"Bitch" can be a loaded word. Sometimes it's used as the female version of "asshole" or "dickhead." Sometimes it feels more hateful of women in general, like an ethnic slur. Because it's so sensitive to context like that, I think reasonable people should not use it with so little context in a professional presentation.
No, because it's not the same thing. Saying a woman is a bitch is a far cry from saying all women are (though granted, his choice of having a generic woman with a blanked out face was bad).
>I think reasonable people should not use it with so little context in a professional presentation.
I never said the presenter was reasonable, in fact I said the opposite. But that's a problem with him and the proper response is to assume he's not very mature. A random woman in the audience getting offended is silly and useless. He wasn't talking to or about her specifically.
I don't think this is how "getting offended" works.
She felt angry and offended, not because it served a purpose, but because that's how she felt. Are you only offended when it's useful? I think I'd have been pretty irritated by the presentation as well (and I'm a guy), which suggests to me that her reaction wasn't some personal idiosyncrasy. Kagan should, in fact, pay some attention to what happened here & why, if he wants to be invited to give more important talks.
And if he does or has been thinking about that, that would be useful, after all.
His mistake was that this made him look petty and childish ("Oh look at me, I'm in front of people so now I can call people I'm mad at names!") while serving no positive purpose.
If nothing else, didn't she still have the phone in her hand? Or maybe she was in a difficult spot to place a good throw. I mean she couldn't get the bottle to him, maybe he didn't think he could get it to her? Did the author say that he never did it again? Rather then this horrible kind of arm-chair sleuthing it's probably just easier to ask him why.
[1] funny enough, you suggesting this makes it more apparent that you think this way. I mean, this never occurred to me.
The poster was making a joke based on a period when women were not considered capable of playing sports (among other things). The fact that that is no longer true and thinking like that is anachronistic is why the joke is funny (or is a joke at all). I can laugh at a joke that puts someone or a group down and still not be a bigot.
I think people who don't adjust their definitions of words/idioms to reflect modern connotations should stop holding grudges (or whatever the appropriate term is) and move on. That's obviously too simple a solution to work since it causes words to be less offensive over time and thus some parts of what they represent may become acceptable. For example, the word rape might be a bad one to get desensitized to because it might also lead to desensitization to the act of rape.
But when you make assumptions about what someone is thinking based on one action then you are not "understanding someone's link of thinking", you are projecting.
>The poster was making a joke based on a period when women were not considered capable of playing sports
If it was a joke then obviously I overreacted. The usual clues and context ("how does the parent usually talk/joke?") are missing in text, so it's easier to miss.
> I can laugh at a joke that puts someone or a group down and still not be a bigot.
Totally agree. Somethings are funny precisely because they're ridiculous.
>I think people who don't adjust their definitions of words/idioms to reflect modern connotations should stop holding grudges (or whatever the appropriate term is) and move on.
Not sure what you're addressing here.
Of course we have to. Cynical sarcasm is way funnier than, say, throwing around hot sauce.