Should I be worried about being offensive? Why?

[Electronic God-Man]

I suppose this is some sort of moral question.

I just got back from a philosophy class. The topic was language. One of the assigned readings was How Words Hurt by Stephanie Ross, a radical feminist who teaches at the University of Missouri. The article made some ridiculous claims about how we should not use words such as "fuck" or "screw".

To fuck comes from Latin fustis meaning "a staff or cudgel" and/or Celtic buc a meaning "a point, to pierce" according to Ross. I'll wait for Osweo to tell me if she was right or not about that. She writes this about the verb to screw:


A screw is hard and sharp; wood by contrast is soft and yielding; force is applied to make a screw penetrate wood; a screw can be unscrewed and reused but wood -- wherever a screw has been embedded in it -- is destroyed forever. When the verb to screw is used to describe sexual intercourse, it carries with it images of dominance and destruction.

Apparently we shouldn't use these words because they will cause some sort of "harm" to women, "an oppressed group."

I sat there and listened to my fellow classmates debate back and forth about when a word is or is not offensive. We even got into terms like "holy cow" (supposedly a mockery of the Hindu veneration of cows) and "to gip" (from Roma Gypsies). A large contingent of the class felt that these terms were offensive and shouldn't be used if anyone really knows the etymology and how they came into common speech. We even got into things like "this sucks!" and "this blows!"

Anyway, the whole time while they all were talking about not wanting to be offensive and "harm" anybody I couldn't stop thinking that honestly I don't really care about being offensive to someone else. Who the fuck (oops!) cares if some Hindu takes offense when someone says "Holy Cow!" or if a Gypsy gets offended when I say I've just been gipped. I feel like it all revolves around this victim status that apparently applies to everyone but "white males". I was disappointed to see a bunch of these white girls in the class describing themselves as oppressed all of a sudden once we got on the feminist stuff. I think this victim status is...weak. And pathetic.

So that's just been a long roundabout way of getting to my question:
Should I be worried about being offensive and why?

On one hand, I should be worried about offending someone if...well, if I don't want to offend them. On the other hand, I'm a big believer in saying what you mean and what you feel. If my best friend is being an ass I should call him an ass and he should be offended. That was the point.

But our discussion today was waaay beyond that. We're talking more along the lines of saying "offensive" things and even if the people around are not offended then we are still causing some sort of harm. For instance, the "holy cow" example. Only one person in the room knew what it was really referring to, so clearly no one was offended when he first said it...but now that we all knew we were supposed to just consider it offensive from now on. What is more, by using the phrase, regardless of whether or not we realized its origins we were furthering some sort of ongoing slur against Hindus.

I walked away from it all thinking "I don't give a fuck!"...Is that a problem?

[The Lawspeaker]

No. Feminism is pretty much screwing up Western civilization so I don't see why you should give a fuck...:coffee:


Disclaimer: still.. if you want to have any kind of sucess with the ladies. Avoiding using those- and similar- words though.

[Electronic God-Man]

I also found something the professor said quite amusing. She told another student that had he made an anti-semitic joke she, being a Jew, would not be offended...to which she added "because I think that Jews are far superior, but maybe I should be offended because it is hurtful to the Jewish people."

:lightbul:

PdNMo9_bl2o

[Electronic God-Man]

No. Feminism is pretty much screwing up Western civilization so I don't see why you should give a fuck...:coffee:


Disclaimer: still.. if you want to have any kind of sucess with the ladies. Avoiding using those- and similar- words though.

Yeah, but beyond feminism...should I be worried about offending anyone unless it is somehow detrimental to me or a relationship I hope to have or maintain with a person for instance.

[The Lawspeaker]

Yeah, but beyond feminism...should I be worried about offending anyone unless it is somehow detrimental to me or a relationship I hope to have or maintain with a person for instance.
I personally think that (if it does not harm your relationship/friendships/family bonds) you should be open and honest about what you think about certain issues and avoid consensus and political correctness.

And if other people would feel insulted. Then the problem is theirs and not yours as they are just being narrow-minded.

[Beorn]

You should have told that cock deprived fucking Jew bitch whore that her dirty cunt mouth offended you as a man of Anglo-Saxon descent.


Anglo-Saxon

An Anglo-Saxon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxons) charter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter)[4] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuck#cite_note-3)[5] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuck#cite_note-4) granted by Offa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offa), king of Mercia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercia), dated AD 772, granting land at Bexhill, Sussex (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bexhill,_Sussex) to a bishop, includes this text in a mixture of Anglo-Saxon language (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxon_language) and Latin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin):

Þonne syndon þa gauolland þas utlandes into Bexlea in hiis locis qui appellantur hiis nominibus: on Berna hornan .iii. hida, on Wyrtlesham .i., on Ibbanhyrste .i., on Croghyrste .viii., on Hrigce .i., on Gyllingan .ii., on Fuccerham 7 and on Blacanbrocan .i., on Ikelesham .iii.; Then the tax-lands of the outland belonging to Bexley (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bexley) are in these places which are called by these names: at Barnhorne (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnhorne) 3 hides (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hide_%28unit%29), at Wyrtlesham [Worsham farm near Bexhill (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bexhill) ] 1, at Ibbanhyrst 1, at Crowhurst (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowhurst,_East_Sussex) 8, at (Rye (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rye)? The ridge north of Hastings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hastings)?) 1, at Gillingham (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gillingham,_Medway) 2, at Fuccerham and at Blackbrook [may be Black Brooks in Westfield (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westfield,_East_Sussex) village just north of Hastings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hastings) ] 1, at Icklesham (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icklesham) 3.

The placename Fuccerham looks like either "the home (hām) of the fucker or fuckers" or "the enclosed pasture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasture) (hamm) of the fucker or fuckers", who may have been a once-notorious man, or a locally well-known stud (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stud_%28animal%29) male animal, or a group of such, or something unrelated.[citation needed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed)]

[Electronic God-Man]

I personally think that (if it does not harm your relationship/friendships/family bonds) you should be open and honest about what you think about certain issues and avoid consensus and political correctness.

Yeah, I agree.



And if other people would feel insulted. Then the problem is theirs and not yours as they are just being narrow-minded.

Well, here's the thing. Several times throughout the class I felt impelled to just say "Listen, I see no reason to give a damn about offending someone else." but I figure that the response would have been that I am somehow immoral....

Does that make me immoral? How could I defend just not giving a fuck if a Hindu takes offense to me saying "holy cow!" or even straight-up calling him a "dot-head"?

[Electronic God-Man]

You should have told that cock deprived fucking Jew bitch whore that her dirty cunt mouth offended you as a man of Anglo-Saxon descent.

Trust me. These sorts of things only want me to be more incredibly and blatantly offensive. I considered just offending everydamnbody in the room, but I'm sure I would have been kicked out of school.

[Loddfafner]

This strand of feminism depends on an extreme form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity), the belief that language directly shapes thought. Postmodernist discourse analysis adds the dimension that obscure etymological origins of words contributes to their impact.

Counter-arguments might start from attacking these premises. The fact that many people can think in shapes or images, and then fumble for the words to express them, immediately refutes them.

What you see there is an academic cult in which those who buy into it stay int he cult while those that don't steer clear of it, leaving the cultists protected from challenge. One consequence of these pseudoscientific beliefs is that it enables a culture of identifying with what offends them and bonding by lovingly polishing the chips on each other's shoulders until they find some new reason to be offended.

They increasingly rip each other apart over increasingly obscure "forms of oppression". It does not help that they tend to elevate PMS-derived impulses to important matters of principle. If radical feminist philosophers were to be released on a desert island, the consequences would be much more brutal than anything in The Lord of the Flies once their cycles become synchronized.

[Baron Samedi]

I don't think you should worry about what modern society thinks about anything.

Look around you.... Do you actually "care" what they think?

[Loddfafner]

I vaguely recall an essay by a black Lesbian contrasting her vocally homophobic brother who respects her as a person and backs her up as kin to a feminist who hides her discomfort behind perfect politically correct language but treats her not as a person but as a specimen of political correctness, like an insect on a pin.

[Electronic God-Man]

This strand of feminism depends on an extreme form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity), the belief that language directly shapes thought. Postmodernist discourse analysis adds the dimension that obscure etymological origins of words contributes to their impact.

Yes. This is exactly what we were talking about. We even read an essay by Whorf directly before getting into the Ross piece.

[Loddfafner]

Those PC harpies would confine the oppressed to carefully-policed happy-word preserves rather than toughening them up to function in the real world. They contribute to the marginalization of the "oppressed" while repeating slogans about empowerment.

Words ultimately do matter: as tools of communication. The Sapir-Whorfians should be charged with linguistic treason for degrading our language with so many euphemisms we cannot speak up any more.

[Psychonaut]

This strand of feminism depends on an extreme form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity)

Hah! You beat me to it! I studied Sapir and Whorf in college, but never really got behind the idea that artificial changes made to the way you speak could have the same kind of effect on your thought process as do the linguistic foundations of your native language. It also seemed, from their research, that the particular linguistic instances that most strongly influence thought (like the time example using Chinese) were based on structure and grammar rather than vocabulary.

Regarding the original question, I think it depends on your personal ethics. Nietzschean uebermenschen offend whoever the fuck they want. Kantian deontologists are generally unoffensive. Jamesean pragmatists do a cost benefit analysis when they want to be offensive.

[The Khagan]

Feminists are some of the most self righteous, pretentious idiots on the planet.

And for some reason they all unanimously decide to give false etymologies for awesome words. Had a feminist speaker and she give a false etymology of the word "cunt." Said it came from Latin. I had to interject, I'm sure I made everyone in the room feel slightly dirtier.

EDIT: On false etymologies and oppression. I just read loddfather's posts, thank you! I've always knew there was an actual concrete definition for something like this.

[Electronic God-Man]

Regarding the original question, I think it depends on your personal ethics. Nietzschean uebermenschen offend whoever the fuck they want. Kantian deontologists are generally unoffensive. Jamesean pragmatists do a cost benefit analysis when they want to be offensive.

I'm feeling pretty Übermensch.

[Loddfafner]

And for some reason they all unanimously decide to give false etymologies for awesome words.

Then you get Mary Daly (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Daly), who made up lots of words to fill her books (ie Gyn/Ecology) so readers would stop thinking in "patriarchal" terms. She may of persuaded her readers to stop thinking period.

[Electronic God-Man]

Then you get Mary Daly (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Daly), who made up lots of words to fill her books (ie Gyn/Ecology) so readers would stop thinking in "patriarchal" terms. She may of persuaded her readers to stop thinking period.

LOL. What a cunt! We read some of her stuff too. Did she come up with "HerStory"?

She died just recently. She didn't allow men in her classroom and our prof tried to explain that sometimes women don't want to say things in front of men and it helps if they can just be taught separately.

My first thought: I think you're on to something! Let's have a race class with whites only...I bet you'll get a whole different picture then.

[The Khagan]

Then you get Mary Daly (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Daly), who made up lots of words to fill her books (ie Gyn/Ecology) so readers would stop thinking in "patriarchal" terms. She may of persuaded her readers to stop thinking period.

There's a great deal of subjectivity when it comes to "offensiveness."

People who are offended by words are the culprit of making a word offensive in the first place. It's a fluid and dynamic, completely mutable and subject to an individual and current mob mentality.

The "offendees" are essentially trivializing a group just as much as the "offenders."

[Poltergeist]

Some people here are confounding the topic of whether or not someone is allowed to be "offensive" with the topic of whether vulgarity is to be tolerated and how much. Two totally different things.

As for offending, it's hard to tell. If some people pretend to have some "right to be offensive", then they have to admit the possibility that the offended ones can "offend them back", in retaliation. What I experienced more than once is that many self-styled Nietzschean uebermenschen who think they can offend anyone they like, usually cry like little babies when offended back by those towards whom they were "offensive" in the first place.

[Puddle of Mudd]

In a class environment especially, where there is trouble walking away I find it hard to refrain from bringing people up on their bullshit. This had led to many full blown arguments with teachers who won't accept they could be wrong, and me getting fucked for speaking my mind.

[Treffie]

No. Feminism is pretty much screwing up Western civilization so I don't see why you should give a fuck...:coffee:



It's a lot more than feminism, it's also about showing respect for those who are less fortunate than ourselves etc. Would you address someone who is wheelchair bound as a `spaz?` It may sound funny to those who are insensitive to others, but can you imagine how hurtful it could be to someone else?

As for cultural sensitivities, I can't see the reason why they can't accept our language in the same way that we accept theirs - it's not as if we're being deliberately insenstive to them. If they don't like the way that we speak, then it's their problem.

[The Lawspeaker]

It's a lot more than feminism, it's also about showing respect for those who are less fortunate than ourselves etc. Would you address someone who is wheelchair bound as a `spaz?` It may sound funny to those who are insensitive to others, but can you imagine how hurtful it could be to someone else?
No I wouldn't.. because there is such a thing about common courtesy and respect (and it is dishonorable to target the weak that cannot defend themselves) but I wouldn't refrain from making jokes or critical comments around people that could take offense because of their "political or religious ideas".
So if I find Feminism to be a crock of shit (which I do) I will say it just as loudly around left-wingers and feminists (which are usually the same bunch anyways).
And I will say exactly what I feel about Islam.. around Muslims. And I think that openness and even harsh criticism are a sign of respect.



As for cultural sensitivities, I can't see the reason why they can't accept our language in the same way that we accept theirs - it's not as if we're being deliberately insenstive to them. If they don't like the way that we speak, then it's their problem.
Exactly.

[Loddfafner]

When politically correct prigs are called on their shit, one of their lines of defense is that PC really means "Plain Courteous". Yes, there is an element of manners and hospitality. That is why I don't use all the slurs all the time in all settings. But, they miss the bigger picture of them trying to impose what amounts to blatant folly.

[Electronic God-Man]

Some people here are confounding the topic of whether or not someone is allowed to be "offensive" with the topic of whether vulgarity is to be tolerated and how much. Two totally different things.

I'm asking about the whole spectrum from barely offensive to sickeningly vulgar. I assume that everything that is vulgar is also offensive.

If I were to say "Screw you, I dislike your stupid essays." to the feminist writer Mary Daly she probably would have found it both offensive and vulgar. I wouldn't find it that offensive, but even if it was offensive to her I wouldn't care. I think it would be more offensive to her perhaps because she has it in her head that using the verb "to screw" is somehow offensive to all womankind.

On a somewhat related note, I wonder if people like this know of all the stuff kids say when playing shooting games on Playstation or whatever. They'd be freaking out. Every time they shoot someone it's "I just killed that (nigger, cunt, faggot, bitch, etc.)"!

[antonio]

I also found something the professor said quite amusing. She told another student that had he made an anti-semitic joke she, being a Jew, would not be offended...to which she added "because I think that Jews are far superior, but maybe I should be offended because it is hurtful to the Jewish people."


I had always thinking that a Philosophy grade must be based on Platon, Aristoteles, Nietzsche...the same way a Mathematic one is on Abel, Bolzano, Weiestrass, Leibnitz,etc... So, from my old-fashioned point of view, all the sound emissions from this fucking bitch ridiculously pretending to be wise by offending believers, are blatantly out of place if she respect the matter she're teaching about. Maybe we're playing here or at tabern similar roles, but, at least, were doing for free and not under the respectability aurea of an university.

[Anthropos]

No, I don't think that you should worry. But I must say that expressions that are designed to debase traditional/religious/theological concepts are... well, antitraditional. It's quite telling that many such expressions became part of common usage.

The recently deceased Mary Daly was herself not above being offensive; it would seem on the contrary that it was a trademark of hers:


Ex-nun Mary Daly teaches lesbian witchcraft. She has written several books, including the anti-male and anti-Catholic Beyond God the Father and Wickedary, a dictionary of sorts for witches. In Wickedary Daly defines the Beatific Vision as: "the 'face to face' vision of god in patriarchal heaven promised as a reward to good Christians; an afterlife of perpetual Boredom: union/ copulation with the 'Divine Essence'; the final consummate union of the Happy Dead Ones with the Supreme Dead One." (Mary Daly, Wickedary, The Women's Press Ltd., London, 1987, p. 185.)

http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=611&CFID=29283113&CFTOKEN=40961334

[Maleficarum]

Putting feminism, PC and cultural references to one side, I feel you simply need to act appropriately to whatever the setting dictates, within reason. I swear like a trooper but being a professional trainer, I have to reign that in whilst working as it would be unprofessional.

I have what some people I work with could call rather harsh opinions on certain subjects but it's neither necessary nor appropriate to push these down peoples throats at every opportunity; the feminist at your class appears not to believe in that! As has already been said, respecting other peoples opinions is important as is respecting Free Speech, but as soon as anybody starts shutting out all other opinions then they are risking alienating themselves from the people around them.

Unfortunately, the extreme types who incidentally fall into a minority group have a tendency to claim 'victim' status so we being the 'oppressive white race' will be deemed to be wrong.

But broadly speaking, whilst not at work, I don't give a flying fuck through a rolling doughnut who I offend, I'll happily listen patiently to their opinions so if they don't have the courtesy to listen to mine then they can go fuck themselves!

[Liffrea]

I don’t personally worry about causing offence, other people’s views of me and my opinions have never really concerned me as long as I’m happy with me why should I care what you think?

Yet I don’t go out of my way to cause offence either, in fact I’m one of the least opinionated people I know, largely because, as I have already hinted, I’m more interested in my own philosophy and life than I am other peoples. As long as they are not interfering in my life I see no reason to become embroiled in what are, usually, asinine arguments.

On the reverse side I’m rarely offended either, in general I rarely connect with people or find I have much in common with them, so I suppose, for me, there is no basis for relations that would cause offence, I tend to think one can only be reasonably offended if you actually care about the person and their opinion in the first place.

[Bridie]

I suppose this is some sort of moral question.

I just got back from a philosophy class. The topic was language. One of the assigned readings was How Words Hurt by Stephanie Ross, a radical feminist who teaches at the University of Missouri. The article made some ridiculous claims about how we should not use words such as "fuck" or "screw".

To fuck comes from Latin fustis meaning "a staff or cudgel" and/or Celtic buc a meaning "a point, to pierce" according to Ross. I'll wait for Osweo to tell me if she was right or not about that. She writes this about the verb to screw:



Apparently we shouldn't use these words because they will cause some sort of "harm" to women, "an oppressed group."

I sat there and listened to my fellow classmates debate back and forth about when a word is or is not offensive. We even got into terms like "holy cow" (supposedly a mockery of the Hindu veneration of cows) and "to gip" (from Roma Gypsies). A large contingent of the class felt that these terms were offensive and shouldn't be used if anyone really knows the etymology and how they came into common speech. We even got into things like "this sucks!" and "this blows!"

Anyway, the whole time while they all were talking about not wanting to be offensive and "harm" anybody I couldn't stop thinking that honestly I don't really care about being offensive to someone else. Who the fuck (oops!) cares if some Hindu takes offense when someone says "Holy Cow!" or if a Gypsy gets offended when I say I've just been gipped. I feel like it all revolves around this victim status that apparently applies to everyone but "white males". I was disappointed to see a bunch of these white girls in the class describing themselves as oppressed all of a sudden once we got on the feminist stuff. I think this victim status is...weak. And pathetic.

So that's just been a long roundabout way of getting to my question:
Should I be worried about being offensive and why?

On one hand, I should be worried about offending someone if...well, if I don't want to offend them. On the other hand, I'm a big believer in saying what you mean and what you feel. If my best friend is being an ass I should call him an ass and he should be offended. That was the point.

But our discussion today was waaay beyond that. We're talking more along the lines of saying "offensive" things and even if the people around are not offended then we are still causing some sort of harm. For instance, the "holy cow" example. Only one person in the room knew what it was really referring to, so clearly no one was offended when he first said it...but now that we all knew we were supposed to just consider it offensive from now on. What is more, by using the phrase, regardless of whether or not we realized its origins we were furthering some sort of ongoing slur against Hindus.

I walked away from it all thinking "I don't give a fuck!"...Is that a problem?LOL :D

That's hilarious. I recall such tutorials and lectures from my days of studying a couple of "Women's Studies" units at uni. Those units are designed to create man-haters. :p Really.

Anyway, you shouldn't give a fuck about offending self-righteous, pretentious nit pickers who have no comprehension of the genuine nature of masculine/feminine relationships, and probably don't give a toss either, since they're only focusing on them to try to realise their own agenda of self-victimisation as a means to social empowerment.

Personally, I make a point of taking the piss out of people who take themselves too seriously. (Actually, I make a point to take the piss out of just about everyone... but that's just because I like having a good time. :)) Such people need to learn how to laugh at themselves and until they do, I'll enjoy laughing at them all the more. :D

So.... screw Stephanie Ross... it's probably all she's really needing anyway. :thumb001:

[Bridie]

Some people here are confounding the topic of whether or not someone is allowed to be "offensive" with the topic of whether vulgarity is to be tolerated and how much. Two totally different things.

As for offending, it's hard to tell. If some people pretend to have some "right to be offensive", then they have to admit the possibility that the offended ones can "offend them back", in retaliation. What I experienced more than once is that many self-styled Nietzschean uebermenschen who think they can offend anyone they like, usually cry like little babies when offended back by those towards whom they were "offensive" in the first place.On the other hand, I think there is a big difference between not caring about being offensive and not caring about genuinely hurting people. (The latter I do care about, personally.)

What some people (who take themselves too seriously) may find offensive is rarely genuinely hurtful. Take the term "screw" for example. Using it won't seriously hurt anyone. Vulgarities won't hurt anyone either. They just damage the image of the people who use them.

And if we all went about being so worried about offending anyone and everyone all the time, we'd be severely limiting and white-washing our own self-expression to the point of being false at best, a complete vegetable at worst.

Personally, I'd rather someone be offensive to me, but genuine in their self-expression, than someone who avoids being offensive, but is false or misleading.

[Phil75231]

On the other hand, I think there is a big difference between not caring about being offensive and not caring about genuinely hurting people. (The latter I do care about, personally.)

AND


What some people (who take themselves too seriously) may find offensive is rarely genuinely hurtful. Take the term "screw" for example. Using it won't seriously hurt anyone. Vulgarities won't hurt anyone either. They just damage the image of the people who use them.

And if we all went about being so worried about offending anyone and everyone all the time, we'd be severely limiting and white-washing our own self-expression to the point of being false at best, a complete vegetable at worst.

Personally, I'd rather someone be offensive to me, but genuine in their self-expression, than someone who avoids being offensive, but is false or misleading.

Often, the difference is a lot less so than the day-to-day rules interpersonal interactions assume. Example: as you said, vulgarities reflect badly on the person, but they shouldn't sent people into conniption fits. On the other hand - expressing an opinion about abortion, enthanasia, or suicide may abrase another's nerves - but it's not something to get truly offended by. Sure, there are settings and situations where talking about controversial social and political issues IS impolite, but it doesn't have to be in a rude or inconsiderate way.

Choosing words carefully DOES have merit too. The way you express something is just as important as what you say, and arguably even MORE important than what you say. That doesn't mean you have to water down the truth, contrary to conventional wisdom. All that proves is that you have to develop your sense of how to be honest and truthful without causing serious offense. Some people may have to work at it harder than others, but it can be accomplished (I myself have improved greatly in this regard over the past 10 to 15 years, so I can tell you first hand that it is possible to be both more honest and non-offensive at the same time than popular wisdom would have us believe).