The main idea, 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, when most people agree that a statement is not offensive, and change our behavior on that basis.
I disagree. In my view it's polite to avoid saying things that would be offensive to members of some group, especially if is possible that a member of that group might be overhearing, even if those being directly addressed are not in that group. [ETA the point is, only members of this board were able to comment, and they are the least likely to be offended. We'd only know that someone who dropped in had been offended if they'd been *so* offended as to register here specifically in order to say so; so absence of evidence of offence is not strong evidence of absence of offence.]
Can someone not express a viewpoint that hothousing doesn't work, or that it's wrong for some other reason?
Of course: in fact I would have had no objection to a signature that said "Hothousing doesn't work" or "Hothousing is wrong" (although I'd have thought it pretty pointless). I would rather, however, that people who drop in here don't feel that their children are being compared to elephants or their attempts at supporting their children's learning to putting tapshoes on an elephant. I realise that that isn't what the OP intended to convey, but in a context where the reader of a sig expects it to convey
something and has no information other than the actual words, I actually think that might well be what was conveyed, hence the potential for offence.
