Sex and Gender in Virtual Worlds

[Vanity Fair]

A discussion of the concept of the Universal Avatar over on the SLUniverse forums went off on an interesting tangent: the issue of sex and gender in virtual worlds.

https://sansarnewsblog.wordpress.com/2017/11/30/sex-and-gender-issues-in-virtual-worlds-the-male-female-dichotomy-was-viewed-as-binary-and-the-technology-literally-codified-that-concept/

 

[cykarushb]

I think this person is looking into this idea a bit too much. This is secondlife, you can be literally anything.

Male, female, transgender, some kind of gray area between two other genders, parts of several different genders, you can be an ungendered cube, a car, you can unironically sexually identify as an AH-64 Apache Attack Helicopter.

Just because the "base" of the game is centered around Male and Female doesnt mean theres any exclusion for anyone else who doesnt identify with the binary. Its that 99% of people are Male, or Female. They dont identify as anything else. LL isnt going to stick up a big thing at the start that says "pick one: male / female". Because its not important, you can customize your avatar however you like to be whatever you like. Nothing created by LL is restricted to one gender or another. Theres plenty of user created content thats obviously only meant for one or the other, but its not like you cant wear it, it just wont work well because its not designed for it.

There isnt a lulu sweater like mine for male avatars, its female, its got a more petite fit and breasts. But that wouldnt stop people from putting it on a male avatar, that just means you now have more curves on your otherwise manly physique. And thats not LL's fault, thats the fault of the content creator. But even then, there is no real "fault", its not a problem, they are not required to make gender neutral clothing, they make what they want to make and market it to who they want to market it to.

They talk about the starting avatars like thats the end all be all of your SL experience, like opening a tin of mixed nuts and only seeing the plastic film inside. In particular the thing with the horses. Its possible to mess around with things to get a female avatar to ride on the male avatars horse with the male avatars animation. And yes its difficult. But its not important at all, you can go get other horses, you can go get other avatars, you can go get other animations entirely. LL has it set up like that because its simple, for new users to work with it.

 

You wanna see a game where gender really is restricted to the binary? Check out Smallworlds some time, its a isometric social avatar game, but EXTREMELY limited in what you can do with avatar customization. Much of the clothing and avatar customization options are bound to if you have a Male or Female avatar. You cannot have a female avatar with male hair, you cannot have a male avatar and wear (most) female clothing. They have different "voices" and the game is filled with binary gender content.

Not saying its a bad thing, tbh i hardly care about this kinda stuff, its kind of annoying when the female hoodie was really cheap but the male one was really expensive and restricted to VIP users but whatever.

[cykarushb]

Also, off topic, this image is absolutely hilarious and im setting it as my wallpaper, tiled

[Chaser Zaks]

This is an example of people who complain about everything because they don't understand it or they don't have something to to complain about / haven't complained about something in the past work minutes so they start grasping for straws.

Their argument is there is only male and female avatars choices, but that's because there are two genders(yes even when someone is transgender, they change their gender from male to female or visa versa, not attack helicopter).

Even then, it isn't even used to identify avatar's gender, even with LSL it doesn't work well. Lots of men(including me) use the female shape because of the more customisation options for the shape, and now a lot of avatars are consealed by rigged mesh bodies.

Another arguement is that the starter avatars with the horses are "programmed" to work with specific genders. That's because of the animation set and the way it is rigged. I've taken those horses apart and used both of them on my female gendered male avatar, and they have worked. If they mean they can't wear it, that's a bug with inventory permissions.

They have also stated that the UV mapping on avatars for SL are different for male and female which is false, and there are no issues if you want to be a man and wear a skirt if you are using Linden Clothing.

If it is mesh, then yes, a lot of creators use different UV mappings, it isn't a gender thing's it is a matter of how the model is unwrapped.

 

In the end, if they are complaining about being forced to use one thing, they are missing the whole point of SL. You make it the way you want it. if something isn't to your liking, you have all the creation tools available to change it.

Also before someone tells me to check my privileges, I am pansexual and identify as male but feel female sometimes and one of my closest friends is transgender, so go bite a dirt cake. (I don't know how else to end it, that's the first thing that popped into my mind and it sounded funny so I put it, I don't mean to actually go bite a dirt cake, I just wanted to say it because if I don't now, I'll never have a opportunity to say it later)

Edited December 1, 2017 by Chaser Zaks

[Adams Scarmon]

Actually in SL I can be more gender free than RL

Somedays i feel like using my *****, other days I use my dick.

Its awesome lol

[Derek Torvalar]

21 minutes ago, Chaser Zaks said:

T

Also before someone tells me to check my privileges, I am pansexual and identify as male but feel female sometimes and one of my closest friends is transgender, so go bite a dirt cake. (I don't know how else to end it, that's the first thing that popped into my mind and it sounded funny so I put it, I don't mean to actually go bite a dirt cake, I just wanted to say it because if I don't now, I'll never have a opportunity to say it later)

LOLed at this part The parenthetical part.

Tangentially though despite how you identify if you were to suggest that binary view at WLU you would likely be sanctioned or suspended for creating a toxic environment. See my petition in Education Forum.

 

ETA Sorry not MY petition but my thread.

Edited December 1, 2017 by Derek Torvalar

[Bree Giffen]

Could one say that if a software developer neglects to add a representation of genitals to their avatars that technically the avatars are gender neutral? Resulting in asexual avatars where gender is defined purely by the user? In this sense, nearly all games (except maybe Conan Exiles) are way ahead of the curve by presenting true gender neutrality.

Edited December 1, 2017 by Bree Giffen

[Talligurl]

One of the things I would do different if I had it all to do over would have been to pick a gender neutral user name, so I could sometimes go out as a different gender.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

On 12/1/2017 at 2:21 PM, Derek Torvalar said:

LOLed at this part The parenthetical part.

Tangentially though despite how you identify if you were to suggest that binary view at WLU you would likely be sanctioned or suspended for creating a toxic environment. See my petition in Education Forum.

 

ETA Sorry not MY petition but my thread.

No, you would NOT be "sanctioned" or "suspended" at WLU.

You would get a stern talking to by your TA supervisor, followed swiftly by a public apology from the university's president.

C'mon, Derek, you're better than this. This is either deliberate misinformation, or just ignorance. Lindsay Shepherd was not disciplined in any way: she was told to clear her tutorial lesson plans with her teaching supervisor, which, frankly, she should have been doing in the first place. That's it. End of repercussions. No sanctions, no suspension.

That Shepherd's actions were handled very poorly by her supervisor and the two other staff who were present is unquestionable: it was a royal f**k up. But you've just completely mischaracterized the consequences of her actions: there were none. Let's at least get the facts right.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

Interesting blog post. I'll admit to being a little surprised to hear that LL is still so backwards as to be hard-coding certain items by binary gender. I wonder why they don't also provide a non-binary option as a starter avatar? Given that SL was really pretty pioneering in its approach to gender identity, you'd have thought that they'd have done better to keep up with the times.

And yes, I remember how awfully sexist Blue Mars was too. Ick.

[Innula Zenovka]

8 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

nteresting blog post. I'll admit to being a little surprised to hear that LL is still so backwards as to be hard-coding certain items by binary gender. I wonder why they don't also provide a non-binary option as a starter avatar? Given that SL was really pretty pioneering in its approach to gender identity, you'd have thought that they'd have done better to keep up with the times.

I think the issue in SL (as opposed to Sansar) would be that the existing avatar mesh and the editor in the viewer are coded on the basis the avatar is male or female.   The same slider values frequently have a different effect, depending on the gender of the base avatar shape.    So any attempt to change that would presumably mean recoding the avatar editor and recoding the avatar shape, while trying not to break legacy content.     That sounds horribly difficult, if it is, in fact, even possible (which I doubt).

 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

3 minutes ago, Innula Zenovka said:

I think the issue in SL (as opposed to Sansar) would be that the existing avatar mesh and the editor in the viewer are coded on the basis the avatar is male or female.   The same slider values frequently have a different effect, depending on the gender of the base avatar shape.    So any attempt to change that would presumably mean recoding the avatar editor and recoding the avatar shape, while trying not to break legacy content.     That sounds horribly difficult, if it is, in fact, even possible (which I doubt).

 

Wow, didn't know that Innula! Probably I should have, but I never did much of the gender-bending thing. And it's been a long time. 

So, how hard would it be to created a non-binary base shape then?

[Innula Zenovka]

1 hour ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Wow, didn't know that Innula! Probably I should have, but I never did much of the gender-bending thing. And it's been a long time. 

So, how hard would it be to created a non-binary base shape then?

I don't know a lot about shape-making.    There is a newish flag to llGetObjectDetails, OBJECT_BODY_SHAPE_TYPE, which returns a float as opposed to an integer,  and the wiki explains, 

Quote

Normal operational values are in the range [0.0, 1.0]. 0.0 is standard female setting, 1.0 is standard male setting. Intermediate values with visible differences are possible with manually crafted shapes.

If you follow the link, you'll see that there are several pictures of the good old Ruth avatar with various settings for the OBJECT_BODY_SHAPE_TYPE but I have no idea what they did to the shape to get the call to return the intermediate values.    "Manually crafted" it, presumably, but heaven knows what that actually involves doing.

Certainly, though, I'm told by shape makers that it's not uncommon to start with a base shape for the "wrong" gender, particularly if you want to make a shape for a slightly-build male or an athletic or older female.   That's one reason, I am sure, why the RLV call to get the avatar shape's gender is hardly ever used in practice, even though RLV scripters have had it for years.   You start off thinking "that's handy for choosing animations" but then you start thinking of all the things that can go wrong with doing it that way, and generally conclude it's not a good idea in practice.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

2 hours ago, Innula Zenovka said:

There is a newish flag to llGetObjectDetails, OBJECT_BODY_SHAPE_TYPE, which returns a float as opposed to an integer,  and the wiki explains . . .

One of the really ADORABLE and darling things that I've always loved about the people here is how you all generously try so hard to pretend that I have even the tiniest inkling of what this technical stuff means . . . 

2 hours ago, Innula Zenovka said:

Normal operational values are in the range [0.0, 1.0]. 0.0 is standard female setting, 1.0 is standard male setting. Intermediate values with visible differences are possible with manually crafted shapes.

Ok, so I think I sort of get this. In theory at least, there are intermediate values between 0.0 and 1.0 that represent sort of "midpoints" between male and female. I suppose that's sort of like non-binary in effect.

I did like this part in the link: "The avatar itself has no defined gender." That's actually pretty important, because it highlights the way that a gendered shape is an add-on, like clothing (which, of course, in actual practice, it sort of is), but that the avatar, as a sort of abstract "thing," independent of how it is rendered, is genderless. In some ways, that's a kind of analogy to how one might think of the difference between the gendered (or genderless) identity one might recognize in oneself, as independent from the biological body that one "occupies" (or, in an SL context, "wears"). That's pretty cool, and does, sort of, undercut the argument that binary genders are "hard coded" into the avatar (even if they are in practice coded into shapes as either 0.0 or 1.0 values).

2 hours ago, Innula Zenovka said:

Certainly, though, I'm told by shape makers that it's not uncommon to start with a base shape for the "wrong" gender, particularly if you want to make a shape for a slightly-build male or an athletic or older female.   That's one reason, I am sure, why the RLV call to get the avatar shape's gender is hardly ever used in practice, even though RLV scripters have had it for years.   You start off thinking "that's handy for choosing animations" but then you start thinking of all the things that can go wrong with doing it that way, and generally conclude it's not a good idea in practice.

The idea that there is a sort of "Ur-Male," and an "Ur-Female" shape representing two poles, with all other possibilities existing only as intermediates is a bit odd, when you think about it. It's definitely not "thinking outside of the box" to imagine human physiology that way, it seems to me. It shows a distinct lack of imagination, and suggests that morphology is primarily a function of biological sex. The latter is obviously really important, but it's not the only determinant. Genetically, I should think (I don't know for sure), most elements of body shape are probably independent of, even if they are modified by, sexual characteristics.

I suppose it's "good" that animations, whatever they're for, don't tend to call the shape's gender -- but still, nearly all, or surely a huge majority, of animations are in practice gendered, whether that's a component of the programming, or simply the aesthetic. I presume the point of such a call would be to "customize" the animation to the gender value that was returned?

Anyway, this is fascinating. I wish I'd known more about this kind of thing 5 or 6 years ago. Thanks Innula!

(PS. I never tried RLV, which is kind of odd. It was certainly of interest to me, just to see exactly what it did, how it functioned, and what it felt like, but I think it intimidated me.)

Edited December 3, 2017 by Scylla Rhiadra
Just clarifying a few things. Because wine.

[Callum Meriman]

Hang on, I am a male-ish avatar but using the female shape (I have had a female shape as a male for most of 11 years)

I have a female mesh head (Catwa Lilly). I have male Aeros bits, and I certainly don't have breasts.

Where do I fit in this "Only binary choices" scheme?

[Klytyna]

7 hours ago, Innula Zenovka said:

That's one reason, I am sure, why the RLV call to get the avatar shape's gender is hardly ever used in practice,

Actually, the main reason for not using that rlv command, as far as i can remember, is that it wasn't that useful, all it really did was pull a value from the VIEWER's debug settings, for the gender of the first shape worn in that viewer, it didn't get the gender of your current shape on your current logged in account.

The new lsl return value for object details tells you the 'gender' of the currently worn shape, which is far more useful for most purposes.

8 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

So, how hard would it be to created a non-binary base shape then?

One of the biggest problems in "non gender specific bodies" is that bodies ARE gender specific.

Daz3D did this years back, they made the 'unimesh' series of figures, Mike 3 Vicky 3, Stephanie 3, Aiko 3, Hiro 3 etc., and theoretically, they all shared a rig, and all shared a single polygonal cut, so any morph target for any of them could be loaded into any of the others, etc.

I once did a render of a female character made with Hiro 3, and some extreme and gratuitous morph abuse. Worked well for a static carefully posed render.

The problem is, male and female skeletal rigs are not the same, typically female hip joints will be angled inwards more to account for being further apart, creating a 'pelvic floor' and a slightly knock kneed appearance. It's why women on a crowded train find it easier to sit with their knees together than men do for long periods. 

It's also why the pelvic structure of Daz's female unimesh figures was often critisised for being a pain in the butt to work with, because essentially, it's a male crotch, no pelvic floor to speak of.

The 'standard SL system avatar' seems to suffer from the same problem, it's not male, it's not female, its a hybrid that can be bullied into approximating either, badly, with a binary setting..
 

[Derek Torvalar]

11 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

No, you would NOT be "sanctioned" or "suspended" at WLU.

You would get a stern talking to by your TA supervisor, followed swiftly by a public apology from the university's president.

C'mon, Derek, you're better than this. This is either deliberate misinformation, or just ignorance. Lindsay Shepherd was not disciplined in any way: she was told to clear her tutorial lesson plans with her teaching supervisor, which, frankly, she should have been doing in the first place. That's it. End of repercussions. No sanctions, no suspension.

That Shepherd's actions were handled very poorly by her supervisor and the two other staff who were present is unquestionable: it was a royal f**k up. But you've just completely mischaracterized the consequences of her actions: there were none. Let's at least get the facts right.

Well hellooo Scylla

Had a feeling you might be by.

Fair enough, I should have said "could'. But as the secret third party investigation is still under way, and that there seems to be some irregularities going on with it in regard to its impartiality and legality it may well turn out that my original statement will be correct.

Time will tell.

I take it from your timbre that you will not be signing the petition?

PS Did you see what Barb Kay reported about WLU and their their tendency to eat their own? http://www.barbarakay.ca/articles/view/1234

PPS And by the way 'Expulsion' is one of the 'sanctions' permitted under their GSVP

Edited December 3, 2017 by Derek Torvalar

[Innula Zenovka]

3 hours ago, Klytyna said:

Actually, the main reason for not using that rlv command, as far as i can remember, is that it wasn't that useful, all it really did was pull a value from the VIEWER's debug settings, for the gender of the first shape worn in that viewer, it didn't get the gender of your current shape on your current logged in account.

I think your memory is mistaken in this case.   

It's easy enough to test if you have RLV/RLVa enabled -- simply drop this into a prim and touch it.  Note the result.   Use the avatar editor to switch the gender of the shape you're wearing, save the change, and touch the prim again.  Compare the results.

In Catznip (RLVa) it behaves as I suggested, and I imagine its behaviour is similar with Marine's RLV.   

integer iChan = 7;

default {
    state_entry() {
        llListen(iChan,"",llGetOwner(),"");
    }

    touch_start(integer num_detected) {
        llOwnerSay("@getdebug_AvatarSex="+(string)iChan);
    }

    listen(integer channel, string name, key id, string message) {
        llOwnerSay("Your viewer reports your body shape as "+llList2String(["female","male"],(integer)message));
    }
}

 

[Klytyna]

2 hours ago, Innula Zenovka said:

I think your memory is mistaken in this case. 

I know theres a reason why "does not work" occurred to me...

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LSL_Protocol/Restrained_Life_Relay/gender

In addition, rlv can SET this value, without changing the actual gender of the worn shape, which means that it can report a value that is in fact not correct in response to a later query, and thus does NOT reliably report the gender of your current shape, just whats currently stored in a viewer debug value.
 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

7 hours ago, Klytyna said:

One of the biggest problems in "non gender specific bodies" is that bodies ARE gender specific.

Well, yes. In RL they are mostly, I suppose.

I'm not a geneticist, so I'm not really in a position to contradict you about human morphology in RL, but in SL . . . well, your world, your imagination? One of the things that both explains SL's appeal for most people, but also describes its limitations, is that, for all of the freedom that it affords user, it is still built, really, to produce a virtual approximation of RL. So, by default we have ground, and sky. We have gravity. And, of course, we have avatars that are built to replicate (relatively) closely human ones. We can get around most of those things, but they involve a fair bit of sophisticated and complicated messing about with code. And maybe that's too bad?

[Klytyna]

3 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Well, yes. In RL they are mostly, I suppose.

It's simple really... male and female skeletal structure is different in real people in real life... different proportions on bone lengths, and distances between joints (like the hips) and angles..

In digital representation of people, you have to take that into account or your representations will not look like people.

The Daz unimesh figures were a pain because despite making vicky 3 first, and then making mike from her mesh, vicky's mesh was essentially quasi male, and thus didn't have a pelvic floor, that is to say a female figure with NO ROOM to add the FEMALE bits.

 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

6 hours ago, Derek Torvalar said:

Well hellooo Scylla

Had a feeling you might be by.

Fair enough, I should have said "could'. But as the secret third party investigation is still under way, and that there seems to be some irregularities going on with it in regard to its impartiality and legality it may well turn out that my original statement will be correct.

Time will tell.

I take it from your timbre that you will not be signing the petition?

PS Did you see what Barb Kay reported about WLU and their their tendency to eat their own? http://www.barbarakay.ca/articles/view/1234

PPS And by the way 'Expulsion' is one of the 'sanctions' permitted under their GSVP

Well, really, it's pretty accidental that I happened by as you posted this, but, hey, lucky you, eh?

I really don't want to get into this debate here, in part because it's not an appropriate place to get into it, and most people would be bored out of their gourd by it, and in part because I've been discussing it ad nauseum elsewhere and am limp already with exhaustion.

The one thing I will note is that the comparison of Shepherd's case to that of Dicarlo is really a false equivalency. Dicarlo was a tenure-track PhD teaching and designing his own courses. Shepherd, on the other hand, is a teaching assistant who is only a couple of months into her MA program. She's not a "professor" or even an "instructor": her job as a TA is literally to support and complement the professor's lectures. She doesn't have "academic freedom": it's not her course. Arguably, doing her own thing in tutorials represents a violation of the professor's actual academic freedom.

This is not conjectural on my part: I've served as both a TA and an instructor (and TA supervisor) in courses somewhat like the one Shepherd is TAing for, in the same public university system as her. Most of the media feeding frenzy around this has demonstrated an astonish level of ignorance about what universities do, and how courses like this work.

We don't know an awful lot about what actually happened in that tutorial, but on the basis of what I've read, I can reasonably confidently say that 1) Shepherd was given inadequate training, support, and guidance by her TA supervisor (i.e., the professor), 2) Shepherd did an inadequate job of contextualizing the video she showed (i.e., she didn't actually "teach" at all: showing a YouTube video and then telling the students to have at it in an undirected way is not "teaching"), and 3) the response of her TA supervisor, the equity officer, and the other faculty member was appallingly poor and a really obvious form of bullying.

But "censorship"? Nope. University courses teach these issues, and deal with Peterson's views, all the time (even I have, in passing). This was just really poorly managed pedagogy and supervision.

Edited December 3, 2017 by Scylla Rhiadra

[Innula Zenovka]

46 minutes ago, Klytyna said:

I know theres a reason why "does not work" occurred to me...

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LSL_Protocol/Restrained_Life_Relay/gender

In addition, rlv can SET this value, without changing the actual gender of the worn shape, which means that it can report a value that is in fact not correct in response to a later query, and thus does NOT reliably report the gender of your current shape, just whats currently stored in a viewer debug value.
 

Which, as I understand it, means it's not reliable when the RLV call @setdebug has been used to switch the gender of the shape you're wearing.  It is the rest of the time, though, as far as I know.   But I still say it (and OBJECT_BODY_SHAPE_TYPE) aren't much practical use to scripters other than in very specific circumstances since even when the body shape type is accurately reported, that's not a reliable guide to the gender the shape is actually presenting.    So I think we agree, for all practical purposes.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

29 minutes ago, Klytyna said:

It's simple really... male and female skeletal structure is different in real people in real life... different proportions on bone lengths, and distances between joints (like the hips) and angles..

In digital representation of people, you have to take that into account or your representations will not look like people.
 

Well, yes, and no.

It's a universally recognized truism that the default avatars in SL are not actually very "realistic," or at least representative, of RL body types. The women are generally statuesque and wasp-waisted, with gravity-defying large breasts; the men tend to be broad-shouldered and well-muscled, with nary a beer belly in sight. They are cartoonish (or if you prefer, "idealized") versions of RL human bodies, rather than realistic representations. (In fact, of course, trying to make your shape "realistic" in terms of height and so forth puts you at a hopeless disadvantage in SL: animations don't work properly, and so forth).

34 minutes ago, Klytyna said:

The Daz unimesh figures were a pain because despite making vicky 3 first, and then making mike from her mesh, vicky's mesh was essentially quasi male, and thus didn't have a pelvic floor, that is to say a female figure with NO ROOM to add the FEMALE bits.

Well, that certainly is a problem: a world without female bits is no world at all!

[Derek Torvalar]

3 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Well, really, it's pretty accidental that I happened by as you posted this, but, hey, lucky you, eh?

An ambiguous forced choice?

I really don't want to get into this debate here, in part because it's not an appropriate place to get into it, and most people would be bored out of their gourd by it, and in part because I've been discussing it ad nauseum elsewhere and am limp already with exhaustion.

Never stopped you before, ;P But fine. Go for a steam and massage, you will feel better.

The one thing I will note is that the comparison of Shepherd's case to that of Dicarlo is really a false equivalency. Dicarlo was a tenure-track PhD teaching and designing his own courses. Shepherd, on the other hand, is a teaching assistant who is only a couple of months into her MA program. She's not a "professor" or even an "instructor": her job as a TA is literally to support and complement the professor's lectures. She doesn't have "academic freedom": it's not her course. Arguably, doing her own thing in tutorials represents a violation of the professor's actual academic freedom.

I wasn't making a direct comparison between cases per se but in Laurier's lack of support of those caught in the crosshairs of a ridiculous complaint. But I do take your point, however 'academic freedom' extends to the student (Shepherd's status is that of student) as much as to the prof/researcher.

This is not conjectural on my part: I've served as both a TA and an instructor (and TA supervisor) in courses somewhat like the one Shepherd is TAing for, in the same public university system as her. Most of the media feeding frenzy around this has demonstrated an astonish level of ignorance about what universities do, and how courses like this work.

As have I, and well the press, gotta write to your audience, right? I am more inclined to read the Op Eds by various profs and better Editorial Columnists who do have an inkling as to what it is like as opposed to beat reporters.

We don't know an awful lot about what actually happened in that tutorial, but on the basis of what I've read, I can reasonably confidently say that 1) Shepherd was given inadequate training, support, and guidance by her TA supervisor (i.e., the professor), 2) Shepherd did an inadequate job of contextualizing the video she showed (i.e., she didn't actually "teach" at all: showing a YouTube video and then telling the students to have at it in an undirected way is not "teaching"), and 3) the response of her TA supervisor, the equity officer, and the other faculty member was appallingly poor and a really obvious form of bullying.

1. Probably as he appears to be incompetent. 2.Ya that is pretty simplistic interpretation of what actually transpired as reported by Shepherd. The clip was introduced into the middle of a discussion on pronoun use. It was not just plopped in front of them without introduction as the discussion preceding the playing of it turned to the issue in contention within the debate on the clip. 3. Yes obviously. In case you aren't aware Lindsay tweeted today that she had retained Howard Levitt. Apparently the 3rd party secret investigation was not quite as independent nor impartial as it was supposed to be.

But "censorship"? Nope. University courses teach these issues, and deal with Peterson's views, all the time (even I have, in passing). This was just really poorly managed pedagogy and supervision.

The issue of 'censorship' is an offshoot issue resulting from the complaints by trans folks that WLU failed to protect them from transphobia. The 'opponents' are making all kinds of demands on the University to further limit Academic Freedom and to broaden the definitions what constitute hate speech. Or to so tightly constrict open discussion as to make it anything but open discussion.

 

It's okay if we end this at this point, I have no need to extend this into a 100 page debate, though it would bring back fond memories of what this place used to be like. 

Be well Scylla!