I think that's absolutely horrible when people intentionally call others names they don't want to be called by. Even worse if it's done in hostility and if it escalates to violence.
I think that people taking strong offence from a racial slur or any other slur made the mistake of making "I'm a universally respectable person" part of their identity. Then any display of disrespect becomes attack on identity. Making race part of your identity would backfire not when people recognize your race even with a racial slur but when your race is doubted ("you are not that black") or misrecognized, like hearing n-word when you had some black ancestors but you think of yourself as white and made it a part of your identity.
'n-word' rose in popularity immensely over last two decades. Earlier either people said it or didn't say it but never people made the mental gymnastic of saying a lot 'that word that we do not say'. It could be made taboo because it's fairly useless and there are fairly good alternatives. People born in the fifties in the US might disagree but this never bothered me much, being born in 99,99% white country that never had any expeirience of exploiting people of other races. Also any reflexive negative feeling you get when hearing specific words is self inflicted harm. You trained yourself to react that way to those words. It's not innate. Getting mad at people is punishing yourself for their stupidity and you should try to do as little of that as you can.
Unfortunately you can't convince people who despise you especially when you don't know who are those people. And they will not stop despising you.
By trying to convince everyone what you might get is a lot of people despising your actions when you try to turn a common word like 'he' or 'she' into a contextual slur.
A lot of people care how their actions affect other people and don't like when they affect other people negatively. Telling them that your plain speech affects you negatively and possibly intentionally, affects them negatively. I think striving to not harming people is important part of a lot of people's identity as is gender for some and telling them they are harming you is attacking their identity.
I guess I just figured out why this is a thing.
There are just two fractions of offended people. One fraction suspects other of intentionally attacking their identity by using improper gender pronouns. The other feels like the first one intentionally attacks their identity of being a good person by insinuating that there's harmful intent in their use of common words. Words they use every day. Words they learned around age 3.
While the despicable people grab popcorn, fuel the fire, and watch from the sidelines as vulerable people and good people hurt each other.
I see no resolution of that conflict. It will just gradually die down by a lot of people removing gender out of their identity and a lot more removing 'being good' from their identity to remove themselves from the conflict. This is all sad.
I guess lesson for me is, be ready to shed parts of your identity when they become source of harm for you.
I think that people taking strong offence from a racial slur or any other slur made the mistake of making "I'm a universally respectable person" part of their identity. Then any display of disrespect becomes attack on identity. Making race part of your identity would backfire not when people recognize your race even with a racial slur but when your race is doubted ("you are not that black") or misrecognized, like hearing n-word when you had some black ancestors but you think of yourself as white and made it a part of your identity.
'n-word' rose in popularity immensely over last two decades. Earlier either people said it or didn't say it but never people made the mental gymnastic of saying a lot 'that word that we do not say'. It could be made taboo because it's fairly useless and there are fairly good alternatives. People born in the fifties in the US might disagree but this never bothered me much, being born in 99,99% white country that never had any expeirience of exploiting people of other races. Also any reflexive negative feeling you get when hearing specific words is self inflicted harm. You trained yourself to react that way to those words. It's not innate. Getting mad at people is punishing yourself for their stupidity and you should try to do as little of that as you can.
Unfortunately you can't convince people who despise you especially when you don't know who are those people. And they will not stop despising you.
By trying to convince everyone what you might get is a lot of people despising your actions when you try to turn a common word like 'he' or 'she' into a contextual slur.
A lot of people care how their actions affect other people and don't like when they affect other people negatively. Telling them that your plain speech affects you negatively and possibly intentionally, affects them negatively. I think striving to not harming people is important part of a lot of people's identity as is gender for some and telling them they are harming you is attacking their identity.
I guess I just figured out why this is a thing.
There are just two fractions of offended people. One fraction suspects other of intentionally attacking their identity by using improper gender pronouns. The other feels like the first one intentionally attacks their identity of being a good person by insinuating that there's harmful intent in their use of common words. Words they use every day. Words they learned around age 3.
While the despicable people grab popcorn, fuel the fire, and watch from the sidelines as vulerable people and good people hurt each other.
I see no resolution of that conflict. It will just gradually die down by a lot of people removing gender out of their identity and a lot more removing 'being good' from their identity to remove themselves from the conflict. This is all sad.
I guess lesson for me is, be ready to shed parts of your identity when they become source of harm for you.