I’m going to jump the shark here and put everyone on notice that calisthenics, named for the Greek historian Calisthenes, are off-limits to you unless you are Greek.
I’m simply following the example set by the University of Ottawa, which has canceled a weekly yoga class offered free to students in response to complaints that the classes were an unacceptable “cultural appropriation” of a non-Western practice.
From the Independent:
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Yoga has become the latest victim of political correctness on university campuses….
Jennifer Scharf, a yoga practitioner who has offered free weekly sessions to students … since 2008, said she was shocked to receive an abrupt message telling her the classes were to be suspended.
“I’d been in touch to prepare for the new semester’s classes when, out of nowhere, I received an email telling me there were some issues in terms of a formal complaint,” she told The Independent.
The decision to cancel the classes was made by the Ottawa Student Federation, the university’s independent student body.
So now, doing something good for the body (and reportedly the psyche) is verboten because it belongs to another culture. Unless you’re Indian, that is, in which case you should be free (if not required) to practice yoga. I was unable to determine the exact percentage of the student body at the University of Ottawa that is of Indian extraction, but with 20, 525 Indians living in the city (comprising 2.6% of the population), it seems fair to assume the school has some students with ties to the subcontinent.
Apart from the absurdity of the cultural appropriation subset of trigger warnings, shouldn’t liberals bristle at the selfishness of cultures that refuse to share their customs and rituals? Shouldn’t they in fact encourage openness insofar as it promotes diversity?
(h/t reader Steven Ein)
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