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handoflixue comments on Don't Get Offended - Less Wrong
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This post and some of the comments seem to me to have got the wrong end of the stick. Sometimes offense is used as a rhetorical trick, in which case notions of 'high status response' and 'manipulation' are appropriate. However it normally occurs when one person - from callousness or ignorance - says or does something that does not accord another person's the respect and dignity they are entitled to.
When someone says something offensive to you - they're racist, homophobic, sexist - it seems like you should be offended by that. To a large extent your reaction will be non-rational, emotional, habitual. But to the extent that you can shape your reactions (or character traits), this seems like one you'd want to keep. In addition to the positive social effects, it seems important at a personal level. The offender is disparaging your identity, your dignity, your self-worth - they're not according you the respect you deserve as a person. How dare they!
By getting offended - and even better telling them off - you're often reaffirming your self-respect. It's an important, powerful moment when a wife stands up to her husband, when a gay kid stands up to bullies, when a black person calls out a bigot. When there's so much contemporary emphasis on challenging everyday misogyny, homophobia and racism whenever it occurs, it seems strange that you would be advocating the exact opposite.
Taboo, "racist, homophobic, sexist". In my experience these words, especially when spoken by the offended, frequently mean "you are making an argument/stating a potential truth that I don't like".
For example: is it racist/sexist to point out the differences in average IQ between the people of different races/genders? Does it become racist/sexist if one attempts to speculate on the cause of these differences?
"Gay people shouldn't marry because it will undermine the very fabric of civilization" "Women shouldn't vote, because they don't understand male concepts like War and Empire" "Everyone knows Irish people get drunk on St. Patrick's day!"
This is the sort of stuff that frequently arises in the world.
I would suggest you probably live in a very filtered environment. It's cool, most people do. I've been trying to re-filter my own environment. But, trust me, these things are all still alive and kicking out there. Following the news, activist blogs, or just having friends who are oppressed in their daily life and talk about it, will quickly draw this sort of racist, homophobic, sexist comments to your attention.
If you really think this qualifies as "stating an unpleasant truth" then... wow.
Is your claim that these statements are obviously false or that they're so offensive that they shouldn't be stated even if they're true?
I ADBOC with the last of them (except the “everyone knows” part -- my mother didn't know what the significance of St. Paddy's was until I told her a few years ago).
The last one should be read as "ALL" Irish people, my bad :)
BTW, this is something I've recently noticed -- the vast majority of statements I'm offended by is of the form “All [people from some group that comprises a sizeable fraction of the human population, and doesn't include the speaker] are [something non-tautological and unflattering].” (I am more offended if the group happens to include me, but not very much.) But remove the universal quantifier and, no matter how large the group is and how unflattering the thing is, the statement will lose almost all of its offensiveness in my eyes.
Internally I am generally the same, but I've come to realize that a rather sizable portion of the population has trouble distinguishing "all X are Y" and "some X are Y", both in speaking and in listening. So if someone says "man, women can be so stupid", I know that might well reflect the internal thought of "all women are idiots". And equally, someone saying "all women are idiots" might just be upset because his girlfriend broke up with him for some trivial reason.
And the belief in question acts more light "some/most X are Y" then "all X are Y", i.e., the belief mostly get's applied to X's the person doesn't know, when it makes sense to use the prior for X's.
Yes, people who say “all X are Y” usually do know at least one person who happens to be an X and whom they don't actually alieve is Y -- but I think that in certain cases what's going on is that they don't actually alieve that person is an X, i.e. they're internally committing a no true Scotsman. Now, I can't remember anyone ever explicitly saying “All X are Y [they notice that I'm looking at them in an offended way] -- well, you're not, but you're not a ‘real’ X so you don't count” (and if they did, I'd be tremendously offended), but I have heard things that sound very much like a self-censored version of that.
Obviously false. I just stated them, so they're not de-facto offensive; they're offensive when you assert such an obvious falsehood as TRUE.
Can I here the evidence that caused you to assign such low probability to them.
I don't think frequently means ‘more than 50% of the time’, so it is possible for both of you to be right.