Snowflake Generation - Are we really snowflakes? You may be aware that, in recent years, our generation, you and me, have been dubbed as ‘snowflakes’. The Collins English Dictionary has added another meaning to the word snowflake as ‘the young adults of the 2010’s, viewed as being less resilient and more prone to taking offence than previous generations’. Today, in our rapidly changing society, we live acceptingly, appreciating all ranges of diversity and peoples’ opinions. Yet, there are so many types of people nowadays, the majority of which carry controversial debates, which makes it hard to argue against in fear of causing offence or being seen by those around you as unaccepting of others; even though, supposedly, everyone is free to share their opinions. This has led many people, mainly amongst those of the older generations, to believe that the motifs of generation snowflake are contradictory. However, arguably, as a result of rapid societal change, polarised socialisation experiences from the different generations has led to conflicting views about acceptance. Society has developed rapidly in terms of social acceptance and is still expanding human rights and equality for all e.g. from 2015 to 2018, the gender pay gap has slowly started to narrow, increasing women’s pay compared to men by 5% (although this is a small amount, it proves that change is being made). Many people agree with the decisions made to achieve this and the views spread about modern societal issues such as gender inequality, racial discrimination, sexual orientation etc. For example, in June 2016, the Secretary of Defence Carter announced that the Pentagon lifted the ban on transgender people serving openly in the US military– one of many achievements made benefitting the LGBT community. Although not all issues have been resolved, for instance, one of many examples include over 70% of ethnic minority workers say they have experienced racial harassment at work or been subjected to unfair treatment by their employer because of their race, awareness for these problems has increased massively; mainly due to us, generation snowflake. Despite our previous generations efforts to kickstart social equality by introducing hugely beneficial laws such as the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975 and the Race Relations Act of 1976, the majority of societal change regarding controversial issues has come into play as a consequence of the actions from our generation – the Equality Act of 2010, the Human Rights Act of 1998 , the Employment
Equality Regulations regarding religion, belief, sexual orientation and age Act of 2003, the legalisation of gay marriage in 2014 – the list goes on and on.
“The young adults of the 2010’s, viewed as being less resilient and more prone to taking offence than previous generations” For today’s millennials, cultural and ethnic diversity is the norm, since we’ve been socialised to acknowledge so – quite rightly. However, the number of different ‘groups’ in society seems to be on the rise, and perhaps the majority of the older generations are finding it hard to keep up. On the contrary, those millennials less engaged with shifting modern societal attitudes can also find this quite confusing. I admit that I can become discombobulated with the everchanging initialism of the LGBT community; which currently adopts the form of LGBTTQQIAAP, standing for (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, queer, questioning, intersexual, asexual, ally, pansexual). But does this mean that I am causing offence?
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