Gonna hafta camo my yurt!
Posted on 11/23/2015 4:45:04 AM PST by markomalley
The University of Ottawa in Canada notified Jennifer Scharf that her free weekly yoga classes were to be suspended...for cultural appropriation. Scharf had been offering free beginning yoga classes to students at the university since 2008.
“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 came from the Ottawa Student Federation, a group that describes itself as an "instrument of political action."
According to the Ottawa Sun, staff from the Centre for Students with Disabilities, where the classes were held for students of all abilities, wrote in an email: “While yoga is a really great idea and accessible and great for students...there are cultural issues of implication involved in the practice. Yoga has been under a lot of controversy lately due to how it is being practiced”, and which cultures those practices “are being taken from”.
The email also informed Scharf many of those cultures “have experienced oppression, cultural genocide and diasporas due to colonialism and western supremacy... we need to be mindful of this and how we express ourselves while practising yoga.”
Scharf, trying to salvage her class from extinction, offered to change the name to "mindful stretching" but the school was not interested. Her request was rejected. “I think it’s easy to worry too much about accommodating everyone,” she said. “By saving one person’s feelings, we’re ruined the experience for so many others.”
The Washington Post contacted Scharf who told the paper she was unhappy, but accepted the decision.
“This particular class was intro to beginners yoga because I’m very sensitive to this issue,” she said. “I would never want anyone to think I was making some sort of spiritual claim other than the pure joy of being human that belongs to everyone free of religion.”
I’ve never had any bad perceptions about it. I’m just relating what I’ve perceived. The real problem here is these so-called victim groups assigning blame for ridiculous situations and getting away with it because these Universities are too cowardly to stand up to these groups.
It’s really not surprising that the PC Nazis are taking on yoga, maybe yogurt will be next.
Willing to wager that she has been a consistent voter of the “progressive” party and never saw this coming.
No, Yoga was "culturally appropriated" from Indians.
Not the "Come to our casino" Indians. The "Hello, my name is Tim, if the hard drive was a sandwich, how far would you have to open our mouth" Indian.
Oops, was that racist?
Mark
See Post #21.
You can't call them "tights." That's hurtful to those of us who are gravitationally & circumfrentially challenged!
Mark
Post of the Day.
I think the term is “calorically challenged”. :0)
Gonna hafta camo my yurt!
“University Cancels Free Yoga Class for ‘Cultural Appropriation’”
Fair enough. Now all those from the Far East have to turn in their computers and cell phones since they were developed by Western Civilization.
.there are cultural issues of implication involved in the practice. Yoga has been under a lot of controversy lately due to how it is being practicedâ€, and which cultures those practices “are being taken fromâ€.
The email also informed Scharf many of those cultures “have experienced oppression, cultural genocide and diasporas due to colonialism and western supremacy... we need to be mindful of this and how we express ourselves while practising yoga.â€
What the bloody hell does this mean?
Are today’s colleges this screwed up that - not only do their “students” and activists WRITE these string of words (string of BS actually), but that a collage administration actually thinks they “mean something” so significant that a yoga class is cancelled? And then the news media actually “believes” that they are important, and not something to be laughed at?
Not that a yoga class means all that much either, but ....
Anyone with a grain of common sense should withdraw their support and/or young adults from these places and leave them to their own devices. Their end would come soon enough under those circumstances.
Anything over 120 lbs. has to have a permit with a warning signal.
Anything over 125 lbs. has to be covered by a full burka-bee keeper-Batman suit.
I suffer from a severe case of lookism.
Where do I go to get my government check again?
:-)
OTOH, maybe it's a very delayed, but visceral PTSD response to Air India Flight 182 from a victim's relative?
Nah, but not just snowflakes, lunatic snowflakes with insecure cultural self-esteem intent on making everyone around them more miserable than they are themselves.
Well, that or Napoleon Complex.
Can we get these idiots to stop by pointing out their ‘Cultural Appropriation’ of actions from Soviets and Nazis?
I think a real communist or nazi should be offended at the trivial matters their tactics are being used to attack.
I guess this means that India, Pakistan, the Caribbean nations will have to give up cricket. A shame since they’re pretty good at it.
Sounds like liberals eating their own. I need to know the political affiliation of Ms Sharf and her students before I give a damn.
One of the favorite tools of the left is the manipulation of guilt.
Its pretty effective. Find some focal point for their version of original sin, and then offer themselves as the source of absolution. If you conform to the left’s agenda, you can do anything guilt free. If you do not, your guilt will be on parade, endlessly, for all to see.
It doesn’t work well with committed Christians who have their own rather independent consciences and their own source for absolution. But if you don’t know who you are, this and the human need to conform make a pretty effective tool for managing people.
And baseball can’t be played in Japan or Latin America; and the rest of the world has to give up rock ‘n roll.
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