Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Quote of the Day

Actually from Sunday, but who's counting? Quoth Ann Althouse:

The post actually begins with "Trigger Warning: Violence against Women." That's after the headline, quoted in my post title, so anyone already knows the subject. The "Trigger Warning" isn't so much a way of warning readers that there's something triggering in the post content as it is a way of asserting that the writer is part of a movement that purports to care about the sensitivities of women.

"Trigger warnings" are claims of ideological solidarity with this or that designated victim class. Which is an important topic for a much larger discussion some other time.

The important point here is that they're disguised as something else for the purpose of smuggling certain assumptions into the discussions which follow them.

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