I think perhaps there’s a bit of a difference between “being offended” and “finding something offensive”. “Being offended”, to me, implies taking something personally as an insult or something of the kind—as you say, an ego-blow.
Being offended is pretty counterproductive, because if the other person meant to offend you, they’ve got exactly what they wanted, and if they didn’t, your offended reaction will probably just upset them and not cause any useful change to their accidentally-offensive behaviour.
Finding something offensive, though, is not necessarily counterproductive at all. If you find something offensive, you don’t take it as a personal insult or ego-blow, but you point out calmly and politely why they other person’s behaviour is alienating or unpleasant or potentially insulting or whatever the actual problem with it is.
Maybe my labels for the two reactions are wrong, but this is how I think of it, anyway. I (would like to?) think I’m very seldom offended. But I point out when I find things offensive quite a bit more often.
Funny enough I just saw this comment in the recent comments section without reading any of the context. I took your comment to imply exactly the sort of distinction Emily explained. I figured that you were replying to to a comment which you managed to decipher despite it being from objectively confusing (equivocating, poor word choice, grammatically wrong etc.)
I tried to think of situations where this apparent rule does not apply.
While this doesn’t include me, I do find it inclusive.
While this doesn’t coerce me, I do find it coercive.
While this doesn’t illustrate me, I do find it illustrative.
While this doesn’t detect me, I do find it detective?
Saying you are offended/confused/amused etc. is a descriptive statement about the effect of a stimulus on you personally. Thinking something is offensive/confusing/amusing can be a descriptive judgment about the likely effect of a stimulus on a broader class of people, or it could be a more normative judgment about whether the stimulus deserves a particular response, independent of whether it in fact typically generates that response in you or anyone else.
The ambiguity in this may be a good reason for people to generally try to taboo “offensive”, and instead make more precise the nature of their claims (or alternatively, to speak in E-Prime).
I understand that. It’s just a piece of data that seemed to support my suspicion that most of the argument is led by people who defend other hypothetical people, who may or may not actually exist. At least before this remark I thought Alicorn was one of the non-hypothetical offended people, but it turns out she isn’t. Too much of searching for the offending statements is going on.
I don’t know about Alicorn, but when I say I find something offensive as opposed to being offended, it’s not that it has no effect on me. Whether you take it as a personal offence or not, being unthinkingly excluded from a group (/being thought of as a non-person by the group, etc) is not something that makes you want to remain or become part of it. It’s a logical next step to suggest that what puts me off, as a long-time reader of OB, seems to have a reasonable chance of entirely putting off other women who stumble across LW, but even if you’d rather not take that step, the fact is that real, non-hypothetical people are put off by this stuff even if they aren’t personally offended.
I agree that tabooing “offensive” might be a good idea.
Edited because I thought of a possibly-useful way of extending what Jack said. I do a bit of work as an editor/proofreader for another site. It quite often happens that I come across a sentence with tangled syntax or something that momentarily puzzles me. I have to go back and read it again or concentrate for a moment in order to understand what the author is saying. When I point this out and perhaps suggest an improvement, I occasionally get the response: “But you obviously figured out exactly what I meant; it must be understandable.” Well, sure. I did figure it out. But you could give me an easier reading experience, avoid a potential stumbling block for others, and make your message a bit clearer by fixing up that sentence a little.
Similarly, I may have got over the moment of feeling excluded or whatever with no harm done. But what’s the point in obscuring your message with little things like that, even if it probably won’t affect all of your audience, when alternatives are just as good?
Similarly, I may have got over the moment of feeling excluded or whatever with no harm done. But what’s the point in obscuring your message with little things like that, even if it probably won’t affect all of your audience, when alternatives are just as good?
You don’t usually get flame wars over bad writing. That needs to be explained, and the cause resolved.
I see your point, but I think it’s fairly easily explicable and works in both ways. No one feels specifically excluded by poor syntax! In the other direction: pointing out that someone has written a sentence with twisted syntax can be perceived as an attack on their writing skills, but pointing out that someone has written a sentence that might be exclusionary to certain people can be perceived as an attack on their character. The impulse to be more defensive over the latter is understandable.
For my own part, I’ve generally found the focus on individual emotional responses (whether of actual members of this community, or hypothetical others) somewhat misguided.
While we should certainly care about individuals’ emotional reactions to what we write, I think there are bigger issues at play here too. There are statements and phrases that I judge problematic because they seem to reflect or promote conscious or unconscious attitudes or assumptions that I think are harmful to society in general. By way of example:
I would find the objectification of women problematic for this reason, regardless of whether reading objectifying statements actually offended anyone (though as it happens, I do have a negative emotional reaction to statements that I think reflect objectifying attitudes).
I find the use of masculine generics problematic because because it primes us to think in particular ways. My understanding of the relevant research* is that it’s a fairly consistent finding that masculine generics (a) do cause people to imagine men rather than women, and (b) that this can have negative effects ranging from impaired recall, comprehension, and self-esteem in women, to reducing female job applications. (Some of these negative effects have also been established for men from feminine generics as well, which favours using they/them/their rather than she/her as replacements.)
* There’s an overview of some of this here (from p.26).
I think perhaps there’s a bit of a difference between “being offended” and “finding something offensive”. “Being offended”, to me, implies taking something personally as an insult or something of the kind—as you say, an ego-blow.
Being offended is pretty counterproductive, because if the other person meant to offend you, they’ve got exactly what they wanted, and if they didn’t, your offended reaction will probably just upset them and not cause any useful change to their accidentally-offensive behaviour.
Finding something offensive, though, is not necessarily counterproductive at all. If you find something offensive, you don’t take it as a personal insult or ego-blow, but you point out calmly and politely why they other person’s behaviour is alienating or unpleasant or potentially insulting or whatever the actual problem with it is.
Maybe my labels for the two reactions are wrong, but this is how I think of it, anyway. I (would like to?) think I’m very seldom offended. But I point out when I find things offensive quite a bit more often.
Thank you; this is much more eloquently put than I could have done. I am typically not offended, but I often find things offensive.
While this doesn’t confuse me, I do find it confusing.
While I don’t find this amusing, it does amuse me. ;-)
Funny enough I just saw this comment in the recent comments section without reading any of the context. I took your comment to imply exactly the sort of distinction Emily explained. I figured that you were replying to to a comment which you managed to decipher despite it being from objectively confusing (equivocating, poor word choice, grammatically wrong etc.)
I tried to think of situations where this apparent rule does not apply.
While this doesn’t include me, I do find it inclusive. While this doesn’t coerce me, I do find it coercive. While this doesn’t illustrate me, I do find it illustrative. While this doesn’t detect me, I do find it detective?
The fact that this sounds so ridiculous is the reason I suggest that my labels for the two reactions might be bad ones. :)
Wat???
Saying you are offended/confused/amused etc. is a descriptive statement about the effect of a stimulus on you personally. Thinking something is offensive/confusing/amusing can be a descriptive judgment about the likely effect of a stimulus on a broader class of people, or it could be a more normative judgment about whether the stimulus deserves a particular response, independent of whether it in fact typically generates that response in you or anyone else.
The ambiguity in this may be a good reason for people to generally try to taboo “offensive”, and instead make more precise the nature of their claims (or alternatively, to speak in E-Prime).
I understand that. It’s just a piece of data that seemed to support my suspicion that most of the argument is led by people who defend other hypothetical people, who may or may not actually exist. At least before this remark I thought Alicorn was one of the non-hypothetical offended people, but it turns out she isn’t. Too much of searching for the offending statements is going on.
I don’t know about Alicorn, but when I say I find something offensive as opposed to being offended, it’s not that it has no effect on me. Whether you take it as a personal offence or not, being unthinkingly excluded from a group (/being thought of as a non-person by the group, etc) is not something that makes you want to remain or become part of it. It’s a logical next step to suggest that what puts me off, as a long-time reader of OB, seems to have a reasonable chance of entirely putting off other women who stumble across LW, but even if you’d rather not take that step, the fact is that real, non-hypothetical people are put off by this stuff even if they aren’t personally offended.
I agree that tabooing “offensive” might be a good idea.
Edited because I thought of a possibly-useful way of extending what Jack said. I do a bit of work as an editor/proofreader for another site. It quite often happens that I come across a sentence with tangled syntax or something that momentarily puzzles me. I have to go back and read it again or concentrate for a moment in order to understand what the author is saying. When I point this out and perhaps suggest an improvement, I occasionally get the response: “But you obviously figured out exactly what I meant; it must be understandable.” Well, sure. I did figure it out. But you could give me an easier reading experience, avoid a potential stumbling block for others, and make your message a bit clearer by fixing up that sentence a little.
Similarly, I may have got over the moment of feeling excluded or whatever with no harm done. But what’s the point in obscuring your message with little things like that, even if it probably won’t affect all of your audience, when alternatives are just as good?
You don’t usually get flame wars over bad writing. That needs to be explained, and the cause resolved.
You clearly haven’t done much editing! :)
I see your point, but I think it’s fairly easily explicable and works in both ways. No one feels specifically excluded by poor syntax! In the other direction: pointing out that someone has written a sentence with twisted syntax can be perceived as an attack on their writing skills, but pointing out that someone has written a sentence that might be exclusionary to certain people can be perceived as an attack on their character. The impulse to be more defensive over the latter is understandable.
Which could lead to interesting arguments if it wasn’t intended as an attack on their character.
I wonder if that’s some of what was going on here?
Exactly.
Fair enough.
For my own part, I’ve generally found the focus on individual emotional responses (whether of actual members of this community, or hypothetical others) somewhat misguided.
While we should certainly care about individuals’ emotional reactions to what we write, I think there are bigger issues at play here too. There are statements and phrases that I judge problematic because they seem to reflect or promote conscious or unconscious attitudes or assumptions that I think are harmful to society in general. By way of example:
I would find the objectification of women problematic for this reason, regardless of whether reading objectifying statements actually offended anyone (though as it happens, I do have a negative emotional reaction to statements that I think reflect objectifying attitudes).
I find the use of masculine generics problematic because because it primes us to think in particular ways. My understanding of the relevant research* is that it’s a fairly consistent finding that masculine generics (a) do cause people to imagine men rather than women, and (b) that this can have negative effects ranging from impaired recall, comprehension, and self-esteem in women, to reducing female job applications. (Some of these negative effects have also been established for men from feminine generics as well, which favours using they/them/their rather than she/her as replacements.)
* There’s an overview of some of this here (from p.26).