Having railed against the term ‘political correctness’ for many years, I now have another word to get mad about: ‘snowflake’. No, not the little white thing that visits us occasionally in the winter but what the Sun newspaper describes “an overly sensitive person who thinks the world revolves around them. Snowflakes gasp in horror when they hear an opinion they don’t like, and believe they have a right to be protected from anything unpalatable.” We all know that people complain about so called ‘political correctness’ because they hate the idea of their racism, misogynism and homophobia being questioned. The term ‘snowflake’ is an undoubted term of abuse but doesn’t it say more about the person who uses it, than the person to whom it is being directed?
The Sun, like most newspapers, is read by old and elderly people which is why it feels free to have a pop at the younger generation. Students are a group particularly loathed by Rupert Murdoch’s drooping organ. Look at what it says about them: “Today’s generation of sensitive uni students are often labelled snowflakes because they receive “trigger warnings” on books and lectures that might contain upsetting subjects. Snowflake youngsters were horrified at un-PC jokes in the 90s sitcom Friends, which they saw for the first time when it was released on Netflix. The term was also used when people began complaining about old James Bond films starring Sean Connery.” This is all news to me since just about every student I have ever met – and both my sons were and are students – are anything but “overly sensitive who (think) the world revolves around them.”
It strikes me that many of those who employ the word ‘snowflake’ as a term of abuse appear to represent the Sun’s definition. They are the ones who are “overly sensitive who think the world revolves around them”, not their intended victims. They are the ones who “gasp in horror when they hear an opinion they don’t like” and, yes, they want to be protected from it.
There’s a bit of macho in it, too. “I’m bigger and harder than you,” they probably think. “And I’m definitely normal, unlike those ‘snowflake liberals’ who think it’s okay for gay people to love each other. I’d ban it, me, because I’m totally masculine.”
Like other new word interpretations, the ‘snowflake’ is in the Collins dictionary and so it should be because our language changes and evolves all the time. However, it does not mean there is any such person. I feel very sorry for the people who use the word, as I do the people who complain about political correctness. All it reveals is that they are sadly insecure beings themselves. Snowflakes, you might say.
