Sensitivity

I think I figured out the creepy feeling I get about sensitivity readers.

They do not consider how something is meant, only how it MIGHT be taken.

Increasingly it's not even worry about how the person referred to might take it, but how an uninvolved third party thinks that the person referred to SHOULD take it.

Ten to one they never even bother to check with the people they worry about.

I am, just, old enough to remember the flap about adding American to Indian when referring to Indians.

I know several Indians and they are not offended by being called Indian, and they thought it was silly to worry about adding American to it when there's so many other things that matter to them more, or at all.

Indian might be an exonym, but they've adopted the term to describe them because they know it's not meant to be an insult.

Until SJGames started revising the Basic Set, I'd never heard that Eskimo was even an insult, let alone a slur.  It was simply a word for the people who were native to Alaska prior to Western Civ taking over.

In Canada things are different, and the populations that Americans would call Eskimos without hatred expressed or implied emphatically reject the word and wish to be called by their own names, such as Inuit or Yupik.  Why?  Because in Canada, they use Eskimo as an insult and slur (or so I have been informed). 

Which is a good an example as any that you can make every word an insult or slur if you say it right.

It's how you MEAN the word that matters, not how the word is taken.

Even dueling societies had the knowing of this!

But the people with the vapors are everywhere making sure they're offended FOR the people who don't have the common sense to be offended for themselves.

At least that's how they act and don't seem to catch how bigoted it is.

As if someone can't tell if they'd been insulted on their own or make a decision about the insult being something to be offended over.

There's a lot of folks I don't give enough shit about to ever feel insulted by anything they call me.

Their, "boos," mean nothing because I've seen what makes them cheer.