People love to hate on my generation, the Millennials, for many reasons.
“Your generation can’t take a joke.” “If you put a trigger warning on one thing, where does it end?” “You’re too sensitive.” “You’re more concerned with being PC than getting anything done.” “You just want to be coddled.” “That’s not how the real world is!” “Free speech!!!!!”
I, and I imagine many others, am very tired of the battling think pieces on this topic. Instead, here’s a list of productive comebacks to these anti-Millennial concerns.
1. Some Things I Do Find Funny
This cat:
This guy:
This other cat (getting a theme?):
These goats singing the Game of Thrones theme song (winter aka April 24th is coming!):
I could continue indefinitely, and not a single joke would need to be based on mocking a marginalized group. There's a whole universe of great jokes. You know why all of these are funny? They aren't racism, sexism, transphobia, etc. masquerading as humor. If the best joke you can tell comes at the expense of a group of marginalized people, you just have a bad sense of humor. If you have to say "why can't you take a joke?", you're putting your inability to tell a decent joke on someone else. It's not our fault you were born unfunny.
2. Trigger Warnings
Trigger warning skeptics have two main issues: A) trigger warnings are for the weak and B) you can't put trigger warnings on all possible triggers so why bother.
To address part A:
Are combat veterans weak? I'm guessing staunch anti-Millennials would say no, and yet combat veterans have effectively asked for a trigger warning on fireworks as it may trigger severe PTSD. This seems totally reasonable to most people.
Why then is it unreasonable for the one in six American women who have been raped to ask for a trigger warning regarding sexual assault? Is their trauma not real? The next time someone objects to trigger warnings, take a look at the categories of warnings they oppose. I'm betting it will be very telling of who they consider worthy of living in comfort.
And now part B:
I have a short answer for that bad argument. That's like saying death is inevitable so we might as well not treat cancer, infectious disease, STDs, etc. It's true we may never be immortal, but is that a reason to stop trying to expand medicine to treat more diseases?
3. Who's The Coddled One?
If people tell you certain language hurts them, and you get upset enough to go on an anti-PC tirade (or write articles, go on talk shows, become a Fox News correspondent, etc), then you are the coddled one. If you have never been asked to stop being racist (or anything "ist"), then your bigotry has been coddled your entire life. Your privilege is so ridiculously enormous, that having to stop hurting people is too much for you to consider. You are so coddled that someone else asking for human decency seems like an affront. Who's the sensitive one?
4. We Should Improve The "Real World"
Anti-Millennials love to tell us that the "real world" isn't going to be like (insert wherever we are–college, liberal cities, internet, affinity groups, sitting on the couch at home, existing in the Milky Way Galaxy, etc).
First of all unless this really is the Matrix, everywhere is the "real world." Second, why should we accept that this post-college world is bigoted? That's basically the message: "Don't get to used to being respected as human beings now, because once you're an adult it's open season on women and minorities again!"
5. But Free Speech!
This is the big one. So much has been written on this (by everyone from idiots on Twitter to Supreme Court Justices), that I'm just going to pull from my favorite, clearest piece: An Idiot's Guide to Free Speech.
"(We are) not infringing on your right to free speech; it's pointing out how you choose to exercise that right. Like the rest of the federal constitution, the First Amendment protects us from the government, not from private companies, which may be able to fire or otherwise punish you for stuff you say."
Honestly, even the Supreme court has some pretty wishy-washy language on what the First Amendment means, so really no one knows with certainty. However, one thing is perfectly clear: Free Speech does not protect you from being societally punished for being an @sshole.
