For this and for ‘woke’, I can’t help blaming the people who go too far in their enthusiasm to denounce pretty much everything as offensive
The problem with that is that it's a
very moveable line. There are plenty of people who think complaining about misgendering a trans person is "being too sensitive".
I mean, you could draw the line as being: when the person being offended has the 'right' to be offended then it's OK for them to say something (ie: it's gay person objecting to a derogatory term for gay people or it's a transgender person objecting to being misgendered) but I've never met
one trans person who thinks misgendering is OK — and I've done it. Unintentionally, but I still did it.* Do I, as a white man, have to sit quiet while racists spout off because only people of colour have the right to be offended by it? I'd argue not.
So, yeah. No easy answers. But, honestly, if it's a line between offending people and not offending people then I don't really have a problem with erring on the side of not offending people. The key distinction here (and I'm sort of fumbling towards a conclusion as I go along, so forgive the rambling post) is between what people
are and what they
do. Some trans people, gay people, people of colour, are shitheads — white men don't have an absolute monopoly on that. And it's fine to tell them they're shitheads if they're being shitheads… but they're not shitheads
because they're gay/trans/POC, they're just shitheads irrespective of that.
I have no idea if any of that makes a lick of sense.
*It's OK for this to be a process. I struggled with the whole transgender thing for a long time, partly because it's something so unaligned with my own experiences that I found it difficult to relate, and partly because the first transgender person I had more than passing contact with was a childhood friend who I'd known as male for thirty-plus years… and it's
really difficult to make that adjustment in your own head, but, eventually, I realised that just because it's difficult, doesn't mean you shouldn't try to do better. My problem, not
theirs.