People who use the term 'snowflake'?

[yesyesyep]

Aren't the brightest bunch are they?

It's like a script isn't it? Something picked up from the daily mail or another equivalent hate-rag, to shout at people who have the audacity to care about someone other than themselves. It appears to give the user a sense of superiority over someone, when they are just throwing words they like the sound of because they've seen it used to bully others before.

I find it often ties in with people who use multiple exclamation marks after a space. !!!

(Honestly, have a look for the multiple exclamation marks after a space. It's almost poetic.)

I know I probably ABU, but the level of stupidity on this planet at the moment baffles me.

Yeah I think sjw (social justice warrior) is for people who cares about others.

SJW is a term for people who care about others as long as they fit perfectly into certain demographics SJWs have ordained as needy and deserving of support. And as long as they are not in conflict with any other group which the SJW deems to be higher in the SJW hierarchy of oppression.

So for example the apocryphal black one legged lesbian would need to be a trans black one legged lesbian these days otherwise she might well be told she was transphobic for not wanting to have sex with people with penises and quite clearly beyond the SJW pale.

If you are part of the white working classes that the left was originally set up to represent I think it’s quite clear no SJW will care about you, especially if you’re in the habit of doing something horrifying like working.

For me, it's not a case of being offended by the 'snowflake' description, I haven't actually ever been accused of being a 'snowflake'. I just think the term is rather silly, I mean why is the word used that way at all???

Meh.. tbh I think it's a good word to describe people 'offended' or worse

But so incredibly lazy

Do people really think that universities and student unions are doing appalling harm to their students, and to 'free speech', if they refuse to allow the likes of Yaxley-Lennon to participate in a panel discussion? How about Roosh V, or Louis Farrakhan (oh no, hang on, LF isn't actually allowed in the UK, what with him being a headbangingly antisemitic wingnut, etc). How about if some students wanted their debating society to choose the motion 'This House Believes that Paedophiles are Unjustly Criticised' and got a couple of nonces in to propose it?

No one is defending the right to free speech that incites violence, that is already a caveat to it.

But other topics, such as trans and religion are being censored - not just in universities but right across the board. Would you go into your workplace and announce “I don’t think trans women are women”?

Or would you be wary of the consequences ?

I quite like the word tbh, I don't really use it though

ime the people I hear using it are people working themselves up into a frenzy about how much of a snowflake someone else is and so exposing themselves as being similarly delicate and fragile themselves

The polarity in modern social movements is making for an interesting next few years that's for sure

I think ReanimatedSGB is trying to frame the debate and purposefully misrepresenting the situation of how no-platforming has got slightly out of control

www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/no-platform-epidemic-not-right-wing-fantasy

Karl Poppers tolerance paradox comes to mind, its always framed by citing white supremacists but in reality the narrative that certain ideas should be kept off campus so students can feels safe hasn't generally been used to shoo away the Brownshirts. It's been used to try and keep out the likes of Peter Tatchell, Julie Bindel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Maryam Namazie, Germaine Greer, and Niall Ferguson.

Would you go into your workplace and announce I don’t think trans women are women?

Plenty of people at my workplace are open about this being their belief. As long as their beliefs don't have an effect on the quality of care we give our patients, they don't refuse to care for people on the basis of their trans identity, they don't tell patients with a trans identity what they believe about it and they refrain from being offensive about trans people when discussing their beliefs with colleagues, it's fine.

I don't like it. It is a term currently in vogue. What did people say before? Hypersensitive possibly. Didn't like that either.

Best to say nothing.

PS: I was talking about the 'snowflake' label, I see conversation has moved on, sorry for not reading every post.

YANBU, I don't like it either. It's just used as a way of further offending someone who you have already offended with probably some kind of discriminatory language or bad taste joke. What ever happened to 'sorry. Didn't mean to offend' that used to work ok when you put your foot in it.

My Mother calls me it sometimes and I can confirm she is not the brightest bulb in the box and definitely reads The Sun .

It's not a term I have heard used other than online, seems to be a current 'buzzword', like gammon, that certain types like to use (even if they use it wrongly) so they are seen to be in the know. There are many such words around - two which spring to mind are 'literally' and 'sourced' which are being misused these days. No, you did not 'literally die of laughing', nor did you 'source' that new sofa - you went to DFS, not on expedition up the Orinoco. People are just twats.

SGB In reality what happens is that speakers are No Platformed who do not meet any definition of hate speech, but have views different from the group of students with the power.

And please don't try and tell me that students democratically vote for these. It is a TINY percentage of students who vote on these issues.

So the debates being stifled are those different from Pro Palestinian groups, those who are critical of Islamist such as MaryAm Namazie and those who are gender critical.

Lecturers also report an increasing intolerance amongst students of opposing views in seminars and classroom discussions. And yes I do think this is a very worrying trend.

I think it is a modern day book burning.

OutPinked But do you deserve the label? Or does she just mean left wing?

It’s a generational term. You may be too old to understand it. Around the time I started school things changed drastically. There was suddenly a huge push towards emotions, validating emotions etc. coupled with teachers encouraging children to pursue ‘fulfilling’ careers. It wasn’t enough to want to be a teacher or a miner or whatever. You had to aspire to being a writer or an actor etc. The idea was that everyone was unique and important. The ones who were stupid enough to buy into that and not snap out of it are referred to as snowflakes because they demand complete validation for everything that they do simply because they do it. They build up an impossibly perfect and therefore very fragile sense of self which can or withstand any less than complete validation. Consequently this group of people cannot tolerate contradictory thought or opinion or criticism. It has nothing to do with being a caring person and everything to do with an inflated sense of self.

@reanimatedSGB ? Do you seriously think that no playforming is an answer. The only way to deal with these kinds of ideas is to debate them, to oppose them. The point of an education isn’t to teach students what to think. It is to teach them how to think. They should be coming out of universitiesno only knowing that antisemitism is wrong but why it is wrong.

RaceCarDriver Exactly. I actually feel sorry for these kids as most are being set up to fail in their eyes. Although many do snap out of it.
It is also why it tends to be confined to the very privileged universities. Students from working class backgrounds with large loans having to work jobs to fund their education are usually too exposed to the reality of life to buy into this nonsense.

And also understanding the complexities around situations. Take Palestine and Israel. It is complex. You can condemn the human rights violations against palestinian people and recognise that Hezbollah are dangerous terrorists. Too many young people on the left seem to see situations in black and white. So you choose a side and then support them whatever. Growing up is IMO learning that most situations are shades of grey and pretty complex.

racecardriver, yep. I have several primary school teachers on my Facebook who complained bitterly when the coalition government came in that they were being expected to teach children to read and write and do sums and stuff when they could have been using that time ‘teaching them how to be creative’.

Problem is, creativity pays the bills for very few people. It was very much a New Labour driven phenomena, particularly that students were taught that the answer to any problem was to expect a higher authority, preferably the state, to sort out.

Definitely a generational thing.

I'm in my 40s and quite a lot of the stuff (not all) that transpired in the 70s and 80s that would now be considered unacceptable was the making of us. Most youngsters today can't relate to the level of benign neglect that went on, like a summer entirely void of any structure or television.

And hell yes I would allow Farrakhan to speak. He should certainly pay his own security tab, but you have no idea how much this pivotal this guy has been in the black movement in the US if you think he should be banned.

How about if some students wanted their debating society to choose the motion 'This House Believes that Paedophiles are Unjustly Criticised' and got a couple of nonces in to propose it?

I think there are already Universities which would tolerate that. I work in a University and I’m pretty sure the Student Union would be open to that sort of thing in rather the same way many left wingers supported PIE in the 70s. They see paedophiles as victims of a society where their sexual orientation which isn’t socially acceptable. I know they have certainly had discussions praising paedophiles who don’t act on it and suggesting they should be ‘rewarded’ by tools to satisfy their desire such as dolls or images of CSE which shows people who are now adults and consent to it’s use (under the banner of ‘saving’ current children from being used to produce it). They’re not very interested in the fact studies show men are rarely satisfied with substitutes and they encourage them to offend rather than stop them.

I think the hardcore of what many people regard as ‘snowflakes’ are the people most open to this because they are most receptive to the idea of always seeing people as victims, no matter how abhorrent their actions are, and they are reluctant to see individuals as responsible for their own actions. Everybody is a victim of their desires and feelings in their world and the ideas of self restraint and responsibility are anathema to them.

I think it’s only the revulsion of staff and some other students which would stop them to be honest.

Also people keep proposing speakers they want us all to agree should be banned, ignoring the fact that those are not the type of speakers who actually do get banned.

Fundamentally our snowflake culture starts to impact free speech at a micro level where conversations between individuals become less truthful for fear of offence, right up to societal level where ‘unpalatable’ views are not aired. What is deemed unpalatable is subjective. Most of us agree that incitement to violence is an obvious exclusion, but beyond that, I think we need to be more careful.

Suppression of free speech is totalitarianism. Both the left and right have examples of this, neither are pretty. It doesn’t matter whether your intentions are kind and caring and wanting to protect people’s feelings, suppressing free speech is unambiguously always bad for our survival. Yes, really!

No platforming is not harmless, it is harmful. It creates echo chambers, divisions and people should learn to live with discomfort in hearing opposing views to their own, especially if their ultimate goal is more peace!

I haven’t seen one strong argument on here to support no platforming, I’ve heard ‘it’s not that bad’ ‘would you let jimmy saville speak to children type of thing’ but nothing to justify GG, JB etc. Being no platformed

I get the impression people haven’t quite thought this through

Again: there are people who would regard themselves (and/or be regarded by others) as both left-wing and right-wing who display ridiculous intolerance and whinyarsery. On the left, the over-excitable pounce on some mild joke made in private, or some outdated terminology as an excuse to vilify: on the right, they start ragepissing over utter myths such as 'It's illegal to say Happy Christmas now because muslamics WAAAAH' or shoot their own coffee machines because the manufactures made a joke about Trump.

And the whole 'no-platforming' thing has become utter nonsense, not only because it seems to be quite random, but also because people mean different things by it. It's a bit difficult to feel sympathy for someone who is bawling about having been 'silenced' in three different newspaper columns, all over Twitter and on a dozen TV shows, for example. And there's surely something a bit concerning about gobshites and self-promoters being treated like serious political figures in terms of the airtime they get when they have no legitimate authority (ie have failed several times to get elected as MPs) and track records of dishonesty and violence. Treating such people as novelty value, Aunt Sallies or a sick joke on chat shows is one thing, but wheeling them out to provide 'different views' or 'balance' on every fucking panel discussion is a bit much. It would be more democratic and promote greater freedom of speech to round up half a dozen knobs from the nearest pub and let them have a go.