I agree with everything you’ve written, but we are sort of going in a big circle. Earlier I wrote that
using the r-word to insult someone autistic is cruel and unacceptable.
For that reason, I can endorse everything you’re saying. However, I thought our disagreement was over whether there should be a concerted effort to banish a particular pejorative term from our vocabularies (namely the r-word). I had argued no, since it seemed like an overreaction, whereas you were in the affirmative, since groups of people were being offended/hurt by the casual use of that term.
So then the question becomes:
To what extent are we responsible for moderating our private speech in order to appease people we’ve never met?
My intuition is that the answer is never. I think words should be struck from our vocabulary for a very different reason. Namely, when they represent an evil ideology. That is to say, I think that removing words from our vocabulary is a drastic thing to do and should be reserved for truly heinous verbiage (the sort of language that, if repeated, the only possible outcome between us would be violence). Some of these words are worse than the n-word. They are so evil, I can’t even euphemize them in good conscience.
My understanding is that you have looser parameters for unacceptable language, which must meet a certain thresholds of causing offense to be candidates for censorship. Is that right? It’s a reasonable position, I’m just clarifying.
I agree with everything you’ve written, but we are sort of going in a big circle. Earlier I wrote that
For that reason, I can endorse everything you’re saying. However, I thought our disagreement was over whether there should be a concerted effort to banish a particular pejorative term from our vocabularies (namely the r-word). I had argued no, since it seemed like an overreaction, whereas you were in the affirmative, since groups of people were being offended/hurt by the casual use of that term.
So then the question becomes: