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A Ryerson University student is told she can only use feminist sources for her paper — and don’t bother consulting Statistics Canada. It’s part of the patriarchy.

A University of Toronto professor is threatened and vilified by peers and students because he dared to use his right to free speech and refuse to use gender neutral pronouns.

A renowned criminal lawyer is told she isn’t welcome to speak on campus by women’s studies students who object to her defence of Jian Ghomeshi on sexual assault charges.

When did institutions of higher learning decide there is only one way to think — and anything outside that world view can be censored and silenced? And why are we funding this insanity?

A business and marketing major at Ryerson, Jane Mathias is taking a sociology elective. The 21-year-old wanted to write a paper about the gender gap “myth” but was told by her instructor that her “premise is wrong.”

Instead, she should write about the glass ceiling and consult only feminist sources. “Do NOT use business sources. They blame women. The reality is patriarchy,” the instructor wrote in her e-mail. Not even government agencies such as Statistics Canada would be considered acceptable scholarly sources, she said, because they usually reproduce “mainstream stereotypes, assumptions and misconceptions.”

Are you kidding me?

Dr. Jordan Peterson was bemused at my surprise. “I know, when you first discover it, you say ‘What the hell; what’s going on here?’” he acknowledged. “Unfortunately, it’s pretty par for the course. This is standard practice.”

He should know. The U of T psychology prof ignited a firestorm of criticism last fall from trans activists, faculty and students when he ran afoul of the PC police by posting a video on his YouTube channel saying that he wouldn’t use gender-neutral pronouns such as “they,” “ze” and “zir.” Protesters called for his dismissal and someone poured glue into the lock of his office door.

Where’s the intellectual discourse, the room for contrary views?

“This is the thing people don’t understand about postmodernism: postmodernists don’t debate. They don’t believe in debate, it’s not part of the creed,” Peterson argued.

“All these ethnic studies, gender studies, most of the humanities, a good chunk of the social sciences, it’s all gone down the postmodern rabbit hole. There’s no debate. It’s a political war. You don’t talk to the other side.”

Dialogue with those you don’t agree with would be giving them a platform — and respect — they don’t deserve. Instead, you just shut it down. “This is how it is. This is a university,” he sighed. “It sure would be nice if was unbelieveable, but unfortunately, it’s how it is.”

So Mathias was told her paper was offside even before she’d typed a word. “She’s basically telling her she’s wrong before she’s heard her argument,” the professor said in exasperation. “‘Your premise is wrong?’ Guess what, that’s what you decide after you read the essay.”

There’s no room for critical thinking or alternative argument. Isn’t that what university is supposed to be about?

“Everything bad is about patriarchy,” scoffed Peterson said. “Why does hunger exist? Patriarchy. Why does suffering exist? Patriarchy. It’s so pathetic.”

Many students tell him they fear their only way to get good grades is to shut up and toe the party line. “I tell them you never, ever bend what you think to suit a professor’s whim. That’s not education.”

That, he said, is indoctrination.

So what’s the solution? His advice is almost as radical as some of the ideas he protests.

“Cut the university funding by 25% until they sort themselves out. I’d starve them because some decisions have to be made. But failing that, people have to wake up and understand where they’re sending their children.

“Universities have become little more than cults and I’ve seen them do serious damage to their students’ mental health.”

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TORONTO - Back in my college career, it was considered a good day if you weren’t teargassed.

No more. Sure there are still tears, but they are more crocodilian than courageous.

We mollycoddle our kids. Universities are turning them into cogs in the Age of the Victim. Two examples this week, one protecting the poor innocent dears from free speech, the other sparing them the fear of fat.

Oh, the humanities. Let’s start with free speech 101.

If you have kids at Western, you may have heard that controversial prof Jordan Peterson is giving a talk there next Saturday.

Luckily, there’s a safe haven to retreat to with their ravaged psyches after the awful man speaks.

“Sensitivity trained” volunteers are standing by in the university’s Peer Support Centre.

Who knew pronouns could cause such pain? Who knew today’s collegians were so easily traumatized?

Peterson is a University of Toronto psychology prof who refuses to refer to students by anything other than good old “he” and “she.”

Thus, he contravenes a U of T policy demanding use of gender-neutral pronouns such as “they” or “ze” or “zir” or whatever a student wishes. Technically, I suppose, you can be addressed as “whozzit,” if it suits your fancy.

Peterson thinks that’s just silly. A lot of people do. But not the U of T or social engineers.

So students reportedly have complained they don’t feel “safe” in Peterson’s classroom, and activists have had a field day with online outrage.

Apparently, an expensive university is no place for free speech. The young souls in its tender care have enough trouble forging their own ideas — let alone having to listen to others.

Debate can make your head hurt. Free speech is, like, complicated. Hence the trauma.

A speech by Peterson — on “the psychology of creativity,” his speciality — at the National Gallery of Canada last week drew 100 protesters. One organizer, a Carleton University student, mewled to the CBC, “Art has always been a safe space for queer people, people of colour and marginalized people in general.

“We don’t feel safe coming to the National Gallery of Canada anymore.”

I kid you not. Ze actually said that. Well, you know how dangerous an art gallery can be. A Rembrandt might topple off the wall onto your head.

Speaking of Carleton U, it is my alma mater and the source of the past week’s second case of college coddling gone crazy.

The university gym has removed its weigh scale to avoid offending folks with body issues such as, dare I say it, fat people. This is no joke.

“Scales are very triggering,” a student told the school paper, the Charlatan. Which is true. They might trigger you to ... GET FIT!

The good news is Carleton’s more sensible students are pushing back. “Next it will be mirrors,” criminology student Riley Main warns on Facebook.

Weighty matters, indeed. We are teaching our kids to be afraid of their own shadow.

What happened to universities as wonderful bubbling stews of ideas, viewpoints, rebellion and fearlessness? Isn’t debate the best way to learn?

Are today’s schools turning out free thinkers ... or politically correct zombies?

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ORIGINAL: respectmen

http://www.torontosun.com/2017/03/10/give-political-correctness-a-failing-grade

A Ryerson University student is told she can only use feminist sources for her paper. What a bunch of controlling totalitarian freaks.

Welcome to the consequences of matriarchy.

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In the last few weeks, there has been a spate of columns by writers on the left condemning the left-wing college students who riot, take over university buildings and shout down speakers with whom they differ.

These condemnations, coming about 50 years too late, should not be taken seriously.

Take New York Times columnist Frank Bruni. His latest column is filled with dismay over the way Middlebury College students attacked Charles Murray and a liberal woman professor who interviewed him (she was injured by the rioters).

I have no doubt that Bruni is sincere. However, sincerity is completely unrelated to wisdom or insight.

Here's the problem:

It is the left that transformed universities into the moral and intellectual wastelands most are now.

It is the left that created the moral monsters known as left-wing students who do not believe in free speech, let alone tolerance.

It is the left that has taught generations of young Americans that America is essentially a despicable society that is racist and xenophobic to its core.

It is the left that came up with the lie that the university has been overrun by a "culture of rape."

It is the left that taught generations of Americans that everyone on the right is sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, racist and bigoted.

It is the left that is anti-intellectual, teaching students to substitute feelings for reason.

It is the left that removed the portrait of Shakespeare hanging in the English department of the University of Pennsylvania because Shakespeare is a white male, thereby teaching college students that art is not measured by excellence or by the pursuit of truth but by race, gender and class.

It is the left that has transformed the Founding Fathers of the United States from great men who created the freest and most affluent society in human society into rich racist white males who created a racist, colonialist, imperialist, women-hating, foreigner-hating, non-white-hating society.

Two of Bruni's fellow New York Times columnists, Paul Krugman and Charles Blow, vie with each other to write hate-filled hysteria regarding conservatives, Republicans and the president. What are students who reads Blow supposed to conclude when Blow declares President Donald Trump "madman of the year," "a parasite" and a "demi-fascist," and writes that the battle against Trump is "about democracy and fascism, war and peace, life and death"? Can we expect them to conclude that they should be respectful of conservatives who come to campus?

How are students who read Krugman supposed to react to Republicans coming to their campus? In Jan. 2011, just one day after Jared Loughner murdered six people and gravely wounded former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, Arizona, Krugman wrote that the murders were a result of hate-filled rhetoric coming from conservatives and Republicans.

He said: "When you heard the terrible news from Arizona, were you completely surprised? Or were you, at some level, expecting something like this atrocity to happen? Put me in the latter category. ... It's the saturation of our political discourse -- and especially our airwaves -- with eliminationist rhetoric that lies behind the rising tide of violence. Where's that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let's not make a false pretense of balance: it's coming, overwhelmingly, from the right."

Why would students want to allow people who engage in "eliminationist rhetoric" to speak on their campus?

And what about all the leftists who routinely use the word "resistance," a word connoting a battle against Nazi-like tyranny, instead of the usual word "opposition" to denote political disagreement? What should students conclude about that? Isn't rioting a legitimate form of "resistance" when a representative of "tyranny" comes to campus?

To cite but one more example, if students believe the left-wing hate group the Southern Poverty Law Center when it labels Ayaan Hirsi Ali an "anti-Islamic extremist," is it any wonder that they and the professors at Brandeis University would rescind the university's invitation to this courageous Somali-American woman, a great defender of women in the Islamic world?

After this half-century of left-wing teaching and hateful rhetoric, the tears of the Frank Brunis and others on the left mean nothing. Their leftist thinking spawned this catastrophe. Until they take responsibility for it, they are not to be taken seriously.

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It is the left that transformed universities into the moral and intellectual wastelands most are now.

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It is the left that created the moral monsters known as left-wing students who do not believe in free speech, let alone tolerance.

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It is the left that has taught generations of young Americans that America is essentially a despicable society that is racist and xenophobic to its core.

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It is the left that came up with the lie that the university has been overrun by a "culture of rape."

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It is the left that taught generations of Americans that everyone on the right is sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, racist and bigoted.

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It is the left that is anti-intellectual, teaching students to substitute feelings for reason.

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It is the left that removed the portrait of Shakespeare hanging in the English department . . .

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Why would students want to allow people who engage in "eliminationist rhetoric" to speak on their campus?

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And what about all the leftists who routinely use the word "resistance," a word connoting a battle against Nazi-like tyranny, instead of the usual word "opposition" to denote political disagreement? What should students conclude about that? Isn't rioting a legitimate form of "resistance" when a representative of "tyranny" comes to campus?

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ORIGINAL: Musicmystery

In the interest of accuracy, you can just write in a gender neutral way, with reference neither to male nor female pronouns. Or use nouns.

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ORIGINAL: Milesnmiles

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ORIGINAL: Musicmystery

In the interest of accuracy, you can just write in a gender neutral way, with reference neither to male nor female pronouns. Or use nouns.

Yes, you can write in a gender neutral way, many times making sentence structure cumbersome but I was talking about the way political correctness is trying to change the English language so the pronouns he and she are interchangeable and I find that just makes the English language less understandable just for the sake of political correctness.

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ORIGINAL: WhoreMods

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ORIGINAL: Milesnmiles

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ORIGINAL: Musicmystery

In the interest of accuracy, you can just write in a gender neutral way, with reference neither to male nor female pronouns. Or use nouns.

Yes, you can write in a gender neutral way, many times making sentence structure cumbersome but I was talking about the way political correctness is trying to change the English language so the pronouns he and she are interchangeable and I find that just makes the English language less understandable just for the sake of political correctness.

Well quite: Americans should only mangle the language for the sake of expediency.

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ORIGINAL: Milesnmile

Honestly, if you don’t like the way the English language works, learn another language and use it, perhaps one of those you have to learn whether each of a million or more nouns is masculine or feminine so you can use the proper masculine or feminine article with it.

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ORIGINAL: tweakabelle
These sentiments reflect a common delusion that the English one learnt as a child remains the only permissible form of English - pure pristine and eternally unchanging. There is a considerable gap between these sentiments and reality. This view is nostalgic nonsense.

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ORIGINAL: tweakabelle
All languages are changing all the time. Languages evolve to deal with new or altered circumstances, developments and innovation. The vocabulary we use to describe computers - bytes, RAM, hard drives floppies and so forth - was not in use half a century ago. It is commonplace today. To reify a language, to set it in stone as unchanging permanently the same is effectively a death sentence for a language.

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ORIGINAL: tweakabelle
A century ago use of the N word to describe black people was commonplace and acceptable in so-called polite society. Today use of that word (except by blacks themselves) is frowned upon and likely to provoke the charge of racism.
It is politically correct not to use the N word. Would you have use revert to its previous mode of usage?

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ORIGINAL: tweakabelle
It amazes me that some people are so hung up about their 'right' to insult others. It amazes me that they resist talking about others in polite terms so strongly. Why are they so insistent on their so-called right to be rude, their 'right; to insult and put down others almost always people less fortunate than themselves? Why are they so insistent on their so-called right to express their hate? It amazes me that they feign astonishment when someone objects to their articulating their hate - how is society enriched or even improved by the articulation of hate? Why is it that some people are so trenchant in their refusal to consider others when they are talking?

Since when intolerance bigotry and hate speech things we should value and preserve?