Offended (Updated)
March 20, 2008
According to this online dictionary, offended is defined, in part, thusly:
(v. tr.) 1. To cause displeasure, anger, resentment, or wounded feelings in.
I’ve been thinking about the concept of giving / taking offense and/or the state of being offended lately because of a bunch of conversations online which I will not enumerate. Recent features of our US Presidential campaigning, ditto. Some additional scenarios in my real world existence, you betcha. Suffice it to say that I’ve been considering the evidence, such as it is, that has apparently been taken as justification for taking offense in a number of scenarios. I have found it wanting. I have also been considering a scenario or two in which it appears that one of my correspondents feels that I am unjustifiably “taking offense” because I am “too sensitive”. This makes me howl. Because I very rarely find myself in the emotional state that is, to all appearances from others, properly considered the “offended” state. Still, this failure to understand what is apparently a basic feature of human nature makes one step back and consider.
I have come to the conclusion that I have a modest deficit in understanding the concept of “offended”.
Now to be honest, I frequently have a certain evocative image of “offended”, created (I think) by Robin Williams who remarked upon people who look as if they have a very small turd under their nose. So I will admit that I start from a position of finding people who are offended, well, pretty funny. Ridiculous even. And in many cases said “offended” individuals go right ahead and render themselves even more comical by engaging in all sorts of rhetorical excess about the “offending” situation. The emotion seems to render people illogical, willing to spout all sorts of nonsense, to take positions antithetical to their own record or beliefs, to launch absurd ad hominem attacks. I find this curious.
Does this mean that other peoples’ actions do not bother me? Of course not. People engage in all sorts of behavior and express beliefs that I find objectionable. Ofttimes, I go ahead and point this out directly to the source. I am quite willing to argue with people until the cows come home. Nevertheless, I rarely find myself feeling, well, offended. This suggests two things. Either I do not really understand other people who are acting or expressing “being offended” such that they have the same lack of emotional component and I misinterpret their rhetorical excesses. Or, I have a deficit in feeling “offended”.
Here’s where you come in Dear Reader. What does it mean to you to be offended? What sort of situations cause you offense? When does a discussion of ideas pass the threshold from an argument over correctness of viewpoint into Offend-o-land? How do we quantify and compare offending situations?
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Update 3/24/08: As luck would have it, we have an interesting and highly related comment thread developing over at The Intersection after Sheril expressed the classic offense-designed-to-manipulate-others’-behavior based on personal taste:
That kind of language and reaction is simply unacceptable on and off the blogosphere.
In case you are wondering, said offense was taken because after this comment from Nisbet:
So Richard and PZ, when it comes to Expelled, it’s time to let other people be the messengers for science. This is not about censoring your ideas and positions, but rather being smart, strategic, tactical, and ultimately effective in promoting science rather than your own personal ideology, books, or blog.
PZ Myers had the gall to respond with:
Fuck you very much, Matt. You know where you can stick your advice.
Updated 3/25/08: Sheril has now amended her post:
It’s worth pointing out, my problem is not with profanity.
AAUGHHH! This sort of thing is not helpful in my quest to understand “offense”. Because this sort of backpedaling leaves one with the conclusion that Sheril was just completely faking up outrage in an attempt to score points against PZ’s message without addressing the message itself. Lame.
DrugMonkey 
March 20, 2008 at 5:28 am
Well said DM. A rare thought, but one that I have echoed myself.
It is true that we can provoked, angered, even upset by the actions or words of others, but those who claim to be “offended” are almost always implying some “moral” high ground.
Perhaps the word is useful in helping to identify the religious bigot? They tend to use the word “offended” rather than any more personal phrase when the particular “offense” is an argument or ridicule against any superstition that they hold especially dear.
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March 20, 2008 at 7:10 am
Hey, DM! Go fuck yourself!!!!
You feel offended now!?
HAHAHAHAH!
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March 20, 2008 at 8:02 am
Drug Monkey:
What PhysiProf Said!!!!
(Only Kidding. I hate PhysiProf).
((Only Kidding, PhsyioProf, I don’t hate anybody. Except Adolf Hitler and stuff))
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March 20, 2008 at 8:25 am
I’m offended that Greg effectively ended (Godwin’d on the third post!?) the discussion before I could chime in.
Like all good sociopaths, I’ve learned what is likely to cause offense in others but I don’t feel that offense myself.
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March 20, 2008 at 9:23 am
For the discussion of ideas, for me to be offended someone would hypothetically need to not just come at a discussion from a different viewpoint, but completely understand points, but ignore how that information fits into ones own perspective. I can’t think of any examples where that actually happened to me. Perhaps the only time I’ve been very mildly offended is when a blog owner was essentially proven wrong on a topic and wrote a concluding response and said he had to leave for the day and permanently shut down all comments for that post (not a regular occurrence on this blog)
People who try to follow trends and add popular suffixes to their user IDs are also offensive.
People who try into unrelated topics (including trolls) are sometimes offensive, but annoying is probably a better phrase.
Slightly off topic, has anyone here considered the beneficial uses of LSD for psychotherapy in pre-schoolers?
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March 20, 2008 at 10:39 am
I have to admit I’ve never given this any thought, but what suffixes are popular?
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March 20, 2008 at 10:45 am
I
sometimesoften feel the need to point out to someone when they are expressing an opinion based in stereotype. Loudly. But I don’t know if I feel offended by that person. Maybe angered if it was someone who could have some affect on my life, or disappointed if it was someone I felt should know better. Maybe that could count as offended, in that displeasure and anger, and perhaps even resentment are felt, but with the wounded feelins being put aside to allow a different choice on how to act that than those people with “very small turd under their nose”.I can think of a couple of things that have and probably always will, cause me to become irrational and extremely violent (verbally, since I’ve left my school yard fighting days behind). Being called the N word, or hearing someone else (especially someone I care about) called that, just makes my blood boil. And my behavior in response might be considered ridiculous by a dispassionate outsider.
I think it’s a good thing to feel the feelings, but choose to respond in a more effective way. I hope to develop that skill even further. But I would not say that a person who does this has a “deficit”.
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March 20, 2008 at 11:03 am
I think it’s necessary to differentiate between the emotional sense of “offended,” as in “He hurt my feelings,” versus the intellectual/rational sense, as in “Does he really think everyone is that stupid?” or “His rationale defies both logic and justice.”
Anyway, I think that being offended doesn’t necessarily imply an emotional reaction.
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March 20, 2008 at 11:12 am
I dislike people who say ‘I’m sorry if this offends you but…’. They might as well say ‘I’m about to hurt your feelings/make you angry/behave like a moron so I’ll say sorry first and hope you don’t notice the badness’.
I think there is a moral element in taking offense, not necessarily the moral high ground although I concede that some people do use the concept of offense to imply some greater offense to ‘polite’ society, and take the moral high ground. I tend to find things offensive that go against my personal morals, but accept that this makes them offensive to me. I think it is good to point out to people that their views may not be universally popular and suggesting that they are offensive is a socially acceptable way of doing this.
Unfairness offends me most of all, in my childlike view of the world unfairness should simply not exist and so I tend to respond to that with the greatest venom.
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March 20, 2008 at 2:03 pm
PhysioProf, “monkey” seems like a popular suffix around these parts
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March 20, 2008 at 3:13 pm
I am offended by the notion that so many people take offense at being offended. These people are just offensive, in their words, their ideas and, well, their smell. But mostly they are offensive in their tendency for taking offense so bloody easily. It is immoral and just plain silly….
I have actually maintained that I really don’t take offense to much. There are several ways to really piss me off, calling me a liar, is towards the top of the list. But actual offense, not so much. I tend to agree with propter doc, that offense to me, implies some sort of morality play, though not one that necessitates self-righteousness.
For example, I find the notion of exploiting and enslaving women (or anyone) as sex slaves to be offensive (to give a nod to an earlier discussion). I am offended by the mere existence of people who would do the enslaving or pay for the “services” of the enslaved. This is specifically because of what I see as an inherently immoral and thoroughly vile practice. I.e. it doesn’t just really piss me off, it runs absolutely counter to my own moral frame.
OTOH, calling me names, while it can occasionally piss me off (though it takes quite a bit to get me there), is not something I really see as offensive. But then, I’m something of an asshole at times, so I may be biased.
bscimonkey –
Slightly off topic, has anyone here considered the beneficial uses of LSD for psychotherapy in pre-schoolers?
Oddly enough, yes. On a couple of occasions, I have actually been involved in discussions that ended up hypothesizing on the potential positive and negative effects of giving acid to young children. Of course this was on a par with discussions about most effectively make extremely high temp incendiary devices, or how best to take over our local municipality and succeed from the union (an oddly popular one at the time, thank gods we were all to stoned to actually follow through – we had some kick-ass plans that would have worked, dammit).
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March 20, 2008 at 4:54 pm
As re #2: I don’t think “Go Fuck Yourself” is offensive. Now, “We will be welcomed as liberators” could be another matter.
Also, some PPeople may find a phrase like “Unlike what the Clintons did to Lani Guinier” to be offensive, I think.
As re #5 —“follow trends and add popular suffixes to their user ID”—-What the hell are you babbling about?
Also, —“LSD for psychotherapy in pre-schoolers?”—What the hell? Drugs? Dude, if you can’t keep them in line with regular beatings, you ain’t doin’ it right.
I’m off to get the popcorn…
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March 20, 2008 at 4:54 pm
As re #2: I don’t think “Go Fuck Yourself” is offensive. Now, “We will be welcomed as liberators” could be another matter.
Also, some PPeople may find a phrase like “Unlike what the Clintons did to Lani Guinier” to be offensive, I think.
As re #5 —“follow trends and add popular suffixes to their user ID”—-What the hell are you babbling about?
Also, —“LSD for psychotherapy in pre-schoolers?”—What the hell? Drugs? Dude, if you can’t keep them in line with regular beatings, you ain’t doin’ it right.
I’m off to get the popcorn…
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March 20, 2008 at 4:54 pm
As re #2: I don’t think “Go Fuck Yourself” is offensive. Now, “We will be welcomed as liberators” could be another matter.
Also, some PPeople may find a phrase like “Unlike what the Clintons did to Lani Guinier” to be offensive, I think.
As re #5 —“follow trends and add popular suffixes to their user ID”—-What the hell are you babbling about?
Also, —“LSD for psychotherapy in pre-schoolers?”—What the hell? Drugs? Dude, if you can’t keep them in line with regular beatings, you ain’t doin’ it right.
I’m off to get the popcorn…
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March 20, 2008 at 6:05 pm
AHPMM –
Dude, if you can’t keep them in line with regular beatings, you ain’t doin’ it right.
No, no, no. Your not getting it. Just like psych drugs can be fairly effective as a supplement to therapy, the acid is a supplement to regular, thorough beatings. The key thing is being consistent. A lot of people think that if you just beat them on the days you catch them misbehaving, your fine. But then you miss out on the shit you don’t catch. I for one advocate daily beatings regardless of what you think they did, that way you never miss anything.
Now if you add a decent dose of LSD once in a while, it enhances the terror and really drives the lesson home. Some people prefer PCP for that, but it can be unpredictable. Some of those same parents end up dead. This isn’t to say that PCP can’t be used effectively, it’s just that one should also use restraints.
OTOH, I just asked the six year old his opinion of daily beatings and he reminded me that it isn’t very nice to beat kids. He also reminded me that he is pretty damn good about telling us when he is about to, is or recently has misbehaved. He figured out early that waiting for us to figure it out, is a bad idea. I didn’t bring up drugging him.
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March 20, 2008 at 10:01 pm
i am offended quite often. like when people steal ideas from other people (me) in the lab or go to my boss and outright lie to him about what i am doing in the lab. most of the time the work-related stuff gets to me. non-work stuff usually rolls off my back. quantifying offending situations is probably not useful because the end result is the same (someone is offended). comparing offending situations is where it’s at, because someone on here will have a doozy of a story…
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March 21, 2008 at 12:13 am
“Offense is what people take when they can’t take argument”
Richard Dawkins
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March 21, 2008 at 12:46 am
I think R N B pretty much hits on my biggest problem with people claiming to be “offended”. It is a naked ploy to step outside the logic of the discussion with a wild card. Not a trump card, a wild card. This seems like cheating to me. An attempt to claim inherent superiority of the position based, in essence, on authority or identity. “We just don’t talk that potty talk around these parts”. or, “My religious beliefs are against using the word ‘fuck’ in vain”. or “OMG, you said people are only supporting my candidate because my candidate is female/black/brown/white/old/young/gay/straight…”
As if we can just jump past real discussion and assume the offended party has won. Bullshit. The “moral high ground” reason for faking up a position of “offended” is just plain pathetic. Because let us face it squarely, if you were either “winning the argument” or clearly in the right there would be no need, right?
except we must acknowledge acmegirl’s excellent point. Nigger, spic, wop, mick, hymie, faggot, ‘ho. Shall I go on? Sure, there are some epithets which when used face to face in the intended manner result quite rightfully in a punch in the nose. this is quite clearly “anger”. is it “offended”? I’m with acmegirl in that I am not so sure. It does not seem similar to the sort of “offense” a religious person takes to taking the deity’s name in vain for example.
chezjake= My experience with people describing “taking offense” incorporates an emotional component by connotation. a close relative of disgust. the lack of any evidence of the emotional component in an individual claiming offense tends to imply a hypocrisy in using the term, in my view.
propter doc sez: I tend to find things offensive that go against my personal morals, but accept that this makes them offensive to me. I think it is good to point out to people that their views may not be universally popular and suggesting that they are offensive is a socially acceptable way of doing this.
and herein is where so many problems lie. propter doc has really pinned down a point that needs to be wrestled into submission. I think the problem is that people who seek to hold the higher moral ground tend to extrapolate too generously from their personal opinion or preference to what is “socially acceptable”. Meaning that people are first and foremost going to affiliate with like-minded people to the extent that it is possible. Thereby creating a little reflecting room of what is “acceptable behavior” and what is “something done by those jerks who we don’t like already and therefore don’t count as part of relevant society”.
Second, and more pernicious, are those who wish to manipulate the world into accordance with their own preferences or tastes. As in “I don’t like to hear profanity so nobody should use profanity”.
With that said, propter doc has a key observation. Sometimes things are accepted to be widely understood as taboo. Sometimes well-meaning people really do not understand the impact of their unthinking verbal habits on people they would like to consider part of their in-group. So it can be a convenient shorthand to be able to say “you know, some people find that comment offensive because of X, Y, Z”.
so now I am just muddying the waters. dammit.
I suppose I come down to an exhortation to check your offends. To really think about what you mean when you claim that someone is being offensive. To be sure that you are not just trying to claim that you have won an argument you have clearly lost. Dare I ask to be sure you are not faking up offense for craven political gain? Ask yourself if you are substituting personal preference for something a little more high falutin’.
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March 21, 2008 at 7:02 am
At the beginning of your post, I think you mean “to offend is defined . . . .”
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March 21, 2008 at 8:15 am
I don’t think you muddied the waters in #16, DM.
My views are largely summed up by the Dawkins quote provided by Mark Crislip in #15, and I suspect that may be true for a large section of the Sb readership. But it isn’t always as simple as that, particularly in some of the examples raised by Acmegirl and PropterDoc; so that aspect of it is worth some discussion.
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March 21, 2008 at 4:55 pm
I suppose I come down to an exhortation to check your offends. To really think about what you mean when you claim that someone is being offensive. To be sure that you are not just trying to claim that you have won an argument you have clearly lost. Dare I ask to be sure you are not faking up offense for craven political gain? Ask yourself if you are substituting personal preference for something a little more high falutin’.
I think this is probably the perfect summary.
You’ve offended me, so I win the argument by default, is a rather common tactic for a lot of people. Less common, is the; You’ve offended me, here’s why you’re wrong and here’s how it’s offensive. I win the argument because your a bloody moron. Unfortunately, the former tactic is so common, that the latter is rarely used even when the offended has a valid point.
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March 21, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Do you think we can distinguish between the concept of ‘moral high ground’ and ‘of different moral system’? If I tell someone I find what they said to me offensive, am I claiming moral high ground or am I saying ‘to me this is offensive’ without making a value judgement on the relative merits of our morality systems?
Second, and more pernicious, are those who wish to manipulate the world into accordance with their own preferences or tastes. As in “I don’t like to hear profanity so nobody should use profanity”.
We have one of those in the lab at the moment, tells people off for using profane words and worse still will tell you when he thinks the ‘profanity was acceptable’. Needless to say this person is not well liked because they are constantly forcing their moral structure on everyone else and taking offense.
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March 21, 2008 at 7:48 pm
That would be totally fucking hilarious if someone like that came to work in my lab!! Most of my trainees end up swearing like sailors by the time they’ve been in my lab for a few years.
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March 22, 2008 at 12:40 am
I’m offended when I pick a verbal fight with someone and they refuse to argue with me. Instead they pretend to be offended and go cry into their PCR tubes, or even worse, keep restating their unfounded position despite being unable to offer a reasonable argument in support thereof.
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March 23, 2008 at 7:13 pm
PP – I can send the person to you if you like!
Bayman has a point, those kind of folks are offensive. Nothing beats a good arguement where no one takes offense, and it stays reasonable.
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March 23, 2008 at 8:08 pm
Well, I feel offended sometimes… but then, no one ever said I had a deficiency in feeling *anything*.
I’m not sure I can help illuminate what everybody else thinks being offended is, but here’s what it is for me…
it’s being outraged. With a sense of having my personal value system utterly shaken (and usually discrete from having my personal self insulted).
I think it’s very important to remember that, in many situations, people get much more offended *on the behalf of others*. Thus, I am inclined to think that ‘taking offense’ is, largely, an attempt to re-establish personal and social norms (and often those two get confused by the offended party, as alluded to by other commenters).
Taking offense in an argument can be a way of putting the brakes on it. When you’ll all set for a good debate, it’s annoying as all get out to have someome do this. However, sometimes it can be useful in causing both people to stop and figure out if the fundamental value has really been violated- in some cases, people have totally different ‘first premises’ that allow some to do/say/believe things that are utterly at odds with another, but in other cases the ‘first premises’ are perfectly consistent, but somebody has an association that sort of posions a particular argument.
Trivial example- use of the N-word is offensive to me. However, use of the word *per se* not really offensive- it’s more the associations I have with it. The belief in the inferiority of a group based on skin color, is, to me, fundamentally offensive. Thus, the use of a word is posioned- it leaves a bad taste in my mouth and might make me offended.
A lot of times, I have a gut emotional flare up type response, and then let my rational mind overide getting offended. In the case of the above example, use of the word would usually get overridden unless I thought I was encountering someone who endorsed the belief (in which case, I might get ticke doff).
I sometimes wonder if most other people have this concious check on getting offended.
In a sense, I think being offended requires a certain level of committment to enough moral absoluteism that you think some things *should* have an emotional effect on you (and, that you should work to change them).
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March 24, 2008 at 2:44 pm
propter doc queries:
I do think we can so distinguish, yes. How does this work out in practice though? If you just become offended quietly, resolve to avoid the person, etc, then the issue never arises. all nice and polite.
once one feels motivated to do something external about the “offense” we start moving toward the “moral high ground” and “manipulating the environment based on personal taste” concerns.
In case I didn’t make it clear. I find this to be a very murky situation because there are issues I can think of where I would seek to manipulate the environment. Someone who peppered the air with the abovementioned hotbutton bigoted epithets would draw this response from me.
I dunno if I ever try to take the moral high ground to shut off debate or not but I probably have. only human you know.
The case raised by propter doc in which one tells someone else that offense has been given can be essentially neutral, civil and somewhat casual. If so, it would probably fail to qualify as pontification from on high or whatnot. Interestingly this has a way of going like this…
A: “What you just said offended me.”
B: “Oh? And why is that?”
A: “Because of X, Y and/or Z.”
B: “Ah. Well you shouldn’t be offended because of X, Y or Z. You are wrong to take offense blah, blah, blah”
Pretty soon a nasty argument or flamewar erupts.
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March 24, 2008 at 8:34 pm
I think it’s funny how offended that certain people get when you ask them to be polite.
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March 24, 2008 at 8:44 pm
Asking people to “be polite” is frequently a cynical tool of oppression.
One of the points of this post was originally to try to get people to explain to me what “offense” means to them. Perhaps you could contribute substantively by explaining what “being polite” means to you and how being “impolite” in various ways offends you?
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March 24, 2008 at 9:37 pm
Worse still, if you tell people that you aren’t offended, that’s even worse because they say: Oh, so you don’t actually give a shit (about me/my opinions).
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March 24, 2008 at 10:00 pm
Asking people to “be polite” is frequently a cynical tool of oppression.
Uh huh.
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March 25, 2008 at 12:21 am
A: “What you just said offended me.”
B: “Oh? And why is that?”
A: “Because of X, Y and/or Z.”
B: “Ah. Well you shouldn’t be offended because of X, Y or Z. You are wrong to take offense blah, blah, blah”
On reflection you are correct Drugmonkey, if you do come out and say ‘that offends me’ then you do start a flame war. We just couch it in softer language when it is someone we respect, like ‘I disagree’ or similar. That brings a different concept to the table. Can people we like or hold in high regard ever really offend us, or is offense just reserved for strangers or extreme circumstances? If you like someone and you are a reasonable person, there are few reasons to take offense at anything they say. If you are reading a post on a blog/newspaper article/listening to someone with a viewpoint that is contrary to your sense of morality then you are more likely to be offended.
Damn, I’m thinking about this way to much now…
Impolite is not holding the door when I’m hauling shopping, or not saying thank you to the bus driver who waited because she saw you running for the bus, or swearing inappropriately (I have some limits on F-bombs), not showing respect… Polite is a form of social oppression, as it is a set of rules that control how we think, behave and interact. Strangers who don’t know the rules or people who just don’t care for them may be offensive to some people.
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March 25, 2008 at 2:41 pm
There’s an interesting asymmetry between taking offensive and attempting to give offense. I suspect that there are people who try to give offense far more frequently than they’d admit. They’re trying to administer a verbal slap, to shake someone up, to hurt their feelings. It’s interesting that it doesn’t always work — which may be partly due to miscalculation on the part of the person trying to give offense, but also due to the target being able to opt out of an emotional reaction.
I think it’s easy to be offended if you’re hit with something from a person you considered an ally or a friend that really challenges the common ground you thought you had. If it happens enough, though, I suspect the emotional bit of it is easier to detach because you’re just less likely to fully trust the impressions you’ve formed that someone can be counted on to take your interests seriously.
As far as the “bad” language, I have no good theory to offer for people’s likes and dislikes. One of the best arguments I’ve heard for restraint with the f-bomb is that it loses its power if you use it too frequently. (Also, practically, I keep it out of the sprogs’ earshot because I don’t have time for meetings with the vice principal over inappropriate language.)
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March 25, 2008 at 3:28 pm
I suspect that there are people who try to give offense far more frequently than they’d admit. They’re trying to administer a verbal slap, to shake someone up, to hurt their feelings.
err. so am I trying to give certain people a little slap? well I suppose i am, assuming the relevant parties come to read this post. definitely to shake up their comfortable little worldview. but trying to “give offense”? at least I don’t think that is the point here…
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March 25, 2008 at 3:40 pm
I didn’t mean to imply that you were trying to give offense here, DrugMonkey. Indeed, I think there are lots of ways of trying to get people to question their assumptions and/or of reaching people emotionally that are not attempts to give offense.
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March 26, 2008 at 1:30 am
‘Being offended’ is not an actual emotional state like anger, fear etc. (which are about reacting to physical threats), but a role being played in a social situation. In particular, it only makes sense in a culture based on status and ‘honour’; go back a couple of hundred years and only ‘gentlemen’ had the capacity to be ‘offended’ (which was a pretext to duel). Thus, affecting to be offended is a claim to high social standing; but in these days when duelling happens rather less often in polite society, it’s safe for almost anyone to do it. In jail or the military or a gang or on the subway late at night, taking offense at somebody’s words is still a serious business. On the blogosphere, it’s just silly.
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March 26, 2008 at 8:30 am
Just out of curiosity, what’s “FCD”?
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March 26, 2008 at 10:35 am
WON’T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!?!
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March 26, 2008 at 2:17 pm
May I suggest we’ve basically got the wrong word here? I know certain folks like to use the term “offense” in this context, but I for one would probably say what they are taking is not offense but “umbrage.”
(It isn’t even a highfalutin word any longer, not after Harry Potter and the dreaded Dolores Umbridge.)
My own working definition of “umbrage” has always been something like “taking unadmitted pleasure in being offended,” the pleasure being that it lets one climb onto the old high horse and run down the offender with it. It seems to me more or less perfectly captured in the (undoubtedly offensive) phrase “to have one’s knickers in a twist.”
To mobilize the term “umbrage” leaves us free to use “offense” for those things that just quite naturally piss us off, like the neighbor who doesn’t pick up dog poop off the sidewalk. There is no credible argument that “most people” aren’t bothered by stepping in dog poop, or that some people’s “culture” or “religion” requires them to leave poop sitting where it dropped. It is clear to everyone involved that the neighbor is just being careless at best. It’s offensive behavior. No exuse for it, particularly.
But people who get the knickers twisting over the same example but with “poop” replaced by “shit,” on the grounds that it’s OK to talk about the stuff on the internet but not to call it “shit,” are just enjoying themselves at someone else’s expense, not to mention deflecting attention away from inconsiderate dog owners and onto potty-mouthed victims of inconsiderate dog owners.
Of course, even such a thing as getting angry over the neighbor who doesn’t scoop poop can obviously degenerate into umbrage. I walk a lot in my neighborhood–it’s my primary form of transportation–and so I have plenty of opportunities to step in it if it’s there. However, I don’t go looking for it, either. Nor do I surreptitiously observe the neighbors from behind my curtains, hoping to catch them poop-handed, so that I can then have an excuse to berate them.
I do some days have the impression that some people visit blogs only so that they can be exposed to things that they can work up a full-fledged fit of umbrage over, like that dreadful fucking word PZ used. I don’t know why else the little dears come here, since they show signs of losing their personal comfort and psychological stability whenever they encounter people who talk like bloggers.
(Of course not all bloggers use vivid language. But I for one love blogging in part because it lets me use words I couldn’t get away with writing for the fucking newspapers.)
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June 9, 2008 at 2:19 pm
John Wilkins has apparently been offended, do I need to ask by whom?????
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June 9, 2008 at 2:25 pm
It musta been that fucking asshole DrugMonkey! HAHAHAHAHAH! He’s such an offensive dickhead!
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June 2, 2009 at 1:18 pm
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/05/28/101-being-offended/
HAHAHAHAAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!ELEVEN!!!!!!!!!!
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