According to dictionary.com, an opinion is "a belief or judgment that rests on grounds insufficient to produce complete certainty."
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. However, it must be understood that opinions aren't always based on knowledge, and they can be hurtful to others. Therefore, based on the situation, it's not always the right time and place for an opinion to be shared.
Twitter is probably one of the most opinionated "places" out there. I can't remember the last time I've gone a day without seeing a tweet that outwardly supported a certain view. Often these tweets cause some sort of argument in the mentions.
Personally, I love Twitter. I think it's an amazing tool for expanding viewpoints, being creative, and procrastinating. But there are some aspects of it that need to be addressed.
There was a tweet that recently caught my attention – it was posted by a woman who attends the University of Northern Iowa (which is only about an hour and a half from Iowa State) and got almost 30k likes. It reads: "If this offends you, you can unfollow/block me but let's get one thing straight.. you were either born a BOY or a GIRL. none of this agender, bigender stuff. This generation is way too sensitive."
When I first saw this tweet, the main thing that stuck out to me was its ignorance. It's clear that adequate research wasn't done before this it was sent, because if it was, the sender would have known that intersex individuals exist and hopefully would've been decent enough to acknowledge them. Intersexequality.com says that "the most thorough existing research finds intersex people to constitute an estimated 1.7% of the population, which makes being intersex about as common as having red hair (1%-2%)."
This tweet essentially erases an entire group of people. UNI's student enrollment, according to forbes.com, is 11,981. So, there around 204 students that go to school with Valerie are intersex. It's possible, even likely that a percentage of them saw this tweet.
Second, this tweet associates gender and sex as interchangeable. It's taught in your most basic psych101 class that this isn't true.The sex you're born as does not necessarily correlate with what gender you identify with; or as the sender put it, "this agender, bigender stuff."
Third, I don't really understand how the conclusion of "this generation is way too sensitive" was reached. Everyone lives different lives, with different things they have to overcome. Reducing other people having to deal with their hardships to them being "too sensitive" is dehumanizing. And what's wrong with being sensitive? What's wrong with caring? What's wrong with standing up for yourself and/or others?
This is what we need to leave in 2017. Sure, you can share your opinion. That doesn't mean you should. And if you decide to share, make it educated.
I think my friend Ryan Frank, another UNI student, had the best response to the original tweet:
