Poor bastard is really between a rock and a hard place.
On the one hand he owes a lot of money and if he doesn't genuflect he'll forfeit or delay his glorious law career and hamper his ability to repay his debt in a timely manner.
On the other hand, they're asking him to sell his fucking soul.
And I for one don't agree with the "practical" advice that he should do it, either. In fact, I consider it completely IMpractical because it's a self-abnegation that there's no turning back from and for which there's no redemption, I don't care how much of a big shot lawyer he becomes.
Say he writes the bullshit paper. He'll have to confront that painful fact for the rest of his life. The whole beauty of the paper is that it's "just a paper", no big deal right...?
Negative. It's something he'll never forgive himself for doing, NEVER. And the uni goons know that, and that's why they're doing. It seems innocuous and and they can paint any person who would refuse as a loon for making a stink about a mere essay. But that is exactly the evil genius of it.
You don't have to be Howard Roark but you have to draw a line in the sand when it comes to martyring your pride and your manhood in so public, so degrading, and so fundamentally insane a fashion.
Just thinking out loud: maybe he could use the media attention this is getting to bring down a shit storm on these people that would make them think twice before pulling this kind of Orwellian shit. He could possibly even get himself completely exonerated once the University feels the heat. Maybe not?
Ok what about the worst case scenario? He'll have to go to work for a few years to pay down debt, apply to other, saner schools, and achieve his goals without selling out in a way that he will never, ever be able to forgive himself for. Is that so bad?
I had a similar situation in college when a moonbat leftist professor claimed that I made her "feel afraid" (because I politely debated her on the negative vocal effects of suppressing vibrato in a choral context, OF ALL FUCKING THINGS). She saw me as a thorn in her side and spun a bullshit yarn to the powers that be.
Next thing I know I get a summons to visit the student disciplinary office.
Luckily, the officer they assigned to me was a total hottie. Not only that, she sympathized with my plight and basically swept the whole thing under the rug. I guess if she were an ogress and had a chip on her shoulder I could have been sentenced to sensitivity training or some such Kafaesque punishment. But such as it was I got off the hook.
Mind you, this was in a conservative part of Florida some 10 years ago. But coming back to the university for a concert last year when I flew back to the states to visit my family, I saw "open discussion about transgender issues" notices plastered all over the campus and thought:
Conservative or no conservative, universities have a certain nature. They're like these flea factories breading disease vectors. And you don't notice them or pay them any mind until they start biting you and creating a nuisance. And by then you've got a plague on your hands.
Surely some of you guys will say it's not worth it to fight so seemingly minute a battle. But I ask you this: if you're this guy, and you wrote this paper, when you're telling your grandkids of your comeuppance some 50 years hence, will you proudly regale them with the memory of how you wrote a paper to apologize for the balls hanging between your legs? Or will you keep that painful memory locked up in a dark corner of your mind never to be shared with people who esteem you too much to disappoint them?
@MrLemon
If I may offer my opinion on your situation which you kindly and openly shared, I believe that an exodus to Canada or some such place would be to tepid a difference to make any difference.
If you want to really get away from the bullcrap, you have to change everything and not just a little, but drastically. It occurs to me that when I was but a lad of four puny years, my family left the Soviet Union for greener pastures as soon as the iron curtain came up. Old, young, sick, healthy. A whole bunch of us completely uprooted our lives in search of something better.
If you truly believe what you say about the US, and there's a place somewhere in the world (whether South America, Central America, Eastern Europe, or Asia) that you can live according to the values that are important to you, then you owe it to yourself to find a way to get there, struggle through the adjustment period, and reap the benefits of your new life.
Now whether that's practical for you and your family is another matter but it's been done, and it's not that crazy.
I'd say Canada is in many ways even more whacked out liberal than the US too, so I don't know how much better it would really be. It'd just be the same shit with maple syrup poured on top of it.
On the one hand he owes a lot of money and if he doesn't genuflect he'll forfeit or delay his glorious law career and hamper his ability to repay his debt in a timely manner.
On the other hand, they're asking him to sell his fucking soul.
And I for one don't agree with the "practical" advice that he should do it, either. In fact, I consider it completely IMpractical because it's a self-abnegation that there's no turning back from and for which there's no redemption, I don't care how much of a big shot lawyer he becomes.
Say he writes the bullshit paper. He'll have to confront that painful fact for the rest of his life. The whole beauty of the paper is that it's "just a paper", no big deal right...?
Negative. It's something he'll never forgive himself for doing, NEVER. And the uni goons know that, and that's why they're doing. It seems innocuous and and they can paint any person who would refuse as a loon for making a stink about a mere essay. But that is exactly the evil genius of it.
You don't have to be Howard Roark but you have to draw a line in the sand when it comes to martyring your pride and your manhood in so public, so degrading, and so fundamentally insane a fashion.
Just thinking out loud: maybe he could use the media attention this is getting to bring down a shit storm on these people that would make them think twice before pulling this kind of Orwellian shit. He could possibly even get himself completely exonerated once the University feels the heat. Maybe not?
Ok what about the worst case scenario? He'll have to go to work for a few years to pay down debt, apply to other, saner schools, and achieve his goals without selling out in a way that he will never, ever be able to forgive himself for. Is that so bad?
I had a similar situation in college when a moonbat leftist professor claimed that I made her "feel afraid" (because I politely debated her on the negative vocal effects of suppressing vibrato in a choral context, OF ALL FUCKING THINGS). She saw me as a thorn in her side and spun a bullshit yarn to the powers that be.
Next thing I know I get a summons to visit the student disciplinary office.
Luckily, the officer they assigned to me was a total hottie. Not only that, she sympathized with my plight and basically swept the whole thing under the rug. I guess if she were an ogress and had a chip on her shoulder I could have been sentenced to sensitivity training or some such Kafaesque punishment. But such as it was I got off the hook.
Mind you, this was in a conservative part of Florida some 10 years ago. But coming back to the university for a concert last year when I flew back to the states to visit my family, I saw "open discussion about transgender issues" notices plastered all over the campus and thought:
Conservative or no conservative, universities have a certain nature. They're like these flea factories breading disease vectors. And you don't notice them or pay them any mind until they start biting you and creating a nuisance. And by then you've got a plague on your hands.
Surely some of you guys will say it's not worth it to fight so seemingly minute a battle. But I ask you this: if you're this guy, and you wrote this paper, when you're telling your grandkids of your comeuppance some 50 years hence, will you proudly regale them with the memory of how you wrote a paper to apologize for the balls hanging between your legs? Or will you keep that painful memory locked up in a dark corner of your mind never to be shared with people who esteem you too much to disappoint them?
@MrLemon
If I may offer my opinion on your situation which you kindly and openly shared, I believe that an exodus to Canada or some such place would be to tepid a difference to make any difference.
If you want to really get away from the bullcrap, you have to change everything and not just a little, but drastically. It occurs to me that when I was but a lad of four puny years, my family left the Soviet Union for greener pastures as soon as the iron curtain came up. Old, young, sick, healthy. A whole bunch of us completely uprooted our lives in search of something better.
If you truly believe what you say about the US, and there's a place somewhere in the world (whether South America, Central America, Eastern Europe, or Asia) that you can live according to the values that are important to you, then you owe it to yourself to find a way to get there, struggle through the adjustment period, and reap the benefits of your new life.
Now whether that's practical for you and your family is another matter but it's been done, and it's not that crazy.
I'd say Canada is in many ways even more whacked out liberal than the US too, so I don't know how much better it would really be. It'd just be the same shit with maple syrup poured on top of it.