It's easy to get defensive when someone calls us on our use of offensive speech: "It's all in the ears of the hearer", "Some people just like to be offended and it's nobody else's fault", "There are possible interpretations besides the glaringly obvious hurtful ones", "You're making my point for me", etc. It's often easy to cut through such nonsense by simply putting oneself in the position of the specific hearer, and likely others as well.

Might someone get offended upon learning that someone described her child as a zombie? Weird? Glazed (i.e. lifeless etc.)? Of course they certainly would, and reasonably so-- any argument to the contrary is so ridiculous that it terminates any pretense at reasonable debate. It's pure bull****. (If you insert an offensive term there, it's your issue and not mine.)

If any posters here saw a little of their own attitudes in my previous post, I hope it stings a little. The extent to which it does may be the extent to which they can easily change to become more kind and mindful of others, when discussing topics with such an obvious capacity for hurt feelings-- and with such recent evidence of the sort of backlash their attitudes cause against the parents of gifted children. There may be little hope for those who stick to their guns even after someone lets them know that they have been personally, directly offended to the point of leaving this site.

Striving to increase my rate of flow, and fight forum gloopiness. sick