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Composition 1
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Trigger Warning! Everyone Wants You to Speak No Evil

	Over the past few years a strange trend has spread across the United States, as well as many other countries worldwide. People are getting sensitive, angry, hateful, and illogical; they are lashing out at anyone who doesn’t act sufficiently politically correct. This societal over-sensitivity is causing unnecessary strife and division among people by spinning minor grievances into massive flame-wars and demanding censorship of anyone speaking out of line. As such anyone who values their freedom of speech should be against this trend. It can be seen easiest on the Internet, where comments sections are overflowing with ranting Social Justice Warriors – people who take an active approach to stopping what they find to be too inflammatory to be expressed – insulting other users and demanding they censor themselves. Oftentimes, to someone mobbed with the over-sensitive crowd, even the smallest breach of modern social etiquette is enough to pitch a fit.
	A common thing to see people get salty about is lack of representation in films and other media. Characters are not this or that minority, and so on. Even in mainstream media such as a critique of the new “Peanuts Movie” by Variety magazine brings up that Charlie Brown doesn’t have a non-white love interest, saying “But a little modernization wouldn’t have hurt, especially in the diversity department … a non-white love interest would have been as progressive as Schulz’s tomboyish depiction of Peppermint Patty was back in the day.”  This kind of comment is non-sequitur to the point of the review and the movie, and was only included to convince people such representation is necessary. From girls wearing box braids being harassed on Twitter  to fanartists attempting suicide over being spammed with hate mail for drawing a character too skinny for the Tumblr community’s liking , societal over-sensitivity is taking unimportant things and blowing them up into internet-wide scandals unnecessarily and people are getting hurt in the process.
	On the other hand it could be argued that while some of the scandals are silly other issues buzzed about by the group are important and that their actions bring awareness to serious topics. This is a good point, as this does happen. However couldn’t these topics be exposed to public scrutiny without the witch hunts and rage directed at individuals who happen to not meet the standards of the perfectly politically correct? If anything the important issues addressed by the mob are a side effect of the widespread nature of their hate mongering. When one casts a net so wide it’s sure to catch some big fish, so the question is are you willing to sacrifice all the little fish who get caught up in it too?
	Anita Sarkeesian’s answer to that question seems to be yes. Recently she and Zoe Quinn, another popular Social Justice Warrior, went to the United Nations to present a plea for the ability to legally censor those who says anything that can be construed as “gendered cyber violence” against women.  If such a thing was to be allowed nobody would be able to speak critically about anything produced by women, considering some of the comments they used as examples of this violence were as simple as calling her a liar over her videos and social media posts in which she regularly manipulates statistics and facts. This idea of just censoring those who speak out against or ignore their ideas of what is politically correct is a common trope among the socially over-sensitive. Almost any time there is a social justice rant there is a call for the target of the rant to either self-censor or be censored by an authority. There’s no getting around that this is an attempt to limit freedom of speech, and on a global scale with the UN. The common argument for this kind of censorship is that it’s the only sure way to stop cyber-bullying, and that by doing so we will protect people who aren’t able to handle it. If this were true then perhaps it might be worth it. Unfortunately, the fact that to be able to censor these messages the victim of the attacks would have to be exposed to the message before deleting means the victim is still impacted by it. In the long run making it possible to make the problems go away after they come won’t stop them from coming and the effect would be the same. Limiting the right to free speech to achieve so little is ridiculous.
	That the movement would go so far is damnation enough to say societal over-sensitivity has gotten way out of hand. The hate and vile behavior has gone on long enough. With all the little disagreements escalating into internet meltdowns and attempted destruction of rights it’s just a matter of time before society goes crazy and bans public criticism in fear of hurting each other’s feelings. Don’t let the world become a place where George Carlin could never get a start in comedy for being too raunchy. Stand up for your right to say and think what you want, fight societal over-sensitivity.









Bibliography
Debruge, Peter. “Film Review: ‘The Peanuts Movie’ .” Variety. Variety Magazine, 02 Nov. 2015. Web. 02 Nov. 2015.
Burke, Jennifer. n.e. “12-Year Old White Girl Got Braids, You Won’t Believe People’s Brutal Reactions.” TPNN. n.p., 21 Jan. 2015. Web. 02 Nov. 2015.
Romano, Aja. n.e. “'Steven Universe' fandom is melting down after bullied fanartist attempts suicide.” The Daily Dot. n.p., 27 Oct. 2015. Web. 02 Nov. 2015.
 Frank, Allegra. n.e. “Anita Sarkeesian, Zoe Quinn and more take aim at cyber harassment against women in new report.” Polygon. n.p., 25 Sep. 2015. Web. 02 Nov. 2015