Cancel culture? Young people aren’t intolerant, we’re progressive

“covering everything from LGBT+ rights and sustainability to violence against women and feminism — issues that older generations might not be as well versed in.“

Jesus wept. No sense of history whatsoever. She needs to go listen to some Peggy Seeger IMO.

I’m younger than her so I’m allowed to tell her to go educate herself.

The author reminds me of my 15-year-old niece, who is very hard work at present. She's cut off her hair, has lots of 'non-binary' friends and likes to lecture the adults in the family on whatever is the latest cultural fad and why we're all bigots and know nothing at all [implication - we need her to 'educate us']. I avoid her as much as possible.

I particularly liked this bit:

”…recently lectured my British baby boomer father about why it’s offensive to deadname a transgender person (that is when you refer to a trans person by the name they used prior to transitioning).”

Patronising (that’s when you talk down to someone, Olivia)

It is also likely that privilege shields someone to at least some extent from some of the things that women come across. For example, she would have the money to leave a violent relationship without worrying about how she was going to cover the rent on a new property.

If we’re going to talk about privilege and all that jazz…..

I know that it’s generally an elite that gravitate to jobs like newspaper columnist etc

to me that class based access to opportunities is very stark

Yes but no one allowed us to write in the paper.

LinkedIn says she was at Millfield School (expensive boarding school, I believe) until 2012 and then did an English degree at Bristol, all of which tallies with being born in 1993 or 1994.

28 or 29 if the Sun article last year got her age right.

Looking at her photo, how old even is she? She doesn’t even look that young, just smug and Sloany.

“Take one look at what the young people around you are watching on TikTok and you’ll see videos with millions of views that reflect contemporary discourse”

Her mistake is to think that the stuff people are talking about on the internet is stuff that really matters in the real world. People get on their high horse about any old thing on social media. Most of the trans rights discussion is or was only happening online until recently. IRL people have more grown up concerns like taking care of their families or paying their bills or whatever.

As an older, mixed race woman who is also a teacher and a mother, the idea of being lectured about race or about feminism by this silly little white girl with little to no experience of the real world is just laughable.

Someone nominate that to Private Eye's Pseuds Corner. And warn them they're going to need a bigger corner.

Leave Olivia alone. She's a sex column and fashion writer who wrote a novel about dating.

Even people who write about sex and fashion should be capable of critical thinking. Young women sometimes take writing about sex and fashion seriously. It’s a damn shame if they’re not getting something better than Olivia.

It is an old cliche that a 15-year-old thinks her parents know nothing and are surprised how much they have learnt by the time she is twenty, but in this generation's case, steeped in woke and cancel culture I doubt they will have even begun to grow up by the time they are 30.

That sounds likely in this case. Olivia Petter is nearly 30. In this article it says she was 27 last year.

www.thesun.co.uk/fabulous/15650720/stealthing-victim-pregnant-abortion-rape/

Hit post too soon but on reflection not much else to say. Just save any vitriol for people who are listening to and commissioning this stuff. Not the writers who are trying to finance their precarious London lifestyles with hastily written column inches. If Olivia is really interested in this subject she can do some real research and write another book - I'm sure she'll unearth more substance that will give her a different perspective.

No. I will not leave her alone. She is holding herself up as an arbiter of modern society and being paid to do so. Her views are open for critique. Indeed, respectful critique.

Respectful critique is not something she i is apparently willing to extend to others. She gets no free pass.

Older people might not be versed in feminism?

I was a second generation feminist, now in my eighth decade. It was my generation, you self-entitled little brat, that won you the right to enter jobs previousy held only by men, the principle of equal pay for work of equal value, the right to have a mortgage or a loan without a male guarantor, the principle of maternity leave and pay - need I go on?

It is an old cliche that a 15-year-old thinks her parents know nothing and are surprised how much they have learnt by the time she is twenty, but in this generation's case, steeped in woke and cancel culture I doubt they will have even begun to grow up by the time they are 30.

Mark Twain was right when he said: “It is better to keep one's mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”

I agree that young people have always been like this. The issue today is their enthusiasm for echo chambers and cancel culture may inhibit the challenge to and evolution of those views.

The situation in universities being particularly appalling and problematic. I was challenged at all angles at uni. It shaped my critical facilities as I was always having to stand up my position. How will the generation that doesn't have this training fare in the longer term?

Leave Olivia alone. She's a sex column and fashion writer who wrote a novel about dating. Newspapers like to commission these pieces - cha

Channel 4 have a programme, Made in the 80s - the decade that shaped us that features the women of Greenham Common.

www.channel4.com/programmes/made-in-the-80s-decade-that-shaped-our-world

Hasn't it always been this way? Young people think they know everything and see things in shades of black and white and as you get older you see everything more in shades of gray as you get more experience of the world? I predict her views will change as she gets older and discovers the issues that those of us who have gone before are sadly too familiar with such as sexism in the workplace and domestic violence.

That's quite telling that she thinks it's about being "versed" - told what to think and having all your correct slogans and pre-trained views to hand.

Well spotted. Very telling indeed.

as if they were cherry-picked by journalists

Can't be cherry-picked by journalists if they're not there or don't agree to make a twat of themselves in a national newspaper.

I do agree it's a typical teenage/young person thing to think you know it all and rant on in a woke (/what we used to call "right on") manner. And that's always been so. But I do think it was different in the past in that you didn't expect to be given the power to silence all other views. We may have thought we were righteously right, but we did know there were other views and understood that debating topics with people who disagreed was a thing. We all saw the danger of being Rik off the Young Ones and knew he was ridiculous.

Older people might not be 'versed' in feminism?

That's quite telling that she thinks it's about being "versed" - told what to think and having all your correct slogans and pre-trained views to hand.

The thing about being an older woman, for a great many of us, is that our feminism isn't versed, it's a long hard journey that we look back on, in which decades of experience has shown us how misogyny works in a million ways, and what it does to relationships, to girls, to society. As women get older, they tend to grow and mature away from needing to be liked and trying to centre men, as the sexism in our upbringing gets replaced by clear-eyed cynicism about relationships and understanding that we can centre ourselves in our own lives. That can happen whether a woman is self-consciously a feminist, or just going through life and dealing with all the shit without that label.

That is why older women can help younger ones, even when we see that they're naive and disrespectful and think they're right - and I have been helped by so many older women in my life.

What an insufferable prig.

I have shoes older than her.

wonder if she’s read the great classic texts of feminism and gay liberation, or just watched YouTube vids?

Yeah, but The Second Sex is over 900 pages, and there's this nice beardy bloke who explains feminism in two minute segments on TikTok.