Being a Snowflake Is Bad for Your Mental Health
9th August 2021
When you overprotect people from any and all risks, you’re not doing them any favours. Trauma-informed approaches and safetyism lead to antifragility, a term coined by Nassim Taleb, which refers to the fact that many systems — including our immune system and psychological system — need to experience stressors to grow strong. Instead of helping young people, we are empowering their anxiety. These overprotective approaches can stunt the natural coping responses that individuals need to develop.
Critical gender studies can also have a detrimental impact on mental health. In 2016, Dr Jordan Peterson expressed his concerns about a bill under consideration by the Canadian federal government. The bill included a list of gender expressions whose use would be prohibited on the grounds of discrimination. Peterson pointed out that the bill let the notion of identity be determined solely by the individual in question — whatever identity that might be. The problem with this is the fact that identity is not solely an individual construct but also a social one. There’s more to it than a person’s choices; identity oscillates between the psychological and the social. Therefore, if someone subjectively decides their identity without taking society into account, this decision will potentially compromise others by unilaterally redefining their roles in society.