Can’t argue with the idea that a list saves the tedious effort of having to explain exactly why you’re offended - convincingly. Sadly, codification of one set of micro-aggressions will likely only bring about further, expanded lists.
There’s a possibility this is being looked at from the wrong end… that it’s an education for the offender. There’s at least as much schooling going on for the offended. That these phrases should be bristled at because they’re offensive.
@hayden I think they type of phrasing like “the same thing happens to me” can also upset some people because it’s not accurate. It seems pretty rare that it’s really the same, so the upset person feels like they aren’t being understood.
IMO it can be a bit more helpful when phrased that it isn’t the same, but a similar experience that gives the listener an bit of an idea of how the upset person feels.
At our hospital, we were taught to call folks Mr. X or Mrs. X or Miss X only. Ever. Never a first name basis let alone a term of endearment. I’m surprised to hear this still goes on in a healthcare setting anywhere these days.
Here’s a good example of why we could all use a bit of sensitivity training:
[Fox News Correspondent Goes To Chinatown, Produces Incredibly Racist Segment](http://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/10/05/fox-news-correspondent-goes-chinatown-produces-incredibly-racist-segment/213552)
I lived in Nashville for a decade.
The first place i walked into, I was greeted with “How y’all doin’, darlin’?”
I was alone and i’m a heterosexual male from Wisconsin… and the only person who had ever called me “darlin’” prior to that moment was my paternal grandma.
Anyway, I looked around to see whom else she was talking to. Realizing that she’d only been speaking to me, I filed that away as “The South: Counting Confusion.”
But I kid you not, half of the women I met down there called me “darlin’”. It didn’t bother me a bit; in fact, I found it to be generally charming and endearing.
I think intent is of great importance: if the person means well, it’s much easier for us to forgive them, if not accept the speech. None of us can really read minds, at least not the minds of people whom we don’t know. There’s just no way to know what will affect an individual until we can observe their body language or, better, they tell us.
We should not stereotype. I think we should apply that rule to this list of potentially harmful phrases: these won’t be offensive to all, or maybe even most, of the people whom these students assume they will offend. Still, we should try to be polite and learn what the individuals with whom we interact think about them. You can’t be a friend to everyone, but you can be a better one to *your friends.
Count the ways in which it would be wrong to say “I feel your pain, man”.
@marvin100 --hard to believe that was real. Wow. (I might use that in class, thanks.)
@mom2twogirls This is so true. Can you imagine if your spouse was recounting his/her rough day and your reply would be this? hahaha
@T26E4 we see the same kind of thing on CC all of the time. Things like:
Q: “What colleges can my uw3.0 gpa student get into with merit”
A: “well, my uw 3.5 gpa student got into…”
Q: “my parents make $40k a year and I can’t afford college. My college is expecting me to pay too much. How can I get more aid? Otherwise I won’t be able to go to college.”
A: “we have the same problem. We make $350k a year and have so many bills that we can’t afford what my kids’ college is expecting either.”
Ha! Yes, if statements on CC were banned so as to create a ‘safe and inclusive environment’, so that all statements about how smart your kid was or how many ECs they had would be banned so as to make those whose kids didn’t have those grades or ECs not feel bad. Same for all statements showing how weathly you were ie. vacation homes, amount saved for retirement, designer handbags and European vacations would all be discouraged as not being sensitive or inclusive.
Seriously though, these sorts of lists just create a minefield in talking to new people, particularly those of a different race or sexual orientation. I think it just discourages dialogue, period and creates wider divisions between groups.
I already feel guilty that I wrote in the recent thread “I also spilled red wine on my laptop’s keyboard”. Obviously I was insensitive to the OP’s misery. I also described how I fixed my laptop. Now my laptop is working while OP’s laptop maybe still not working so I just added salt to his/her/other wounds.
I just went back amd read the whole list. It strikes me that the problem is not so much the rise of the PC police, but rather the death of manners. Most of those sentences (not all, I concede) would be avoided by an adult raised to behave with good manners.
Maybe that’s been true for a while, and we just haven’t noticed: the need for PC has only arisen when we decided that manners and social norms no longer had to be respected. Enforcing some level of PC allows our diverse society to continue to bump along.
I hate that nowadays when I am a customer at a restaurant, the servers address my wife and me as ‘you guys.’ Since when was that type of fake familiarity the norm?
Conversations are not a minefield. Viewing a sensitive topic as a minefield just sets the conversation to go anywhere but up. When you view a topic and someone’s reaction as “touchy” or “volatile”, you’re setting your outcomes to be negative ones.
All in all, you can have conversations any which way you want to, but don’t be surprised when conversations cease to progress.
" the need for PC has only arisen when we decided that manners and social norms no longer had to be respected"
I’m not sure I agree. I do agree that things seem fairly ugly of late with the election and certain political figures seeming to fan the flames, but there is a lot of stuff that used to be said “back in the day” that just wouldn’t fly know because I think we are more enlightened. A lot of prejudices are taught as are good manners. My grandparents were good people but some things they said back when they were alive would come across a very inappropriate now. I’m sure we can all think of things that were said a generation or two back, some of which have been mentioned here already. As bad as things seem, I think these discussions continue to raise sensitivity and move us in a better direction.
“@T26E4 we see the same kind of thing on CC all of the time.”
And you know who we never see it from? The leaders whose job it is to make us all feel welcome here. They seem to know that leaders should meet a higher standard.
Yes, but who defines that higher standard? Should both “black lives matter” and “all lives matter” be banned/discouraged so no one is offended? (Same for “praise the Lord” and “Allahu Akbar”?) Should everything that could possibly offend someone be relegated to the hush list? That list is just a starting point.
{runs in corner quickly to review all my posts to make sure I’ve never done this}
^ As my favorite professional quarterback has been known to say, relax. 
No, you cannot relax because “show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime”