Iucounu, I disagree completely. If the OP doesn't feel censored, you don't get to say that she has been! That's patronising of you at the least. She had the option, after all, of telling whoever PMed her that she disagreed, and leaving it at that. As you say, it's unlikely the moderators would have taken action, and if they had, we'd have had a different position. She chose instead, as was her right, to ask what people thought. She chose, on hearing a variety of points of view, to change her signature; there too, she could have respectfully disagreed and kept it as it was. You disagree with her choice, but that doesn't make her coerced.
I disagree with your assessment. It doesn't require storm troopers knocking down the door to suppress speech; public opinion will often do the trick well enough, and the weight of opprobrium depends on the status of the public opinion holders. My take: she was contacted by someone who holds a lot of sway here, and so became a bit upset upon receiving the PM, though obviously she felt that she was not in the wrong. She got much validation here that she was not in the wrong. Mid-thread, she responded to my comment in a way that indicated that she still didn't feel in the wrong. After the discussion here wound down, she however remained worried-- not because deep down she feels that her signature was offensive, but worried about how it was perceived here by some. In the end, her speech was suppressed by the opinion of a vocal minority. She was the one who clicked "submit" on her profile page, but the causation is clear to me.
I'm not patronizing the OP; I'm continuing to support her, even if she may be feeling a bit leaned on. She has no need to feel like she did anything wrong, and there was no need to change her signature either. I feel bad for her.
You lay great stress on the idea that we have no evidence that anyone was in fact offended. That's true, but neither do we have evidence that nobody was. We don't know.
I didn't lay great stress; I mentioned it several times. The proposition that no one was actually insulted is so obviously and highly likely to be true that I don't see value in debating it. In the short time it was up, nobody noticed the OP's particular signature, recognized all the implications of what it might mean, took the worst possible one (in the reader's special circumstances) as the intended meaning, and recoiled in horror.
The main idea on lack of evidence, though, is that it's foolish to scour the possibilities to determine whether someone might be offended, in the lack of any evidence of actual offense (especially when most people agree that a statement is not offensive), and change our behavior on that basis. We shouldn't insist that people stifle their opinions that way, or anyone can veto anyone else's speech. You say that's not what you want, but that's what you're helping to do in this case.
Incidentally, you hypothesise that it hadn't occurred to anyone that the signature might be a problem until this thread. That's not true: it had occurred to me on multiple occasions, although I hadn't felt so strongly as to say anything about it until I was directly asked.
Fair enough. I'm left wondering if all of the people voicing support for suppression of the signature are in the same boat. In any event, I think that your objection to the signature is unreasonable. Can someone not express a viewpoint that hothousing doesn't work, or that it's wrong for some other reason? Why should another poster conform to your views on this topic? (Another possible objection to the signature is that it's elitist, but you've previously expressed your wish that this forum remain for the elite.)
I strongly want this forum to remain a place where people can say what they think, thoughtfully and politely, even if many others will vehemently disagree. I think discussion about whether what someone says is really what they mean goes along with that, rather than contradicting it. Discussions in which people may change their minds tend to be the interesting ones.
In this case, the OP meant what she said. I don't think she really changed her mind, but rather chose to be polite and bow to the wishes of certain users, apparently worried that she might be offending Davidson in some way. I don't see how she could change her mind on whether the signature was really offensive or not, after receiving such support here.
But hey, I might be in the wrong.
Ametrine, do you think your challenged signature line was insultingly offensive to other discussion-board users? (That's a yes-or-no question. I'm not asking whether it might in someone's opinion offend someone else, etc., or whether it was offensive by virtue of possibly directly offending someone else. Was it
directly offensive to
reasonable people? Did you really change your mind on that?)
