“Snowflake is a 2010s derogatory slang term for a person, implying that they have an inflated sense of uniqueness, an unwarranted sense of entitlement, or are overly-emotional, easily offended, and unable to deal with opposing opinions.”

Today I had a fascinating and totally infuriating conversation with an otherwise intelligent woman who insisted that I talked to her in the way she wanted to be talked to, as if she ruled the world.

She kept repeating the phrase professionalism, that our discussion should be professional despite our disagreements. Her view of professionalism, of course. Mostly, she didn’t like my tone. Well, too bad.

This woman sounded like she sat on the board of some politically correct charity or perhaps a University committee where everyone waits for someone to say the wrong thing.

I don’t watch my words around someone I am paying a service for, I advocate for myself and relentlessly drive home any points I want to make. Damn the tone. In the immortal words of Damon Wayans, “Homey don’t play that game.”

Today, with this new breed we call snowflakes, we must retreat from our own personalities to match these overly sensitive types who can’t or don’t want to handle a disagreement, who dismiss our ideas and arguments by stating that they are delivered in the wrong way. Not professional. The wrong tone.

Have you ever listened to the Nixon White House Tapes? Those guys played rough, and nobody backed down or gave quarter when pushing for their programs or the favors they wanted. I’m sure that tone was and is the same with every presidential administration. And most corporations when they discuss taking over other companies, markets, or entire countries.

Nixon’s henchmen were profanity driven people which I do think is completely unprofessional. Generally, I never swear, especially not to a woman, and in my conversation with this snowflake I never used a single curse word. Yet she thought my tone threatening.

Learn to deal! I think this twit was so insulated, so pretentious, so utterly full of self-conceit, that she was shocked that someone would battle and argue over every word she said.

Listen, lady, this is the real world. Use your intelligence and your logic to make your points, don’t try to cower me into submitting to your politically correct world where everyone melts down before you because you feel threatened.

What she was really threatened by were my ideas. My tone was the blunt hammer she wanted to use to beat down those ideas.

At one point she actually accused me of putting her in fear for her safety. I was a threat. “Prove it,” I said. I have never been arrested, have no criminal record and my last speeding ticket was twenty years ago. I have never hit or harmed anyone. She wasn’t interested in that, instead, she “felt” that I was a threat.

If someone can’t tell the difference between a real threat and an imagined one then they are delusional and living afraid in a world of fears they have built in their own mind.

A figure of speech is now taken literally when ten years ago it was taken, properly, as figurative. But today the politically correct crowd seizes on anything that might offend, so they can shame someone into silence. You’re not shutting me up, though, in fact, I’m going to raise my voice. Some more.

As a writer, I endlessly advocate for free speech, no matter how it is delivered. You may not agree with Wayne LaPierre, Louis Farrakhan, or Gerry Adams, but all are brilliant orators who state their positions well. Even if they “threaten” the establishment.

Talking to this woman was so depressing; I think she and her sheltered kind are setting back the women’s movement fifty years. Bella Abzug, Betty Friedan, and Gloria Steinem would not have asked me to back down, they would have fought me at every step for what they thought was right. They would have come after me. In a literal sense, of course, as any sane person would understand that expression.

“Polite women seldom make history.” Indeed. Fight for what’s important. Forget about tone, civility, and professionalism when none is being shown to you.

Respectfully, in the best sense of the phrase, those three women were tough old broads. Fighters, advocates, driven. Not sheltered, but bashing it out in the real world of real threats. These women wouldn’t turn into snowflakes if they had snow. Instead, they’d make a snowball with a rock in it and throw it at you. They never worried about getting their feelings hurt, they got on with their struggles and their missions despite fierce and often personal criticism. That’s how you stand up. And not melt down like a snowflake.

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Bernadette Devlin holding her own with William F. Buckley Jr. while smoking a cigarette. Devlin was not a snowflake.