Katydee (the OP I meant) and you both seem to be conflating offence, a word that seemds to describe a broad class of possible emotional states and responses to something (two people might as readily say “I’m offended” before respectively starting a loud, angry argument and quietly asking if it’s okay to change the topic), with the subset of offence that deals with what HaydnB was talking about.
The gay kid standing up to peer bullying, or the woman standing up to a husband who’s acting entitled about access to her body for sex for that matter, are not the same thing as the peers’ reaction to someone’s perceived homosexuality, or the husband’s assumption that his wife should put out whenever he wants. There are numerous other factors to take into account; the people bullying the gay kid aren’t harmed by queer folks existing in anything like the way the kid emself is harmed by violent physical assault. The husband feeling frustration over not getting sex on his terms alone is not harmed by this in anything like the way the woman is if he forces himself on her or even just continues to act as though her body is presumptively there for his pleasure.
All of those examples will involve very different emotions, and very different motivations. I daresay even those that take the same “sides” you’ve framed here will be quite different from each other.
When someone says something offensive to you … it seems like you should be offended by that. … to the extent that you can shape your reactions (or character traits), this seems like one you’d want to keep.
His examples were cases where we might want to keep the reaction. But that doesn’t mean he was talking about “objecting to harm” instead of offence, as you suggest. He was just using the most positive examples for his argument.
His examples were cases where we might want to keep the reaction.
And I am trying to elucidate something of his likely sorting algorithm, such that the reasons for favoring one side of those cases might be a little more obvious to you, who seemed to find it suspicious he didn’t take the other side.
The reason for favouring one side of those cases is obvious. If it wasn’t, he wouldn’t have used them. However, the fail to support his point, because “offence” supports both sides of each of his cases.
Would you be fine with the compromise of “we should get offended over genuine harm”? i.e. bullying is offensive, and gay kids are not. Rape is offensive, and the wife having a low sex drive is not.
For different reasons, I think that’s not true. Lots of things hurt me that it doesn’t seem appropriate to get offended over. For example, paying income taxes, getting fired from a job, or being randomly mugged in the street. I might try to prevent these, but the psychological reaction of offence is not the appropriate one.
“Harm that is both genuine and unfair”, then? Income taxes are ‘fair’ (and I would find it baffling to call that ‘harm’ unless they somehow came as a surprise), getting fired is offensive if it’s done solely because your manager doesn’t like you, but fair (and therefor not offensive) if it’s because you failed to do the job. I think getting mugged is a good thing to get outraged about—we want to make that happen less!
I think your claims about income taxes are implausible, but won’t pursue that line of argument, as what I took to be an obvious truth is apparently political.
I might be outraged at being mugged but not offended. I think I would be more likely to be violent than either though.
Sorry, I’m not sure what you mean—do you mean that HaydnB was (wrongly) conflating being offended, which is not very bad, and being harmed, which is?
Katydee (the OP I meant) and you both seem to be conflating offence, a word that seemds to describe a broad class of possible emotional states and responses to something (two people might as readily say “I’m offended” before respectively starting a loud, angry argument and quietly asking if it’s okay to change the topic), with the subset of offence that deals with what HaydnB was talking about.
The gay kid standing up to peer bullying, or the woman standing up to a husband who’s acting entitled about access to her body for sex for that matter, are not the same thing as the peers’ reaction to someone’s perceived homosexuality, or the husband’s assumption that his wife should put out whenever he wants. There are numerous other factors to take into account; the people bullying the gay kid aren’t harmed by queer folks existing in anything like the way the kid emself is harmed by violent physical assault. The husband feeling frustration over not getting sex on his terms alone is not harmed by this in anything like the way the woman is if he forces himself on her or even just continues to act as though her body is presumptively there for his pleasure.
All of those examples will involve very different emotions, and very different motivations. I daresay even those that take the same “sides” you’ve framed here will be quite different from each other.
HaydnB said
His examples were cases where we might want to keep the reaction. But that doesn’t mean he was talking about “objecting to harm” instead of offence, as you suggest. He was just using the most positive examples for his argument.
And I am trying to elucidate something of his likely sorting algorithm, such that the reasons for favoring one side of those cases might be a little more obvious to you, who seemed to find it suspicious he didn’t take the other side.
The reason for favouring one side of those cases is obvious. If it wasn’t, he wouldn’t have used them. However, the fail to support his point, because “offence” supports both sides of each of his cases.
Would you be fine with the compromise of “we should get offended over genuine harm”? i.e. bullying is offensive, and gay kids are not. Rape is offensive, and the wife having a low sex drive is not.
For different reasons, I think that’s not true. Lots of things hurt me that it doesn’t seem appropriate to get offended over. For example, paying income taxes, getting fired from a job, or being randomly mugged in the street. I might try to prevent these, but the psychological reaction of offence is not the appropriate one.
“Harm that is both genuine and unfair”, then? Income taxes are ‘fair’ (and I would find it baffling to call that ‘harm’ unless they somehow came as a surprise), getting fired is offensive if it’s done solely because your manager doesn’t like you, but fair (and therefor not offensive) if it’s because you failed to do the job. I think getting mugged is a good thing to get outraged about—we want to make that happen less!
I think your claims about income taxes are implausible, but won’t pursue that line of argument, as what I took to be an obvious truth is apparently political.
I might be outraged at being mugged but not offended. I think I would be more likely to be violent than either though.