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Getting offended: the new national pastime
Posts
You don't participate in many movie threads, do you?
The analogy is bad though as deciding if something is offensive or not is a value judgment and judging the quality of a movie isn't.
The results so far have top-notch.
> PA makes a comic that offends some people, they write to the boys about it
> The boys take exception to this particular round of offence, even though by their own admission they get letters all the time, and abloo about it
> Someone comes in here and starts a thread about how its so stupid that (other) people react emotionally to things*, like emotions are so stupid and blah blah feminists blah, despite missing entirely the fact that he's doing the exact same thing by starting the thread
> ooga booga censorship**
> ooga booga angry women - seriously, would this thread even exist if that wasn't an element? ***
> a lot of people in here react sensibly, but a lot more say some really really epically stupid things about offense, public discourse, and sex crimes
> will is awesome
> will's comments fly right over the heads of their targets
> thread gets progressively more retarded
yes? roughly?
People are allowed to get offended and upset about whatever they want, its a normal human reaction, and if it makes you upset in turn then I suggest you take a teaspoon of cement, harden up, and address the issue honestly. Here's me doing it for you:
The thing about humor is that is it a form of aggression, in large part. People who perceive themselves as targets of aggression often react poorly! Its totally understandable. People who've been traumatised might be a bit more likely to do this than other people, and dismissing their experiences because their being upset makes you feel uncomfortable is a pretty immature thing to do. The correct response is 'no offence meant, sorry if it hurt you', and moving on.
I think the way some blogs post trigger warnings before discussion of sensitive topics is kind of dorky, but shows a genuine desire to take care of one's audience without shying away from any particular topic. It might be a thing more people should do.
_________
* 'things' meaning 'things that affect women more, not like, really important things like the aerial on my iPhone and how much it sucks and Steve Jobs should be set on fire and dropped from a great height'.
** Hey, if the government or some other authority-holding institutional body isn't involved, just fyi, then its not fucking censorship. Its criticism.
*** Apparently its only women and 'feminist blogs' 'angry' about the comic, even though there's no evidence of the gender breakdown of the letters written to the boys and no commentary on any of the feminist blogs I read. I read a lot of 'em, too.
Yes, passive-aggression is the best way to be a person. You're a rad dude.
None of those things are objective though. What constitutes good writing? What constitutes good acting?
No, and your poignant response is also the explanation of why I do not :P
You seem to have misspelled my name here.
You're setting your cousin up to be the 40 year old virgin?
I really didn't.
people are instantly more likely to believe a victim's claim about any other crime - for example, "that guy mugged me" or "that guy punched me in the face" or "she's the one who stabbed me in an alley and left me to die" - than they are to believe a victim's claim about rape. the first response to a rape victim's claim is often doubt.
ITWASJUSTAJOKEJEEZITOTALLYJOKEABOUTEVERYTHING.
No no, I'm talking more about "offense" in this case being impersonal. A joke in an webcomic mentioning rape is not the same as being told in person that your rape was no big deal. The particular definition I'm refering to and which people are thinking about hinges on being personally affected.
When people say they've never been offended they mean that they've never been offended by people they don't know and who don't affect their life. Offense to them implies non-personal things.
Can you cite this claim?
Likewise, I truly doubt people go through life without ever feeling any "non-personal" offenses, and I'm not even sure how much faith I put into that definition anyways. Regardless, I see what you're getting at (I think), I just consider people who "don't get why someone is so offended!" to often be disingenuous or lacking in empathy. Perhaps you've encountered more people who are innocently uninformed.
This verges on legitimizing their silly goosery.
Rape conviction numbers are pretty terrible. Its a complicated issue to discuss because there's so much social and emotional baggage with it. Additionally, rape is extra hard to prove because the Defendant can always respond with "it was consensual." Nobody argues that robbery or face-punching or running a red light "was consensual," but with sex that's a different matter.
I also suspect there's a big issue with many men being afraid of being accused of rape unfairly, prejudicing them against rape claims and towards the "it was consensual she's lying!" defense. Which I totally understand as a guy-fear, even if it is statistically very unlikely to happen.
a) no it doesn't, its just good manners.
b) you're assuming that it is always silly goosery, which, no.
So no women have actually gotten angry, yet the discourse is somehow driven by a hatred of angry women? Is the support for the Cordoba House based on a hatred of 9/11 survivors?
I still fail to see how anybody is "abloo abloo" about the criticism. Tycho's post betrayed incredulity, Gabe's puzzlement, and the comic amusement. This is the same pair that asked Jack Thompson if he's going to sue himself. They love going after idiocy directed their way.
I don't think anybody is dismissing offense because they don't like people being offended. Maybe, just maybe, some of us think that the offense is too stupid to merit anything but mockery and dismissal.
There are plenty of objective criteria. For example, if lighting is poor in a movie and the audience is unable to adequately see what is occurring, then the movie wouldn't meet certain objective criteria on lighting. There are certain measurable criteria for acting - does the actor properly enunciate, does he convincingly portray emotion, etc.
Just because something is qualitative doesn't mean that you can't apply objective criteria to it. But more importantly, like I said, applying objective or subjective criteria on a movie is completely different than making a value judgment on offensiveness.
But like most posts in this thread - this has nothing to do with the issue at hand. Although I'm not really sure what the issue at hand is...
This thread is all over the place.
This isn't the same as what EM is claiming. Also if you don't think law enforcement officers conduct investigations of stabbing, assault, and robbery with some doubt due to false charges made daily in those claims you're fooling yourself.
Given that this thread hinges upon the legitimacy of being offended by rape humor, the actual threat posed by rape and the social stigmas and difficulties that go with it will inevitably be relevant.
There's no way to have a discussion about whether a "rape joke" is offensive without veering into what an actual rape victim could face and why they would interpret certain statements or ideas about rape as offensive.
a) I feel that it does.
b) I'm assuming that it is in this case, and that we are talking about similar cases. In some case were you say something that is actually offensive, that's different.
I didn't say that, so I'm not going to bother responding.
To the first sentence, then you clearly haven't read this thread. To the second, I don't believe that mocking Jack Thompson has either jack or shit to do with this instance. I also think the boys could have dismissed this critique of their comics the same way they dismiss all the other ones, and I don't get why they felt the need to make a fuss about this particular round. No, scratch that, I do, but whatever. I'm actually way more interested in responding to what people in this thread have said than what Mike and Jerry said. For one thing, there's a whole lot more of it.
That's fine, but those of you reacting that way are failing pretty hard at basic empathy. What really ticks me off though, is that some of you are using this incident to claim that people shouldn't ever get offended about anything that doesn't offend you ever, and that people who do suck. Also, comedians lolololol!
That's the bit that pisses me off, the rest is immaterial.
This is why I think a lot of people got annoyed at people finding the joke offensive. It wasn't a rape joke in the slightest. It was actually something that used rape in a way to show it as something horrible that can happen. But oh no you mention rape and people will find it offensive while completely ignoring context.
So the fact that you say that someone should apologize without considering the actual merit of the complaint isn't assuming that the complaint has merit? I find that offensive, so you are now obligated to follow your own advice and apologize.
Actually the entire reason I posted in this thread was to point out the hypocrisy of Qingu saying it was ok to find offense with a rape joke but not a religious one.
Did the links to comedians being funny upset you? Why? That would seem to have little enough to do with the rest of it.
Its pretty amazing that this took 16 pages to appear. I mean really, all M&J had to do was say this. Explain the joke. It should have been a non-issue, but now we've got several thousand words of people debating whether rape victims are allowed to be upset at anything because something something courts and juries. Its so stupid!
But I see you're all really emotionally invested in shouting down hypothetical offended rape victims, so do continue. I'm going to go make some breakfast.
It didn't though. Jeffe and I talked about it early on in the thread.
It didn't.
I must say you're not nearly as awesome as will. It's a shame.
Sorry if you're offended by my statement, but what I actually advocated was not apologizing for the joke itself. I advocated a mature acceptance of other's feelings, which does not discount subsequently explaining why they're wrong. As I just did to you, since you apparently fail at reading comprehension just as hard as these original complainers.