Offensive/Offendable
 

I am posting here about the offensive comments made by all parties because they have recently been brought to the attention of the community. It is undeniable that many of us have wanted to speak about this, but it has been brought up in less than appropriate locations, such as the shoutbox and a community support thread for one of our younger members. Others of us have taken the opinion that this topic is unworthy of discussion, regardless of what side we lean towards. I'm aware that, however, a private message has been sent to some of us, though I was left out of the receiving party. I also have input, though that is perhaps easily doubted due to my characteristically short responses on various threads.

First, I want to address jokes directed to me from Iron Jones. More than once, they have caused a stir, much as other comments he's made have. No one was addressed in these instances other than myself, and I was and am unharmed and unoffended, so these should be disregarded. He was clearly addressing me, and no one else was involved unless they made it their goal to be. I would not bring this up if not for the group PM which made an example of one of these events.

Second, on the subject of potentially offensive comments in general, I believe that it is always better to PM someone for clarification or to contact a mod if there is a potential problem, and I think most people would agree with that. We are all members of a fantastic community here, and I'd dare say some of us know each other fairly well. Some of us are timid, some outspoken, some just opening up to others, and some well established. Some of us may come off as bland (myself among them), and some of us may use rash humor which can easily be mistaken for insults. The latter is completely understandable, and I know I have had my fair share of instances like this, however, we get to know our peers and understand who they are as people, and these uncertainties fade as we come to expect what is typical of them, whether we can relate to them or not. A question I have is, if one has every reason to believe a statement is a joke, why not take it that way, especially if it seems far from serious as a normal statement? Being offended becomes a choice, and why would anyone choose to be offended?

Third, regarding the mess in the shoutbox (which was so lengthy that I managed to misunderstand what was going on at first), even I am guilty of potentially offensive jokes, but I only address these to Iron Jones and occasionally Saph, because I know they will appreciate that sort of silliness. If someone else reads that and misunderstands, I don't believe it should be my fault or anyone else's. I've always had the impression that the shoutbox is for "shouting", a short line about what you're thinking or in response to someone else. This would seem the best place to post a short silly line.

Fourth, Amitiri's community support thread was definitely not the place to discuss this issue, but the most of it probably went on in there, at least recently. Iron Jones gave inflammatory advice to a young person, yes. Perhaps her age wasn't clear at first, or perhaps this was just an obvious case of bad judgement. She is quite new here and probably wouldn't yet know not to take such a remark for exactly what it is. Regardless, flaunting beliefs is never acceptable, even if one thinks their own are superior to those held by others. Therefore, we can't really in good conscience say that we are more enlightened than others here or elsewhere, at least when it comes to lifestyle choices (sustainability not included). We all have our own faults, and we need to learn to accept some of them and work to change the others.

Last, the group PM which many of you may have received, which was my final inspiration for this thread, was not sent to me. It acknowledged Amitiri's quick decision to lean on us as a forum and pursue her artistic hobbies. Then, it claimed that it was good that the issue of offensive comments was in the open. I can fully agree with these statements. It seems much more of us than I thought have strong opinions about these issues, and they need to be discussed somewhere (which is what this thread is about). This PM claims that Iron Jones's offensive comments need to stop, but that brings up an interesting issue of where the line should be drawn, an issue I'm not really sure about myself. Until this point, I have refrained from direct quotes, but I feel one would be appropriate here. One of the few descriptions of offensive commentary is:
This would refer to the few gender jokes he made a few months back, addressed to me, which have been long since taken down. He was making fun of me for complaining about the iTunes user interface and told me to let a man figure it out for me. I acknowledged it with a "haha", and went on with a response to something else. Then, I was away for about a day or so. When I came back, that post I had so easily dismissed had seemingly blown up in the faces of my peers. Suddenly, everyone was standing up for me, and women in general. Feeling things needed to be loosened up, I made a joke of my own, and amid the retaliatory posts, we had a short exchange of cheap gender based jokes during the next couple hours which have now been removed :P Nothing about this was "sick"; we were just being silly, and everyone who was there for it should've known that. Personally, I don't understand why instances such as this inflate so easily, but I made this thread so that maybe I could find out.

Hope I didn't offend or scare anybody with this monster post ;)

I feel bad that I pretty much had no idea that any of this stuff was happening. Oh well.

Well said, people need not to take things so seriously sometimes - jokes do happen, and yes, it's possible to misinterpret them, but when that becomes clear, hat should be the end of it, while generalising against someone for it and in the process annoying people who might otherwise have stood up for both sides is also a bad idea.

This needed to be said.
This is the internet. People on it are just other people. Don't get offended,

The problem is, what you might not find offensive, other people might - and other people have to take that into consideration when making jokes.

I do wonder how people would react if it were racist jokes, or homosexual jokes, or jokes about darker things like the holocaust came up. I'm sure more people would then begin to start feeling uneasy about those kinds of jokes, because they are highly sensitive subjects. What a lot of people seem to fail to recognise is that jokes about sexism can be just as bad to some people as any other jokes like those other subjects.

The question is, should you continue to make such jokes, knowing that they are offensive to other people, regardless of that fact?

You are not alone.

To be honest, I haven't taken much notice as to what happened.
With that said though, we have some members here who always say some things in jest.. There are also people who may at times take their comments the wrong way.
How we approach those members who jest and percieve their comments is entirely up to each of us. Though if we are supposed to respect everyone here and their quirks included then what do we do as a community if something goes wrong?

Just my two cents. I hope I make sense here.

There's nothing ACTUALLY happening. People make jokes and sometimes other people get offended.
Not much of that even goes on here.

Hiya, yes I am the Amitiri spoken about in the community support issue, I am unoffended and I know better then to get fussy over such a little thing, Iron_jones was just acting silly and I am sure he didn't mean it! so please don't worry!

It's not all about me, brother.

Wow, Okay some comments may be offensive, but things have always been like this, or at least they used to be worse.

Examples (I know this is AF, but it applies tbh.)

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7147976/gaydoorfail.png
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7147976/pedowin.png

Now, the only reason we were never 'told off' for perhaps offensive behaviour is the fact that it helped spark discussion and actually made the shoutbox very very active!

Dear sweet jesus that quote is never going to leave me alone, is it? :D

Ha, yeah, that's what I always think, that the past was even less politically correct and nobody gave it much thought, but I wasn't here then so didn't want to make that claim. I'm glad someone did though :D Nice evidence.

Sometimes someone takes something in the wrong context or too seriously. There have always been plenty of jokes, some off-colour and some not, and anyone who doesn't think so needs to read some old threads or stop by IRC :P

And yet you seem to love handing out infractions for the simplest of jokes.


Just an observation.

Not for quite a long time; and because I did not want to have to watch yet ANOTHER flamewar, or otherwise get complained at for closing a thread when it becomes unsaveable. It's hard to understand without having been there.