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-- 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.
Agree with most of that...
If I am honest with myself, I'd have to admit that my own stance on just telling it like it is stems from an entire lifetime of being misunderstood, put down and treated badly. No one ever thought it was important to censor what they said to me.... yet, I was supposed to censor myself. I had to "dumb" myself down and avoid saying certain things.
Most of us on here still do that, daily. So... we want more acceptance from people like "I hate hearing about your gifted kid" lady, so we need to model good behavior.. .
OK. I like that idea, but I think that, in reality, there will always be people who feel bad or jealous of other people. It is human nature and not going anywhere. Trying our best to not offend someone else won't make them more tolerant of us. And I really, really think this thread has been quite tame.
And I personally think I keep what I say pretty "tame". Other babies look "sleepy" to me. I don't know. I missed the gifted cut-off and I was apparently one of those "blanket babies" who behaved everywhere. Maybe I had a glazed look. But I am SO not offended!
I used to agonize over it a bit more when I was younger (maybe even on this forum?), but now I know what my capabilities are (and aren't) and it is what it is. I accept where I'm at. There are lots of people in the world who look better than me and do things better than I do. I'm just somewhere on a spectrum.
There are many many people who have not reached the level of acceptance I have about some things, but when does considering their feelings (these imaginary offended people apparently reading these words) get ridiculous? I can respect the feelings of my friend that I'm talking to, but it is nice to have the freedom to talk about things like this on an online forum... I can't control who drops in from google. Maybe the anonymity of forums is a problem, though... people are certainly more honest and even cruel online.
I think the differing opinions on this also come from having different personality types. (Ex: MBTI.. F vs T)
