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**DragonFury** · 06-10-2016, 12:36 PM

Quote:Was there something in that article that you dispute, or is it just easier to dismiss the source?

Quote:It's on the internet and is an opinion piece. Evidently the Brit writer of it "gets it".

Here's a challenge for you my undocumented moderator friend, how about commenting on the topic at hand?

I dismiss the source because it's the freaking Sun newspaper, a publication famous for believing and reporting whatever they're told as long as fits the political narrative the paper is supporting at the time. As a whole, the Sun is the journalistic equivalent of a damp towel. But I'm nothing if not a crowd pleaser so let's comment on the article itself, my comments are in red:

Quote:

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”She said British and American universities are dominated by cabals of young women who are dead set on banning anything they find remotely offensive.

First of all, let's talk about this think tank: a Google search leads to a few articles about the IoI and they main stance in those articles about the think tank is: no one really knows who or what they are. They do the fairly standard talk about free speech but they also seems to be opposed to any kind of green initiative, not surprising considering they draw funding from the likes of Shell. Secondly, what is immediately clear is that this entire article is based upon the opinion of this Claire Fox, the head of the think tank. So straight away it's presenting personal opinion as fact. We're not exactly starting off well here.

“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.

So she wrote an article for the Mail Online. The Mail, by the way, is a famously conservative newspaper generally considered to be the Chicken Little of British newspapers. If you like articles about how some new-fangled thing or the young people is going to ruin society then the Daily Mail is your kind of publication.

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.

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”.

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.

Gotta love a good old "things were better in the olden days" argument. Mix it in with some thorough anecdotal evidence (the best kind of evidence) and you're all set to make sweeping generalizations about entire groups of people based on interactions with a tiny subset of those groups.

“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.”

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.”

Again; personal opinion presented as fact.

Claire Fox has penned a book about Generation Snowflake which is called I Find That Offensive and was published by Biteback in May

Quote:It must be a regional thing, I didn't grow up without keeping score. My kids 5 year old football league kept score, heck we had playoffs ( for 5 year olds? lol). I've never seen a participation trophy, my kids have never seen a participation trophy. My daughter got the AB honor role this year, she got a trophy, a ribbon and a certificate, my son didn't he came home empty handed. He asked why Bella got all the attention, we told him he had to work harder in school.

certainly no snowflakes in Putnam county to damn hot they would melt.

You don't see it happening because it's largely the territory of a very specific set of people. Of course there's been a nice little narrative about the supposed lack of quality of the current generation for a few years now and this fits nicely within that narrative so it gets hit with a nice big shiny spotlight. Of course when you start looking at the actual data there's a completely different story; the supposed lazy and feckless generation actually has the highest graduation rates in history, both for high school and college. Numbers for teen pregnancy, STD's, drug usage and the like are all down to record lows while numbers for productivity and education are all up.