelated.
People who pick up a book and see something about biology instead of geology aren't going to be traumatized, and it's not enabling a mental disorder. It's enabling targeted, focused, education, which has a practical purpose. An ESSENTIAL practical purpose.

NO it would not be good if the person read Don Quixote instead, because that would not further the study of Geology and his or her chosen career and focus, and it wouldn't help him or her make the world a better place through scientific achievement. If he or she wants to do that in his or her free time that's fine, but FOCUS has practical utility and is essential to science. If everybody diversified, we would make no progress at all.

See this:
http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/

Anybody who suggests that a geologist, or a physicist, or any STEM student would benefit the world more by being unable to find the material in the field he or she is studying and getting distracted by Don Quixote instead needs to be lined up and shot. Likewise, anybody who equates that to enabling a mental disorder probably needs to be lined up right beside them. These things are completely different.

I can not emphasize enough how these extremist SJWs you cite are morons, they don't understand the first thing about how science works and the purpose of focused study, to put it simply they are a force of ignorance and evil in the world undermining legitimate science and human knowledge with ridiculous intersectional ideas.

They say that “Confronting triggers, not avoiding them, is the best way to overcome PTSD”. They point out that “exposure therapy” is the best treatment for trauma survivors, including rape victims. And that this involves reliving the trauma and exposing yourself to traumatic stimuli, exactly what trigger warnings are intended to prevent. All this is true. But I feel like they are missing a very important point.

YOU DO NOT GIVE PSYCHOTHERAPY TO PEOPLE WITHOUT THEIR CONSENT.

It's not giving psychotherapy, it's refusing to go out of your way to enable people and make their conditions worse. That's completely different.
If you're adding a "trigger warning" then it's YOU who is practicing psychotherapy by trying to reduce the exposure, and it's malpractice. Psychotherapists will already advise a person to avoid or moderate exposure to normal society as necessary. Nobody who can't handle society is out in society by their therapists' orders.

If somebody needs therapy and can't afford it, we need to help him or her with government programs to seek real therapists.

When you're asking somebody to DO something, like ADD a "trigger warning" to anything and everything normal in society that might upset somebody, you're assertively enabling the disorder. YOU are doing harm by acting in that way.

And "consent"??
Since when did you become a deontologist?
Since when does consent matter when helping people?
Is it now wrong in your mind to prohibit sale of oversized soft drinks because obese people didn't explicitly consent to you limiting their consumption and saving their lives?

The primacy of consent is a myth of social justice deontologists. It's not a critical factor in real ethics when you're helping people who can't or won't help themselves. That's why we have systems to commit people to care in psychiatric institutions.
If you're waiting until they're suicidal to stop enabling them, then you're doing it wrong.

Finding an arachnophobic person, and throwing a bucket full of tarantulas at them while shouting “I’M HELPING! I’M HELPING!” works less well.

And this seems to be the arachnophobe’s equivalent of the PTSD “advice” in the Pacific Standard. There are two problems with its approach. The first is that it avoids the carefully controlled, anxiety-minimizing setup of psychotherapy.

That's complete bullshit and you should know that very well. I don't know why you cited this terrible article.

The equivalent to a rape victim would be like gang raping her for therapy. Having a bucket of tarantulas thrown on a person is worse than the initial trauma that caused the fear, of course it will make it worse. NORMAL exposure to spiders is not that.

That's not remotely what a lack of trigger warnings are.
The classroom IS safe, there is no rape or harm going on there. There is no physical violence at all. But being exposed to the ideas in a safe environment is what a classroom is, that's not having a bucket of tarantulas thrown on you.

These people are insane and evil.
If you want to side with them, by all means go against all credible consensus in psychotherapy, go against free speech, go against science and consequential ethics. That's the wrong choice, though; doing so is siding with evil and irrational dogma.
Look instead at the real consequences, not the deontological ideology of "consent".

But at the end of a really long and exasperating day when I’m at my wit’s end and just want to relax, I don’t want you chasing me with a sword and making me run for my life, and I don’t want you forcing traumatic material at me.

That's not what "trigger warnings" are.
At the end of the day when you go home, you can turn off the TV, you can close the computer, and you can relax. Nobody is coming into your home to talk to you about rape or whatever.

If you can't stand mention or discussion of rape or violence, you can stay home from school or quit. You're only going to make yourself worse, though, if you have serious disorder.
Your sensitivities do not entitle you to impose on and limit the free speech of others and inhibit the function of learning in academic institutions.

Please do not try to increase the background level of triggers in the hopes that one of them will fortuitously collide with a PTSD sufferer in a therapeutic way.

People aren't trying to increase the background level of triggers. They're just opposed to the censorship, and watering down normal discussion and interaction by banning certain topics for fear of triggering people, which in itself is not even helpful to those people.

What the hell? Dogma? What dogma?

Any dogma. If you ban different opinions in the public sphere, the only purpose of that is to defend dogma.
It's sensible to ban disruption and physical violence, but not opinions. And merely banning disruption and physical violence is not a "safe space" as it's used.

We're talking about people who have been raped etc.. It has nothing to do with some type of political ideology.

They need therapy if they have PTSD, then they need to be gradually reintroduced to society and learn to cope with normal triggers there.

Nobody wants to talk about how they were raped in a totally public place.

There's a difference between safe spaces and anonymity.
Anonymity can be very useful. Safe spaces are not. If they're needed anywhere, that's under supervision by a trained therapist in the context of therapy with the goal of reintroducing a person to society and teaching him or her to cope with those triggers.
Trigger warnings are nothing but harmful, and impose on free speech while enabling mental disorders.