The new inclusive society

I read an article today in the Independent newspaper about how the snowflake generation is possibly killing comedy because comedians are very careful about what they write now for fear of offending anyone and this got me thinking about just how inclusive and understanding is the latest politically correct towards everybody which is how I understand them to be.
As a fifty year old male growing up and living in an industrial town in the heart of West Yorkshire I have seen and experienced many cultural changes. These changes have included, race, religion, sex, gender, inclusiveness and political correctness among many others.
Inclusiveness has always fascinated me not least because while it purports to be inclusive it is, in my view as exclusive as any other form of culture can be and here is why I see it as such.
Currently inclusiveness and political correctness is centred around two topics. They are gender and offending people.
I was brought up in a time when gender was make and female. You were taught that at school and in society and you accepted the gender norms. People’s sexuality which is a different subject to gender for me, was coming to the fore in the 70s and 80s, with more people coming out as homosexual or lesbian. I don’t have a problem with anyone’s sexuality and never will. You are what you want to be.
Similarly offending people was dealt with very differently when I was growing up. If you was offended you avoided that person, you did not befriend them in an attempt to try and change their view. You accepted that people are different and have different views and opinions to yourself and found a group of people who shared similar views and opinions to yourself to be friends with.
This is much in the same way that if you was watching something on television that you didn’t like or which offended you, you switched over to watch something that was more to your taste rather than watch it to the end and then complain about it. At the end of the day you have a choice what you watch so why watch something that offends you just so you can complain about it?
But now it seems as if society has changed how it views these subjects and in some ways has taken on a far more sinister standpoint.
If we take gender we now have people who call themselves gender fluid and who experience gender on a spectrum and can be experiencing female in the morning and male in the afternoon. I don’t have a problem with this as each generation develops human evolution a little bit further and experiences life differently to the generation before.
Where I do have a problem is when this is forced down my throat and I am forced to conform to the views of others and expected to respect their views and change mine overnight when they have no respect for my views or for how I have experienced life.
If we take for example toilets. Toilets are now expected to be gender neutral and both male and females are expected to use the same facilities. My problem with this is I want to use a toilet that is designed for males, but in doing so I am apparently offending some members of society because I still see people made up of male and female.
But I am offended too. I am offended because no one is asking me about my experience of society, how I was brought up and how I was influenced by society during my time growing up. I am allowed to offend others but not to be offended by them it seems.
This leads me onto my next point which is about growing up in a different generational culture. There seems to be a particular stance these days whereby you must apologise for how you behaved in a previous era because your actions then are compared to the societal norms and expectations of now and judged accordingly.
While I fully appreciate that some of mine and my contemporaries behaviour would not be acceptable now I believe it is equally unacceptable to expect us to apologise for our behaviour and actions back then when what was and was not acceptable in society was different because the norms of society were also different.
Why do some people find it acceptable to expect different generations to apologise for behaviour and actions that conformed to the accepted norms and standards of that particular time? I really do not understand this.
Yes of course I behave differently to how I behaved back then but this is due to my evolving with society and understanding that times change and what was acceptable back then is not acceptable now. And this is the same throughout history.
Why should I apologise for something I cannot change and which was done with the best of intentions according to the values of that time?
And it seems as if you can be offended by anything these days and the recourse action is to force people to change their opinions, values, behaviour and actions to fit in with how you see the world. It does not seem to occur to these people that they can accept that people are different and not everyone will have the same opinions and values as them and this will result in different behaviours and actions that may offend them.
The simple answer is avoid people who are so different to you that you are offended but also appreciate that in a fully inclusive society some people will have a different opinion and this may offend you but you do not have the right to force someone to change their views just to suit yours so you aren’t offended.
And this to me is the crux of this new inclusive society that some people are trying to create. It isn’t inclusive. It is exclusive.
It is exclusive because if you have a different opinion they will not debate it with you, they simply ignore you and exclude you. It is exclusive because if you are from a different generation and find it difficult to understand their views and opinions they exclude you. It is exclusive because if you still want to be called a male or a female they exclude you.
What this new inclusive society is doing is stifling debate, stifling creativity, stifling the development and growth of society because it wants everyone to conform to a narrow understanding of what it is to be human and does not recognise and appreciate the immense difference and diversity that exists with humanity.
Yes we can all respect someone who different to how we experienced humanity when we were growing up and who wants to do things in a particular way and live their life as they want to, no one should have a problem with that. But when you are made to feel small and insignificant and your views and opinions and your life don’t matter simply because you was born in a different era and have different cultural values and expectations than that is as far from an inclusive society as you can get.