Posted on 06/09/2016 8:03:39 AM PDT by Altura Ct.
British thinktank boss says mollycoddled kids are breaking down in tears when asked to deal with controversial ideas
A top British thinker has claimed young women are in the grip of a “hysteria” which has made them unable to cope with being offended.
Claire Fox, head of a thinktank called the Institute of Ideas, has penned a coruscating critique of “Generation Snowflake”, the name given to a growing group of youngsters who “believe it’s their right to be protected from anything they might find unpalatable”.
Generation Snowflake
She said British and American universities are dominated by cabals of young women who are dead set on banning anything they find remotely offensive.
“It makes me sad that these teens and 20-somethings have become so fearful that they believe a dissenting opinion can pose such a serious threat,” Fox wrote in an article for Mail Online.
This hyper-sensitivity has prompted the University of East Anglia to outlaw sombreros in a Mexican restaurant and caused the National Union of Student to ban clapping as “as it might trigger trauma”, asking youngsters to use “jazz hands” instead.
The sombreros were seen as racist
Is the sombrero really too racist to be worn in Britain?
Books containing troublesome material are now slapped with “trigger warnings”, whilst universities and student unions are declared “safe spaces” where young people should not have to encounter anything they disagree with.
Fox described astonishing scenes at an event set up to discuss whether the public outcry against footballer Ched Evans was “social justice or mob rule”.
The academic said her mostly female audience broke down in tears after she “dared suggest (as eminent feminists have before me) that rape wasn’t necessarily the worst thing a woman could experience”.
Safe space: Should youngsters be protected from troubling material?
Fox added: “I expected robust discussion – not for them all to dissolve into outraged gasps of, ‘You can’t say that!’
“Their reaction shocked me. I take no pleasure in making teenagers cry, but it also brought home the contrast to previous generations of young people, who would have relished the chance to argue back.
“It illustrated this generation’s almost belligerent sense of entitlement. They assume their emotional suffering takes precedence. Express a view they disagree with and you must immediately recant and apologise.”
Are some ideas too controversial to be heard?
Generation Snowflake has also created a social minefield for young boys and men, who risk being labelled “sex pests” for twanging a girl’s bra at school, Fox continued.
She said women were opting to stay at home and socialise on the internet due to overblown fears about predatory men.
“There is a strand of self-absorption and fragility running through this generation; all too ready to cry ‘victim’ at the first hint of a situation they don’t like,” Fox concluded.
“We need a younger generation that’s prepared to grow a backbone, go out into the world, take risks and make difficult decisions. Otherwise the future doesn’t bode well for any of us.”
Claire Fox has penned a book about Generation Snowflake which is called I Find That Offensive and was published by Biteback in May.
It's the weak made strong.
But with the under 30 group, it’s not just the women who are precious snowflakes. I had a guy who worked for me who had to take his back pack with personal journal and other “must haves” with him everywhere. I put a little aquarium with a betta fish on my desk, discovered he was deathly afraid of fish. When he needed to talk to me, he would stand in the door of my office, as far from the aquarium as he could get, so the fish “wouldn’t jump out and attack” him. He had to take half a day off from work, because of a bug bite, not because he had an allergic reaction, but because he was so traumatized that a bug had crawled into his hat and bitten him, that he couldn’t focus on doing his job for the rest of the day. No, I’m not kidding.
I don’t deny that.
It’s just a fact this blog was focused on females.
-PJ
MILO IS THE CURE..!!
““Their reaction shocked me. I take no pleasure in making teenagers cry, “
In current circumstances it’s necessary and the best thing that can happen.
I’ve had people blow up at me when they were talking about modern women’s problems, and my reply was a terse, “ISIS has sex slaves. Boko Haram has sex slaves.”
If I weren’t female, it would have been violence. Instead, screaming that I wasn’t really a feminist, I don’t count as a woman.
Not really. It is time for the rest of society to turn up the head and let the snowflakes (I prefer calling them snow-flacks) either melt or be put into long term refrigeration. Society cannot and should not tolerate such LOSERS!
.
The Ritalin and anti-depressant generation. These drugs stunts emotional/social development.
“Maybe there should be mandatory euthanizing for stupid people.”
That used to sort itself out on its own, but we’ve started coddling stupid people so they live longer. As an example I cite US RT 1 as it passes through the University of Maryland campus in College Park. The speed limit used to be 30mph but too many drunken college students were getting run over so they lowered it to 25mph. Methinks it is also a revenue-enhancing scheme and not just college students failing the street-crossing exam.
Yes. It gives them moral authority that they can't access in any other way. To actually be a moral person and thus speak with that confidence is difficult. To declare victimhood is the shortcut to moral authority.
You are exactly correct. They whine/cry/litigate until they get their way and society is bending over backwards to accommodate them. It's disgusting how one person or small group, throwing a temper tantrum like a 2-year old, can get everybody else to bow to their outrageous desires.
That guy sounds crazy enough to be dangerous. I hope you found a way to get rid of him.
Exactly right. Children who find that throwing tantrums garners attention tend to throw a lot of them, especially when they know they can't be stopped until they are satisfied.
I haven’t met any of these snowflakes. Maybe it takes years of training to become one. I have a friend who got a call from the school about her daughter arguing with the teacher. They had been studying phonic and she decided we were spelling some words wrong and refused to accept the teacher’s explanation why they didn’t follow the rules. If I must follow the rules why don’t words follow the rules? She was 2nd grade at the time. I can’t see her ever becoming a snowflake.
Well, it’s not as if one must choose rape or one of the various “bad experience” alternatives. Although I agree that the author might have expected some reasonable discussion, I still don’t see what point is served by her statement.
Was her contention that, because rape is not “the worst thing,” society need not take rape very seriously? There’s certainly a historical case that can be made for that argument, but saying “Traumatic amputation is worse!” doesn’t add much.
I do very much believe in mercy killing.
We'll never know, because apparently this contentious topic-starter was never engaged.
Maybe all it was was a topic-starter, and the suggestion that "society need not take rape seriously" would have ultimately been dissuaded via dialog? Just judging intent by the question alone can be misleading, especially if it is setting up a Socratic method learning experience.
That's what I think is at the core here: that at the college level of educating, the Socratic method is no longer applicable for teaching snowflakes who can't make it past the opening question.
-PJ
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