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“I don’t mean to be offensive, but…”
This drives me up the wall because, seriously? If you *actually* believed that what you’re about to say is going to be “offensive” – which is anything from slightly rude or mildly intrusive (such as: “How tall *are* you, anyway?”) to outright hurtful or blatantly hateful (“So… you’re really a *guy*, right?”) – and you *actually* didn’t want to cause your listener discomfort or pain… you probably wouldn’t open your mouth to say it, now would you?
I mean…
Isn’t it just a way of pre-emptively silencing someone?
A way of saying “Satisfying my curiosity and/or putting you ‘in your place’ in some way is more important to me than whether or not you feel comfortable around me – oh, but if you *do* feel uncomfortable because of my intrusive comments/questions (etc), I don’t want to hear about it and will dismiss you as Being Unreasonable (or too sensitive, or whatever) if you call my on my crap”.
Someone said this to me this morning, and it just kind of clicked about exactly what that means. :-P
This drives me up the wall because, seriously? If you *actually* believed that what you’re about to say is going to be “offensive” – which is anything from slightly rude or mildly intrusive (such as: “How tall *are* you, anyway?”) to outright hurtful or blatantly hateful (“So… you’re really a *guy*, right?”) – and you *actually* didn’t want to cause your listener discomfort or pain… you probably wouldn’t open your mouth to say it, now would you?
I mean…
Isn’t it just a way of pre-emptively silencing someone?
A way of saying “Satisfying my curiosity and/or putting you ‘in your place’ in some way is more important to me than whether or not you feel comfortable around me – oh, but if you *do* feel uncomfortable because of my intrusive comments/questions (etc), I don’t want to hear about it and will dismiss you as Being Unreasonable (or too sensitive, or whatever) if you call my on my crap”.
Someone said this to me this morning, and it just kind of clicked about exactly what that means. :-P
