
Bartleby, the Safe-Spacer - quickfox
https://www.the-american-interest.com/2019/09/16/bartleby-the-safe-spacer/
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lidHanteyk
And yet, sometimes, we really rather would prefer not to.

Bartleby was broken twice, first by the weight of the world at the dead-letter
room of the post office, and then by the realization that his worth in life
was as a scribe. Note how he goes from hard-working to burnt-out as his days
fill with the copying of somebody else's qualified work and original thoughts.

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valenciarose
Patientplatypus was overly kind in describing this as a stretch. It hinges on
an obscene misrepresentation of the intent behind safety spaces and total
ignorance as to what goes on inside them.

Discussing safe spaces without mentioning trauma and PTSD is evidence of
disinterest in investigating the topic at best and deception at worst. The
purpose of content warnings and taking care to use respectful language is not
about shielding participants from learning that bad things happen or that our
everyday language encodes bias about the relative value of human beings. The
participants whose well-being it seeks to promote already have this knowledge
to a greater degree than Colin Fleming ever will.

Content warnings about rape matter because almost every classroom has a few
women who've been raped, very possibly by someone in the classroom. PTSD
evokes strong physiological responses that are more likely to be manageable
with advanced warning.

Similarly, derogatory language about LGBTQ people is often delivered with the
threat of violence or actual violence. I don't know a queer person who hasn't
experienced some anti-queer violence. My wife worked in a LGBTQ center and had
to hit the floor when someone emptied a gun into it from a car. The initial
trauma is deepened by subsequent threat and fear.

So what goes on in safe spaces? I'm a Boomer, so I don't spend much time in
classrooms, but I do spend a lot of time in spaces like activist conferences.
Let me tell you, none of the discussions I see elsewhere are as passionate or
as vigorously contested. This is a benefit of safety, not a casualty of it. I
see the same thing at work when I succeed in creating psychological safety for
my teams: passionate discussion in engaged teams.

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ubu7737
> Bartleby is clearly depressed, as many of us are in these times. He’s
> broken, not committed to repair. And he’s encouraged to stay that way, in
> part, because no one really knows what the hell to do with him.

As Szasz points out, this is the basic attitude of modern psychiatry. "What
the hell do we do with these depressed people? They should repair themselves
and get lively in the world (that we have miserably abused)."

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patientplatypus
This...seems like a stretch.

The author fits the 'safe space' narrative to the story, but it's a little
difficult to discount that maybe young people are just tired of the awfulness.

I mean stuff like this
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_among_LGBT_youth_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_among_LGBT_youth_in_the_United_States#Explanations_for_overrepresentation))
- you have gay girls who are fleeing home because they're families are trying
to "rape them straight".

 _The Hetrick-Martin Institute showed that among homeless queer girls aged
13–15 in New York City, that 50% of them were homeless because they were
fleeing familial corrective rape._

So, yeah. Young people get defensive about how others use words because the
world is terrifying. That makes perfectly rational sense to me and it seems
pretty sad that the author can't see that.

Not to mention the huge uptick in gun violence or lack of mental (or any other
healthcare) or lack of good paying jobs or the fact that half the country is
addicted to Oxy or heroin.

But no, it's the youth of today that are wrong. /s

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rendall
>> _The Hetrick-Martin Institute showed that among homeless queer girls aged
13–15 in New York City, that 50% of them were homeless because they were
fleeing familial corrective rape._

That is a pretty astonishing claim. However, I could not find the cited paper.
It seems to be an unsubstantiated claim on a blog. Perhaps you can find the
original paper?

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droithomme
The author Colin Fleming presumes that Melville's works are for the most part
fabricated or exaggerations, and is a "sell out", yet he offers no evidence
for these claims.

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pram
Bartleby is a fantastic story that haunts you. I also agree with the author of
this article in that it seems like it could have been written by Kafka. Very
ahead of its time.

~~~
mirimir
Indeed. I've wondered whether it could have influenced Kafka in writing "A
Hunger Artist".

