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RE: Safe Spaces - The Dystopian Infantilization of America's Youth (Part 1)
This kind of thing kills me. People are so worried about being offended that they believe only they should have freedom of speech.
In America, everyone has the right to free speech, which means we should all be ready to hear something we may not want to hear.
But many of these younger people (I say that like I'm old, I'm actually only 30.) don't believe we should have many of the freedoms we enjoy, as long as everyone is coddled and taken care of.
Sad but true. I would contend that the freedom of speech we (once?) enjoyed in the States should be spread around the world, but we see increasingly draconian "hate speech" laws proliferating everywhere and it is being pushed for in the states as well. I actually had a student in one of my classes that said Milo shouldn't be allowed to speak in public (the topic was his fat shaming lecture) because what he said was offensive. I engaged in a respectful way and asked a few questions on unrelated topics until I found something mildly controversial and then reminded her, by her own standards, I would be justified in making sure she wasn't allowed to speak on the topic in public because it was offensive. She was stymied and didn't know what to say, I let the topic rest and moved on, but that is pretty much the only way I have found of addressing that kind of thing. I have tried just criticizing restricting free speech, but that has yet to work. Thanks for the response!
That's a good way of going about it. Often times, I believe people truly don't mean to "restrict" free speech, they just truly think that people have a right to not be offended, and that couldn't be further from the truth.