People can take anything as a slap in the face.
They can and they do which is why when assigning fault we must be careful to apply the reasonable-man criterion. Whether it is reasonable to feel harm or not, the harm is felt. But fault can only be assigned when feeling harmed is reasonable.
My contention is not that she has not felt harm but rather that the person putting up the sign has not done harm to her.
I would argue that rudeness isn't the only way to cause harm. If you have a group of people who are the subject of painful systemic discrimination, then anyone who is not part of the solution is part of the problem and has a small share of the general blame for how badly society can treat people. I don't know that you have to reach out to the group to avoid blame, but excluding people who are already in pain, IMO, does harm, even if not done rudely.
At this point a large part of the disagreement is a semantic one over the meaning of "causing harm".
This whole thing started with Jewel repeatedly insisting that Mojo was doing no harm. Several people suggested potential harm but he would hear none of it, just kept insisting that there was none. Whether or not this or that is harm or no matter how much fault Mojo may bear for it, or how serious the harm might be, it seems utterly obvious that this is a sensitive situation because there is the potential for harm. The fact that you and I are discussing it demonstrates that at least the potential for harm is there or we wouldn't be sorting through the details weighing different aspects. We could argue forever about the particulars of the harm, but what I think is important is that people of good will at least acknowledge that the potential is there, if not make some effort to mitigate it, if not obviate it, rather than insisting that there is no harm. |
