As a woman, I find myself apologizing for a lot of things. When I ask a question in classes, I find myself saying, “I’m sorry, but…” When I’m upset, I feel like it needs to come with a disclaimer: “Oh sorry, but I’m just upset.” To be honest, I am at a huge fault for this, but I’m not alone. I’m a people pleaser, so I don’t like inconveniencing people with how I feel, how stressed I am, etc. You probably feel the same way. But I’m here to tell you; it’s not just you, and it’s not just me…
It’s our generation.
When I found myself apologizing for my opinions the other day, I decided that I’d had enough. It’s completely unnecessary for me to feel like most of my opinions need a filter or a disclaimer before I say them. My personal opinions shouldn’t offend anyone in any way because my opinions are just that: mine. If you disagree with them, let’s have a calm, collected conversation about it. Don’t tell me I’ve offended you or tell me that I’m being insensitive, because trust me, I’m not. I know the difference between opinions and offensive opinions.
And you know what? I’m done. Life is about opinions and judgments and dealing with it. As a millennial, I used to get really upset when the older generation would say how sorry they felt for us because we were so sensitive. Now, that I’m older and understand what these adults were saying, I feel pretty damn sorry for us too. We’re a group of people who literally can’t handle anything on our own.
Everything, and I mean everything, has to have a trigger warning now. One of my professors, the other day, said, “Now, this might offend some people because this text is full of women being lesser than men.” Are you kidding me? Okay, if this text was written yesterday, I would understand that warning to a certain extent because we’ve come a long way in women’s rights. But this text is from the 1300s – when men were literally and whole-heartedly superior to women. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that misogyny is still alive today, but the fact that a professor has to apologize for an author from 700 years ago is appalling. I refuse to apologize for thinking that’s wrong.
I’m so tired of hearing about all the causes and the problems and the disclaimers and the complaints about nothing. Twenty-five years ago, before we were all born, two different people could have two different opinions and they could talk it out in a civilized manner that didn’t result in lost friendships and an unlimited number of people feeling attacked or offended. Now? Don’t even think about having a different opinion from a friend or any other person you might come across. Everyone needs the politically correctness of a full on debate to have even the most informal chit-chat. I don’t know what changed. Maybe it’s social media, maybe it’s 24-hour news, maybe it’s the way we’re being raised.
All I know is this: the next time I have to say sorry for saying how I feel about a subject, I’m going to explode.
I also know this: people are going to take this article personally and be offended by it.
And most importantly, I know this: I don’t care. All that these people are doing is proving my point that millennials can’t handle someone not only having an opinion but also having an opinion other than their own. We also can’t handle someone calling us out on our BS. Well, you know what, get over it. You need someone to help you, to show you that life isn’t always going to be fair and fine and dandy. Life is hard. And it’s full of people who have different opinions than you, believe different things than you, and won’t care about your feelings. I’m just trying to open your eyes before you try to go out into the real world and simply cannot handle it.
You can thank me (or get angry at me) for this article later.
Featured image via Batu Gezer on Unsplash
