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Books

I Find That Offensive by Claire Fox

Terri Murray isn’t offended by Claire Fox’s book about the politics of being offended.

In this pithy, ebullient addition to Biteback Publishing’s ‘Provocations’ series, Claire Fox, the director and founder of the British think-tank the Institute of Ideas, makes a rousing appeal to ‘Generation Snowflake’ to throw off their bubble wrap and embrace the liberating responsibilities of adult life. To those of us born before 1980, it’s mind-boggling that the age-old wisdom Fox dispenses in this book should be considered ‘provocation’ at all. Consequently, readers like myself who have not yet been lobotomized by the culture of adult colouring books and naval-gazing ‘mindfulness’ can almost smell the author’s refreshing irony lurking in the subtext of every page. However, the author is not content to simply sneer at an entire generation by dubbing them ‘Snowflakes’ and ‘cry-babies’, because this does not explain why their prickly tendency to take offense is happening on such an epic scale. She delves deeper into the new cultural norm of fragility to identify its root causes in the privileging of victimhood.

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