Sir, – In "Is anybody else getting sick of the term 'snowflake'? I know I am" (Broadside, December 9th), Niamh Towey plausibly claims that the use of the term "snowflake" is lazy and alienating.
But she continues by saying that the use of the term is offensive. In attacking the truth of a particular proposition on the basis of its palatability, she enters the fallacious realm of the so-called generation snowflake, who seem to believe that truth, above all, must be palatable and inoffensive, and conversely everything that is unpalatable and offensive must be prime candidate for classification as untrue.
Using such reasoning is probably just as dangerous as the new trend towards generalisation that Niamh Towey rightly criticises. – Yours, etc,
ADAM HOBSON,
London.
Sir, – I have a certain amount of sympathy for Niamh Towey’s view, and I certainly don’t dismiss all young adults as unthinking slaves of political correctness.
Up until very recently, I disliked terms such as "social justice warrior", and indeed, "snowflake". However, I have changed my view of them, for a simple and perhaps regrettable reason – they work. Sad to say, political and social discourse does not follow Queensberrry rules. Having lived in a suffocating climate of political correctness all my life, in the last year or so I have seen it (at last) pushed back – not by scholarly tracts (such as The Closing of the American Mind by the American humanities professor Allan Bloom), but by gleeful satire and lampoon, much of it internet-based.
For decades now, the progressive left has wantonly thrown around epithets such as “racist”, “sexist”, “homophobe”, “extremist” and “fundamentalist”. Suddenly they are on the receiving end and have become converts to the idea of civilised discourse. Too late, poor snowflakes! – Yours, etc,
MAOLSHEACHLANN
Ó CEALLAIGH,
Ballymun,
Dublin 11.