Unfortunately, an extreme fringe position from a few people with decently wide media reach can be sufficient to establish something as "offensive". Once some people have said it's offensive, people who are more concerned with respectability will probably avoid saying it, which means the people left saying it will, relatively speaking, be less concerned with respectability, and therefore will try less and probably succeed less at being seen as respectable; the word will therefore acquire less respectable connotations due to who uses it, which will provide a stronger motivator for respectability-concerned people to avoid it, and thus the statement "that word is offensive" becomes a self-fulfilling proclamation. I believe a recent, strong example of this was when some people with very wide media reach announced that Pepe the frog was a white nationalist symbol.
>Unfortunately, an extreme fringe position from a few people with decently wide media reach can be sufficient to establish something as "offensive". Once some people have said it's offensive, people who are more concerned with respectability will probably avoid saying it, which means the people left saying it will, relatively speaking, be less concerned with respectability, and therefore will try less and probably succeed less at being seen as respectable; the word will therefore acquire less respectable connotations due to who uses it, which will provide a stronger motivator for respectability-concerned people to avoid it, and thus the statement "that word is offensive" becomes a self-fulfilling proclamation. I believe a recent, strong example of this was when some people with very wide media reach announced that Pepe the frog was a white nationalist symbol.
Well stated. And that's why the busybodies and the bullies who are constantly dictating new rules of acceptable speech for the rest of society to follow must be resisted at every turn. I will not concede one ounce of moral authority to these power-hungry bullies. It's particularly gratifying when one of them attempts to "correct" my speech in person, and I can respond to them right to their smug faces.
