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So fucking what? I wasn't speaking to them, they have no right to call me out on it.
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But it was still said in a public space, and so free speech is in full effect. They have every right to reply to you.
Remember that just because something you say isn’t directed at a person, they can still hear it and can still be offended, upset, or just in disagreement of it. It’s their choice to make you aware of that just as much as it’s your choice to vocalize it in the first place.
And it’s fairly easy to come up with scenarios where what you say in public can have repercussions on the people around you. Consider the scenario of a man in a bar loudly talking about how horrible his day at work has been, with plenty of profanity mixed in to help illustrate. He may not be addressing anyone else around him except his friend, but other patrons can hear it and it’s putting them off their evening. In this case the people around him are no longer able to enjoy their evening, but also the bartender is in danger of losing patrons as this guy could irritate people enough that they leave.
There are plenty of other scenarios that you could come up with – someone making rape jokes in the vicinity of a rape survivor, for instance, or someone cracking jokes about immigrants in earshot of an immigrant.
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I agree that just blocking out harassment isn't going to solve the root of the problem, but can you think of anything that would? It's the way people are and it will never stop happening, so ignoring it is always the best cause of action.
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Likely harassment is always going to remain an issue in society, sure. That doesn’t mean that steps shouldn’t be taken to minimize it – to educate people on what constitutes harassment so they know what not to do, to call it out when it happens and try to show someone what they have done wrong, and for people who partake in it to face consequences. Ignoring it doesn’t solve the problem, it just moves the problem elsewhere.
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Now on the forums, I speak my mind and I'm honest. When I call someone a name it's because I find it funny and it's not serious 99% of the time (unless I call them an idiot that's generally because they are being an idiot). If they get offended by that, I just don't care because I've got what I've wanted and I've had my laugh, and being offended serves no purpose.
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But in that situation all you’ve done is antagonize someone for the sake of your own entertainment. Can’t you see how that’s a shitty situation for everyone else besides you?
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If they are offended by actual opinions that I hold then again, I'm not going to coddle them because they can't handle it. It's their prerogative.
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That’s fair enough, your opinions are yours and you have a right to them. But it’s worthwhile to acknowledge that there are ways of articulating and defending your opinions that can be both positive and negative, and it’s generally in your best interest to go the positive route for the reasons I’ve mentioned previously.
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Being offended is the most useless thing a person can do. 8t advances no argument, makes no point and serves only to make them irrational and bring emotional arguments into the mix, which hold no water.
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The state of being offended isn’t a conscious decision people take. There’s no option where someone says something to you and you get to sit back and think “did what they say offend me or not?”
You do have a decision in how you react, on whether you respond to the offence in some way. But that reaction is in part based on your emotional stake as well – if someone has just said something incredibly rude or upsetting to you, it can hit you in a way that prevents you from reacting rationally or from controlling your emotional response. And the more directed and antagonistic the comment is the more likely that will happen.
But if you are able to respond in a level, rational way – does brushing it off and ignoring it mean that the person will continue to act that way, will they say other offensive things to you or to others? If they then think you didn’t have an issue then they might even go on to say something worse. They might go on to repeat it to someone else who doesn’t have the same tolerance as you. Is it not then better to point out to them that you have an issue with something they said, as an opportunity to try and let them understand why what they said is problematic and so avoid future upset?
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I wouldn't say calling a black person a nigger is harassment, I'd say that's just being an arsehole.
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It can also be considered racial discrimination depending on the circumstances, which is something that often isn’t covered by free speech.
