Stephen Fry hits out at ‘infantile’ culture of trigger words and safe spaces
There's a lot to unpack in this phenomenon. The most interesting question is - why now?<p>I think that safe spaces / micro-aggressions may come from the perfect storm of a) a generation that was conceived after a period of widespread crime and social uncertainty, leading parents to coddle them and try to protect them from the world [see 'helicopter' parenting'], b) the self-esteem movement [everyone wins prize], and c) increasingly feminized primary and secondary education. The number of male teachers has dwindled rapidly over the decades.<p>I don't want to appeal to gender stereotypes but I remember seeing some research that indicated that while boys in a playground situation were more physically aggressive and directly confrontational during disagreements with each other, girls tended to have higher incidence of shunning and social exclusion - emotional/relational aggression.<p>Maybe we shouldn't be surprised to see safe spaces / micro-aggressions as a strategy to shut down unpleasant situations (ideas) rather than confronting them as ideas. These strategies are essentially forms of shunning and avoidance.<p>Regardless of how one feels about the veracity of these gender stereotypes and how they apply to the sexes, the strategies are real and they are a significant difference from what we've historically had as cultural values in the US and UK: "we're all strong enough for dissent, it's about more than our feelings."