Once upon a time, cries of pain carried a enormous presumption of legitimacy. That is, time was when a person claimed to be a victim of racism or oppression, then there was very, very good reason to believe that indeed a wrongdoing of the appropriate sort had in fact occurred. What is more, one did not have to look too far to see it. Alas, a sad thing happened along the way, namely that people saw the power of claiming to be a victim. Seizing the moment, cries of victimization became a form of art. In fact, they came to have as much legitimacy as being a victim of wrongdoing itself, making demands for evidence otiose. Alas, one consequence of this is that thing got utterly silly.
Here is a lovely example. Some people think that transgendered people are being treated unfairly because they are being forced to identify with either the male sex or the female sex in going into a public restroom. For the following reason, this is just so much nonsense. Whether a transgendered male, for instance, identifies with his penis or not, he has one. Acting in accordance with the fact that one has a penis does not require that one identify with it at all. I may not identify with many aspects of body, but they are mine nonetheless; and this I recognize.
Now, add to this that going to the bathroom is surely not intended to be a learning experience, whether the learning be about evolution or cooking or dry cleaning: then I am at a complete loss as to just how it turns out that having to choose between bathrooms for women and bathrooms for men is a form painful oppression.
And if this were not enough: In acting with other males, a trangendered male certainly has to be mindful of the fact that other males take him to be male. I don’t want to be hugged by a transgendered male as if he were a woman. I won’t allow that to happen. Is this oppressive? And if it is not, then it is even more mysterious just how having to choose between bathrooms for women and bathrooms for men is.
Surely I have belabored the obvious. I have done so because it is at universities of all places that the absurd argument that I have just presented regarding pain of forcing trangendered people to choose between bathrooms for females and bathrooms for males is accorded so much weight.
Should transgendered people be treated with complete respect? Absolutely. But surely this does not require having a bathroom for the trangendered.
What on earth went wrong? The answer can be summed up quite simply. Passion is a virtue; misplaced compassion is a vice.
Sometimes in the wrong in question is manifestly clear. And if not, we can make it plain. Sometimes, however, the problem is none other than a despicable form of self-absorption, which elevates any angst that one might be experiencing in public as a form of oppression. And as a result of misplaced compassion, people are not being required to engage in the kind of healthy self-examination that makes life what it should be.
It has been said that an unexamined life isn’t worth living. This saying has withstood the test of time. And the university should be the crucible that gives this idea a reality that it would perhaps not have otherwise. Instead, the university has become the bastion for self-absorption and ideological close-mindedness.
I cannot think of a single idea of cultural substance occasioned by the university within the last 10 or so years. This may be a sign of my own intellectual inadequacy. Or, it may constitute regrettable and quite poignant support for the very view that I have been making.
Misplaced compassion has occasioned none other than ossification itself precisely because it does none other than privilege sentiments above argument.
As I have already indicated, there was a time when we were perfectly justified in according extraordinary weight to expressions of the pain of oppression. This is because there was invariably a corresponding reality. One barely had to look for it, as the corresponding reality was patently evident. That is manifestly not the case nowadays.
So we end up with the astonishing conclusion that can be pointed put as follows: Universities, far from remaining bastions of freedom occasioning tidal waves ideas and endless ripples of reflection, have become stagnant ponds of ideology masquerading as creativity.
John Stuart Mill held that no idea is so certain that it cannot be challenged. I cherish Mill’s thought. Any idea can be challenged. To be sure, not everything counts as a worthy challenge. But we must be careful not to discount every challenge as unworthy merely because it would require us to revise the status quo at the most fundamental level. This is the wisdom that the university should be fostering.
We cannot be truly free until we are free to examine and re-examine the obvious. The university has turned meaningful self-examination into a form of oppression, the result of which is a vicious cycle.
The story about the trangendered and bathroom choices is a case in point. On Tuesday, 1 May, a very bright member of my Political Theory class vociferously defended the claim that transgendered people are oppressed by having to choose between bathrooms for females and bathrooms for males. Notice my language here. He did not do so eloquently or with great ingenuity. Rather, he did so vociferously.
He had been ideologically brainwashed by Syracuse University. He had a view and not one damn good argument for it. Thus, he was incapable of meaningfully defending the view that he held so dearly.
If there is one thing more than any other that Mill made unquestionably clear, it is that depth of conviction is no substitute for reasoning itself. Our humanity is not tied to how ineluctably wedded we are to our view, but our wherewith all to defend them with honesty and grace and, and above all, with reason. Indeed, precisely what Mill held is that unless we can do the third, we cannot do the first two.
