Thank you for saying what I obviously was not not capable of saying.
On 3/15/16, 5:48 PM, "Derek Martin" <inva...@pizzashack.org> wrote: >On Tue, Mar 15, 2016 at 04:07:13PM -0400, Gordon Marx wrote: >> Yes, you are aggressively missing the point. >> >> "apparently my intentions don't count" >> >> Your intentions, in fact, do not count, Your impact is what counts. I >> can't tell what your intentions are, and all the good intentions in >> the world don't stop actions from doing damage. > >Intent DOES matter, and it MUST--it's the only thing that the actor >can control. Intent is a big part of proving many kinds of crimes for >exactly that reason. Your philosophy puts the burden on literally >every human to know what might offend literally every other human, but >that is very obviously unreasonable, particularly since that is mostly >arbitrary, depending on a wide variety of factors that are impossible >to know in the general case, like the person's local / regional social >norms, ethnicity and culture, personality, etc.. The only way to live >up to that is to never say anything. > >I once saw a black man become irate on a street corner because he was >referred to as "African American" -- he was very clear that he was >neither African nor American. I was once myself castigated by a >Chinese-American woman for using the word "Oriental" in a cultural >context, because "That's derogatory," when my girlfriend at the time >was Chinese and used the word proudly. > >You simply can not know what will offend people, and getting uppety >about people's usages of particular phraseology is, I think, a waste >of your energy. Impuning someone publicly for doing it with innocent >intent is, for my money, much more offensive than the act itself. And >it IS a form of oppression. Now, if someone is being intentionally >disrespectful, that's another matter... but frankly I see far less >peer pressure from the PC crowd here or elsewhere in those situations >than in this one, so long as the discourse contains no hot-button >phrases. > >Some of you claim PC is about being respectful. But if that was your >goal, you'd message the OP privately about his comments that bother >you, to show him respect, keeping the noise off the list to respect >the other list members in the process. So I call BS. > >-- >Derek D. Martin http://www.pizzashack.org/ GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02 >-=-=-=-=- >This message is posted from an invalid address. Replying to it will result in >undeliverable mail due to spam prevention. Sorry for the inconvenience. > _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss