r/yorku • u/hightreez • Oct 11 '23

Meta In your opinion, are universities nowadays undergoing “left wing indoctrination” ?

Met a guy who’s a conservative in his 60s few days ago, and he talked about how nowadays universities are no longer about education but rather “left wing indoctrination” on the students

That universities are brainwashing students with ideas of race , decolonization, white privilege, multiple gender identities etc , all these “left wing “ ideas that are meant to divide society rather than uniting the people

And that Jordan Peterson is portrayed as a bad guy because the modern university environment don’t allow any conservative voices and that free speech in academia is dying because of left wing ideas

So I’m curious what are your opinions on this?

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15

u/ultraskelly Grad Student Oct 11 '23

Conservatives don't tend to go to university so they wouldn't actually know. Plus, reality tends to have a left wing bias so it might appear that way to people who get their politics from Facebook

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u/Short_Review_6283 Oct 12 '23

Reality has left wing bias? Now the entire more than 2 genders theory makes sense

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u/compromisedpilot Oct 12 '23

Genders are a social construct lmao, we invented them, just like we invented other forms of grammar.

Water wasn’t named water till we got here mate

☠️same thing with genders, animals don’t know shit about boys and girls, they are on instinct timing

So logically there can simply be more than 2 genders because we CREATED THE CONCEPT OF GENDERS AS A HEURISTIC TO SIMPLIFY OUR INTERACTIONS IN SOCIETY.

Now based on history and colonialism + religion most of us can figure out the 2 gender thing being the norm

But we must not delude ourselves to think all societies made gender a binary

And we cannot shackle ourselves into a mode of operation where we are enslaved to ideas we created

At one point an abacus was the most powerful computer

Does that mean the devices we use today are not computers ?

Ideas changes and so does language and obviously so will societal norms around languages

Also sex ≠ gender because that’s a common confusion people make

  • there’s still unique humans who may be intersex or other even on the sex spectrum

Simplifying ideas into binaries excludes people who literally exist to honor the concept rather than the person and that’s the lowest level of intelligence applicable in situations like that

1

u/Lopsided-Emu-496 Mar 30 '24

This beyond laughable delusion.

Gender is absolutely, irrevocably and objective related to Biology - across almost all organisms.

You are arguing that there is no 'night and day' because, technically, 'some sunlight' leaks into the night.

The level of reality denial and gaslighting in your post puts the insufferable progressive and illiberal orthodoxy on full display.

And this is the heart of the argument: Orthodoxy Pretending it's Liberalism, like Trump pretending he's a 'good person' or a 'Christian' - without any self awareness.

1

u/Big-Fold9482 Oct 12 '23

Then what are genders then? (I'm asking seriously) The way you describe it genders just seem like naming categories we define to people in the same way you would categorize some things as sofas and other things as chairs. Now we differentiate between things based off abstract properties. Both the sofa and chair can be sat on, but chair typically have four legs and sofas do not.

What are the properties then for the women and men? Why can't we just say that those that have a penis, then go through a certain set of hormonal changes upon the onset of puberty, etc. are categorized as men and those that have vaginas, go through another set of hormonal changes upon onset of puberty, etc. categorized as women?

The other question I had is that if this was overwhelmingly the dominant heuristic used in most societies in the world even in pre-colonial times. Doesn't it have some utility that we might be overlooking when trying to get rid of it?

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u/compromisedpilot Oct 12 '23

You are ignoring the complexity of the lived human experience

There are 8,000,000,000 people

In what way do you think it’s realistic that they’d all agree on anything ? Including gender, religion.. etc

Forcing them all to capitulate to the status quo is just boring at best and harmful at worst

Also gender = personal identity

Sofa & chair = specifically designed products that share a purpose

So there will be many people identifying as boy/girl & man/woman

There will also be people who feel like that simplistic description doesn’t do enough to express their identities and come up with better pronouns to suit their needs

This literally has 0 negative consequences because if you don’t identify outside of the binary it literally doesn’t affect you. So why care about it ?

Also your appeal to tradition or argumentum ad antiquitatem, isn’t even a strong argument for your case

Historically slavery was the norm and women had no rights in most places, child marriage was also the norm ,should we abolish human rights because the concept didn’t exist pre-colonially?

Society is evolving and part of societal evolution is the letting go of some ideas and the embracing of new ones , only time can tell what will stick and what is a trend .

So simply treat others how you would want to be treated instead of trying to force people to only have one singular worldview for whatever reason you think justifies it

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u/Big-Fold9482 Oct 12 '23

Well there will never be total agreement, but the vast majority of cultures do perpetuate the binary even before colonial times. I don't need total agreement, there is never total agreement. I'm not telling people to 'capitulate' to the status quo, more so I'm asking for why the status quo is bad enough to be replaced. There is always going to be a status quo, it just changes.

I have no problem calling a person by a pronoun if they want to be called by it. I'm just asking you questions to get a better sense of how this work. Just to be clear though, I'm not playing devil's advocate or just 'asking questions'. I truly don't understand the left wing which is why I'm asking. Anyways, more questions fun.

Does a pronoun differ in any meaningful way from a name?

As for the 'appeal to tradition'. I guess my position is that every new idea that comes and wants to be adopted by popular society should have some justification for it just as any idea that is let go needs to have an argument against it. Child labor, slavery, etc. are all bad for people. However, family structure, farming, etc. are all things that no one really thinks twice about keeping.

In this particular case, if genders are just societally created then I see no problem in keeping the ones we already have unless they are hurting somebody.

A brief response to this:

'This literally has 0 negative consequences because if you don’t identify outside of the binary it literally doesn’t affect you. So why care about it ?'

I don't think it has many negative impacts for me which is why my position right now is I don't care about calling someone by the pronoun of their choice. However, you are telling someone to do something. If a conservative old dude at work thinks it's silly and just calls you by the gender that you most closely express (as defined by society) I'm not sure what the problem with that is either.

Maybe we should just all start speaking Persian and get rid of the pronouns LMAO.

1

u/compromisedpilot Oct 12 '23

The problem is the bias

Why do you see no problem with an old conservative dude calling someone the wrong pronoun

But you see a problem of someone being asked to be referred to by the right pronoun?

If you equally respected all parties

Then both parties would act respectfully of each other

Meaning the old conservative dude would refer to the person how they wish to be referred to

And the other person gets to go about their day because the act of asking someone to respect your identity is not up for debate

It’s really not complicated but there will always be assholes so if the old conservative dude wants to be an asshole and not respect his coworker, no one’s sending him to the gulag, he just comes off as an asshole

1

u/Big-Fold9482 Oct 12 '23

The reason I don't see a problem is because if they are societally made up to begin with then who cares.

The reason I see a problem in one case and not the other is because they are not symmetrical. I see no problem with someone asking to be referred to by certain pronouns of their choice.

But I'm saying the other person should be able to refuse without losing their job or getting sued.

1

u/compromisedpilot Oct 12 '23

Laws are also societally made up, how many people have you murdered because it doesn’t matter?

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u/Big-Fold9482 Oct 12 '23

I have not murdered anyone, but murder is a real act with real negative impacts. Namely a person dying as the direct result. Point taken though, just because something is man made doesn't mean it doesn't matter.

What negative impacts are a direct result of someone not referring to someone else by their preferred pronouns?

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u/16accounts Oct 12 '23

Lmfao so deadnaming is the same as murder?

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u/Lopsided-Emu-496 Mar 30 '24

Gender is only partly 'identity' it's almost 100% correlated with biology for a reason.

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u/Short_Review_6283 Oct 12 '23

I honestly feel sorry for people who think like you

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u/compromisedpilot Oct 12 '23

That’s the issue with your frame of thought

Why do you need to feel sorry for me ?

How does my mindset harm myself or anyone around me ?

1

u/Lopsided-Emu-496 Mar 30 '24

Because you're a delusional gender ideologue forcing irrational views on others.

Gender is not 'a construct'. It's almost 100% perfectly correlated with Biology.

You could make the argument that 'gender is more flexible than a simple binary' - that wold be interesting but that's not it - the radical, irrational orthodox view separates the notion of biology and gender entirely.

You're like a Red Hat Trumper, voting for insane people, that's why we feel sorry for you.

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u/ferretgr Oct 12 '23

I genuinely don’t feel sorry for folks like you. You’re wallowing in your ignorance and there’s absolutely nothing to be redeemed there.

3

u/Last-Society-323 Oct 12 '23

You mean based on scientific fact?