Certain things turn ugly when you think too hard

[spiderstars]

There was recently a protest on our campus. It was over, globally speaking, a somewhat minor issue relevant only to Denison students. The actual background isn't much relevant to what I want to talk about, but my friend Robbie gave a pretty succinct explanation on facebook:

To make a long story short, students came together to show disapproval

Comments

[aeoliana]

"Saying anything along the lines of "why are you protesting X when you could be protesting Y?" really, to me, only sounds like another way to propagate ignorance [...] it seems one of the most effective ways to slaughter any kind of meaningful dialogue that might be brought up on the subject."

Yeah. You kind of already said this, but to me it sounds like an escape tactic - a way to not have to be held accountable for things. With the Twilight example, if I was a Twilight fan I might make that sort of comment to make myself feel less guilty for supporting a sexist work and redeem myself by showing that I care about the possibly unjustified war.

And BTW, is the Avatar film the one where they cast a bunch of Caucasian people as characters who were Asian in the original?

[aeirol]

(Just a btw, but you linked to the wrong Avatar; that's something else coming out sometime in the future. They're calling the movie "The Last Airbender" if I remember correctly.)

Probably the part that gets me the most is how it's almost expected at this point, in a society that supposedly holds freedom of speech in such high regard, that if you're protesting, it needs to be about something big; not necessarily something you care about and have an emotional attachment to (although that's automatically assumed and were you to state otherwise, people would probably shun you as a hypocrite), but just something that's accepted by a majority as being a "big issue."

[calligraphe]

I agree. I don't respond well to invalidation either.

[koemiko]

It is utterly refreshing to hear you say this.

This is why I love your brain/friended you.

[ashlultum]

Since a number of the examples you gave involved representations of gender/race/etc. in media and the debate over whether or not they matter, I thought you might appreciate this post.