Richard Mellor
An excellent animated presentation on what has become an obsession; protecting our delicate feelings from the reality of the outside world, outside the safe bubble. The term in the video is "trigger warnings". Not being or ever being in the world of academia I have not been a victim of it in that setting. An issue of concern should be who is protecting us from unpleasant images, speech, history, words.
I do recall when I was about 13 at a summer job pulling up ragwort in Port Meadow Oxford. It was hard work but I was happy to be doing it, after all, work is what grown ups do and I was eager to be recognized as such.
Sitting down to eat our lunch I was pounced on by the guys who held me down, pulled down my pants and spread axle grease (from the truck or tractor, I can't remember which) around my balls with some favorable comments about being a man now or something along those lines.
There were no trigger warnings. I never told my dad and there was no lawsuit pending.
I was both embarrassed and maybe just a little relieved that I was passing some sort of test, albeit it a messy one, probably messy as it was more likely a common rural activity than an urban one.
I am certainly not advocating it as a practice today and in a sense I don't think I understood it to be a violent thing or an attack on me by unfriendly forces. I survived it intact I think.
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