On the Offensive

[6_bleen_7]

I am not easily offended. I don't consider anything sacred. Some of my favorite humor falls into the extremely tasteless category. While outrageous racism and religious bigotry will make my shake my head in sorrow, on account of the infinite stupidity of humanity, such atrocities against human fellowship and common sense don't offend me

Comments

[6_bleen_7]

Before I ever joined LJ-in fact, during my postdoc in Seattle-I used to wind down in the evenings playing games on Pogo.com. That site has a chat room attached to every game. Though I didn't really intend to, I fell in to conversing with a bunch of other regulars on one particular game, and got to know them fairly well. And much as in LJ, many of them would take mortal offense at most offhand, unintentional slight imaginable. I saw best friends broken apart for life over some comment that I considered perfectly ordinary. I'd heard previously that people whose friends lived in their computer were, all in all, hypersensitive-but I'd dismissed it as an unfair stereotype. But between Pogo.com and LJ, I've begun to see a grain of truth in that stereotype (which, of course, is stereotypical of stereotypes).

[6_bleen_7]

If someone replies to your comment, it is no longer editable. There are other, more obscure rules.

[ex_ciannait]

I've always found you to be very fair and even-handed. Scientific brain, and all. I'm someone that some people say "offends easily", but I've never found any of your comments offensive. I can feel free to debate with you, for example, and you never dismiss my own thoughts when you present your own.

So whoever's being an ass, can go find themselves some yes-men.

[6_bleen_7]

Thanks! Perhaps it's my training in science, but my preferred tactic in disagreeing with someone is to marshal as much evidence in my favor as possible. (A problem arises when my opponent refuses to acknowledge the authority of my cited sources, but at that point I lose interest, since it's just futile arguing with someone who lives in a different reality.)

[ratbastrd]

The sole thing out there that I generally find honestly offensive, rather than simply obnoxious or in bad taste, is how large groups of people who should know better seem to feel that they have a constitutional right not to be offended. The lack of a sense of humor, and the inability to take oneself any way other tan seriously, has done far more damage to the civil rights movement (and similar if lesser concerns) in this country then almost any other single factor...

[chillyrodent]

It's a classic technique of privilege to vilify activists as "humorless" and "shrill" in order to silence them. It also serves to distance others from the movement, for fear of being one of those strident (humorless, shrill) _____s.

I don't mean to imply that you're doing that, by any means; I don't know you at all. I surmise that, being a friend of 6_bleen_7, you are witty, intelligent and socially sophisticated.

[6_bleen_7]

You are correct. I have no trouble with activism in the service of important causes. I was 100% behind women's rights groups protesting violence against women, for example; the only problem was that at Oberlin they were almost entirely preaching to the choir. I support vegetarianism, as well, though I can't quite exercise the will to abstain from meat, myself. (My fault for not marrying a vegetarian cook; but I'm not complaining.) On the other hand, the Vienna Sausage Affair, as it came to be known, seemed rather beyond the pale. Taking offense from the mere existence of meat pushes the boundary too far, in my opinion.

In a slightly different vein, lecturing me on how I am doomed to a painful, early death from drinking sugared soda, while puffing away on a cigarette, intertwines self-righteousness and hypocrisy in a way rarely seen outside the Republican Party-yet from precisely the opposite wing. Saw a fair amount of that at Oberlin, as well.

[6_bleen_7]

Yes; this goes double for people who can't abide the existence of a message that offends them even when they have no chance of being exposed to it. The FCC usually serves to enforce their will on the rest of us. As George Carlin once remarked, "Hey, Reverend! Don't you know there are two knobs on the radio? One of them turns the radio off, and the other one-[smacks self in head]-changes the station! Imagine that, Reverend: you can actually change the station!"

[6_bleen_7]

I wonder whether extreme self-consciousness and drive to conformity are universal adolescent traits, or merely a by-product of Western culture. I agree that much unspoken meaning is lost in conveying messages through text. I've been stung by that once or twice, when someone got miffed because they failed to see irony in one of my comments. I've come to annotate irony and sarcasm in LJ comments if I don't know the person to whom I'm responding well.

[margareta87]

You don't offend me.

I went to a college somewhat like that. (Actually, my mom wanted me to go to Oberlin.)

[6_bleen_7]

Thanks! Don't think I am likely to run afoul of your sensibilities, even unintentionally.

Why didn't you? It was the best time of my life, a smattering of hypersensitive activists notwithstanding.

Sorry to be so late in responding; I was rather sick last week, and absolutely needed every non-working moment to hibernate.

[margareta87]

I don't really remember. Probably because my mom wanted me to go there.

[6_bleen_7]

If you have musical talent, that might explain it. Or because Oberlin was the first US college to graduate women. Or maybe because it made the cover story in Life for its pioneering work in co-ed dormitory living. (And it started out as a religious college. While I was there, some of the double sidewalks still existed from a time when men and women students weren't allowed to walk together. Or so I heard.)