AS240: Social Justice Commentary

Transcript

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

0:00:29 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Atheistically Speaking. This is episode 240 and I am your host Thomas Smith. Well, anything going on with you guys? Nothing here? All right, that has been my show. No, just kidding. It is time, I think, to try to take on the elephant in the podcast, which is commentary on these last very, very action-packed three episodes. So let me play that music real quick.

0:01:05 Thomas: Well, how in the world to begin the monumental task of commenting on a four-hour debate over possibly the most contentious issues in the atheism movement? How do I do that? How do I do that and not miss anything? I don't intend to adjudicate every single point. That would be pretty ridiculous, given that it takes longer to do that than it does to make the points, and we already had four hours making the points. I don't need a 16 hour, you know, inception level commentary on this. So if I leave anything out, which I will, 100% will, please don't assume my leaving something out means I forgot, you know, didn't think it important or making a statement by leaving something out. None of that is true.

0:01:50 Thomas: I've been going through some serious mental labor for the better part of a week now, trying to, you know, think about all the different issues, what I want to talk about, the points I want to make, and balancing that with the fact that this will be now the fourth episode of a long, long three on the same topic or series of topics, and I'm sensitive to the fact that people might not, you know, be that interested in social justice, but from the looks of the download numbers and the comments I'm getting, I do think this is actually a very interesting issue to everybody, myself included especially. So I'm going to, as promised, and I did have a lot of people asking me what I thought. So as promised I am going to spend this episode doing some commentary on social justice and the debate and then we can next week get on to bigger and maybe not better, but different, probably not bigger either.

0:02:42 Thomas: We can get on to differenter and different things. First off one more, big thanks, to Eli & James. They were the ones, of course, that spoke for four hours. I barely said anything, which I'll get to in a minute. It. But thanks to them so much for coming on, having the courage to have the debate. This is not a popular, well, it's not an easy thing to do. I mean, I think one side is probably more prevalent than the other, but there's so much vitriol that when you represent either side, you face a lot of angry tweets and angry comments and all that. And it was very nice of them to come on, have the debate, put in the effort, do the work, all that, I really appreciate it. Gave me a ton to think about. And the listeners appreciate it as well. I've got a ton of comments, a Most of which expressed the same sentiment that I had been expressing coming into this, was that this debate needs to happen, this conversation needs to happen, because there is such a huge divide.

0:03:41 Thomas: And I'm under no illusions, as I constantly know, illusions from Scathing Atheist has ruined that figure of speech for me, or maybe made it better, I don't actually, but I'm under no fantasies that this one podcast or one incredibly long podcast solved all or any or even half or some of the issues. I mean, I get it. It's a hugely divided community. But I would also say there's reason to be positive because I've received a lot of comments and many of them, sure, many of the more the very usual quote, "I can't believe Eli slash slash James can even make these points with a straight face" or "how pathetic were Eli slash James's arguments" or "Eli slash James was using reason while Eli slash Jones was simply appealing to emotion and dogma."

0:04:31 Thomas: Um, but there was a significant number that were not that and encouraging number that were things like, "wow, I, I wasn't sure where I stood, but Eli slash James convinced me." I mean, it, it may, who knows what the net effect was, but I definitely had had commenters from either side saying, well, and my favorite thing actually is when people say, "well, I'm still not totally sure I'm on a side." I don't know, you know, what I would say because I don't think we all need to jump on a site of every issue. But anyway, I had plenty of people saying the conversation just gave me a ton to think about, you know, and I agree. That's what I find really encouraging. So on one hand, it's easy to say, "oh, no one's mind will be changed. Everyone thinks the same thing." But I, you know, I have a little bit of data here showing that that's not true. I mean, people's minds were changed, uh, and that is what makes it all worthwhile.

0:05:21 Thomas: I think giving people the opportunity to change their minds based on evidence, it's it's that's the name of the game here. I want to talk about issues that are difficult on the show that atheists disagree with each other on. And this is a big one. And it's amazing that we got two people who are as smart and as well, you know, able to talk for hours on end and not back down and, you You know, never give up, never surrender. There were a ton of battle metaphors, as Eli pointed out at some points. I'm just continuing those. So thanks again to them. Next, I want to quickly talk about some little practical issues based on other comments I got. There were some concerns that I think were legitimate. People have both praised and criticized my being quote-unquote neutral during all of this and saying very little.

0:06:11 Thomas: I think I've said it before, but I'm going to say it again. The reason for that was, in my mind, I was thinking just what we need in a four-hour debate would be another guy butting in with all his opinions and concerns. I could tell that James and Eli had plenty to say. I think they had it covered. Believe me, I had things I could have asked. I really did. I did ask them at some points, but I don't know.

It almost did more harm than good because I didn't want to interrupt their flow. I figured a better time for commentary would be this very episode here when I can just give all my thoughts and not take up their time because they had a great debate going. Not that it wasn't unpleasant to just sit there silently on my show. It was not the greatest.

I like to give my opinion, but I thought for the good of the debate, I was happy to just kind of sit aside and let them debate, and then I would be able to make some commentary and make some personal judgments on my own in my own brain.

0:07:10 Thomas: So that's what I did. That being said, a couple of times I do think I steered things or ended the cycle of discussion a little bit, but I probably could have butted in more to fix that. So that leaves the thing number two. There have been quite a few comments complaining that I, and or maybe Eli, depending on who you want to hold accountable, but probably me, I hold myself accountable, allow James to talk too much in Part 3 in particular, Part 2 a little. Little bit. I said from the outset that I'd try to keep the time equal, but But once this started, and after thinking about it more, the reality of this recording was that we had plenty of time for everyone to get their point across. Exactly equal time matters a lot on, I don't know, CNN or something, or some rigid debate format where each side gets five, maybe less, maybe ten, who knows how many minutes to make their points, and then it's over, done, end of segment.

0:08:04 Thomas: Segment, throughout the process of recording this four-hour discussion, it gradually became clear that it was more about making sure both Eli and James got the chance to make the points that they wanted to make. Now, this isn't to say it went perfectly. I'm not excusing every decision or, I guess, lack of decision to butt in. I certainly should have butted in sooner and perhaps more frequently than I did in Part three. But in Part two, Eli was content, and me as well, to have James set up his summary of the research on victim culture. Setting that up and talking about setting that whole foundation there takes a lot longer than it does for Eli to respond with his probing questions.

0:08:49 Thomas: So, it wasn't, the difference in time isn't necessarily unfair. It's more about whether each side has the chance to make their points. It's, you know, setting something up forever takes longer than just, okay, here's my question on that, you know, and that's X. Part 3 is where I worried, even live as we were doing it, that the balance was getting off. I spoke to Eli a little bit about this after the fact, and my best answer is that we both were just honestly never sure when James would be done making his point. And I'll speak more about this later, but Part 3 on trigger warning, spoiler alert for my opinions here, was a time when I don't think James was making a great argument, to be honest. And he was more just trying to assert that there was a lot of research that made certain claims, but he didn't really explain it very well, at least in my mind.

0:09:41 Thomas: Feel free to disagree, but I didn't. Really, he didn't explain it. Like the reasoning wasn't explained. So I think Eli and I both were listening in part three, more than usual, we were listening to just try to understand exactly what the claims were. And having said that, I definitely think I should have interrupted James a couple times. So I interrupted him once for sure, maybe twice, I think, if memory serves, but I think I should have done that more and I maybe should have gotten the balance a little more toward Eli. So a lot of people pointed that out. My apologies for that. It was, you know, it's on the fly. It's hard to do. I like to be courteous. I know Eli was tending to let James speak as well and I, you know, I was kind of letting things go where they were going naturally when maybe I should've cut in a little bit more.

0:10:27 Thomas: All right, now to some analysis, finally. I'm not going to do anything like declare a winner or anything like that. That's kind of stupid, especially it wasn't a formal debate and it was multifaceted. There's tons of issues covered. There might be times when I think, you know, one side was making a good point, the other side wasn't, and vice versa. So make a broad answer about who did better or something is less useful. I think what I might do among a million things I would like to talk about is give you my opinion on when I think each person was at their best and maybe at their weakest argument-wise.

0:11:12 Thomas: In no particular order, I'll start with a time I thought James was making a great point and Eli was struggling a little bit. This would be on the no-platforming of speakers. Like, say, I think Milo Yiannopoulos was the example that was brought up most frequently. Now, I will confess before going into this that I've been opposed to no-platforming in general. I wouldn't say completely dogmatically. I'm pretty open on most things. I think listeners know I do change my mind on things. I'm open to evidence, all that. But in general, I'm pro more free speech. I would rather not restrict speech. And it's up to you to say if you think this is just a result of my bias.

0:11:58 Thomas: But I don't think it was because my big concern with Eli's arguments was that he so frequently equivocated and combined two majorly different concepts. One was the idea, and you'll remember, he brought up "teach the controversy." He referenced that several times.

He said, "oh, we both agree that teach the controversy, meaning teaching both evolution and creationism in schools is not a good idea, but this has to do with the actual hired teachers in, like, you know, elementary and high school and what they can and can't teach. This is very clearly spelled out by curriculum. As James pointed out, he mentioned, you know, a math teacher can't just go on a rant about politics as part of the course.

This is very, very, very different from the topic at hand, which was when a student group at a college wants, wants to invite a speaker, not, not even the university itself, just a student group inviting a speaker to give a speech to their group, and maybe it's usually open to whatever students want to attend, and sometimes it's open to the public, sometimes it isn't, I think. But anyway, several times, Eli conflated these two things, even bringing up elementary schools into the equation. There's a pretty easy to establish difference between an elementary school teacher and a speaker invited by people who are legally adults at a college. They're students at a college.

In the interest of representing Eli's arguments as best as I can, I think he was trying to say that the role of education is to filter the information. And Eli asked James at a certain point, "when does that role of education change from filtering to," and then I think James cut him off, but, which happened,

0:13:47 Thomas: But Eli believes that simply throwing all the information at people is not a sufficient method of ensuring they come out educated properly. But James's answer to this, which I think was a good one, was to read, I think it was the charter of Yale University, which was quite clearly stated, stated that it isn't the role of a university to filter the information in the way that Eli was saying. Now, Eli tried to appeal to what he imagined was a common ground in all three of us. He said, "we all agree that teach the controversy is a bad idea, and therefore the role of education is to filter information." My answer, and I think James's was similar, but I guess I'll speak for myself now, my answers that curriculum is just completely different than guest speakers.

0:14:32 Thomas: And this was the confusion that I think Eli was losing this argument for this reason. I think there was some confusion going into it. Not that that means that his side is wrong or anything, but I think he was losing his argument. And I will later explain my reasoning why I do think ultimately I disagree with Eli on this position.

If a campus Christian group wants to invite a young earth creationist to speak at their college, and they have enough financial support and all that to do so from their members, I see absolutely no reason why they shouldn't be able to do that. So, Eli was appealing to this common ground that he thought we all shared, and we just don't. I mean, yes, I do believe that it shouldn't be part of, you know, third grade curriculum to teach creationism, but that is a completely different thing. Thing.

This is a student group at a college that has enough support, that has enough members that are maybe religious or Christian or young earth creationist or whatever, to where they want to invite someone to speak. And I believe they should be free to do that. If a secular group wants to protest, if an atheist group wants to protest, that's fine too. But my belief is, and this is my opinion, it's not necessarily, this wasn't addressed in the debate too much, but my belief is that they should not physically prevent the speaker from speaking. So make your signs, do your chants, you know, have a counter speaker, whatever you want to do, whatever you think is appropriate, but preventing that speaker.

0:16:08 Thomas: Let's say Ken Ham is going to go speak. A student group has invited Ken Ham. Let Ken Ham speak. Let the ideas come out and protest if you want, hold up signs that make good points, have a student speaker somewhere near making a similar speech, or rather a speech against what he's saying, at a similar time or maybe afterward. Do something like that, because I think preventing and shouting down the speaker is against the spirit of free speech and free inquiry, and it's a bad precedent to set if there ever comes a time when there's an issue you care about where you happen to be on the minority end of it, possibly. That's the big issue with all of this that's so common.

0:16:54 Thomas: Somewhere implicit in Eli's argument on this tends to be that the side who is shutting down the speakers is always going to be correct. Like, they're always going to have made the correct judgment. They're right. Implicit in Eli's argument is this. And maybe he'll be right, I don't know, 80% of the time, 95% of the time. But there will be times when they're wrong. Maybe it's even, you know, worse. Maybe it's 50-50. It's hard for us to know that the side that's shutting down speakers is always going to be correct about every issue. And I think it's a better method to allow the speech, but just counter it with your own speech. Now, I think it's pretty easy to imagine a university, even just a public university, that has a Christian majority.

0:17:46 Thomas: Now wouldn't you hope in that case that an LGBT group, or maybe even an atheist group, could exist and invite speakers that they want? I mean, you could easily make the similar case, the Christians could make the case, that the atheist speakers are very threatening to them, they're threatening to their whole religious identity. You know, you can make that case, it's very easy. And when one makes that case, I would not want to have a precedent that says, uh, yeah, no, you're right, we can just dissolve that group and not allow them to invite the speaker that they want. Now here's a point where I would say Eli makes a good point that deserves consideration. Eli has an argument here that I think we all need to think about. And that is that, but these speakers that we're talking about, Milo, I think in particular, there might have been others he mentioned, that they are denying people's humanity.

0:18:37 Thomas: He set that up as his dividing line. So it's easy for me and for Eli and other people of privilege to say, yeah, sure, invite anyone you want to talk, who cares, because no one questions our humanity. And this is something that I've, I've had to think about a lot. I think it's definitely something you don't want to just sweep under the rug and not think about it. It gets really uncomfortable for me, especially when, if you notice on the anti-social justice side, I guess, quote unquote, I don't know if that's a real thing, but anyway, it seems to largely be white men, people of privilege. You know, this doesn't mean it's wrong automatically or anything, but that concerns me. It concerns me when I look around and everyone on a side of something I believe happens to be, you know, cisgender white men.

0:19:28 Thomas: That makes me a little nervous. Like, it just makes me think I want to be extra cautious. I want to think, is this, do I, you know, am I not considering something? Am I not considering others' experiences? What's going on here? So I thought a lot about this, but in the end, it's worthy of consideration. But in the end, I just, I don't know that no platforming is a good solution to this because it becomes really easy to abuse the subjectivity of whatever criteria you somehow decide. And who decides that? I think that's another issue I brought up during the debate. I don't get who just gets to decide we've got this criteria of dehumanization. How do we apply that? Are we, I mean, it's not, it's not like we have a judge here.

0:20:14 Thomas: It's not like we have, you know, it's, I don't know, it's tricky. I don't like things like that where it could so easily be bent to discriminate one way or the other. And this is assuming you can even agree on criteria in the first place. So when we're talking about Milo Yiannopoulos, he said Milo denies trans people's humanity and that's why it's okay to restrict him, to not let him, you Know, deplatform him or no platform him. In researching this, I discovered that it is true. Milo, it's not just a question of, you know, distorting something Milo's saying. You be the judge. Milo believes transgenderism, as he calls it, I can't remember if that's even an official term or just something he was using in his website, but transgenderism is something that should not be treated with a sex change.

0:21:06 Thomas: He essentially thinks that it's a disease, it's a mental disorder, and we're actually doing a lot of harm when we just chop off people's penises because they think they're women, in Milo's pretty much exact words. You can look it up, it is on his website, and it's not even that old. It's from 2014, so it could be less than two years, or it could a little over two years. But anyway, way, I don't think it's an old position. I think it is one he currently holds, that trans women are actually men with a disorder. He has evidence that he cites that doing these sex changes increases suicide among trans people and all this stuff.

0:21:53 Thomas: Honestly, I could do a whole episode on just Milo's views. This is not the time, but let's just say I extremely don't like Milo after reading about him. I didn't know much about him, I'd seen some stuff obviously, I wasn't totally foreign to him, but I didn't know the details of his anti-transgender views and they're pretty bad. I'm not going to lie, they're bad. So, I get that. I get you don't want to allow someone who has those opinions to speak because it's threatening. I understand the impulse. But let's say there's a campus group, which this has happened. This is literally happening all around the country, I think. There's a campus student group that likes Milo and wants him to speak.

0:22:38 Thomas: They have enough support. They've got the funds, which I don't think is cheap. They're not just like two people. This requires a significant number of students to decide this is a good idea. We want him to talk. We're going to raise the money however we're going raise the money. We've got the location. We got all that stuff. Now, the reason I don't think no-platforming him is a good idea is because already there in the premise is the problem. You've already got a problem there. A A university intervening and saying, no, we've decided Milo doesn't meet our criteria, his opinions are unacceptable, you can't have him. That's not going to fix the problem which you already have, which is people think it's a good idea to invite Milo.

0:23:23 Thomas: So, those people already have these opinions, to varying degrees, I'm sure, but still, a lot of them, I am sure, know his positions on transgender issues and they agree with him. And that takes a significant number of students to get Milo to come speak. Do people think, does Eli think, I wonder, and does anyone who agrees with Eli think that denying Milo the right to speak there will change those students' minds? Do you really think that? Because I just don't think it's going to do anything. I think then you get a bitter resentment, you get digging into those views, you get, you know, hostility. Wouldn't it be far more useful to protest the talk, make signs, invite your own speaker to counter the ideas.

0:24:10 Thomas: I understand. I'm incredibly sympathetic to how harmful Milo's ideas must be to trans people. I get it. I know I'm not in your shoes. I know I've never been in that situation, but I get that it hurts to hear that. I totally understand that. I'm pro-trans rights. I'm all that. That. I get it. Or I get it to the best that I can as someone who's not in that experience. And I get that it hurts, but I wonder, I just don't know that this fixes that. Because once you've already got people who want Milo to speak, they already agree with that for the most part. And might it be a better way to counter it, to have groups get together? There are plenty of campus groups who will support trans issues in this way.

0:24:57 Thomas: There are plenty. Campuses are very, very liberal. These groups setting up these Milo talks typically are going to be one group. And then there's going to be a ton of groups, LGBT groups, feminist groups, trans groups, whatever it is that are against Milo. So group together, embrace your common humanity, reinforce each other's humanity and protest and invite a better speaker that's going To give a contrary speech. That's going going to point out the flaws in Milo's thinking. I just think that's a better way. And if you can get some of those students who thought it's a good idea to invite Milo to come to that talk, maybe their minds will be changed. I just, I really, truly think that that's the best way to go. I know it's not perfect.

0:25:43 Thomas: I don't think it's like a perfect solution, but I really believe that's the best thing to do. I could be convinced otherwise, but that's my opinion. Because if you try to just get rid of the ideas, I mean, where does it end? Do you, I'm not trying to pull a slippery slope fallacy, but, but really, I mean, do you, does the campus internet block Milo's YouTube videos? I mean. I kind of, it's not that crazy an idea. I mean if, if the college, if, the philosophy of, oh, they need to filter what their students are hearing, they need to filter the information, is it crazy to block the YouTube videos on the campus as internet? And I mean, I don't think it's that much of a stretch. And furthermore, technology has made it so it just won't work. I mean they would get access to the information.

0:26:28 Thomas: People are going to have, your students are going to have access to information already. So why not, rather than trying to shut that out, which you can't, I mean you can shut out the access to that information, try to promote the better information. Try to promote what you think is the right information. Now, Noah from Scathing Atheist said in, I think it was a Facebook post about this, this episode, part, uh, part two or part, I forget, one of them. He said, essentially, we all agree there's a line and we just, it's just where we draw that line. He said some other things, but that was the crux, I hope I've got that right, of what he was saying here. And I thought about that and I just, I don't know that I agree with that. I don't know, I don't think a line needs to be drawn artificially by any governing body or any university group or anything like that.

0:27:22 Thomas: I think the line is drawn somewhat by society and then further drawn automatically by the admissions office. I keep seeing, because I see this hypothetical question, I think even Eli probably said this. What if a campus group invited the KKK to come speak? And then we all think, oh yeah, that's horrible. Could you imagine? That would be just the most hateful thing. Is this going to happen? Can anyone point to an example of this happening that's not completely crazy? Can you imagine being a part of the student group on your campus who invited the KKK to come speak? Can you imagine that? Can you picture that happening? Do you know how quickly that group would be completely ostracized from the entire college community.

0:28:08 Thomas: Universities do their best to admit reasonably qualified and intelligent students, and I think that pretty much covers it for the most part. I know nothing's 100%, but I think that's better. That's going to be a better indicator, recruiting and admitting smart students and educating them and then letting them form their little student groups and letting them invite who they want to come speak. I think that's a better method than trying to enforce some line because people are not going to invite the KKK to speak.

And if they are, if you have a student group and a college, furthermore, and a university that is so, I guess, I don't know what the right word would be, but so precariously populated with students such that they think it's a good idea to invite to KKK and aren't afraid of the social consequences of that, then you've already got such a much bigger problem than simply allowing the KKK to speak. I mean, maybe, maybe you would want to intervene if it was that extreme, I guess. But even then, that kind of goes against what I'm saying about drawing the line. I just think that you have such a bigger problem. I don't think that's going to happen because of the society we live in and the culture where we are right now.

So now I want to get to where I think Eli, and this is not an exhaustive list by any means, but now I wanted to get an example, and maybe two because I spent a long time on that one, of when I thought Eli was doing a great job and I thought James' arguments were not so strong, and that was mainly, as I already referenced, in episode three.

0:29:48 Thomas: The trigger warnings episode, to me, was a little disappointing in my mind. I'm going to be honest with you guys. If the circumstances were different, I probably wouldn't have posted that episode. I probably would have withheld the trigger warning part or edited it out.

Now we got the part at the end where I asked some questions and there was some stuff that happened so I don't think it was a bad episode and I actually just saw today a comment of someone who said, "Oh, I really liked part three." Actually, actually.

So, you know, maybe that would have been a bad decision on my part, but I would have, the reason why I maybe would have considered not even keeping it is James seemed to be saying a whole lot without really making any claims, which he sort of alluded to himself, which, and it ended up just being, well, I know these research papers, I've read these research papers that you haven't read, and they make a great case against trigger warnings, and that's all to be said. And then Eli would try to engage a little bit and then James would shut it down. And this is where I maybe should have butted in a littlebit and say, no, no. You're not understanding.

You don't understand that the research says this and all that. And it really ended up being a little big counterproductive. But here's why I left it in. The reason I left it in is because one thing I've been very critical of, and Eli and others on the social justice side have been critical of as well, is the constant bashing and jokes and ridiculing of trigger warnings.

0:31:24 Thomas: There's so... Now, and this is where I may go on a brief tangent, because it's the most unoriginal thing in the world. We see it everywhere on Twitter, or I do anyway, maybe I'm following the wrong people, but everywhere. Oh, trigger warning, ha ha, go hide in your safe space, trigger warning anything, just saying trigger warning meaninglessly. First off, the main reason you should stop doing it is because it's been done. It's been done. The joke has been made. We get it. Trigger warning, milk, ha ha ha, trigger warning. I'm doing it now. You know, that joke has been made. It, it's done. We've, we've made the joke. Someone made the jokes 10, five years ago, whatever it is. And now it's just everyone making the same joke in an effort to ridicule trigger warnings. Now, I As a result of this opinion that I have, and I think Eli and others, and the frustration with this ridiculing, you know, that we have, we I really wanted to know the reasoning behind someone who holds this position.

0:32:23 Thomas: Now, I don't think James is someone who ridicules trigger warnings a tremendous amount, but he has. He's retweeted stuff. He's, you know, and he's friends with Boghossian, and Boghassian had the tweets that Eli referenced during the episode. So, it's that side. The other side of this issue does tend to ridicule it quite a bit. Some people more than others, and it's frustrating to me. So This is a question I really wanted to know about and I think others would really want to know about. And I couldn't have just left it out of the discussion. Like, no, we didn't talk about trigger warnings. I think it was important to see. I think it was also an example of Eli, I think, doing a better job in the debate, personally. That's my view. And I did not want to deprive people of hearing that.

0:33:09 Thomas: So that was why I left it in. I don't regret it at all. I'm just saying that this section was a little weak. For that reason. And I put that on James because he came across to me as someone who had an incredibly strong opinion on trigger warnings, but then was trying to appeal to, well, the research is mixed and there's a debate and it's leaning toward trigger warnings being bad. And then Eli would try to say like, why? And then James was conflating trigger warnings with the culture that requires trigger warnings and was saying, sometimes James said that was the problem, sometimes not, and Eli kept asking, well, how are the trigger warnings themselves causing these problems? Like with the law school where students aren't adequately prepared, how are the triggers warning causing that?

0:34:00 Thomas: And then James would deflect a little bit and he didn't, to my mind, and I've listened to this three times, I was there and I listened to it three times the full four hours, but feel free to listen again for yourself, but in my mind James never established that very well. And now, just like with the previous example where I started going off on my own opinion, I- I'm- I've formed some opinions on this that I want to talk about as a result of this debate. The number one thing I want to say is I am very, very worried and somewhat convinced, after getting comments and interacting with some people on this issue, that the two sides of trigger warnings do not even know where they are. I know that sounds crazy, but it turns out that...

0:34:47 Thomas: So there was someone who commented on a post that Noah did on this section, I think, and she was talking about trigger warnings very, very compellingly, was saying trigger warnings are vital to me. I'm a survivor of trauma, etc. Here's what happened, and went into some detail. And I messaged her and asked her about it, and it was really compelling. Telling. She had some trauma. She was abused. She needs these things. These trigger warnings help so that she knows when something is coming. And then I asked her, like, what trigger warnings are we talking about? And she's entirely talking about ones that I think James agreed with. I mean, James in the beginning said, well, if it's going to be something really, really graphic, etc.

0:35:34 Thomas: And I think most people agree that if you're going to show an ISIS beheading video, Give a heads up. I don't know anyone who is arguing that that's not a good idea. Now, this person that I talked to, that's what actually really set her off. Someone on Facebook had posted a picture, or sorry, a video of a woman, just a horrible thing that this listener described to me of a women being burned to death for being raped, I think, some awful, guess the religion, it was Islam. And just the description is enough for me to, I seriously can't stop thinking about it. It's horrible. But this is a woman who, the one talking to me was a survivor of rape and was a survivor of, you know, trauma.

0:36:23 Thomas: And for her, it was even more so. And she picked up her phone and it was on this video. And that caused a horrifying reaction for her. And I want to say that, But first off, unrelated issue, who is it who posts these videos? I really, seriously, if you're going to post something that graphic on Facebook, I don't, I know, I get that it's your personal account. That's fine.

But people following you might not necessarily know that, hey, I'm just going to post a graphic death, like a brutal death video on my feed. I know these people. I know some of them. I unfriend them very quickly on Facebook if I find out that's what they do. You. But I don't watch these things at all because they're horrifying to me. I can't handle it. I don't know what it is. I like to think it's because I'm very empathetic. Maybe. I don't know what else to say about it, but I can't handle these things. It's so horrifying to me. I've never watched an ISIS video. I've never watched anything like this. I never will. It's too much for me. It makes me too sad and depressed, frankly. I get really depressed about it. And I think a lot of people probably share that. So who are these people who can just post it?

I know some people have the justification of, well, we need to see what Islam is doing or something. It's like, if that's your justification, please at least put a warning. Please put it in a link that won't autoplay or something. Do something, you know. Anyway, but the reason I bring this up is I asked Eli specifically about this.

0:37:57 Thomas: So in one of James's sources, he had about a billion. They're all in the first episode show notes, so you can go through them. In one of them, it talked about Oberlin College and how it had sent out a guideline to professors about trigger warnings. And among the things it had said was not just, trigger warnings for rape, murder, or something like that. Things that I think we all would agree on, pretty much.

I don't know anyone, and correct me if I'm wrong, feel free to comment. I haven't seen anyone argue, if you're going to show a movie that depicts murder, rape, you can't give a heads up in the syllabus. You can't say, hey, today, there's a serious, this is violent. This movie is violent now. Now James brought up the example of, you know, maybe you would have some piece of art or film or literature where the trigger warning would ruin the plot, um, it's something to consider but it just seems so minor to me relative to the trauma that someone could have relative to this, so here's the interesting thing, I think that virtually everyone agrees on these serious trigger warnings, murder, violence, rape, whatever, like the very serious ones.

I don't know too many people who have a problem with giving a heads up on that. Now, I brought up the Oberlin College thing where there was a guide for professors that said, not only that, so not only do you have to issue trigger warnings for that stuff, but you also have to say if there's anything like racism, classism, sexism, cissexism, ableism, and other things like that.

0:39:36 Thomas: So This was an example that James had in his notes. He probably should have brought it up. I think they were saying you have to give trigger warnings for ableism, sex, all that kind of stuff. Now, this is interesting because I asked Eli about this and he said, oh, no, I don't support those trigger warnings. So and I don't know how many people do. Now there is a contingent of people who do, obviously, because this came from Oberlin College. But that's why I'm so concerned here. I don't know that the two sides know what they're talking about. I don't know that they know who knows what. I think if we're going to argue about trigger warnings, we need to issue a trigger warning. No, I'm just kidding. We need to be very clear what we are doing, what we're talking about. We need to say trigger warnings like ableism, you know, whatever.

0:40:25 Thomas: We need to give examples because it's clearly there's too many things under the umbrella of trigger warning that then are just being mocked by saying, "Ha ha, trigger warning, milk, ha." That doesn't, people have no idea, myself included, when you're mocking trigger warnings, what kind you're mocking. So, there's a ton of miscommunication going on here, because in the end, Eli and James may have even agreed on trigger warnings, they might actually agree on trigger warning, and not even in the way that they said they did, where James was saying, "Oh, I don't think, I'm not sure, I think they needed to specify which ones we're talking about." So let me give my opinion on this. I think so many of the arguments are trauma. This is PTS.

0:41:11 Thomas: A question of PTSD, and these certain triggers can send people in their limbic system will go nuts. It's not something you can rationally respond to because it is trauma. It is PTSD. Now, a lot of people have had concerns with, well, and James mentioned some of this, the answer to that is not trigger warnings, it's therapy, it is all that, but then the counter was, well it's not hard to just give a brief trigger warning, and it doesn't cost us anything really. You just, in the syllabus or that day or in that day of class, if something's going to come up, you say, hey, just a heads up, we are going to be talking about such and such. It can be tough. If you have a problem, if you have an awful PTSD reaction, you may need to see somebody about it.

0:41:57 Thomas: And that's all fine. But when we start talking about things like ableism and sexism and, you know, cisgenderism, call me crazy, but I don't think there's any trauma. I don't think there's any, maybe trauma is not the right word. There's no PTSD related to ableism. Is there, has there been a documented case of PTSD related ableism, or is this like, what is the trigger warning doing there? So those are the kinds of trigger warnings that I think people are ridiculing, and we need to be very clear in communicating with each other how we feel on this, because I actually don't agree with those, and it's surprising to find out Eli doesn't either. So he was against those, and we may never know unless we have another debate where James and Eli actually disagree on that.

0:42:46 Thomas: Wow, I can't believe I'm already virtually out of time. I wanted to go over comments and like 400 other things. One more random opinion I've got, and this is something I can put in the category of, because I already criticized Eli early probably a lot more than I criticized James, so this is another thing I will criticize James for, and it has to do with a claim he made on Twitter after the debate. So in the ensuing discussion, I came across an opinion that really just baffles me. James claimed on Twitter, and others agreed with him that I kind of interacted with, that That the popularity and support of Donald Trump, at least in part, it's something the estimate was like a third. There's a very scientific number somehow. I don't know how someone came up with that. But anyway, around a third of Donald trump's support can be attributed to the social justice movement, as in the backlash in an effort to, let me just make sure I can represent this as best I can to avoid strawmanning it.

0:43:41 Thomas: The claim is that the social justice movement has such a significant authoritarian component. People who want to police what we say and think and make sure it's absolutely pristinely politically correct. And by the way, I agree with that so far. That does exist. I don't know. We can debate the extent of it. But yeah, I disagree. There are certainly, we can point to examples of political correctness gone too far. That happens all the time. There's some ridiculous examples. Examples. A big question in this whole debate was how significant is that? And James and Eli both agreed it was likely a minority of people. But anyway, let's get back to the claim. The claim is that that authoritarian front there in policing people's language has led to support of Trump because people are, there's a backlash against that PC.

0:44:29 Thomas: So people are tired of being politically correct. They see Trump saying, ah, I'll be damned if I'll Be politically correct. I'm going to be honest. And they say, that's my guy. I'm voting for him. And this is apparently a problem for social justice. So this is, according to James and others, this is something that can be laid at the feet. The cause is in social justice." I find this claim baffling. I really do. I don't, I cannot think of a hypothetical person, I've never met anyone certainly, who is otherwise reasonable, otherwise rational. Who sees Trump and sees him say like, oh, you know, I'm not going to be politically correct.

0:45:16 Thomas: Mexicans are rapists and stuff like that. Things he's literally said, you know, like we need to build a wall, keep Muslims out, Mexicans or rapists. I don't need to bore you with the things he said. And they say, well, you know, I'm otherwise rational, as Thomas said. I don't believe that stuff, but goddamn, PC culture is so bad, I am going to vote for him anyway. I mean, I just, I find that incredibly hard to believe. I think that it likely goes the other way around. I think there are people who are a little bit racist and who don't like being politically correct because that goes against their beliefs, that they like to be able to kind of say whatever they want. And maybe it's not outright racist, but they like to be able to say things and not be held accountable for it. Slash, there's a certainly a significant contingent of Trump supporters who are racists, who are actual racists.

0:46:05 Thomas: And they see what he says and they say, you know what? I agree with that. And they sort of do so under the guise of let's not be politically correct. But it's not as though Trump is saying, here's the thing. Recently, Patton Oswalt had a new special. I'm not the hugest Patton Oswalt fan, to be honest with you. I don't, I chuckle a little bit. I think it's, he's smart and pretty funny, but I don't really laugh that hard at it. But his best bit, in my opinion, in that latest special was when he talked about the terminology and all that and how he's liberal. He wants to, he wants to be on the right side of everything, but he can't keep up with the glossary of terms. It was really funny. And so if you had someone like that, who was not Trump, but someone saying, you know, I think that political correctness goes too far sometimes, I think you really got to look in people's hearts.

0:46:56 Thomas: And if they're saying, if the content of their heart is that they're really good, they just don't know the right word, they accidentally misgender someone, they do something accidental, unintentional, look at intentions, then we need to excuse them. Now, that would be a case where I'd say, okay, that person is fighting against political correctness gone amok. I will vote for that person. I could see that. But this is, you know, damn PC culture, Mexicans are rapists. That's just, it's just it's like voting for Hitler because you don't want to be politically correct. Sorry for the hyperbole, but it's not that far away from that. It's there is a line, you know, there's a line where the consequences are far worse than the problem you're trying to solve, which then the problem being political correctness.

0:47:45 Thomas: So I find that claim to be, even if this were happening, even if it were true that political correctness is leading to people supporting Trump, does that mean we should just never be, like, I don't think you can lay that at the feet of the social justice movement. What matters is their claims. If the social justice movement is wrong in what they're claiming, then that's already wrong. You already have a good argument against it. If they're right in the claims they're making, then it's not their fault if some crazy people are seeing what they're saying, not liking it, and as a result, voting for someone who's insane in Donald Trump. I don't think you can blame people for that. I really don't. So, wow. Time has flown.

0:48:30 Thomas: Oh, man. Man. Okay. Well, I guess this means I'm going to draw this to a close. Um, Oh, one thing I have to point out too, is James referenced the feminist glaciology paper. It turns out, uh, that's not exactly how he represented it. It's actually the, the scientist was making a different claim than is commonly represented. That was misrepresented in social media and actually all media. He wasn't trying to research female glaciers or whatever nonsense people were saying. He was, it's a little weird, but it's not as weird as it sounds. So I encourage you to just Google that, maybe Snopes it, Snopes the feminist glaciology paper, judge for yourself. But I do believe that James misrepresented that a little bit. So that's something I want to make sure I didn't forget.

0:49:16 Thomas: And there's about a billion other things that I could say, but this is, we got to call it. So, feel free to leave comments, thank you so much for listening to all of this, and again, thanks Eli and James, most of all. I think that's not the end, people, if you want to suggest other guests or another debate to try to line up, please do so, I want to continue this conversation, I wanna continue trying to get the two sides to meet, and particularly with trigger warnings, now I'm armed with the knowledge that next time I host a debate on trigger warnings I really want to get down to the detail of what trigger warnings people actually disagree with. I think that's critical. So, and next I've got to, of course, thank my wonderful patrons, many of whom came on as a result of this debate.

0:50:04 Thomas: So thank you so much for pledging. Thank you, Venture Free McGee. Thank you, Matt Clark, John Warner, Lindsey Osterman. Thank you, Dave Nichols. Thank you, Caperton B. Miller. Thank you so much, Andrew Northcutt. Thank you, McDrunky. That's a good one. And thank you, David. And of course, I've got to thank my all-time top patrons. Those include Andrew Northcutt, Al Lehman, Kaylee Reiser, Zimu Zinu, Adrian Borschoff, Jonathan Moyet, Jay Alden, Walt Bangs, Naughty Bits, Peter Skelton, Brian Gareford, Dale, Matt Garrett, Ian Rozzano, and Lizzie. Thank you guys. And Samantha, as honorable mention as well. Thank so much for being my top patrons. I really appreciate it. If you'd like to support the show, go to patreon.com/atheist. Got a lot of good patron comments.

0:50:50 Thomas: I try to respond to all of those as well, and you can always feel free to message me anytime on there. I always respond to Patreon messages because it's the least I can do for you guys. Bonus content with Jake will be out this weekend only to patrons. And of course, next time there's a big debate, you'll always get it early and all that. So thanks for the support, patreon.com/atheist. And thanks for a great two weeks of really engaging stuff. I think this gave us all a lot to think about. I look forward to reading more of your comments. See you next week.