Talk:Safetyism

Uncritical

The article as currently written is entirely uncritical of "safetyism" and declares in Wikivoice that it both exists and is the cause of various things that those using the term regard as maladies. This would appear to be unjustified and instead Wikipedia should present this as a term used by certain writers advancing certain political views, and those writers consider this term helpful in explaining aspects of American culture they despise or disapprove of. Other writers go as far as saying it doesn't even exist, and that there are alternative more compelling reasons for various behaviours, and of course that some of these behaviours are not universally regarded negatively.

Comparable concepts are Snowflake and Wokery, which Wikipedia describes without appearing to approve of them and believe in them. Other articles covering concepts whose existence is not widely accepted include Rapid-onset gender dysphoria, which Wikipedia refuses to give credence in an article with that name, instead preferring Rapid-onset gender dysphoria controversy, and Morgellons, which Wikipedia describes as delusional.

The article frames "safetyism" in terms of those who "support" it (think it is a good thing) and "detractors" (the author who coined it). But the use of the term "safetyism" would appear to come entirely from those who view it pejoratively. Thus it is a description, like TERF, only used by those outside of the group when describing all the things they believe that are wrong with those inside the group. Are there any people who own "safetyism" (would use it to describe their own beliefs) and think it is a good thing? The article currently fails to mention the the very concept is disputed by some: either that it doesn't exist at all, or that it is an unconvincing explanation for behaviour, or that that behaviour is actually a malady. I'll collect some sources on this.

Currently my impression is this content should be moved to being a section inside The Coddling of the American Mind as it is still, after five years, largely a word written inside quotes and attributed to those who coined it in a book. -- Colin°^Talk 18:28, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Hey guys. Looking in academic literature, there is not much coverage of safetyism (https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%22safetyism%22&btnG=) so it does appear to be political. It should be noted that the *concept* not by the name very clearly exists within the medical and mental health literatures - so some article addressing this sort of concept should probably exist somewhere. It is vaguely address in Involuntary treatment in the sociology section.

It's also worth noting that UK supreme court Jonathan Sumption has written about this sort of topic at length before and after the pandemic un the UK and even did a Reith lecture that address the topic if memory serves. He does not appear to directly use the word.

It's worth noting that safetyism shows up in the COVID debate as well as debates about parenting - so I don't think it is naturally an article underneath american mind. [1]

You raise a good point about a "neutral" use of the term, you are right - it kind of analogou to "prochoice" in the abortion debate. If you want a place where this sort of stuff has come up for a while - medical screening for cancer (e.g. cervical smears, breast screening etc) is one area. Here the disk associated with unnecessary diagnositics or treatment is a topic. The UK policy here is often radically different from that of other countries. I doubt the term safetyism is used - but it is in many ways the same concept.

Within parenting the concept is pretty old. See for example this blog post from 2008 [2], in fact you can find this concept in the work of Jane Jacobs on urban planning.

So yeah, it's real thing that appears in multiple concepts just not necessarily by the same name. Talpedia 13:26, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Talpedia I think you've fallen into the trap that this article presents. It claims, often by misrepresenting the sources by using them out of context, to be describing some universal human failing. But that is not what the authors of the book coined Safetyism to mean. It isn't about whether we should have locked down in covid or whether parents should let their children play rough and tumble (though the latter may have influenced their thinking). It is entirely about dealing with what was perceived as an attack on free speech at US university campuses with a claim that unwanted speakers would make the university campus unsafe. Anything beyond that is a bit like what the essay WP:UPPERCASE deals with where someone has taken a word they heard or read somewhere and run with it unaware of what it really means. Like how the other day I heard someone saying some politician was both dog whistling and gaslighting, when it was clear this person didn't really have the first clue what either term meant, but knew they were bad things. It doesn't surprise me at all to find example use on UnHerd. Your Google scholar results are either discussing the book or use the word or a phrase including the word (like "culture of safetyism") in scare quotes. We don't do that for example, for authoritarian or populist, which, are actually real commonly accepted concepts, rather than something two free speech advocates made up.

Humans have and forever will debate what lengths to take "being safe" and the pros and cons and where to draw the line, but that isn't safetyism. We can't really write about them being the same thing unless that's the consensus of reliable sources. Reliable sources document a perceived phenomenon on US campuses starting 2013, which they say the book calls "safetyism". That doesn't in any way sound like "The book describes a universal failing of humans to value safety above all other considerations, with examples from the Bible, the reformation, both world wars and automobile, aircraft design and various would pandemics including AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and flu." It isn't that at all, though someone might see the word "safetyism" and think that maybe it applies to their concern that e.g. we are too cautious during the pandemic. -- Colin°^Talk 14:11, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Not yet a thing

I think this article has jumped the gun a bit. The term "safetyism" is not, as of 2023, a thing, and would appear its use mostly is restricted to free speech advocates writing about US academia, and the occasional right-wing columnist who thinks it's a cool new weapon against liberals.

• Onelook: Safetyism "Sorry, no dictionaries indexed in the selected category contain the word safetyism."
• Merriam-webster: Safetyism "The word you've entered isn't in the dictionary."
• Macmillan: Safetyism "Sorry, No articles match that search term"
• Oxford Learners Dictionaries: Safetyism "No exact match found for “safetyism” in English"
• The American Heritage Dictionary: Safetyism "No word definition found"
• Vocabulary.com: Safetyism "We couldn't find any matches for “safetyism” in the dictionary."
• Cambridge: Safetyism - blank -
• Collins Dictionary: Safetyism

New Word Suggestion

the idea of safety, including "emotional safety", being prioritized in a culture

'Additional Information'

used in 2018 by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt in their book "The Coddling of the American Mind"

Submitted By: MaisieSee - 23/12/2020

Status: This word is being monitored for evidence of usage.

• Howard-Hassmann, Rhoda E.; McLaughlin, Neil (August 2022). "Ideacide: How On-Line Petitions and Open Letters Undermine Academic Freedom and Free Expression". Human Rights Quarterly. 44 (3): 451–475. doi:10.1353/hrq.2022.0023. ISSN 1085-794X.

This article is used eight times here and is the main source. The article itself proposes a new term ideacide. They write 'we are seeing the emergence of "ideacide."', which they describe as "a gift to the political right". This ideacide is then explained by three "major dynamics operating within academy". The first is the "scissors movement", a term that was coined in 2005 by "US neo-Marxist sociologist Michael Buroway" which claims that "since the late 1960s, US sociologists have been moving left and the US public right". The second is "a new ideology of safetyism (explained below), starting in elite universities in the United States and spreading to other countries and institutions" and the third is "a new culture of complaint operating in the concrete situations in which academics and students find themselves, under our new social media-mediated existence". They also emphasise the emergence of internet technologies such as social media that hugely speed up the conversation and break down the barriers between academics and the public.

The authors of this article consider that "safetyism" is both a "new ideology" and a new word. Hence the need for "(explained below)". And "below" they write "Safetyism can be defined as a culture or belief system which makes safety, especially emotional safety, a sacred value that cannot be compromised on behalf of other practical or moral trade-offs." The footnote for this text explains this is "Authors' definition, based on discussions by LUKIANOFF & HAIDT", who are the authors who coined the term. In other words, this is such an unrecognised and unused neologism that even four years (2022) after it was coined, one has to actually converse with those who coined it in order to be sure what they meant by it. Therefore to use this article to write in wikivoice that Safetyism is a thing and that its definition is accepted widely and its consequences are also accepted widely fails WP:V imo. Instead we must write that this is a term which free-speech advocates propose as an explanation for what they view as anti-free-speech behaviour that they have seen recently within US academia. Also this source defines Safetyism not as some general human or social failing that has always been with us and always will, but specifically as a "culture or belief system" that "Emerg[ed] first in elite United States colleges" but has since apparently "spread widely" though their examples of "trigger warnings, safe spaces, and bias response teams" are limited to academia, which is the concern of the article. The authors do not actually suggest safetyism alone is responsible for the "two recent cases of academic mobbing in the United States", nor do they offer any examples that this "culture or belief system" exists outside of US academia and is of anything other than very recent history.

We do not have articles on "ideacide", the "scissor movement" or "complaint culture". Terms like these get proposed by authors all the time and Wikipedia has to decide whether they have yet become a thing. Sometimes the thing they become is simply a rhetorical weapon used solely by one group in a political battle of ideas, but whose existence or importance is questionable. Four years after it was coined, academics using the term have to introduce their readers to it, refer to the book that coined it, define it and cite personal conversations with the book authors. -- Colin°^Talk 10:48, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

Used in journalistic political discourse [3]. Definitely a thing - just one with many names (see my comments above). Talpedia 13:27, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Unherd is not a reliable source. I'll comment in the section above. -- Colin°^Talk 13:49, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Sources

• Paresky, Pamela; Campbell, Bradley (1 June 2020). "Safetyism Isn't the Problem". The New York Times.

This says "those concerned about the side effects of the lockdown have begun to use the word “safetyism” to characterize what they consider extreme social-distancing measures." The word "safetyism" is linked to Another NY Times article that quotes some email saying "Progressives have grown more likely to embrace a culture of “safetyism” in recent years. This safetyism seeks to protect them and those who are deemed the most vulnerable members of our society from threats to their emotional and physical well-being." Note the quotes round both uses of the term. The first article goes on to define it with explicit reference to the book, both clues that this is a neologism. The point of the article is essentially that "safetyism" isn't a useful concept because those alleging safetyism or those alleging anti-safetyism are "stereotyp[ing] both sides of the reopening debate". That in practice all parties are more nuanced and using this word just shuts down analysis of what really concerns the sides of the argument. -- Colin°^Talk 16:26, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

• Singal, Jesse (26 September 2018). "How 'Coddled' Are American College Students, Anyway?". Intelligencer.

The writer notes the book "is already being caricatured as two middle-aged white guys complaining about how pampered “kids these days” are". The claim that "a culture of safetyism … [swept] through many universities between 2013 and 2017" (emphasis theirs) is examined by the writer and concludes it "is a tough thing to prove empirically, and [the authors] don’t quite do that". Despite this the writer says the book "can be enjoyed whether or not one agrees that safetyism has taken over some college campuses". So this review rejects the idea of safetyism as something without evidence. -- Colin°^Talk 16:26, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

• Berlatsky, Noah (14 September 2018). "'The Coddling of the American Mind' Is Sort of Brainless". Pacific Standard.

This is summed up by the sub-title "A new book repackages old complaints about college kids, while also discouraging protest." The article continues from their earlier work here claiming that framing student protest as being all an attack on free speech is wrong and missing out of valid criticism of those who really are threatening free speech. They attack the central core of safetyism that "adversity makes you stronger" as "trite" and note that "some life experiences may make you stronger, others diminish you, sometimes permanently". It's too broad a brush to be useful and ends up being employed simply to dismiss. They also claim Lukianoff and Haidt downplay some of the things students were protesting about, for example, presenting one figure "as a reasonable scholar, rather than as a man peddling discredited race science". -- Colin°^Talk 18:55, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

• S. Roth, Michael (7 September 2018). "Have parents made their kids too fragile for the rough-and-tumble of life?". Washington Post. Retrieved 19 November 2023.

The writer says "The authors tell a tale of overprotective parents eager to make everything safe for their offspring, leaving little room for young people to learn from their mistakes because they were shielded from ever making any. “Safetyism,” as they put it, is a symptom of the “paranoid parenting” styles that the authors claim reached a peak in the 1990s." This, the reviewer argues this is nothing new, that every generation thinks the younger generation are bringing up the kids all wrong, and being too soft on them. While the reviewer accepts some lessons in the book are worthwhile, they fundamentally reject the idea that kids are "disempowered because they’ve been convinced they are fragile" or that the parents are doing it wrong. Instead they point to real crises in society that the kids and parents are responding to. -- Colin°^Talk 18:55, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

• Warner, John. "Safetyism Was Never Real". www.insidehighered.com. The title says it all. This blog post is entirely dismissive of the concept arguing those who use the term are in power and privilege: "While holding all the cards, you get to tell others that they’re not playing the game correctly". They argue students today, far from being fragile and afraid, are speaking out like never before, and not afraid at all to challenge. -- Colin°^Talk 18:55, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

  I see this source has been added to support the text "Conservatives who have been accused of engaging in safetyism to protect themselves from criticism include the former US president Donald Trump, due to his "inability to withstand even the slightest criticism without lashing out" against less powerful people". The source article is not accusing Trump of "safetyism". The article's writer doesn't believe safetyism exists, hence the title. They are parodying it. It says "If safetyism is a thing, its true avatar is President Donald Trump..." but what it is doing here is mocking safetyism and arguing it is (or has become) essentially any anything-goes pejorative term for someone being thin-skinned or emotionally fragile or daring to mention how they feel about something. And the people using that pejorative term are themselves just as thin-skinned or emotionally fragile or want you to accept their emotional outbursts but the difference is those people are in power or have privilege. The article does not accuse "Bret Stephens" of safetyism, though claims he "is another example of someone who decries the pernicious influence of safetyism while cocooning himself in a protective bubble". In this case, the author is mocking those who use the term to criticise people who complain of being hurt while themselves being unable to handle being hurt. They are saying really that isn't it strange when "safetyism" only exists when someone in power or privilege is using the term when trying to dismiss the concerns, imperfectly expressed perhaps, of those in minority and oppressed.

  Safetyism is not another word for thin skinned. Trump is not an example of safetyism. Nor is it a go-to explanation for all attempts to cancel a speaker, stop a march going head or burn a book or demand libraries don't carry it. The authors of the book were specifically addressing a campus culture they thought they saw, but others don't see, and arguing it explains a free-speech change they say they saw, but also which also others say they don't see. It's an illusion and doesn't deserve an article that claims it is real. -- Colin°^Talk 11:10, 20 November 2023 (UTC)