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Okay, here goes.
Alex's positive intent is that he sees Haus, in his view, 'having a go' at Dead Megatron, and wants to defend him. Haus, for his part, feels aggrieved at being described as 'cunty', and wants to defend his own honour. Enrieb appears to have as his positive intent one ironically similar to Haus' when confronted with Dead Megatron's (admittedly inexact) anger/sharp sword metaphor: to whit, to return the thread to its main topic in letter and, indeed, intent (i.e. by returning a thread to its focus on civil behaviour towards posters by attempting to defuse an increasingly uncivil argument between posters). Haus' positive intent in response is that he feels aggrieved at being posted to in a perhaps judgmental manner. My positive intent is to try and defuse all the arguing by saying what I think.
1) I actually think Alex does have a point, in his PM to Haus, when he points out that discussing Dead Megatron's metaphor is off-topic and is indeed what Haus would consider 'noise'. Oddly, I was about to make a similar (public) post myself, before I was distracted by my life for a few days, there.
2) I think Haus does have a point when he feels aggrieved ate being referred to as a 'c**ty schoolteacher' by Alex, though. It's not nice to call people cunts at any time, chaps, and it is in somewhat bad taste here, where we have recently had many discussions, often long into the digital night, over whether the usage of 'c**t' as an offensive term constitutes linguistic sexism.
3) However, I also think there is a point to be made that the post is not composed entirely of abuse. Indeed, Alex, to his credit, has tried to make an argument in his PM, but has decided, for his own reasons, to basically call Haus a c**t on his way out. But I accept that it was not Alex's sole intent to call Haus a cunt. If he had, we would have been privy to a post consisting largely of statements like the following 'Haus, you c**t, you're a c**ting c**t of a c**t and you can just f**k right off, you c**t.' That's an abusive post, you bunch of cockheads.
4)However, I uphold Haus' description of the post as abusive on the same grounds on which hate crimes are judged in UK law, i.e. that if the victim considers the action abusive then we must consider it abusive. In the end, the lesson, as often here, is this: try to avoid using abusive language wherever possible as you cannot always predict the reaction of others. And try to avoid getting embroiled in off-topic arguments, too. Like that time I got in an argument on the BB thread about Barrymore and I said he'd fisted some bloke and he hadn't, or like how Andrea Dworkin actually didn't say all penetrative sex was rape and anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, stay out of my food. |
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