On Fri, Mar 6, 2015 at 4:53 AM, alister
<alister.nospam.w...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
> I have not seen one female poster on this site claim to be offended by
> the comment or even consider it to be a slur.
>
> I doubt that the original poster of the comment intended it to be either
> & most people reading it would have known that (regardless of their
> gender)
>
> one thing i personally find offensive is when someone raises an issue on
> someone else's behalf because they THINK they MIGHT get offended without
> bothering to check.
"Offended" is a rather vacuous term. It describes a distraught
emotional state without any attempt to reason about what actual
problem might exist. Too often somebody simply says "I'm offended by
X" and then a lot of people kowtow to that statement as if it in
itself were a reason to check behavior.
But that doesn't make it unimportant to measure the kinds of messages
that our actions send, and that's not what's going on here. Ben has
clearly laid out how the comment creates an unwelcoming environment to
women and so marginalizes them. That's a problem even if no women are
speaking up about the comment, because a) there may be some who find
the comment troubling but are unwilling to speak up about it
("suffering in silence"), and b) it doesn't even matter if somebody
says that they don't mind being insulted; it still creates a problem
and it's still not socially acceptable to insult them.
> I am not female so this particular instance does not relate to me but an
> example from a few years ago was when a popular UK soap made an extreme
> effort not to show a cross or Christmas tree during a church wedding in
> case it "offended not-Christians".
>
> I am a non-Christian & found that decision offensive.
I agree that example sounds idiotic. Where is the problem with
depicting Christian paraphernalia in a clearly Christian setting?
There is a great difference between showing Christian imagery and
showing a world that is exclusionary of or hostile to non-Christians.
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