Tactical Question - Haley

[GrayGriffin]

Why is that?

Well, for one, it sounds a bit like you're justifying your own offensive behavior and claiming that it's beyond your own control. Spoiler alert: It never is.

[The Giant]

OK, seriously: Everyone stop it with the barely-screened versions of racial/gender/identity slurs. I don't want to see them here, not even with the middle blocked out. You don't need to type them out with one vowel asteriked to get your point across.

[Rakoa]

Well, for one, it sounds a bit like you're justifying your own offensive behavior and claiming that it's beyond your own control. Spoiler alert: It never is.

I assume by "you", you are referring to a generalized male population, and not me personally?

[The Giant]

Also, as a rule of thumb, if you find yourself defending your inalienable right to make someone else feel like garbage, you're on the wrong side of the argument.

[GrayGriffin]

I assume by "you", you are referring to a generalized male population, and not me personally?

Yes. I figured that would be obvious from context, considering the quote you quoted also used "you" in a general sense.

[oppyu]

Spoiler

Show

(emphasis mine)
Well, yes and no.
If those jokes were only on the minority, there could be a point. but as i said, i make jokes on just about everything, including me and my ethnic/cultural groups. the message is not "look how funny they are. It's not that bad to refer to Asians by some racist term (because they actually deserve it)"; the message is "look how funny everyone is. It's not that bad to refer to any of us by some racist term (because we take ourselves way too seriously)". My opinion has always been that we should strive to see the humorous side in all things in life, and especially in ourselves and in our shortcomings.
But then, people in the minority will often feel oppressed even when they are not. So confirmation bias sink in. Even if they hear potentially insulting jokes against pretty much everyone, they only remember the ones against them. That's why, if a man and a woman are having an argument on the street, and the men yells "all women are sluts", you can be sure that plenty of people will intervene to tell the man that he's a sexist, while if the woman states "all men are pigs" probably no one will give a damn about it. And that's a big part of why many men lash out at feminists with rage(1): because they are called pigs at least as much as the women are called whores, and they suffer many things that could be called discrimination(2), but they don't give a damn about it, they go on with their life without problems, so they just can't understand why women are so offended.

So, I remain of the opinion that most of the discrimination (of any kind) is perceived, not real; the rest can be avoided by hanging up with more progressive people.
After all, if I were looking into it, I could find reasons to take offence every day. I just prefer to let them pass. And the world would be an happier place if everyone did the same.
I know many people will still disagree with me, and my position is not accepted by the mainstream culture, but I feel I had to give it the best defence I can.

1 sexist remarks are only meant as generic insults in that case: it is assumed that a feminist will be hurted more by a sexist insult, so it's the "weapon of choice"; no sexism in it, just insult effectiveness

2 some examples of cultural sexual discrimination against males: some researchers made an experiment, where they pretended to be a dating couple, then one of them would go the the toilet, and the other would overtly slip something into his/her drink. when the man slipped something in the glass of the woman, every time someone told it to the woman, or offered to defend the woman, or accused the man of trying to drug her and rape her. When the woman slipped something in the glass of the man, only half the times people reacted. the other half, no one said anything. some even found it funny.
It is generally considered ok for a girl to slap a man. the reverse is not true.
My department in the university where I work got specific instructions, when hiring new researchers, to prefer females to males. Just for that, no other reasons given. And we already have around 50% of women researchers.
I could make many more examples. And I'm not arguing that there is discrimination against men. I'm arguing that sexism goes both ways.

Ok, to try and rebut your post, I'm going to attempt to break it down into more succinct, less rambling parts.

Making racist/sexist jokes is fine because I joke about everyone. All racist terms are OK, because the victims of discrimination take themselves way too seriously.

People are imagining their oppression, and then twisting their real-life interactions to confirm their feelings of persecution. Also, women are sexist as well. Men call women sluts, and women call men pigs, but for some strange reason I cannot fathom people seem more offended by the first one. This is why men hate feminists, because they feel persecuted and because they don't understand why women would feel persecuted, because they don't feel persecuted.

Therefore, most prejudice and discrimination is imagined, and the rest can be fixed if women and minorities would stop associating with stupid people.

I am not personally offended by racism, so I feel confident in saying the world would be a better place if nobody else was offended by racism.

I know people disagree with me, but I have a right to my opinion.

Sexist remarks are only said to offend and hurt women, so they're not really sexist.

Men suffer from sexism as well. I have some examples that show that society considers men invalid and incapable if they are every victimised, and therefore diminishes their suffering. Also, an anecdote about the university I work at supporting affirmative action.

1: Making jokes about everyone does not diminish the cultural factors which make prejudicial jokes harmful for women and minorities. Just because it's funny to you, does not make it funny for everyone else.

2: No, discrimination is not imagined. See here for just one of the many examples for why just one of the many discriminations in society is not imagined. Also, men reinforcing a milennia-old gender stigma is not equivalent to women calling men pigs.

3: See, 2.

4: The world would be a better place if people would stop being racist.

5: That is true, yes.

6: Er... no. That is not true. And kind of irrelevant. People use sexist remarks as an effective insult because the remarks are given power by cultural conditions. If society was absolutely accepting of homosexuals, then [CENSORED] wouldn't be an effective insult. If society wasn't prejudiced against female sexuality, [AGAIN CENSORED] wouldn't be an effective insult.

7: Yes, but that's going into a whole new thing. The patriarchy (male-run system) both relegates women to the bottom of the barrel, and sets impossible standards of masculinity for men to aspire to. Men are supposed to be strong and invincible, so if they're ever victimised, they aren't really men and it's OK to laugh at them. This leads to some truly disturbing societal trends like people saying men can't really be rape victims, because men getting raped is funny. When feminists oppose the patriarchy, they oppose this [ONCE-MORE CENSORED] as well

Also, affirmative action and quotas ain't pretty, but the glass ceiling isn't going to break itself. When society stops seeing white heterosexual male as the default promotable employee, then we'll talk about getting rid of affirmative action.

[zimmerwald1915]

I have no idea how displaying an accountant that is good with numbers is in any way supposed to be a problem, but I would point out that this accountant is still secretly conspiring in an evil world domination scheme, and is in fact a flying kobold, so I feel pretty safe that I managed to step outside the box on that one.

Kilkil's in on the scheme? Fascinating...

[Shale]

He clearly knows who he's supposed to be taking orders from. Including the people who supposedly advise the empires of sweat and tears.

[Math_Mage]

I'd just like to note that by far the most prominent use of the term 'pig' in the last several years was aimed at Sarah Palin.

I think that it's okay to make fun of poor choices in sexual behavior, including of someone who might, to use the exact same language as last time, be a little quick on the trigger.

Sure, and that phrasing makes it a criticism of the choice rather than a slur on the person. That's a substantial difference.

Part of the problem, I would agree, with bygone eras was the condemnation of excessive sexual behavior for its own sake. Again, outside the era of teenagers, I don't see this as a going concern these days. The "hate" in the love/hate relationship is, I think, mostly a factor in forums where there's a high level of baseline hate, rudeness, and general pie-flinging. The more sensitive a topic is, the more it will be seen by trolls as the right topic on which to base terrible things to say. People that want to hurt other people with words aren't going to fail at that because of a changed topic.

There's a reason the topic is sensitive. It's not all on the Internet. Moreover, it's not like this is easily separated from all the other ways in which gender discrimination is an ongoing social issue.

[GrayGriffin]

Also, as a rule of thumb, if you find yourself defending your inalienable right to make someone else feel like garbage, you're on the wrong side of the argument.

Yeah, this is going into my signature.

[Zmeoaice]

And I'm not arguing that there is discrimination against men. I'm arguing that sexism goes both ways.

...

That means you're arguing that there is discrimination against men. When men are treated differently then women because they are men, that's discrimination.

[Grey Watcher]

But it's not self-inflicted. She's a victim of Tarquin and Malack's deceptions. If they'd tried convincing her to fast two days a week in hopes of gaining spells, she'd do that instead of gorging herself. Tarquin probably figured a morbidly obese dragon was more terrifying than one that was wasting away. Either way, they did this trick to make her easier to control. She's fat because Tarquin took advantage of her stupidity, and because she wanted to be fat.

Well, thing is, all Tarquin says is that they observed that the more powerful dragons out there are larger and that she then assumed that becoming large would cause her to become powerful. Tarquin's manipulating her for sure, but that doesn't necessarily mean that every idea that pops into her head was put there by him. It could just as easily be that she took to this thing of her own volition and Tarquin simply saw no need to correct it. He probably figures she'll be replaced by the next puppet in a few years anyway and constantly gorging keeps her from asking annoying questions about policy and such in the meantime.

Or maybe he deliberately trolled her into turning herself into a living blimp for laughs. Who knows?

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Well, thing is, all Tarquin says is that they observed that the more powerful dragons out there are larger and that she then assumed that becoming large would cause her to become powerful. Tarquin's manipulating her for sure, but that doesn't necessarily mean that every idea that pops into her head was put there by him. It could just as easily be that she took to this thing of her own volition and Tarquin simply saw no need to correct it. He probably figures she'll be replaced by the next puppet in a few years anyway and constantly gorging keeps her from asking annoying questions about policy and such in the meantime.

Or maybe he deliberately trolled her into turning herself into a living blimp for laughs. Who knows?

Agreed on all points, although I'd say he looks more amused at the development that smugly proud of the accomplishment. I think he saw the potential for some great laughs if he didn't correct her mistake, more than him engineering it.

Grey Wolf

[wootage]

Well, the Earl of Condom is a non-person, so you may wish to review your own education.

And yes, warrl has it right. Women were considered nothing more than chattel, and their lives were not considered important. You're essentially trying to ascribe a benevolent (and deeply anachronistic) rationale to the treatment of women in a time period where people didn't care about the treatment of women. Modern perspectives of sexual diseases are far removed from historical ones, which tended to view them as the result of sin.

And you're painting with a brush that covers the entire human race before us awesome enlightened folks. You may wish to both narrow your argument and broaden your own education as well.

[The Extinguisher]

You answered your own question. "They go on with their life without problems." That's a privilege we (straight white men) have—we can laugh off the insults and go on with our lives, because we know the store owner isn't going to call the cops after we spend our own money on an expensive belt (as happened to a young black man in New York recently). We're not going to be shot for knocking on a door and asking for help (as happened to a young black woman here in Massachusetts). We're not going to be beaten to death because we're gay or trans (as happens too often to mention). We're not going to have our opinions dismissed out of hand because of our sex. We're not going to get roofied so some fratboy can get himself off, then laughed out of the police station when we try to report it.

Yes, life can be hard for straight white men. But we don't have to justify our position in society every day of our lives. Unless we're poverty-stricken or homeless or have some other disadvantage, we can wake up and walk out into the world feeling confident that the people we encounter, the police and the store owners and the strangers on the street, are going to treat us like regular folks. The people you think it's funny to insult don't get to feel that way. Sometimes they do, sure. Sometimes they can go a whole day without being patronized or insulted or stalked or sneered at or hit or dismissed. But every time they hear a slur coming out of the mouth of someone like you, like me, it makes it harder for them.

This is a true thing. You can choose to ignore it if you want. That doesn't make it less true.

(Edited to comply with Rich's instructions.)

I think this is one of the best explanations of what privilege is (especially in regards to offensive jokes etc) and I might just have to use it again and again.

(b")b

[redcodekevin]

Also, as a rule of thumb, if you find yourself defending your inalienable right to make someone else feel like garbage, you're on the wrong side of the argument.

You sir, are more amazing than what you've ever been told. This goes into my list of really worthwhile quotes.

[eras10]

Also, as a rule of thumb, if you find yourself defending your inalienable right to make someone else feel like garbage, you're on the wrong side of the argument.

I agree with this. However, it gets a little more complicated if you are defending your inalienable right to say things to someone else that do not make them feel like garbage, but that third parties claim contributes indirectly to fourth parties being willing to say things making fifth parties feel like garbage.
The social scientist in me says that not all of these claims are valid, and that even a valid claim of this kind is not, in an of itself, equivalent to a determination that I shouldn't say this thing.

That's a complicated question, especially if everyone involved could instead choose to draw a distinction that what the fourth person said was bad, the end, and live with condemning obviously mean things as bad, instead of making everyone else do things differently on this basis. I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm just not sure it's always right.

Also, while I don't agree with KoN, I appreciate his ability to discuss the topic without flaming the people talking to him. That's a good sign. If that's grading on a curve, well, grading on a curve is useful. Flies will never be caught here with vinegar alone, which is why stories play a useful role in norm generation, and reach people who will never be reached by stern lectures and mockery. You can't really force people to obey these rules, and in practice coercion fails.

EDIT: A version of this post that actually captured how I really feel was eaten by the forum's very restrictive limits on how long I have to make a post without being logged out automatically. This happens to me about every other post. This version is cruder and mildly overstates my interest in defending the indefensible.

[jere7my]

EDIT: A version of this post that actually captured how I really feel was eaten by the forum's very restrictive limits on how long I have to make a post without being logged out automatically. This happens to me about every other post. This version is cruder and mildly overstates my interest in defending the indefensible.

The what now? I've been logged in here for six months or so.

[ti'esar]

Kilkil's in on the scheme? Fascinating...

I thought that had already been established by 915.

Also, as a rule of thumb, if you find yourself defending your inalienable right to make someone else feel like garbage, you're on the wrong side of the argument.

And yeah, also sigging this.

[Dragonus45]

1: Making jokes about everyone does not diminish the cultural factors which make prejudicial jokes harmful for women and minorities. Just because it's funny to you, does not make it funny for everyone else.

2: No, discrimination is not imagined. See here for just one of the many examples for why just one of the many discriminations in society is not imagined. Also, men reinforcing a milennia-old gender stigma is not equivalent to women calling men pigs.

6: Er... no. That is not true. And kind of irrelevant. People use sexist remarks as an effective insult because the remarks are given power by cultural conditions. If society was absolutely accepting of homosexuals, then [CENSORED] wouldn't be an effective insult. If society wasn't prejudiced against female sexuality, [AGAIN CENSORED] wouldn't be an effective insult.

7: Yes, but that's going into a whole new thing. The patriarchy (male-run system) both relegates women to the bottom of the barrel, and sets impossible standards of masculinity for men to aspire to. Men are supposed to be strong and invincible, so if they're ever victimised, they aren't really men and it's OK to laugh at them. This leads to some truly disturbing societal trends like people saying men can't really be rape victims, because men getting raped is funny. When feminists oppose the patriarchy, they oppose this [ONCE-MORE CENSORED] as well

Also, affirmative action and quotas ain't pretty, but the glass ceiling isn't going to break itself. When society stops seeing white heterosexual male as the default promotable employee, then we'll talk about getting rid of affirmative action.

1. See the above discussion on the nature of humor, the thing that makes the joke funny is the fact that the involved people know and understand that the subject of the joke is in fact a bad thing.

2 I'm not sure if we can discuss that specific link there without violating the board rules, but if a mod does say its fair game i'll have something to chime in on that.

The Rest: That only applies if you subscribe to the view of the world that Patriarchy as presented by several prominent people who will not be named for board rules reasons is a real thing. Now i feel the need to at least give a token disagreement but really all we can do is say yea huh uh uh repeatedly till blue in the face since the forum roles would definitely keep us from having that conversation in any amount of detail, since there is no way to have that debate without talking about politics how about we avoid spending 5 pages going O'rly YA'rly and just move on.

Also I know for a fact that any discussion of affirmative action is absolutely political from the get go, so I'm not touching that one.

2: These jokes reinforce the negative stereotypes associated with the jokes. Want to know why women in the sex industry are still considered gross, or why African-Americans are harassed for buying clothes from expensive upmarket places? Because the prejudicial culture survives through 'jokes'. The thing about these jokes is that you're making the minority the victim of the joke. When you say these hilarious things in public, you're subtextually reassuring people that it's fine to hold those beliefs because look how funny they are. It's not that bad to refer to Asians by some racist term! Look how hilarious it was when I did it ironically! For the most alarming example of this, look up 'rape culture', then prepare to feel bad. (Actually, most people choose to lash out at the feminists with sexist remarks instead. It's pretty sad. But it's absolutely fine, because when they refer to us as female dogs and tell us to shut up, they're being totally funny and joking.)

See my above point on humor often being based on the assumption that the joke is itself about something that is wrong. Also when you talk about culture transferring through jokes your getting dangerously close the shapir-worf hypothesis, which is unproven and unprovable. As to the rape culture comment there is so much more information relevant to that discussion i can barley get into due to forum rules that i think we should perhaps toss that one into the things we can't talk about here pile.

But the only consequence of a man being called a pig is slightly hurt feelings. A woman being called a whore receives a heavy social stigma associated with that word, as well as being more likely to be mocked or attacked further. There's a big, big, big, BIG difference between these two insults, and if you don't understand that difference, you're not going to be able to participate very well in this discussion.

I can't help but feel that your greatly underestimating the power of social stigma and insults on men when it comes to mocking and the like. Pig sure isn't the word i would use to call equal to in comparison here but the word i would use would be filtered. I admit that i lack a fully solid understanding of the female perspective but i think it would be nice if more people could perhaps admit the same lack of understanding in the way it affects men.

I'm just going to throw this out there: when you start blaming things on "mainstream culture" or "feminists" or going on about "male sexual discrimination", I automatically find myself becoming verrrrry suspicious of the motives behind your position.

If you don't mind me asking, why is that?

...

That means you're arguing that there is discrimination against men. When men are treated differently then women because they are men, that's discrimination.

Well lets be honest, there IS discrimination against men.

Well, the Earl of Condom is a non-person, so you may wish to review your own education.

And yes, warrl has it right. Women were considered nothing more than chattel, and their lives were not considered important. You're essentially trying to ascribe a benevolent (and deeply anachronistic) rationale to the treatment of women in a time period where people didn't care about the treatment of women. Modern perspectives of sexual diseases are far removed from historical ones, which tended to view them as the result of sin.

The cultural situation was significantly more complicated than that throughout all of history. Women have always been valued and cared for members of many societies, if you don't believe me just think about why it is that men have always been obligated to hard menial labor in order to provide for family while women have often been spared the most difficult and dangerous work. At very, very, very, very few points in history have the EVER been relegated to the kind of total nonhuman property that you describe. Well i can't start quoting relevant laws and the like due to board rules I do think its an interesting subject to research i would recommend it to anyone.

The what now? I've been logged in here for six months or so.

Happens to occasionally as well, i think it has something to do with cookies timing out or some other tech stuff i don't quite understand.

[GrayGriffin]

I can't help but feel that your greatly underestimating the power of social stigma and insults on men when it comes to mocking and the like. Pig sure isn't the word i would use to call equal to in comparison here but the word i would use would be filtered. I admit that i lack a fully solid understanding of the female perspective but i think it would be nice if more people could perhaps admit the same lack of understanding in the way it affects men.

It's kind of funny how you ignored the male member who pointed out the problematic nature of that statement, and much more eloquently than I did. That does not make you look good.

[Dragonus45]

It's kind of funny how you ignored the male member who pointed out the problematic nature of that statement, and much more eloquently than I did. That does not make you look good.

I missed the last bit of the thread and was responding to things as i saw the, as to what post are referring. :EDIT: I see the one you mean now, I'm not even touching the subject of privileged as a direct named subject on here, its far to political and contoversial so i skipped it. When you say "That does not make me look good" what exactly are you implying.

[GrayGriffin]

I missed the last bit of the thread and was responding to things as i saw the, as to what post are referring. :EDIT: I see the one you mean now, I'm not even touching the subject of privileged as a direct named subject on here, its far to political and contoversial so i skipped it. When you say "That does not make me look good" what exactly are you implying.

You are basically trying to argue that "women can't understand men's feelings, so I don't have to take what you say seriously." And let's not get into semantics, because it's the essential meaning of what you said. Thus, by your logic, you would give more weight to the argument if a man said it. Your apparent ignoring of a male-perspective argument makes it seem like you're giving a dumb excuse for dismissing my argument.

[Math_Mage]

1. See the above discussion on the nature of humor, the thing that makes the joke funny is the fact that the involved people know and understand that the subject of the joke is in fact a bad thing.

"Heheh, you said butts" is the quintessential example of such a joke. (Sometimes it's even funny.) The joke runs on the idea that butts are a juvenile taboo subject, and doesn't really have much else going for it.

"Heheh, you said feminism" is offensive, and not funny, because the joke runs on the idea that feminism is ridiculous. One could argue that the joke is supposed to play on anti-feminist sentiment--it's ironic, right? Except it's not. It's merely wallowing in that sentiment. In a close group of friends, one could make that joke with the understanding that the person is being ironic--but the person is not the joke.

The OP's joke runs on the assumption that one can make the leap from "female" to tramp, skank, and MILF. It's an example of the latter kind of 'humor about offensive subjects', not the former.

It's not impossible to have funny or acceptable jokes in that form--but the bar is much, much higher, and the scope of contexts where those jokes are appropriate is generally narrower.

The cultural situation was significantly more complicated than that throughout all of history. Women have always been valued and cared for members of many societies, if you don't believe me just think about why it is that men have always been obligated to hard menial labor in order to provide for family while women have often been spared the most difficult and dangerous work. At very, very, very, very few points in history have the EVER been relegated to the kind of total nonhuman property that you describe. Well i can't start quoting relevant laws and the like due to board rules I do think its an interesting subject to research i would recommend it to anyone.

I agree that the historical situation is complicated. However, that does not eliminate the long-running strain of male superiority in Western civilization, only complicates it.

[oppyu]

Spoiler

Show

1. See the above discussion on the nature of humor, the thing that makes the joke funny is the fact that the involved people know and understand that the subject of the joke is in fact a bad thing.

2 I'm not sure if we can discuss that specific link there without violating the board rules, but if a mod does say its fair game i'll have something to chime in on that.

The Rest: That only applies if you subscribe to the view of the world that Patriarchy as presented by several prominent people who will not be named for board rules reasons is a real thing. Now i feel the need to at least give a token disagreement but really all we can do is say yea huh uh uh repeatedly till blue in the face since the forum roles would definitely keep us from having that conversation in any amount of detail, since there is no way to have that debate without talking about politics how about we avoid spending 5 pages going O'rly YA'rly and just move on.

Also I know for a fact that any discussion of affirmative action is absolutely political from the get go, so I'm not touching that one.




See my above point on humor often being based on the assumption that the joke is itself about something that is wrong. Also when you talk about culture transferring through jokes your getting dangerously close the shapir-worf hypothesis, which is unproven and unprovable. As to the rape culture comment there is so much more information relevant to that discussion i can barley get into due to forum rules that i think we should perhaps toss that one into the things we can't talk about here pile.



I can't help but feel that your greatly underestimating the power of social stigma and insults on men when it comes to mocking and the like. Pig sure isn't the word i would use to call equal to in comparison here but the word i would use would be filtered. I admit that i lack a fully solid understanding of the female perspective but i think it would be nice if more people could perhaps admit the same lack of understanding in the way it affects men.




If you don't mind me asking, why is that?



Well lets be honest, there IS discrimination against men.



The cultural situation was significantly more complicated than that throughout all of history. Women have always been valued and cared for members of many societies, if you don't believe me just think about why it is that men have always been obligated to hard menial labor in order to provide for family while women have often been spared the most difficult and dangerous work. At very, very, very, very few points in history have the EVER been relegated to the kind of total nonhuman property that you describe. Well i can't start quoting relevant laws and the like due to board rules I do think its an interesting subject to research i would recommend it to anyone.



Happens to occasionally as well, i think it has something to do with cookies timing out or some other tech stuff i don't quite understand.

1: I disagree that offensive humour for the sake of being offensive is inherently not hurtful or prejudicial, or that everyone who employs offensive jokes is doing so to highlight just how offensive the joke is. This does tie into my belief that the jokes are used to express, support, and keep alive beliefs and therefore shape society, but you seem unwilling to discuss that so I'll leave it there.

2: I do not believe patriarchy is propagated by a few select men in positions of power, but a general cultural attitude passed down through the millennia that still thrives today.

3: You seem to have a rather rosy view of gender throughout history; while women have sometimes been shielded from the rough and tough manly stuff, they were stuffed in the kitchens like submissive trophies who existed to clean, cook, and serve the men who actually did stuff and shielded their weak, delicate, stupid wives who couldn't handle such complex things like education, voting or leaving the home. Not to mention the whole 'here's how we'll show their men we mean business... rape, burn and pillage! In that order.' It says a lot that a key sign of gender equality is the fact that women are able to join those nasty, mucky professions that the benevolent men once forcibly shielded them from.

4: Yes, men suffer from social stigma. I'm not arguing that we should exclusively abolish prejudice against women. Men face worse challenges in some respects, in that society teaches them that to be men, they have to grin and bear it no matter what happens. Real men don't cry, real men don't get hurt feelings, real men don't talk about their feelings, real men don't do much with emotional issues aside from internalising them and looking all tough. Society should be nicer to women, and it should be nicer to men as well.

5: The reason I'm suspicious of people who go on with 'darn political correctness this' and 'darn feminists that', is that they always seem to be arguing that they should be allowed to say awful things no matter what anyone else thinks. Going back to what the Giant said, "Also, as a rule of thumb, if you find yourself defending your inalienable right to make someone else feel like garbage, you're on the wrong side of the argument."

[Werekat]

King of Nowere, Dragonus, I'll just note that humor is at least in part a "what seemed dangerous actually isn't" mechanism. It's a "call off the alert" signal. A tense situation stopped being tense, we can all relax now. It can get filtered down through civilization into a "things aren't what they really seem," and this is why we find paradoxes funny.

But when you're laughing at someone by lumping them in with their social group, you're invoking that primal meaning - essentially saying "you're not dangerous. Whatcha gonna do, come and HIT me?" Replace "hit" with "challenge in any meaningful way" in civilized society. What makes it different is that the humor is not aimed at the environment, but at a person.

It's not a "male" or "female" thing. It's not a "we're laughing at a bad thing." It's a message saying "relax, it's ok." But when you're aiming it at people who DO belong to that same group you're insulting, you're sending a conflicting message. You're outwardly telling them to relax and at the same time you're reminding them to "know their place," which is lower than yours. This is what provokes an offended reaction. If they're feeling secure enough, they'll attack. If not, they'll be hurt. Do you seriously want to provoke a confrontation every time you use those words? Because that is what you're doing, ethologically speaking.

It's not offensive to you because you feel secure. If you want to invest into into other people feeling secure, into actually having a secure environment around you, then you don't use slurs or "humorous" insults, period. If you don't want to invest effort into that - well, you're going get the same attitude back in spades, give or take a few years, either you or your children. And there's always a bigger fish.

[Angel Bob]

Yeah, this is going into my signature.

Well, I hate to seem like a copycat, but I agree, this has gotta be sigged.

[ahdok]

It's very simple. You don't get to judge whether or not you're offending someone else. They do.

Apology is your ladder. Justification, your spade.

[Aard_Rinn]

It's very simple. You don't get to judge whether or not you're offending someone else. They do.

Apology is your ladder. Justification, your spade.

Now, I wouldn't say that's true either. After all, my being asexual offends a whole bunch of people very, very deeply.

I'm sure in the past, people were offended by 'those self-righteous women' or 'those damn uppity n*****s'.

A feeling of offense isn't, and shouldn't be, the determination of one's rightness. And it doesn't give you a right to be heard, or a right to my consideration.

There are offensive things I do that I will apologize for. If I slip and use a homophobic term, and someone goes '**** you, don't say that' I don't try to explain it away by citing my own position on the rainbow road - I was wrong, and I'm sorry.

But there are also things I say that are offensive that I have never and will never apologize for - my race, my nationality, my sexual orientation, my gender, my religion. I have been told to apologize for all of these - that they offended someone - and I will not.

You can say that we're clearly talking about insults, here, but that's not and can't be true. These words cause moral offense because they defend a state of the world in which sexist terminology can be used freely - other things cause offense because they can be used to defend a state of the world in which people can be openly gay, or where blacks are equal to whites, or where someone can have any faith they want.

It's a pithy line, and I see they appeal - "Apology is your ladder. Justification, your spade." Unfortunately, that way lies weakness, and a permissive moral viewpoint where you refuse to defend your own beliefs for fear of insulting someone. Terms intended to insult or hurt others shouldn't be used, perhaps - but reducing it to something so simple is insulting.

[AKA_Bait]

It's very simple. You don't get to judge whether or not you're offending someone else. They do.

Apology is your ladder. Justification, your spade.

It's a pithy line, and I see they appeal - "Apology is your ladder. Justification, your spade." Unfortunately, that way lies weakness, and a permissive moral viewpoint where you refuse to defend your own beliefs for fear of insulting someone. Terms intended to insult or hurt others shouldn't be used, perhaps - but reducing it to something so simple is insulting.

I think perhaps the thing you are getting at is that there are times when offending another person is not equivalent to having done something wrong. Most people are capable of becoming offended when it is suggested, or implied by another's behavior, that a position they hold or an action they took is wrong, immoral, or both. Their state of being offended is not causally related to whether or not their action actually was wrong, immoral, or both.