AS194: Eli Bosnick On Safe Spaces

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:30 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Atheistically Speaking. This is episode 194, and I am your host, Thomas Smith. Okay, so all kinds of interesting things going on in this episode, and what will be the next episode. I don't want to color it, so I'm going to just let it go forward. I'll tell you a little something afterward. Furthermore, for all my patrons, the full, full interview is going up right now. It should already be up on Patreon as you hear this, so you don't have to wait, but unfortunately for others, because Eli has a propensity to talk, she might have found out or already known, this is two episodes. It's just too long for one episode, but I'll make the full thing available on patreon.com.

0:01:17 Thomas: So, slash atheist, by the way, patreon.com/atheist. Alright, let's get to it.

0:01:31 Thomas: Joining me right now is someone I've wanted to have on the show for a very long time, I'm Eli Bosnick. How are you doing, sir?

0:01:37 Eli: Good, I'm good. Thanks so much for having me, Thomas.

0:01:39 Thomas: Thanks so much for pausing your incredible ability to go off on any topic for any amount of time so that I could try to introduce the show.

0:01:46 Eli: Yeah. Poor Thomas, just been trying to introduce the show for 10 minutes while I've been like, and then the other Jared Fogel, hey Carla, is just like, I'm gonna say hi. So people, oh.

0:01:58 Thomas: I actually just called you on Skype and as it picked up, it was just, like you were just in the middle of it.

0:02:04 Eli: I was talking before. I've never stopped talking, yeah, I'm

0:02:05 Thomas: Yeah. Right when he turns on his computer, or he starts launching into a diatribe, just hoping someone's going to Skype him or something.

0:02:13 Eli: The Incredible Hulk of talking. I'm always talking.

0:02:15 Thomas: It's true. It's truth. And that's really, I mean, I've told Noah the other day that I wanted to have you guys on for GAM to ask you some questions about that. But then this whole thing came up. So I think I'll, maybe I'll save more of that talk for maybe I can get you guys out in the future for GAM.

0:02:33 Eli: Sure.

0:02:33 Thomas: But let it suffice to say, I'm a huge fan of yours. I think that you are, as someone someone just tweeted at me, they agreed, funnier than Robin Williams. I don't know if Noah told you. Yeah. I told him that I thought you were like Robin Williams, only funny. That was how I put it. But yeah.

0:02:43 Eli: Sure, certainly now. I'll take it. That's a great compliment.

0:02:54 Thomas: As much as I love Robin Williams I just never found him that funny. I actually liked his acting a lot better than his stand-up.

0:03:01 Eli: Oh yeah, he's incredible.

0:03:02 Thomas: But, yeah, yeah.

0:03:02 Eli: What dreams may come, one hour photo. That is some good stuff there.

0:03:06 Thomas: Yeah, Yeah. Underrated movies. But anyway, huge fan of yours. I'm a huge fan of Gam, particularly. I know you're on Scathing Atheist all the time. I love that show. I love all you guys. You guys are just a comedy podcast juggernaut and thoughtful, too. It's really good stuff what you're doing over there.

0:03:24 Eli: Well, I so appreciate that. I am in the shadow and on the shoulders of much, much smarter men and a lady than I. So I am really grateful to be a part of that group of very, very smart folks.

0:03:38 Thomas: Yeah. Let's see here. How do we get started on this? Because I really could go off about your comedic ability forever, but I'll try to cut that short now. I'll try to stop my fanboy going for just to get to this topic. So I had seen you tweet, or maybe it's Facebook, I think. I saw your Facebook post about some, you know, you wanted to debate trigger warnings, social justice, that sort of thing, freedom of speech stuff, and you weren't getting the kind of response you were wanting to get. And well, why don't you just just go ahead and tell us about that and then we can launch into it.

0:04:03 Eli: Right. Yeah, Absolutely. So I mean basically the last – maybe it's just a creation. Maybe it's my Facebook bubble obviously. But the reason why this conversation started is because I feel like there's a real lack of communication right now in the secular community and especially from secular leaders about social justice, about the left. Left. I think the left has some major problems, but I think the blowback that we see against it lately and societally is in many ways worse than the problem itself. So this is something that I wanted to have a conversation with. And I reached out to a few individuals who are not here to defend themselves, so I'll try not to shoot across the bow at them. But I reached out to some folks to have them engage. And luckily you reached out and some other folks have reached out. But surprisingly, the folks who seem the firmest against social justice and safe spaces and trigger warnings have demonstrated not to know what those words mean. And again, I'm not naming names here. I'll name

0:04:46 Thomas: Well, I'm going

0:05:17 Eli: A couple of...

0:05:17 Thomas: To name names. Actually, there is someone I'm gonna call out because of something that happened. Did you ever interact with Gad Saad or whatever? Did you try to involve him at all?

0:05:27 Eli: So one of the fans of GAM, Sam, uh, Ben Young reached out to him via Twitter and said, Hey, would you be interested in having a conversation? And then he said, no. And we said, okay, he's not interested. And then later he tweeted, well, maybe, but I need to know who I'm talking to. And then I guess it was communicated. And then it turned out that he wasn't interested. Um, so definitely no, the, the answer ended up being no. And I felt like, and again, I was not part of this interaction. This was someone else's interaction. So I don't know this guy. I've listened to his work. We obviously disagree on some stuff. I would go so far as to say, I think he misunderstands a lot of the terminology that he talks about.

0:06:15 Eli: AndI would question what it is that he stands for on certain elements that he disagrees with. But I know that he ended up not wanting to have a conversation. I know that the most vocal proponents of the sort of anti-SJW movement have been the least communicative, the least willing to engage in conversation. So, yeah.

0:06:37 Thomas: This is a perfect time and sorry, I'm gong to hijack this a tiny bit because I've been meaning to tell this story on my show. I'll try to be quick about it. Sorry that you're having to sit in, but involving Gad Gadsad or whatever, I think this is a good example of what you're saying. I think it might back you up. And it might be why I'm kind of pretty 50-50 on this issue right now. You know, I think we definitely can debate about some stuff. I'm sure we'll have stuff we disagree on, but I'm pretty 50 50. And a lot of it has to do with Gad because I've been following him on Twitter for a while. And just because I saw people retweeting him from time to time and, you know, know, he was saying some interesting stuff. And there's this, I think you might be right about the backlash you're talking about against SJW, because a lot of what he does is just make jokes about it that aren't particularly funny and kind of misunderstand the point, if you know what I mean.

0:07:30 Thomas: And so there was, so what happened was some woman for Forbes, I think it was, wrote an article about, and it was just an article about a toy, sorry, it was about a Barbie commercial and how how the bar, it was the first Barbie commercial to feature a boy. So it was like, oh, it was, she was just writing, hey, this is kind of cool that maybe boys will not be so embarrassed to be interested in Barbies because this, you know, this commercial. So he tweets at her like totally unsolicited, by the way, and just tweets, hey here's my movie disprover, sorry, here's a YouTube movie. Here's my YouTube video disproving or showing the science but why your article is wrong, like there's, and then she's like, no thanks, she literally just said no thanks to him and Then he goes off, he starts saying, oh yeah, when someone presents you with science and reason about why you're wrong, that's the best thing to do is just tell him, you know, just shut him out and all that. And then she's like, I don't know who you are, I don't know what's going on. No.

0:08:32 Eli: I don't know who you are. Leave me alone.

0:08:34 Thomas: It basically was it and then and then he even said, oh, well, I'm an expert in the field and And I, what are the facts of your article? And she's like, what are you talking about? My article getting something wrong. I wrote about an ad for Barbie. And then he's like, you can easily Google me. And she is like, okay, so if someone bothers me with a video, it's on me to Google who they are. And then, like, you know, and he was going nuts about this. So I tweeted at Gad. I had never interacted with him. But it was just really bothering me that he was doing something.

It's one thing if you're in a debate with someone or whatever, but when you're just trying to post your video on them, like, just here, take this, watch that, and then you go off on her for like several tweets. He would not stop, let it go. I just tweeted, like, dude, just, you got to get over it. She just said no thanks, she literally just did not, was not interested.

And then he didn't say anything, you know, he didn'Tweet back or whatever, and so and then he had a couple more tweets hammering on about it, I wasn't sure if he saw my first one. So I tweeted at him again, this time a little harsher.

0:08:36 Eli: Right, right, right.

0:09:36 Thomas: I'm still not, you know, I wasn't getting, you know, mean or anything, but I was like, you still haven't gotten over this. Like, I think you're being unreasonable. You really, you should look at this. And then he apparently saw the tweet and he said, I can decide when I'm done with this and all this stuff. And then without me even getting to tweet back at him, he's like, and you're a, what did he say? Like a troublemaker. So I'm going to, this is the next thing I'm going to do. I'm gonna block you. You. Like he said it in that weird language of like macho kind of thing. And I thought he was just being like, just threatening it. I didn't even think he was going to block me because it's literally the exact thing he was complaining about her doing because she blocked him and he went off about, oh, they never want to actually have a conversation, blah, blah. And so I went to tweet back at him and I was like, wow, that is, that people really don't care about being hypocrites like they yeah unreal, yeah.

0:10:28 Eli: And that's a huge issue. And that story actually speaks really to what a lot of the issue is, which is that people want to straw man the argument they disagree with and there's – and that is – and then they don't want to engage with it. And again, without naming names or calling anyone out, I have very, very publicly offered to have conversations with vocal members of the secular community about these subjects because of who they choose to attack, because they choose to attack children. They post videos of children that dox children. A crying 19-year-old girl does not properly represent the ideas of privilege or the ideas of microaggressions. If you don't want to have that conversation as a secular leader – listen, I certainly don't call myself a leader, but I do call myself responsible for the things I say, which means that anything I say here or anything I say anywhere else that where I record it and I know it's recorded. I'm not talking, you don't get to come into my bathroom and listen to the swear words I say when I've eaten too much Chipotle.

0:10:35 Thomas: Yeah when we're when the recording's not on, Eli is just all n-words and just uh, it's it's horror, yeah it's

0:11:36 Eli: Yeah, that's all. I just, it's a stream. It's a steam of racial and transphobia. There's a lot of transphobia. It's weird. When I bump my toe, I'm just like, Oh, Bruce Jenner, it's Bruce Jenner. It's weird. She's not a real hero. I don't know why I do it.

0:11:49 Thomas: Yeah yeah it's weird, but when the recordings on, he just boop, snap, focus he's, he's back

0:11:50 Eli: Um, but when, when I record, I am responsible for of the things that I say. And, and, and there's a lot, and you know, I'll use an example, which is in the Yale, the recent controversy at Yale has been so misconstrued by the secular community. And in the, the example I want to use is Maajid Nawaz, because Maajid's a big boy, um, who I've interacted with very, very mildly. And you know Maajid characterized her in his, when he shared that video, which is incredibly out of context, uh, as a safe spacer bully, you know? And that that is, it's

0:12:22 Thomas: Okay is this the shrieking girl one or is this, am I getting him confused

0:12:25 Eli: A shrieking girl. Yeah. This is a crying 19 year old girl. It could not be less of a bully. A 19 yearold crying girl is like, it'S like, Hey, I need an example of a thing. That's not a bully and a crying, like hype, hype, hypo, uh, hyperventilating 19 year Old girl is not the example, but that's, well,

0:12:26 Thomas: Oh okay okay I don't know, I mean I kind of, this is where we might as well get into it now, I guess, because I, that's one thing I might disagree with you on because I think what she represents is exactly what you're talking about, which was shouting and shouting and not wanting to even let the person respond, even if, if she's right, like I, okay, give us the full story.

0:13:00 Eli: Here's the, here'S the full story. And I think the full story puts into, and listen, she's not right. She's not not right. She's 19. And I've said this before and I'll say it again, but if I go to Bob Jones University and I just start knocking it out of the park with the best counter apologetics I know until some kids like, "Well, Christ is my savior." And then I put that online and I'm like, "This is what Christians think." Everyone's going to be like, "Cut it the fuck out. You bully pick on someone your own size." No one would be like, "Good job." Right? No, no. Everyone would be like, "Why don't you talk to a professor or someone who can stay calm?" Cause I can make people cry. I was a high school bully. I'm great at that.

0:13:39 Eli: That's how I started out is in the making people cry category of life. And so I think the full story of Yale is important because it's just not known. So the important thing to understand with Yale is context. And we can talk about this girl's behavior. We really can because she's 19. She's not 21. She can't have a beer. She's not representative of a set of ideas. But what we need to understand is the year before this incident president at Yale or the year before that, it depends on who you ask. And there's a little bit of controversy about it. So I do like to put that out there as a caveat. The year before, one of the fraternities at Halloween had a Katrina themed Halloween party where they put out a sheet that had let's finish what Katrina started written on it. And everyone wore blackface to the party and they drank forties and they ate watermelon and

0:13:38 Thomas: Oh, you were the one. Okay.

0:14:25 Thomas: Wow.

0:14:25 Eli: They took a bunch of pictures. They put them online and it was this horrible, horrible thing. Uh, and students who came to confront them and to have a conversation about it at the time were turned away at the door and told no blacks allowed. No blacks allowed and because Yale is such an understanding university and so committed to free speech, those students were not expelled. They were given a warning and they were told – and then this year, the IRHC, which it's very important to remember, is a student organization. This was students speaking to students, sent out an email saying, hey, folks, Halloween is on its way. Please be aware of what you're dressing like. They didn't say don't wear blackface. They did not say don't wear black face. They said maybe think about wearing black. Should you wear black?

0:14:25 Thomas: Really?

0:15:10 Eli: What do you think that it was a question? Do you just be aware how your costumes and choices will affect others? Everyone have a safe Halloween. And this professor, who is head of a dorm, this is not a classroom, he's not writing this to a class, he is writing it to his dorm, and he writes it in the email and to the email account that is meant for, hey, it's Pizza Tuesday, right? That's what the email he's using for here. He writes an unreplyable email, which people can go online and look at, which is very much, I don't know, aren't we old enough to make our own decisions? I'm very disappointed that we would feel we need to tell adults how to dress and act. If you see something you don't like, just have a conversation or look away. So it's very trollish, and it's a student-to-student conversation, which he wanted to throw his two cents into.

0:15:58 Eli: He then makes that unreplyable. He cancels his office hours. He refuses to speak to students who come to him when they wait outside his classroom. He refuses to speak about it inside his classroom to students that raise questions. And according to some student reports, he then runs away after the class. So the video you see is him having run across campus at one point apparently having his fingers in his ears like la la la I'm not listening until they surround him.

So you've got to imagine this 19-year-old girl, she's gone to see him outside the classroom about what he said. In every conceivable sense, it was an inappropriate thing to write in an unreplyable email in a place where it wasn't time for intellectual discussion and debate. Uh, and he says this, she goes to have a conversation, he doesn't have it. He walks out of the room. They're literally having to chase him down. Professor, professor, professor. Finally they do, and she, she's panicked because this professor is now not, is giving her the silent treatment, and she says, why would you write something like that? And he just goes, well, I just disagree with you. So she starts screaming and crying and screaming, but all we get is the screaming and crying and screaming video.

And then, and that's representative of a generation, you know, which is interesting because we're not, and here's the thing, Maajid didn't say, you know, Katrina themed Halloween party. You know, we didn't see retweets from Richard Dawkins, the yard dog who gives me an anxiety attack every time he tweets, but you know we didn't see a tweet from him about, you know, how problematic a professor wanting to have a one way conversation with a dorm full of children on its Pizza Tuesday email chain is, we saw this is what the SJWs are.

0:17:40 Eli: And that's really misrepresenting the argument. And it's not the best. It's not fair. I wouldn't represent the other side of the argument with the worst side. I wouldn't take a Trump supporter's Facebook and be like, this is the people who are against, you know, speakers rights or what, and these are the, this is why, you people who stand outside of abortion clinics represent free speech. It would be unfair for me to say, you know, and everyone would say I was being intellectually indefensible by saying it. So when we have the context of that girl screaming video, no one's agreeing she should have screamed. Nobody. And I'm not, and I wish that girl had stayed calm. I wish she'd been able to state her points. But she's a kid. She's a kid.

0:18:22 Thomas: Well, yeah, I, I'm glad you put that all in context. And I want to say that I think that probably 100% of any disagreement I might have is based on those facts is the fact that I think either you're incorrect in your facts or you're 100% right that people misrepresented everything that was happening, because I heard almost none of what you just said discussed by other people. Like, I heard, yeah.

0:18:49 Eli: Yeah, exactly. And it's just, the story just doesn't get told. The story, in order to get the story told, you can't look at a Raw Story article. You can't looks at a Patheos article. And it's, it's because of the bubble and it's just not being represented correctly.

0:18:52 Thomas: Yeah, well, yeah, because I find it really, really hard to believe that whole Katrina thing. That sounds horrifying. I I definitely, I'm going to have to say that I would want to research that independently because the thing, the version I heard, which I think if you're right and, and, you know, it sounds like you've done a lot of the research required. So I do trust you, but I just want to say with a caveat that I would want to make sure like, oh, it's not just that I'm getting one bias source and you're getting a source bias the other way.

0:19:27 Eli: Yeah, absolutely. And listen, if I'm on the wrong source, if I've gotten the wrong bias source on this, I'm wrong. If, if this, if you know, if all that happened, if there's no history here and all that happens was the IRHC and then a trollish email, this girl's overreaction is definitely more considerable. But even if we take the most anti-SJW version of this story, and I think that's important, let's take a version where the IRHC, apropos of nothing, just decided, "Hey, we want to tell everyone, be careful what you wear on Halloween because it might offend some people." Apropos of nothing, right? Because red face offends people and black face offens people and it's happened in the world. We know that. So maybe we can say that factually is true. And maybe the IRHC was just deciding to respond to that.

If all that happened was the students wrote an email to their fellow students and a professor chose to respond in a manner that was unrepliable to his students and then had to be cornered in a public square, had to been encircled by students in a pubic square in order for a conversation to take place,

0:19:45 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:20:42 Eli: The very minimum that we can say is that is a crying 19-year-old girl. She doesn't represent a movement. She doesn't represent an intellectual ideology. So to address her as the face of social justice is unfair. And we can say that there is a time and place for those ideas to be discussed. It was not the classroom and the personal emails of Yale freshmen in their dorm the day before Halloween when they are trying to have a conversation amongst themselves about suggestions for sensitivity to others' feelings. And this is the far right version. We're not counting the Katrina party. We're nicht sagen das Part von ihm, das Kanzler seine Arbeitszeiten, weil das ist auch meine Ausgabe.

0:21:28 Eli: Also, lasst uns sagen, dass all das nicht wahr ist. And I'm so willing to be wrong. I'm so, so willing to be wrong. And if I am, and you look it up and I am and you're listening to this, I apologize. These are the sources I get after doing a little more digging into what I read from secular leaders. You know, these are these are just two clicks down. These are what I found out.

0:21:44 Thomas: Yeah. So if someone wants to go three clicks down, we're fucked. They're just going to.

0:21:49 Eli: But I'm right. Exactly. You go three clicks down, you find out I'm wrong. I'm wrong and I'm and I'm sorry. Not only am I wrong, but I'm sorry.

0:21:56 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Well, I really appreciate that approach, by the way, because I do really believe that you are a stand-up guy who is more loyal to facts than to dogma, I think. And I think that's important because not everybody is. Like I said about Gad Saad, I mean, you're not wanting to call people out, but I'm happy to call him out because he blocked me like an asshole for barely disagreeing with him, I think.

0:22:20 Thomas: He's Not loyal to facts, I think. He's loyal to his, um, you know, what he, he wants his image and his cause to be. And anyone who disagrees with it, he blocks. And anyone who praises him and calls him like flattering nicknames, he like promotes them. And it's just not, it's an echo chamber, but Anyway, sorry, I interrupted.

0:22:20 Eli: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It becomes an an echo chamber. And the problem is, you know, and we can look at that. So we can say, look, let's take the harshest version of the story onto this girl, right? Where she, where this professor writes this admittedly trollish email. Nobody thinks it's not trollish to, to have a student, hey kids, don't be racist.

0:22:51 Thomas: Well, And Did His Wife write something? Wasn't

0:22:54 Eli: He's, he's white. So they wrote it together. They wrote it as a team, but then he's the one who had the conversation. And The Problem is the doors. And I think this is factual enough to say the doors have been shut. There's no further conversation taken place from them because after that interaction with students, they stopped having all interaction. They didn't talk to press. They didn't talk to anybody. The university took over and the university has led all communication from there out. But we, so they wrote it together. She wrote it and then he's the one who had the conversation. She and him wrote it altogether. And then he'S the one WHO had the conversion on the campus.

Even if we, again, we take the far, we can take the absolute end of the spectrum on this, which is just an email was written that we can all admit was insensitive, you know, cause if I write it and again, I, you know, I hate to use examples, but if I go to Bob Jones university and I'm a dorm administrator there and there's a, you know, a student dies and they say, you know, bless his soul.

He's up with Jesus now in the bouncy castle in the sky. And I write an email saying, just want to take a moment to remind you all, there's no evidence that God exists. He's probably just dead in the ground and and rotten, and eaten full of worms, and if he lied once in his life, and you have the wrong Jesus, he's burning in fire forever.

0:22:54 Thomas: That part of It? Hmm.

0:23:19 Thomas: So

0:24:10 Eli: Every secularist, no secularist who is currently defending this professor would go, good job, Eli. You said it right. Nobody, nobody, everyone would be like, cut it out. Come on, Eli, you make us look like dicks, right? And so this is the question. And so when we take the term that Maajid used, right, even in the opposite end of the spectrum of this story. And again, I'm willing to say, I'll take it right now and grant my side of the story is wrong. And, again, please research and find out. These are what I looked into and this is what I found. And I hope I clarified where things were conjecture enough. You know, things like, oh, was it last year? Was it the year before where the students actually turned away at the door? Because that's student report. And they could have just made that up. And if it turns out to be false, I don't want to be a guy who spouts those factually. And we have a video of one thing. But even if it's just a screaming girl, she's not a safe spacer and she's really not a bully.

0:25:01 Eli: She's crying and she's upset. And it's, and when it comes to the secular community, my question for us is what do we stand for? Do we, do we, stand for picking on crying 19 year old girls or those who we take on? Cause it's the year of Donald Trump. And you know, a Maajid indicates in that, and I don't mind calling my G now cause he's public. He's well-spoken. He He obviously could – Maajid is not someone who wouldn't be willing to have this conversation with me. So when he calls her a safe spacer, what he indicates is he doesn't know what safe spaces are. And most – she's not a safe spacers.

0:25:33 Thomas: Why Are you saying she's Not a safe spacer? Maybe I Missed That? Yeah.

0:25:37 Eli: So a little clarity on safe spaces because this is a term I hear used all the time and it just doesn't – people have seen the South Park episode and that's what they know about it. But it's just – it's not true. So safe spaces Are created by glue. They're created by an LGBT group and – which has since been absorbed by sort of scholastic LGBT in general and they are meant for – the 90 to – almost 80 to 90% of them are in LGBT centers in campuses. And they are ment for largely – and obviously there are some other ones as well and we can talk about what the other ones are for. They are largely meant for queer LGBTQ students to come and speak in a safe place where no one disagrees with them. And I don't think anyone thinks they shouldn't have that.

0:26:26 Eli: I don't think there should be any place where someone can't go and say, my gender identity is changing. I don't have a gender identity. My sexuality is changing and a place where we've said we have designated as an area where you can't go, well, you know, I think you're just going to tuck it between your legs. You don't look like no lady to me. And I mean, that's what they were created for. That's what LGBT safe spaces are for. So when we mischaracterize, when we strawman a safe space as this idea of students running out of a classroom because they see a Confederate flag or students running Out of a Classroom because someone wants to say the Pledge of Allegiance and then going to blow bubbles in in a safe space, that's not what 80 to 90% of them are for. And for the other percentage, at least the safe spaces I've been introduced to and the safe places I've read about and heard about, they are not being used to avoid hard ideas.

0:27:21 Eli: And the other thing that's very important is nobody, to my knowledge, and listen, if this ever happens, I will be entirely on the professor's side. Nobody has ever suggested, demanded that a professor make their classroom a safe space. Professors have chosen to make classrooms safe spaces, but nobody has ever said classrooms should be safe spaces. Universities are not classrooms. And the interchange of ideas is, and we all know this, this is common knowledge to us. If we disagree on this podcast and I show up on your door 20 minutes later and I'm like, hey man, I was thinking about that thing you said about how my sources might not be right. And you'd be like, hey, man, I'm home. You have to, I will meet you at a Starbucks. Do not, why are you here?

0:28:05 Thomas: Yeah.

0:28:05 Eli: You Know, there is a time and place for an interchange of ideas. And as yet, and again, please prove me wrong on this. I will stand by anyone. There has not been a student who has said, classrooms need to be a safe space. Classrooms need to me a place where I can't be disagreed with, you know? But if you ask me if I have a hard day at class where I'm learning about, you don't, for example, where I have a hard day at class where I'm reading Nietzsche that God is dead or if I have hard day class where I'm studying, you know, a scumbag like Christine Summers who says you didn't get raped unless you would, you know, unless someone had a knife to your throat. And of course, I'm hyperbolizing her language there. But you know, you read some summers and you need a place to talk about your emotions about that subject because you're a sexual assault survivor. Then I think that's something that we all agree needs to exist, especially in a university, especially an environment where you can be challenged so that you can be challenged healthily.

0:28:05 Thomas: So

0:28:59 Eli: And the straw man that schools used to be a haunted house of rape apologetics and racism is just not true. It's always been white guys going, oh yes, have you ever thought about Aristotle? I mean, universities have been the haven for years and years and years of, of safely absorbing the hardest ideas that humankind has to offer. And just now we see this backlash against social justice as though this was not the case and should not be the case, as though there's some alternate idea of a way to exchange ideas, which does not involve people ever getting a reprieve from it.

0:29:41 Thomas: I, I think that there has been a lot of, um, confusing the terms, because I definitely didn't know, I mean, when I hear safe space, I, I, well, I don't know, I guess I just never had a clarified definition of it. I Certainly wouldn't Oppose Something Yeah.

0:29:55 Eli: Right. And most people don't like, but

0:29:57 Thomas: I wouldn't Oppose A Yeah.

0:29:57 Eli: That's what a safe space is.

0:29:59 Thomas: I wouldn't oppose that, obviously, I mean, like You said, um, That seems pretty trivial deal. But what I'm thinking of is, did you see the Salon article? And it's kind of weird that they published this because it seems like they're usually on the other side of it. But there was a Salon article that made the rounds because probably, like you say, the echo chamber of wanting to post anti-trigger warning stuff. And it is from a professor who was trying to teach a course on sex in film, representations in film. And so this teacher said they were very pro trigger warning and did their best to provide trigger warnings throughout the class and still had people in tears storming out of the classroom. Now, this could again be one of those things where they're just bullshitting or something. But did you see that one at all? Did you see that article?

0:30:01 Eli: Yeah. I didn't see the article, but let's take them at their word. Those are people in tears storming out of the classroom who need to process, you know, they, who do we, they're not presenting an idea. You know, when you tell me, and listen, there's lots of silly, and I do not want to come across as having giving the last a past. Regressive leftists do exist and they're deeply harmful. Glenn Greenwald is trying to convince someone to kill Sam Harris. And we should talk about that. And we can't mince words about that. And Sam's talked about it very briefly, but it's something that we as secularists need to know is that when Glenn Greenwald and Reza Aslan and a few other folks who don't deserve to have their names said out loud say things when they misrepresent Sam's ideas in the way that they do, they increase the likelihood that someone will believe them and hurt him.

0:31:40 Thomas: Yeah.

0:31:40 Eli: The left bears the brunt of that. Multiculturalism is a defunct wall of philosophical game playing, which we are all aware holds no relativity to modernism and is an abused construct. When you have TED speakers, and I've said this before, but when you have Ted speakers coming out and saying, well, I'm not sure that we can judge female genital mutilation, conversation, you know, this, we have a huge brunt to bear, but if the conversation is about kids in a college classroom, cause they're kids. If you're in a College classroom, you're a kid and you're not a fully grown adult and you are not having the conversation at the level that we are yet. And if the answer is they're walking out of the classroom crying, it's cause they've got growing up to do it's because they've gotten maturing to do, but they're not

0:32:28 Thomas: Well, I don't, okay, but I gotta, I gotta say, I'm not sure that's how it's looked at, because right now, where the conversation is taking place, where all this, like, hypothetical, you know, quote-unquote battleground is, is in universities, and they're always going to be that age. So, I think it matters. I mean, people are certainly taking their voices seriously. It's not as though everything they're saying is, oh, they'll grow out of it. I means, we're taking them seriously when they march on racial issues, on different, you know, like, I don't know that you can just dismiss it as they're too young. Otherwise, you would have to just ignore everything they're saying. I think, well,

0:32:29 Eli: Sure.

0:33:05 Eli: Well, I'm not dismissing everything, but I'm saying that when people have emotional reactions to things, because the difference is, yes, our colleges can be bastions of great thought and they can be bastions of great fantastic dialogue. But if you tell me that a college student is walking out of a classroom weeping, which this article seems to indicate, that to me is not representative of an ideology. You know, if you were telling me that those students are, yeah, yeah.

0:33:30 Thomas: Let me just read you this real quick. I'll read you a Brief thing. So, there's some movie that he showed, I'm trying not to have to read all of it here, but there's some disturbing scenes, I think involving a younger black man who, it's what happened. It says, "Later that day, I had a white female student come to my office hours crying. Between picking up tissues and blowing her nose, she said, 'I'm doing a minor in African-American studies. How could your first images of black people be that horrible?' I told her that I understood her concerns. I went on to explain how the class was a historical look at sex on screen and, as the reading for the class articulated, it was one of the first films to show black people having" you know what? There's, I just realized "films" has an apostrophe before the S, so I now no longer take this source seriously, and I'm going to just delete it off my computer.

0:34:21 Thomas: Wow. Salon, huh? How about that? First films with an apostrophy to show, how did I miss that the first? To show black People Having Sex, and it was important to film history. She still didn't get it. She said, I had to show some positive images, otherwise it was unfair and that the other students weren't African-American studies minors, so they didn't understand race politics as she did. I told her that we would bring a positive image to the next class to address her concerns. So, basically, the end result of the article, I just wanted to read that. So this person tries to accommodate and then it ends up still not being enough and no one's happy about it. And that's the kind of thing that I think I have a reaction to. And I also want to talk about trigger warnings in general, in classrooms, because that's something that I guess Yes, I associated that with a safe space thing, but you're saying that safe space has nothing to do with classrooms, so I'll go with your definition.

0:35:11 Eli: No one is called, no one who knows what that term, because those words have meaning. No one who knows the definition of safe space. If someone is saying a safe space, a classroom should be a safe place without it first being very clear by a professor that today the classroom is a safe base. If they're just like classrooms should be safe spaces, they are wrong. They do not know the definition of that word. That's not what that word is for, right?

0:35:33 Thomas: Okay, fair, fair enough. I agree with that. So, but how do you feel about trigger warnings in general? Because that's something that I go back and forth on, but at times, just maybe to put the other side of the argument to see what you think, I worry that too much of today is about externalizing everything, is about finding ways that other people can make your your life easier. Because when I think of a classroom, there are certain things that are going to trigger me. Obviously, I'm white, so you just don't really get to say that. It's like everything's supposed to be fine. But there are certainly things that would trigger me to talk about. I look at a classroom as it's not their responsibility to pick out all the things that are going to figure somebody. There could be a billion different things that trigger a billion different people.

0:36:20 Thomas: That's not the responsibility. If they want to say, okay, this film is going to to be graphic or whatever. I mean, I guess that's fine, but I don't really think that's a trigger warning because that's always existed. When I went to college long before trigger warning talk started, we'd get, you know, I had an English class where we watched some violent films and she'd say, okay, today's, you knows, films contain violence or whatever and that's no big deal. If that's all we're talking about, I don't have a problem with it, but I don't think that is all we're taking about, otherwise it wouldn't have morphed into the massive trigger warning thing it is today.

0:36:50 Eli: Sure, absolutely.

0:36:51 Thomas: So, yeah.

0:36:51 Eli: And by the way, for anyone who's looking for the citation to the black girls only at the party thing, this is a The Root article, which was posted by Stephen A. Crockett Jr. And it was posted on November 3rd of 2015. It's on The Roots. It's available. And the title is black Yale student turned away from frat party told white girls only.

0:37:10 Thomas: Well, I saw that. What I hadn't seen was the Katrina thing. So I saw the thing that was a black girl said she got turned away from a frat party. Seems weird. It's not something I can imagine. Now, again, obviously it totally, it's her word. We can believe it. We We cannot, it seems weird to me that it doesn't seem like that would be a, you know, a frat position, official fraternity position that would happen because based on my experience with fraternities, but I understand they're in a different area and that maybe there is more racism going on. It just seems weird. To me that that would happened. And it sounded from the article that other people didn't, couldn't really corroborate it, but yeah.

0:37:21 Eli: Right. Right, absolutely. And again, it's, that's why I said, and I want to clarify again, these are hearsay things, you know, the Katrina theme thing is a hearsay thing. The, nope,

0:38:00 Thomas: Yeah. That's the thing I never heard of. I know. And, and I'm not saying it didn't happen. But I'm saying I'd be, I, I'm very curious that that conversation wasn't had more is all I'm trying to say. Like, I I'm amazed that I didn't see that represented anywhere. Cause that's horribly offensive. That that's Something that I w you know, I don't even, I wouldn't never say like, oh free speech, do whatever, do it. No, no, that that's horrible. That shouldn't happen.

0:38:10 Eli: Absolutely. Sure. Oh absolutely. Right. And just the sourcing on that, the, uh, let's finish what Katrina started is based on a poster, uh that was put up on a bed sheet that was put up at Bama when in their game against LSU. Uh, and apparently that was a replicated at the Katrina themed party at Yale. So that's, so if you Google let's finish what Katrina started. You can see the, the, uh, the bed sheet that was hung up at Bama. Uh, and that was this year, the bedsheet that was hang up that said, let's finished what Katrina started because they're facing LSU. So they're chasing Louisiana, which is why they're going to, they're going to kill Louisiana like Katrina did. And that was at Bama, uh. Apparently that was replicated at the Katrina themed party, which allegedly happened at Yale again. So that's, that's the sourcing

0:38:22 Thomas: Yeah. Hmm. Wow. Right, right, right. Okay. Yeah. If

0:39:06 Eli: For it. So if anyone's interested, sure.

0:39:06 Thomas: That did happen, I think that that fully motivates what you've been saying a lot more. I mean, that backstory definitely lends a whole different view to it. But let's talk about trigger warnings generally.

0:39:17 Eli: So when it comes to trigger warnings, sorry, I jumped away when it goes to trigger warnings. So the history of trigger warnings is, is really important. And you're right in many ways that you can't have a trigger warning for everybody and everything, but it's important that we know what trigger, what purpose trigger warnings have served and continue to serve. So the birth of trigger warnings is in law classrooms. The birth trigger warnings is in law classrooms, and they're in the 80s. Because up until the 80's, we didn't teach rape law. You taught regular law, and rape law was just a part of it, right? Someone stole your bike, and someone raped you. That's law. And if they did it, they were guilty. If they were not guilty, they didn't do it.

But obviously, since then, we have realized that this is a more complicated issue, and it's especially hard to talk about what are known as edge cases when it comes to rape law, which are he said, she said situations. And there were times in classrooms where it was incredibly hard for students to hear about edge cases to a false allegation, um, to, you know, a million different things, you need to date rape and the laws around that. What if they're both drunk?

0:39:19 Thomas: Yeah, sure. Sure. Really? If

0:40:25 Eli: Yada, yada, a whole subject of study, you look up rape edge cases or, you Know, rape trigger warnings, rape law. Any of that. You can, you can find out a million, words more than I could possibly tell you by much, much smarter people than I. But that's where the trigger warning begins. The trigger warning began so that students who are walking into a law classroom know that, okay, if you're a sexual assault victim, today, we're going to be talking about hypothetical he said, she says. And if you experienced a he said she said last year, you know, you shouldn't, you should be prepared for that. You should emotionally be prepared for that and, you know as Tom has said this and I think it's very smart, is that trigger warnings are like peanut allergy warnings. You know, be careful, there's peanuts in this. You know, and for most people, it doesn't matter.

0:41:11 Eli: And you can apply the same slippery slope argument. Okay, sure, some people are allergic to peanuts, but some people are allergic dairy. And some people allergic to, you know, cats. You know, do I have to start telling people when I have a cat? Do I have to start, you know, so the slippery slope side of the trigger warning argument seems to be a lot of bang bang for someone's non-existent buck.

If, for example, and again, I always want to indulge the other side because it's so easy to be like, well, let me give you my side, which is so tragic and so real. But let's indulge to the other side. If for example every piece of content in a classroom that could be offensive to someone received a trigger warning, how much would it affect my educational life?

And the answer is, as someone who currently works in universities, went to a liberal arts university, went to NY – went to New York University Got a very liberal arts education. If there had been a two-minute list of things that were offensive in any particular day in history class or any particular day in a film class I was taking that prepared students, it would not inconvenience me as much as it would – as much much as it would be a problem for the person who's walking into that classroom, who's about to be really affected by a subject. And I, I always use my own personal story to exemplify this.

Uh, and I've told this other places, so I'll try and tell a slightly shortened version of it. Um, but, uh, when I was in college, a friend of mine was, was sexually assaulted and she called me to come pick her up, uh? Cause she was still in the apartment where she'd been assaulted. And she was was currently, they were currently in the apartment trying to convince her not to press charges.

0:42:52 Eli: So I went and I was like, "Everybody needs to leave her alone. You come with me." And she came, she stayed with my dorm room. I was with her when she got her rape kit. I was with she gave her statement to the police. And it was incredibly, incredibly difficult for her, but it was also difficult for me. Now, obviously not nearly as difficult for me as it was for her. And, you know, she's a survivor now who speaks at RAIN and lives a a fantastic life. And she's an example of, of a survivor and how strong and fantastic certain survivors can be. But the next day I happened to be taking a film class and the next day I was in a film class and we were shown the clip from Unforgivable, which is Monica Belucci, which is one of the hardest, most difficult rape scenes to watch.

0:43:36 Eli: Um, it's, it'd be incredibly brutal, violent rape scene. And in the middle of it, and you know, in our, I was lucky. My professor did give a trigger. We said, guys, this is And I just sort of I was spazzing out. I wasn't thinking about it. But I watched the scene and I started to lose my shit. I started to cry and have an anxiety attack. And I was depressed. And it really, really affected me. And, you know, I didn't listen to the trigger warning. So it's not a good example of trigger warnings working. But it is an example of someone needing a heads up. And nobody, nobody I know, thinks that that moment's inconvenience for the students, it didn't affect for the the students in that classroom, assuming I had listened to that and gotten out of the room and processed those emotions in a healthier way, I don't know of anyone who was like, yeah, but you know, when that professor turned around and told everybody that there was going to be sexual assault in the video, like I had to not do anything.

0:44:25 Eli: I was just sitting there waiting, you know, and it's, that's the problem is the downside for people who are put in that position is so much more than the downside for the people, who find it slightly annoying. And at this point, I don't have triggers. You know, I have things that I need to be very careful about. You know again, I had people in my life who were survivors and so when it comes to things like sexual assault and stuff like that, the language used around me, people need to be careful not because I'm going to start weeping but because I am going to go hard in the paint and you know People have found That out the hard way. You know if you are at a dinner party and you start talking rape apologetics, you are going to get beat up verbally by me. Me. And, you know, it doesn't mean I need a trigger warning, but it does mean that there is a certain amount of preparedness that some people may be entitled to.

0:44:58 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:45:15 Thomas: Okay. That, yeah, I think that's fair enough. If All right, that's it for part one. Okay, by now, Cognitive Dissonance listeners, you will have realized that this is very, very close to the same episode you got from Cogdiss this week. My apologies for that. I was not aware until too late that Eli was doing the interview with Cogdiss. I think Eli just wanted to get his message across as far as he could. Many shows as he can. I totally respect that. However, I, I usually would try to, you know, stagger them so that they're not in the same week and maybe get a chance to listen to one so I can hit different points. That's what I try to do because, you know, we're a small community. This stuff happens. But just due to the nature of the recording and the scheduling that I wasn't able to do that.

0:45:16 Eli: Yeah.

0:46:24 Thomas: The episode wasn't out when Eli and I recorded, so I had no way to know what they discussed. But oh well, hopefully there's not too much overlap there. However, here's the upside. Side. So that was a potential downside, although hopefully it's still different enough and you got different stuff out of it if you listen to both shows. Here's the upside. Cogdiss asked me to come on and talk about it because this episode of theirs has been very controversial. I suspect that it will be as controversial on my show, maybe not quite as because we have slightly different listenership, but it was very controversial among their listeners. And so I was going to go on and talk about it. I've had some time since the recording to reflect on a lot of what Eli has said and what you're going to hear in part two.

0:47:12 Thomas: Andso I'm going to give a more informed interview on cognitive dissonance. So look for that in the next week or two, whenever that comes up on their rotation. So that's it for me. Again, if you're on Patreon, you can hear the next part right away. Way. If you're not, no big deal, but you'll have to wait until Monday. That's, that seems like a fair trade to me. So I will publish the rest of this Monday and then I'll probably do Tom and Terry on Thursday. I'd love, I would love to switch that to keep the Tom and Terry on Monday, but I think it'll just be too annoying for people to have to Wait that long for part two. So I'm going to switch it up there. So that's what's happening. Uh, and as usual, thank you so much to my patrons over on patreon.com/atheist. Got some new ones to thank. So I'd like to thank David Severson, Christian Jaeh.

0:48:00 Thomas: Sorry, I can't pronounce your last name. Christian, Chris Scarfe, Trevyn Pless, Richard Still, and Henry something, and Frosted Ambassador. That's a pretty cool name. So thank you guys so much for pledging. It sounds like a lot of people wanted to hear Eli as soon as they possibly could, which I respect. I definitely do as well. Well, so thank you so much. Now, I'll ask you kindly not to just have fake pledged just to hear Eli and then cancel. I think that would be very, very much an ill taste. But, you know, people are going to do what they're going to be doing. But I hope that's not the case. I hope maybe it was just the tiniest little inspiration you needed to finally support the show. Maybe that you kind of always wanted to anyway. We'll just hope it's that. But it's okay. I understand.

0:48:45 Thomas: All right. That's patreon.com/atheist. Thank you so mucho. Oh, got to thank my top people. That is, of course, E. Muzinu, Adrian Borschoff, Michael, Jonathan Moyet, Jay Aldenwalt, Bangs Naughty Bits, Christian, who just signed up, Peter Skelton, Brian Gerfort, Dale, Matt Garrett, Samantha. And that's it. Thank you guys so, so much. And I hope you enjoy getting the interview all in one go. So there you have it. See you next week for the thrilling conclusion and some Tom and Terry Thursday.