Snowflake syndrome and safe spaces have gone viral in the U.S. over the past couple of years. Some may claim that all this censorship in the name of “compassion” boils down to the gay marriage movement in the early 2000s.
I’m not so sure about that.
This week, David Sergeant, a writer for Australian conservative outlet “The Spectator,” reflected on the changes redefining marriage brought to Britain. He argues that moment in Britain’s recent history was a turning point, unleashing a rush of LGBT progress, making it not only uncomfortable but socially inconceivable to have conservative beliefs.
Did the same thing happen in America?
There is no denying that the U.S. has experienced the same series of events. Sergeant first points to a ‘gender revolution’ bringing sweeping changes to legislation in the UK, and certainly America has been juggling those questions with increasing difficulty over the past year since the controversial North Carolina “Bathroom Bill.”
He then points out that religious liberty has come under attack in the UK. Some bakers and florists in the U.S. have experienced the same. Catholic judge Amy Barrett, has been attacked for her adherence to Catholic Dogma. The third area Sergeant brings up is the controversial changes to elementary curriculum, especially in the sex education department, which many in America, like some parents at Rocklin Academy, are also going through.
However, regardless of how one feels about gay marriage, I don’t know if we can blame the current threat to free speech on that movement. I remember being a young Catholic in high school theater, having those awkward and difficult conversations with my much more liberal friends.
They were way more understanding – one of my friends actually gave me a hug before helping me fix my hair after he asked me to explain the Catholic stance on gay marriage – than the college campus censoring we see now. I feel that there had to be something more — a more significant shift in our culture that has made intellectual conversation and debate taboo.
I would argue social media is the root cause of the new censoriousness.
Cyberbullying became an epidemic a decade or so ago, what we call “snowflake” society was a dramatic swing in rejection to that.
Like Sergeant, I’m not a professional. I have some studies to back up my suspicions, like this one from professors at the University of Michigan and Rutgers University that concludes, “with the exception of those with the strongest attitudes, social network sites are associated with lower willingness to discuss a political issue in-person, across a range of settings, from the private home, to public meetings.” But even that experiment doesn’t specifically link cyberbullying to a decline in conversation.
Gabriella Muñoz is a commentary desk intern with the Washington Examiner and a student at Georgetown University. If you would like to write an op-ed for the Washington Examiner, please read our guidelines on submissions here.
