“Social media is rich with talk of microaggressions, privilege, trigger warnings and safe spaces”

Social media is rich with talk of microaggressions, privilege, trigger warnings and safe spaces. These buzzwords can serve as a helpful shorthand for discussing complicated dynamics of identity, history and power, but the smugness that ’80s liberals detected in their ranks can be spied here, too. The more pedantic forms of language scolding on Twitter can come across as coastal Ivy League whites trying to absolve themselves of their privilege by wielding it against poorer, less worldly and less educated white people. And the standards shift so quickly that it’s hard to keep up.

Amanda Hess, “Gag Order”, The New York Times Magazine (24 July 2016), 14.