Time To Put The Little Woman In Her Place

Well, it seems some Gal I thought was a friend has decided to take exception to one of my most recent and most manly posts. Far be it from me to offend her delicate sensibilities. Maybe it's just that time of ... well, you get the drift.

Dan Riehl thinks that only those "with no sense of humor and so much bottled up outrage just looking for something to come crashing down upon" find Pepsi's latest iPhone app offensive:

How the heck did the Sixties beget a culture with no sense of humor and so much bottled up outrage just looking for something to come crashing down upon? Talk about your unintended consequences. It's getting to be a crime to laugh at anything, though I suspect there wouldn't be an issue were the genders reversed here. Get over it, already. Geesh

There are several things wrong with Dan's reasoning here. First of all, the stereotyping aspect of the app and the cheesy pickup lines don't bother me one whit. I agree that people are far too quick to take offense these days. People do fall into recognizable categories and there's nothing wrong with poking a little fun at our differences. Where I get off the bus is here:

The app then lets users add women - along with name, date of the conquest and comments - to the user's "brag list," which can be shared online on sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Well, I'm certainly glad she could find her way off the bus, assuming she started at her rightful place in the back of it, yanno! Da wimmens be sooo oppressed!! I wonder, did she have to stop along the way to get directions from a MAN!!!??

LOL Nah, Cassandra is correct. Frankly, I did see that bit but hadn't given it much thought. In hindsight, she is absolutely right. It is demeaning and inappropriate to encourage that particular type of thing as it does. It feeds upon and into the absolute worst in, especially, the young of both sexes.

She's got me dead to rights on that one, I confess. Damn it! I hate when a broad does that to me, let alone on such a manly post!!! ; )

Comments

[Whippet]

Wow Dan! That would make you a conservative man who actually respects the opinions of women! To listen to the MSM none of you actually exist in the conservative party. You know, not like all those enlightened male liberals and femanistas who speak about women with respect but behind the scenes only use them for the political purposes they may serve.

[Fe]

But what about the children? Mz Michelle can only bring so much Tuscan kale to food stamps but she can't make them viable for venting machines on only $373 million in stimulus funds. Oprah will not be pleased with back peddling on vibrating devices for every 10 year old girl. Such heartache for those taxpayer dollars spent on this NEA approved app to further the HHS agenda of preventive medicine to bring down health care costs. ObamaCare wont spin itself people! Must we add rain to the treehuggers tears of joy in reduced paper for easily accessible electronic medical information for the CDC? Have you no regard for global, cervical cancer vaccine, Gardasil dollars regardless of wheelchair bound side affects? Can you not see the vision of tracking herpes, chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, and others in this 'green' progressive way embracing new media? If this app doesn't meet N.O.W.'s definition of Recovery Act Community Prevention and Wellness Initiative grants called Communities Putting Prevention to Work, what does?

[David R. Graham]

Cassandra is headed down the slippery slope of tyranny on this one. Once "offended" becomes "unacceptable," every action is potentially a crime, as you imply early in this post. Stick to that, it is the solid rock for standing on in this swirl of emotion and folkways.

Criminalization of ever wide and wider circles of activity is a salient feature of the modern world, remarked forebodingly by not a few. Once one thing is "unacceptably"offensive, there is no intrinsic standard for not making anything "unacceptably" offensive.

The presence of continuous offend-ability and offense taken is a constant and unavoidable condition of life, acceptable or not. Which one of us is not diminished in a constant stream of offensive situations as we go through our daily life? Everything from a speck of dust on the floor to a racist thug calling us racist for thinking him a thug.

Giving offense, intentionally or not, should not be acceptable or unacceptable, much less legal or illegal, it should be unthinkable -- like abortion and homosexuality. But one is going to offend someone nonetheless and regardless of one's intentions. This is a condition of existence. Also, one is going to be offended virtually every moment of every day from birth -- a terribly offensive experience -- to death -- of which both the prospect and the actuality is unacceptably offensive for most and acceptable even desirable for a handful.

What is Cassandra's standard for deciding when to get off the bus? What is the line between acceptable and unacceptable offense? Is it more than her own? Is the offense she feels external or internal to her creative spirit? A depth analysis of that question (Kant) reveals that there is no line between acceptable and unacceptable offense because the source of offense cannot be reliably identified as external or internal to the offender or the offend-ee. Life is unavoidably dialectical. The decision one way or another is personal and contextual, which is not to say the decision is right or wrong, just that it does not bear the weight of supporting a universal principle, an unimpeachable standard.

Cassandra is demanding a condition she cannot sustain and implying a counsel she can neither muster nor maintain: the counsel of perfection. Nor does throwing a tirade in lieu of facing facts carry her purpose. Her purpose in this and, IMO, other matters is both utopian and ungracious by way of attracting attention through edginess, a/k/a/ ego.

When one is offended, three fundamental responses are available. Join it, ignore it or make the perp an offer they cannot refuse and be prepared to deal with the consequences, for there will be consequences.

I am offended that Cassandra would complain about being offended by Pepsi's discriminatory iPhone app or your response to it. I am also offended by anyone who stuffs the flesh of an animal in their mouth. I have to live with both conditions of being offended. I have long avoided Cassandra's blog because I find it bumptious and I accept some minimal tolerable (to me) company of people who stuff the flesh of animals in their mouths because I find them otherwise lovable or necessary to deal with. One copes. Emphasis on *one.* And overall one keeps one's offended-ness to oneself. For why burden the world with one's burdens? That is ego.

The one thing I condemn in this matter is using "I am offended" to imply to someone that they need to change their behavior or even their nature. That is egotistical and unrefined, which is the nature of egotistical. Moreover, it is spiritually destructive! But I condemn it and that's that, unless I decide to eliminate a particular offending condition -- recognizing withal that countless unavoidable others await. I don't say I am offended by whatever it is and implicitly demand that the perp (who could be me) change their ways in consequence so as not to offend me. If I want to stop being offended by a particular source, I remove myself from its presence or remove it from mine -- recognizing again that countless, unavoidable other offending conditions are always present and accepting that the source is still in the world remotely offending me because the world is a whole, fully inter-conditioned.

The value of a rose thorn is to remove a rose thorn stuck in one's flesh. Once that one is removed, both thorns are cast away.

I do not demand, implicitly or explicitly, to be not offended. Down that slippery slope is tyranny of the worst sort -- random and selective violence (i.e., offensiveness) driven by brutish impulse, what the White House's occupiers encourage in their dealings and among their supports.

Cassandra's sensibilities neither merit nor require accommodation in this matter. "Offensive" is a category of leftist/progressive/communist political polemic. What's it doing in Cassandra's repertoire, her quiver of sharp retorts? She should speak with Pepsi and Apple. Both have avenues of approach for that purpose. And don't dl the app! I certainly do not intend to. "Conquests," yet!

[Robin]

Here's the thing. That app can't hurt you if you don't engage in casual sex with men you barely know. And if you do, it isn't the app that's your problem.

[Peter]

I dunno. It wasn't very long ago that one insulted or offended someone at the peril of their lives. I grew up around old folks who remembered Billy the Kid and who had parents who lived during the "Pistols at dawn, sir". I would have, when my daughter was a teen, knocked some guy into next week for saying some of the things that are now common.

We've come a long way, we have modern medicine and inventions that would have amazed my grandfather, who died young from injuries in WW1. We sure have slipped a lot, though, in our manners. My word, if there were folks, white or black, "singing" the lyrics in rap in my grandfather's day, they'd be horsewhipped. In my great grandfathers day, hanged or shot, or, if very luck, beaten, tarred, feathered and run out of town on a rail.

[Yu-Ain Gonnano]

Once "offended" becomes "unacceptable," every action is potentially a crime,

Two points:
1) The right to do a thing is not at all the same as being right in doing it. Just as you have the right to persuade people TO use the app, she also has the right to persuade people NOT to use the app.

2) Just because one thinks something offensive/tasteless/unacceptable does not imply that one desires to make it illegal. That is unless "I am offended that Cassandra would complain" means that you desire to make her opinion illegal. Of course, once you make her having an opinion illegal, what's to stop others from making it illegal for you to express yours? So I guess, by your own argument, you just need to shut up too, huh?

Seems to me that the better option is that she gets to have and express her opinion (even if, horror upon horror, it's that she's offended) and you can choose to be persuaded, or not. And you get to have and express your opinion (even if, horror upon horror, it's that you're offended) and she can choose to be persuaded, or not. All without anyone getting the law involved.

[Dan Riehl]

What I think we've lost in our Republic is that, while the Founders didn't intend for the people to have their morals dictated by the government, they, nevertheless, did see the value in a civil society.

People can talk modernity all they want, civilty is a different thing. And it's hard to argue we haven't become something of an uncivil society.

Those are the bons, beyond family, that often help such things together. Once they completely unravel, you've not much more than a pack of animals running wild within a common border.

[Yu-Ain Gonnano]

Careful Dan, David's going to accuse you of helping to make it illegal to be "uncivil" if you keep talking like that. :-)