The Washington Times has a story on how clapping “triggers” anxiety in women:
A U.K. student feminism conference is asking attendees to refrain from clapping and use “jazz hands” instead so as to not trigger anxiety in others.
The National Union of Students (NUS) Women’s Campaign announced the clapping “ban” at the West Midlands conference on Twitter Tuesday, shortly after receiving a request from the Oxford University Women’s Campaign.
- “@nuswomcam please can we ask people to stop clapping but do feminist jazz hands? it’s triggering some peoples’ anxiety. thank you!” Oxford representatives wrote.
Within five minutes, NUS tweeted: “Some delegates are requesting that we move to jazz hands rather than clapping, as it’s triggering anxiety. Please be mindful! #nuswomen15.”
The tweets received a wave of criticism and mockery by people who argued political correctness has run amok, Twitchy first reported….
Geeez. Talk about pansies! This is almost as bad as the sexist glacier study. Now, even raising one’s hand is deemed “triggering,” via Reason:
If you think that the sex and speech climate at U.S. universities has gone awry, U.K. college campuses are becoming downright dystopian. Remember last year, when British student leaders declared clapping too triggering and requested that students show approval with jazz hands instead? Now students have moved on to tackling another menacing movement: the raised hand.
Granted, raising one’s hand has long been the universal symbol of “I have a question,” especially in educational environments. But sometimes hand-raising can denote disagreement with a speakers’ position, or even exasperation, and that’s where we get into dangerous territory, say University of Edinburgh students. The move could be viewed as disrepsectful—and thus a violation of the school’s “safe space” policy.
Last week Imogen Wilson, vice president for academic affairs with the student association, was threatened with removal from her position after she “raised [her] arms in disagreement” during a council debate and shook her head disapprovingly.
Basically this is making people’s ideas and feeling “rights,” …an expression of their infantile emotive state that they express and expect others to accept.
This movement was forecast many years ago in such books as:
- The New Tolerance: How A Cultural Movement Threatens To Destroy You, Your Faith, And Your Children (1998)
- The Shadow University: The Betrayal Of Liberty On America’s Campuses (1999)
- The Betrayal of Liberalism: How the Disciples of Freedom and Equality Helped Foster the Illiberal Politics of Coercion and Control (1999)
- The Liberal Contradiction: How Contemporary Liberalism Violates Its Own Principles and Endangers Its Own Goals (1994)
- The Assault: Liberalism’s Attack on Religion, Freedom, and Democracy (1995)
- Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students (1987)