What are your opinions on those three things?
1. He describes trigger warnings as something people say during conversations to warn the person they're talking to that they're about to say something that may offend them. In reality, trigger warnings are labels on books, movies, internet posts, songs, etc. that say the material contains content that depicts trauma, such as rape, abuse, murder, incest, etc. The point of them is for people who have PTSD due to living through these traumatic events or having close experiences with them, and acts as a warning because exposure to the material for these people can cause anxiety attacks, panic attacks, PTSD-induced flashbacks, all things that are very violent and involuntary indicators of psychological trauma. The subreddit r/nosleep is a good example of this; the subreddit is for people to post their own horror stories and the threads have the option to label them with stuff like "abuse," "rape," "kidnappings," and stuff like that so people who have lived through these things don't involuntarily become exposed to them. Signs that say "Exercise caution when using fireworks because war veterans/ex-soldiers live in this neighborhood" is an example of a trigger warning. Movie ratings also count as trigger warnings because they warn of intense violence and disturbing content.
2. His notion on safe spaces is expressed in a very skewed manner. He explains that safe spaces in college is dumb because safe spaces are areas where you aren't challenged or made uncomfortable, and college is a place where you're supposed to be challenged. He makes it seem like in college, people get a free pass to just harass people, and that if something or someone is making you uncomfortable, then you have to live with it because that's what it means to go to college. That logic is flawed, since someone understandably is allowed to circumvent or remove themselves from atmospheres of harassment and uncomfort. The idea of a "safe place," where people who might be harassed for something like their clothing or sexuality or gender or appearance is a nice sentiment and could work, but it's unrealistic to think that people can either always remove themselves from undesirable situations, and it's also unrealistic to think that exposure to these scenarios has to be absolute because "that's college."
3. The entire concept of "policing words." While I agree the government can't make an official law that makes speaking a certain way or using certain language illegal or punishable, individual institutions still can. For example, if you go into work at the bank and call Jim the security guard the N-word with a hard R and he reports you and you get fired, that's not "policing words," that's a consequence for your words. Lots of people who say "You can't police words" are people who want to say anything to anyone with no consequences and the people they speak to have to live with it. Meaning if you call that female friend of yours "baby girl" and she says "I'm not cool with that," it's usually people who would like to continue calling her "baby girl" anyways that say "You're policing my words". Or if you're playing music with lots of swearing in public and someone goes "Hey my kids were here, can you not," and they tell them to **** off. It's usually people who want to be dicks, and not be told not to be dics.
