[rubecube]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

That being said, I'm sort of surprised that you actually had to look super hard for non-white-man people you agreed with given the amazing resources the internet provides.

Trust me I was surprised, too. That's not to say that it was exclusive white but it was nearly as diverse as I would've liked to think. I remember the moment that kind of got me was one day going through my twitter feed and seeing the same tweets & articles being retweeted. Was a big ol' heaping spoonful of humble pie.

Which is where I get to your second point. If someone is aggrieved, they are either aggrieved for good reason, or not. Some people actually are being oversensitive - the notion that there is any significant energy spent on the overuse of the male pronoun in academic writing is like something out of Swift, and stories like this are just Bizarro World: http://dailycaller.com/2015/07/22/uc...en-menstruate/

I kind of have a half-concocted theory that stuff like this is a combination of it being a an easy target for people who feel disaffected and unable to successfully challenge the bigger issues, or just bored, rich kids.

But leaving that aside, no one can tell someone to be offended or not; that's a subjective reaction. What I can do is determine whether I think a particular grievance should give rise to some redress. That has to be determined objectively.

I think it's crazy to think you can ever determine something like that objectively. Any decision on something like that is always going to involve biases.

Part of the problem in a lot of these cases is that some people seem to feel that if they were subjectively offended, they are entitled to an apology. As if the fact that they were offended is the end of the story and that offense in itself convicts whoever they're upset with of wrongdoing worthy of penance. Instead of actually discussing the issue and hopefully getting to a place where the other person can really see where they've gone wrong here, the reaction is instead to become indignant and demand and apology. I think this is in many cases why we get the "non-apology apology" of "I'm sorry if you were offended", because it immediately becomes a witch hunt of accusations of some form of insensitivity. People still offer that simply because it seems polite and an apology doesn't cost them anything, but they also don't want to admit that they were in the wrong simply by virtue of having been accused. There's often a conversation there, and if the explanation as to "here's why your statement caused me offense" is met with "you're being oversensitive", a following "here's why I'm not being oversensitive" seems apt.

I think you also have to consider what I said earlier. It's usually not the first rodeo for the person who's been offended in these situations and they're often just flat-out tired of having to explain why it offends them. This is sort of what I meant when I asked if you've read any of the pieces on the other side of what you're criticizing for why people react in the ways that they do. You're still entitled to believe their overreacting but it leaves provides some insight as to why.