Devil's advocacy:

The petition listed had 113 signatures. That's between 1/4 and 1/10 of a lecture class at UCLA, where 43,000 grads and undergrads pursue a degree every year. There are always crazy bullshit things like this but yes, there's a lot of crazy bullshit microagression triggerwarning bullshit in the news.

BUT OF COURSE THERE IS. This is a select set of students practicing asymmetrical warfare by using their only asset (minority status, however triangulated) to win leverage over the institution that takes their money and gives them largely debt in return. They did not enroll in college to better know the world, they did it to better gird their loins against a system they're not ready to join and they are actively and inventively applying all available strategies to receive the leverage they desire.

Out in the world, nobody cares. Sure, there are cafes that put "Womyn" on the door and there always will be but they don't represent a majority position anywhere. But where does the author go?

My sympathy for your suffering, whether that suffering was real or imaginary, ended when you demanded I change my life to avoid bringing up your bad memories.

The author isn't even in conversation with these people. If he were, he would discover that the overwhelming majority of the world is in solid agreement with him. We feature stories such as this in the news not because they are the norm but because they are the outlier.

Meanwhile, the rage generated is super-handy for striking back against measures of equality of all stripes. You can try and convince me that the google manifesto happens in a world unprimed by outrage against "the new meaning of trauma" but you'll have to work at it. Whenever the norm's normative behaviors are threatened, regardless of how ridiculously, progress marches backwards.

Microaggressions didn't give us Trump. But outrage against the concept of microaggressions helped.