Generation Snowflake:-
Safe Spaces, Trigger Warnings And The
Wussification Of Our Young People
By Michael Snyder, on June 9th, 2016
Why do so many of our young people instantly break down in tears
the moment anything seriously offends them? Have we raised an entire
generation that has been so coddled and that is so spineless that it is
completely incapable of dealing with the harsh realities of the modern
world? At colleges and universities all over America, students are now
demanding “safe spaces” where anything and everything that could possibly make
them feel “uncomfortable” is banned. And “trigger warnings” are being
placed on some of our great literary classics because they might cause some
students to feel “unsafe” because they may be reminded of a past trauma.
In this day and age, our overly coddled young people have come to expect that
they should be automatically shielded from anything that could remotely be
considered harmful or offensive, and as a result we now have an entire
generation that is completely lacking in toughness. That may be fine as
long as you can depend on Mom and Dad, but how in the world are these young men
and women going to handle the difficult challenges that come with living in the
real world?
Author Claire Fox has a great deal of experience dealing with
these overly sensitive young people, and she has dubbed them “Generation
Snowflake”…
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”.
She said British and American universities are dominated
by cabals of young women who are dead set on banning anything they find
remotely offensive.
Some time ago Fox was giving a speech to a group of young women
during which she brought up the subject of rape, and she was completely stunned by what
happened next…
Some of the
girls were sobbing and hugging each other, while others shrieked. The majority
appeared at the very least shell-shocked.
It was
distress on a scale appropriate for some horrible disaster. Thankfully,
however, I wasn’t in a war zone or at the scene of a pile-up – but in a school
hall filled with A-level students.
What had
provoked such hysteria? I’d dared express an opinion that went against their
accepted way of thinking.
In the western world, political correctness is often taken to
absolutely ridiculous extremes in attempt to keep people from being exposed to
anything that could remotely be considered “offensive”. For instance,
just consider a couple of examples from the
United Kingdom…
This hyper-sensitivity has prompted the University of
East Anglia to outlaw sombreros in a Mexican restaurant
and caused the National Union of Students to ban clapping as “as it might
trigger trauma”, asking youngsters to use “jazz hands” instead.
Could you imagine banning clapping?
But this is actually happening. Anything that might make
someone feel the least bit “uncomfortable” is now being labelled as a
“micro-aggression”, and at schools all over America “safe spaces” are being set
up where young people can avoid anyone or anything that may make them “feel
uncomfortable, unwelcome or challenged”.
he following is one definition of “safe spaces” that comes from Wikipedia…
Advocates for
Youth states on their website that a safe-space is “A place where anyone
can relax and be
fully self-expressed, without fear of being made to feel uncomfortable,
unwelcome or challenged on account of biological sex, race/ethnicity, sexual
orientation, gender identity
or expression, cultural background, age, or physical or mental ability; a place where the
rules guard each person’s self-respect, dignity and feelings and strongly
encourage everyone to respect others.
And this is not a fringe movement at all. These “safe
spaces” are being established at some of the most prestigious universities in
the entire country, and in at least one case a “safe space” included “calming music, cookies, Play-Doh and a
video of frolicking puppies”…
At Brown
University – like Harvard, one of the eight elite Ivy League universities – the New York Times
reported students set up a “safe space” that offered calming music, cookies,
Play-Doh and a video of frolicking puppies to help students cope with a
discussion on how colleges should handle sexual assault.
A Harvard student described in the university
newspaper attending a “safe space” complete with “massage circles”
that was designed to help students have open conversations.
Are you kidding me?
The real world is tough, and we need to teach our kids to be
tough.
Trying to recreate a kindergarten environment for men and women
that are supposed to be adults is not going to help anyone.
Another big thing that students are demanding now are “trigger
warnings” on any educational materials that may potentially upset someone.
According to dictionary.com, a “trigger warning” is
“a stated warning
that the content of a text, video, etc., may upset or offend some people,
especially those who have previously experienced a related trauma.”
At Harvard, students are being told that they are
now free to skip certain books if reading them would make them feel “unsafe”. I wish
that I could have used this excuse back in my college days, because then I
would have had much more time to spend with my friends. The following
comes from the Telegraph…
Literary classics are now considered potentially “unsafe” for
students to read. Reading lists at some universities are being adapted to come
with warnings printed beside certain titles: The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
(Trigger: suicide, domestic abuse and graphic violence) and Mrs Dalloway by
Virginia Woolf (Trigger: suicidal tendencies).
In some colleges, professors have been known to tell students that
if a book makes them feel unsafe, they are allowed to skim it, or skip it
altogether, a Harvard Law professor told this newspaper.
Now that we have defined “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings”, I
am going to define a term that I used in the title of this article.
“Wussification” is the act of turning someone into a
“wussy”. And urbandictionary.com
defines “wussy” in the following manner…
A person with no guts. A person who whines all day and sits around
and cries like a little baby for years over nothing. Will blow anything out of
proportion and create drama to forget about their sad miserable lives.
If our young people need cookies, Play-Doh and videos of
frolicking puppies to deal with the challenges in their lives right now, what
in the world are they going to do when the things that I talk about in my new book start
happening to America?
The real world can be exceedingly cold and cruel, and our young
people need to be equipped to handle whatever life will throw at them.
Unfortunately, we have raised an entire generation of overly
coddled boys and girls that have never learned to become men and women, and as
a result society as a whole will suffer greatly.
So what is the solution?
*About the author: Michael Snyder
is the founder and publisher of ‘End Of The American Dream.’ Michael’s controversial new book about Bible
prophecy entitled “The Rapture Verdict” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.*