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If I say that an inanimate object is "sexy" and the woman nearby me feels offended by it, certainly I don't want her to feel bad, but I have to be entirely honest and feel entirely blindsided by her state of mind. If I talk about night being dangerous because it is dark and visibility is low and a dark skinned person nearby gets offended, I really have to wonder. I mean as a white guy I guess I have to assume that everybody around me is assuming the worst of me? You don't have to answer that. And I would hope that the person who feels offended would try to meet me in the middle, as it were, by evaluating their overreaction to the situation while I would try to evaluate the language I use, but seriously we are really going down a rabbit hole here.



Your assumption built into your last sentence is sort of one of the big problems in a nutshell:

"I hope [they] would meet me in the middle ... by evaulating their overreaction"

It's your assumption that what they're doing is overreacting, that's the problem.


There is such a thing as being overly sensitive. And yes in my mind they are in fact overreacting because I know what my intent was.




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