I get called “snowflake” like it’s a bad thing. It seems to be the go to insult for right leaning people unable to engage in reasonable discourse. Calling someone a snowflake has become a way to automatically invalidate whatever challenge they were making to your behaviour or rhetoric by suggesting that their opinion is invalid because they are “too easily offended”. The debate then become whether or not the same is true, and the original point becomes lost. To have one’s opinion written off and deemed unworthy of attention and engagement is disconcerting to say the least. How can debate occur, different points of view come to be understood, and compromise reached, if one party has been written off from the outset as being unworthy of consideration? It’s also made me wonder if I’m guilty of the reverse: disregarding what someone has to say due to a preconceived notion that their voice is not worth hearing because they are “too offensive”. I hope that I have not been so quick to write people off, and I try now to engage with the opinions, instead of the speaker. (In the sense that I may find what someone is saying to be objectionable, but rather than write them off as an objectionable person, I engage with the topic rather than making a judgement about the person themselves and therefore the validity of their opinion, and any subsequent ones.)

To quote from Ricky Gervais’ The Office: “you don’t have to be black to be offended by racism”. In our increasingly right leaning society, I don’t think it’s possible to be “too easily offended” (as the broadest definition of snowflake defines it). Now, more than ever, minorities need allies. Those for whom it is safer to challenge offensive attitudes and rhetorics. Minorities find themselves targeted, simply through existing. By becoming activists, their personal safety is further compromised. The world needs snowflakes. People to challenge; to raise their voices, not because it will benefit them directly, but because it is the right thing to do.

I’ll borrow (and butcher a little) a metaphor from George Takei: avalanches cannot form without snowflakes. I sincerely believe that the world would benefit from an avalanche of tolerance, compassion and open mindedness right about now.

It takes courage to stand up to popular opinion. To get off the fence and out yourself. It’s easier not to engage; to simply ignore. But if things go unchallenged, they become accepted, then acceptable.

Be brave, my friends. Be more snowflake.