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Dealing with real-life trolls?
SophieSophie
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Registered User regular
We're starting to wrap up the end of the semester, and I'm heading the Student Union committee on welcome and health week. It is actually pretty much three weeks of orientation events and communication mainly aimed at incoming freshmen. There are a lot of college events, but student groups are supposed to contribute something as well - it could be events, speakers, or posters. A lot of this is around what is called 'sex week'. Officially it's health week, but it ends up being a lot of communication about consent culture, sexual health, relationships, and related health services. It's been pretty good this year, except for one group who keeps running poster campaigns that seem super inapropriate.
I complained to the Dean of Students about them, but he says that the rules are that they have to be fact-based, and not derogatory towards any particular groups. He says their campaign this year was fine by these rules.
The fact is though that it seems like a really trolling campaign - for example, they put up a series of posters with the tag-line 'no ifs, no butts' where they have quotes from medical text books or doctors about how much bacertia there is in the anus vs the vagina. If you saw it it's really clear that it is shaming people about anal sex, but it doesn't actually say that.
What kinds of tactics can we use to deal with this? Thanks!
I complained to the Dean of Students about them, but he says that the rules are that they have to be fact-based, and not derogatory towards any particular groups. He says their campaign this year was fine by these rules.
The fact is though that it seems like a really trolling campaign - for example, they put up a series of posters with the tag-line 'no ifs, no butts' where they have quotes from medical text books or doctors about how much bacertia there is in the anus vs the vagina. If you saw it it's really clear that it is shaming people about anal sex, but it doesn't actually say that.
What kinds of tactics can we use to deal with this? Thanks!
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Having actual faculty members supporting you in this, especially full tenured professors, is the way to go. You might want to check with your social justice office (if you have one) or with whoever runs your Gender Studies program for support.
I think I'm worried that they are so completely not acting in good faith, that I almost think they would welcome some kind of ruling that laid us open to them complaining that somehow some other thing should be banned too?
As to how to bring this up with faculty, bring pictures or evidence of the previous issue and talk to them candidly about your concerns (not with the students being trolls, don't use those words) but with how the poster/presentation is discriminatory and inflammatory.
Also, I don't know what your major is, but this sort of thing could be a nice launching point for some sociological/gender studies research with your faculty members.
Having said that, I would be inclined to agree with your "don't feed the trolls" instinct and instead encourage positive, informative campaigning to counter them.
And, jumping right to "no anal sex" rather than "always use protection" is pretty telling here
As an aside, I'm pretty sure the mouth has more bacteria than the butthole.
Regardless of their intent, they seem to be working within the rules and any response would have to as well, and changing the rules at a university is probably the only thing harder than getting congress to do anything.
For what it's worth, I think almost all of the students already have all the information they need. Or so I hope? College seems like a really late time to educate people on these issues.
Then again, I've been known to express unreasonable optimism from time to time.
We have found out from the internet in the last couple of years that the advice "Just ignore the trolls" actually feeds them rather than starving them of the oxygen of attention.
Yeah, college is actually the first time a lot of people get a viewpoint on sex that isn't pretty traditional.
It sounds like they are getting away with this by not technically putting non-factual information on there. That's not the only way to lie or misdirect. Honestly, from what you've described, the Dean kind of sounds like he's being deliberately obtuse. How conservative is your school?
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I mean, that seems to be the line he's proclaiming, yeah. But if, essentially, "anal sex is dangerous so you shouldn't have it" meets his standards, then that strikes me as a particularly conservative view to put it mildly. I don't have an answer, but you may need to consider this from the perspective that he doesn't want to agree with you.
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Instead of trying to remove the work of others, why don't you do some work yourself? Is there anything stopping you from running your own campaign and printing your own posters? Find facts that support your position and make them visible. As long as you abide by the same rules your message should be just as protected as theirs.
As an aside: the Dean is not your ally. He doesn't work for you. He doesn't need to care about your political agenda, your progressive outlook, or your opinion on literally anything. You are not his customer, you cannot hold him accountable, and he already has your money. Whether he agrees with you or not is basically irrelevant - the rules are the rules, so take that as the definition of scope and operate within that scope to get your own message out.
Yeah I can assure you this is really, really incorrect. I honestly didn't get much of any sex ed until I was in my 30s. College is going to be the first place a lot of people are allowed to explore that information on their own, as strict parents will keep them away from it during middle school and high school.
Yeah there's always the internet which we didn't have back when I was a teenager, but the internet is frequently full of bullshit in regards to sexual health, so the educational need is still there.
But fuck you — no, fuck y'all, that's as blunt as it gets"
- Kendrick Lamar, "The Blacker the Berry"
Yeah. As opposed to trying to remove the (very misleading) "buttsex is bad!" posters, you should just go all out. Make a dozen different posters about how awesome anal sex can be or whatever. Make sure you keep it 100% factual!
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anal sex won't get you pregnant
prostate massage can improve its health
having a friend check your prostate is extra helpful
etc.
I mean, generally that's not a bad position to have! College is a great place to have a relatively open forum for most topics. I take "deliberately misleading your audience by selectively presenting and interpreting information" to be inside the guard rails, though :P.
But yeah, it's not that you can't still possibly convince him otherwise! Maybe go find a rhetoric professor or something, see if they can help you formulate why this is not a healthy position to take in this example.
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Holy shit. I had no idea. I'm sorry. I grew up in a completely different environment, and I thought it was normal.
Eh... I feel like that's what rhetoric is for, to expose bad arguments and show why they're misleading, and that the Dean and the college are hoping that their students can win debates through reason and facts rather than having authorities step in every time to punish and silence people with wrong views. It's hard to make any kind of point without some selective presentation and interpretation, but you'd hope that the truth would be hard to beat.
These aren't debates though. These are broadcasted messages that have been "vetted" by the school to be "true"
It's not a debate, otherwise I agree the advice would be different
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Yeah, fingers up male butts is actually helpful. It should be taught to straight people. Feels nice to the guy, also serves to prevent/detect prostate cancer.
I'd counter with a campaign of your own.
Butt wait, there's more!
Anal Pre-Med, but..
Cheeks out these facts.
Fight cancer with this 1 (finger)tip...
It's usually the whole message at college, though, that students are learning how to think, not just what to believe. If they only allow dissenting voices at officiated debates instead of all their open events, it's not really better than having a token liberal on a conservative talk show. And if this event were really putting forth the administration's views then it would be staffed by faculty and contractors, not student organizations.
In any case, I see this is the safe spaces debate. There's basically no chance that the dean is unaware of that issue; if administration were inclined towards that line of thought then they would have crushed that group long ago and there's no way the discussion previously described would have taken place. I'm inclined to doubt that rhetoric is going to change their stance on something so prominent in national politics.
I don't think they're trying to get any other group banned, I think they're hoping to attack the college as being anti-free speech and anti-First Amendment, a narrative that's scoring points for the right.
Or they could just be highly religious, or in it as trolls and nothing else. But in the alt right's America I think it's the free speech thing.
it's also not clear what the remedy would be; permission to take the posters down? Some action against this other student group (assuming they're even organized/recognized enough for that)? Sanction against individual students? Are they a presence at your events anyway?
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
If the stance the school is taking is "free speech", is there any way to find where all these posters are up and pin a poster of your own right underneath as a response?
Something like an arrow pointing at the quote with "This is why you should always save your anal play/sex for last if not wearing a glove or condom! Learn the facts, stay educated. Special thanks to [group] for taking the time and resources to advocate safe anal. #allyinaction" It might be easier to turn the message around than try to get someone from the school to have them all taken down.
whaaaaaaaaaaaaat
Man, sex ed was at least decent here but I thought I was aware how bad it could be elsewhere...I didn't realize the bottom of the barrel was so deep.
edit: typo
Not to derail but this line of craziness is fascinating. Like they believe too much fatty food will make you bleed? Don't eat those Doritos unless you have a tampon type stuff? I have so many questions.
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There's your solution. Print up stickers, plaster them on the front of all their homophobic signs.
I don't think I'd go this particular route to counter the posters. That's getting pretty close to "the only safe/good way to have sex is traditional penis-in-vagina sex," which is probably not the OP's intention
I know that's not what you meant, but it's pretty easy to be misinterpreted that way when it's a continuation of the other poster.
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Yes. But I think those are basically the same thing. The whole idea that you can do this kind of thing and defend it as 'free speech' is just trolling. Everyone knows that there are limits to free speech, and those should be when it creates an environment that is unsafe for others.