Is slack a private social club and other issues my sorry ass has landed itself in

[Angrboda]

@Jörmungandr My position isn't that we just go with his gut instinct. My position is that I'm white, and therefore, I will not say whether or not the word is offensive even if used in a joking manner in this context. It is entirely up to him, and other black people, how they choose to feel about it. I'll respect those feelings. Again, I don't think for a second you meant it offensively or that you are racist. I just don't think that's true. However, you took a risk and it backfired. It's not really that big a deal.

A while back, a Christian on this forum demanded that I remove the signature that I'm currently using, which if you can't see, is the back shoulders of an unclad woman. He had a reaction to it. He was disturbed by it. And like me and my presence on slack, he wanted it removed. Saying that it's up to a person to feel how they want to feel about it is fine, and it's true, but that doesn't address the issue at all. The question is are they justified in feeling the way they do about it, and does their feeling a certain way about it entail that the thing or act was wrong or inappropriate, or that they have any rights to do anything about it. I get frustrated when people post bad arguments. However people posting bad arguments making me frustrated and angry doesn't mean my hatred, if such develops, is justified, or that I have a right that the person who caused my reaction be removed. You say that my "risk" backfired, which is just noting that there was a reaction to my words, it doesn't say anything about why that reaction occurred or what the significance of that reaction is. Perhaps you meant to imply, people reacted to it negatively, therefore it was wrong and inappropriate, but that doesn't follow, and if that's what you're saying, you're simply asserting that it was wrong and inappropriate and your mere assertion doesn't deserve the time of day. It's possible that people reacted because I was being unreasonable in posting that. It's possible that Steelcurtain and others were unreasonable in reacting the way they did. Or any of a number of other possibilities. So, while I appreciate that you thought you were contributing something to the discussion of that question, you really haven't. You've described the situation, calling it a backfire, and said that people are entitled to their feelings, neither of which I would dispute, but those aren't the questions at issue, and being entitled to your feelings, and being entitled to remove someone from slack or from the forum because of your feelings are two very different things.

I hope to get to some of your other points eventually, but seeing as there hasn't been much activity in this thread lately, I may wait until Monday to look at further replies. And in the meantime, I'm still waiting for Steelcurtain to explain his comment. If he is accusing me of being a racist, then I want to know, and I find that rather offensive and unwarranted. That he's chosen not to address my question and the reasons for his not addressing my question are things I can only speculate on.

It would certainly be understandable right now if I felt that Steelcurtain and Huggy are unreasonable black people who uses the race card as a weapon against white people. Perhaps Thena as well. Would that entitle me to have them removed from the forum, Shell? Being entitled to your feelings in this case doesn't really mean squat.

So I'm still waiting for somebody to justify Steelcurtain's behavior with something more than a political opinion or a rather extreme opinion about language, or simply trusting the guts of the people involved.

And I get that Steelcurtain was offended and I do respect those feelings. I'm sorry he was offended, but that doesn't mean that I should feel sorry for having said what I said. I would like to make peace and move on. But there are some serious issues here pertaining to the interests of this community which need to be addressed, and so far they haven't been. Saying that people get offended and that they're well within their rights to get offended tells us nothing. Recently 7 Christians demanded changes to the forum because they were upset with how they were treated on the forum. The lot of you seem to be saying something along the lines of, "Well, they're Christians and they're offended, and they're Christians so they should know what offends them so we should just give them what they want." Is that the only argument I'm hearing? It seems so. If someone has said something more, I'd appreciate someone drawing my attention to it.