Thread: Whos rights are more important?

Originally Posted by Daggdag

There is no right not to be offended. if someone having long hair offends you, that's your problem. Their long hair does not effect you, so it's none of your business.

I agree.

Originally Posted by Object227

You meant to say "..the right not to be offended" I assume? There is no such right so there is no conflict of rights. This is a false dichotomy. One man's long hair does not violate anyone's rights.

Fair enough, but I am a man with long hair and have had over the years a number people scoff at me, look at me sideways with a disapproving sneer, and on rare occasion I receive some offhand ignorant remark. Now I take care of myself and am a clean person, so the only reason I get occasional flack is because of the length of my hair. This is shallow and stereotyping IMO.

And no, I meant the right to be offended. I categorize ones right to be offended under free will and free speech. I don't always have to like what others say, but it is a free country.

Originally Posted by Forseti

No, I think he really meant you do have the right to be offended, same as anyone has the right to find the colour orange offensive, or everyone has the right to be offended by....well....pretty much anything if they so choose. Which is true, a person absolutely does have the right to be offended by whatever they want, whether or not they have the right to do anything about it is another story.

Absolutely.

Originally Posted by robini123

Now I am not talking hot button topic issues like abortion or gay rights. I am thinking of less controversial rights. Say for example, a man has the right to have long hair... and any who see him have the right to be offended. So whose rights trump the others? Are they equal? Why?

Why I ask this is that many times in my life I have seen some try to oppress the freedom of another. For example if a person has a boombox (are those even around anymore?) and is listening to Heavy Metal music at a reasonable low volume in a public park... and someone walks up to them and says "Metal is the work of the devil, please turn it off"... whose rights are more important? I say so long as the music listener is not breaking any applicable laws, then the music listeners rights trump the offended persons.

I find it frustrating that in a free society we are so bound by customs and social peer pressure to conform. Seems to cheapen our freedom IMO. Do whatever you want, so long as the moral majority allows it. What, you want a Mohawk! NO... you are ostracized! What, a woman will not wear a bra!! You are left to the fringe of society! What, you like Dungeons & Dragons!!! Get a real hobby, a socially acceptable hobby like golf or fly fishing else you will be invisible to society!

So whose rights are more important?

you have the right to choose to have long hair, others can choose not to like it, but they can not choose for you to cut it

there is no right to quite in a public park, a person can play their music as loud as the law allows, the offended can choose to move out of range of the sound

I remember Palin saying the media was denying her free speech rights by criticizing here... obviously that is not how free speech works, others have the same free speech right to criticize others free speech

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics...lin-fears-med/

"Palin told WMAL-AM that her criticism of Obama's associations, like those with 1960s radical Bill Ayers and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, should not be considered negative attacks. Rather, for reporters or columnists to suggest that it is going negative may constitute an attack that threatens a candidate's free speech rights under the Constitution, Palin said."

.

Originally Posted by robini123

Fair enough, but I am a man with long hair and have had over the years a number people scoff at me, look at me sideways with a disapproving sneer, and on rare occasion I receive some offhand ignorant remark. Now I take care of myself and am a clean person, so the only reason I get occasional flack is because of the length of my hair. This is shallow and stereotyping IMO.

It's a sad fact of life that some people will absolutely 'judge a book by its cover', and that some will even expect everyone in society to conform to their opinions and ideals whether they like it or not. In a tolerant society, it really shouldn't happen, but not all people in all nominally free and tolerant societies are always as tolerant as they should be of people who choose not to meet their personal expectations of how people should look, dress or think, unfortunately. All you have to remember, most of the time, is that that is their problem, not yours! That's sometimes easier said than done at the time, though.

However, there have been far more serious episodes, like the infamous case of Sophie Lancaster in the UK - it might on the face of it sound relatively trivial to some to be abused and harassed just for liking certain music, or dressing a certain way, or being seen as part of a certain 'sub-culture', but threatening and violent exhibitions of bigotry against people for those things can be very, very real (and just as real and dangerous as similarly violent exhibitions of racism, homophobia, and so on) - it is the responsibility of everyone in society not to show the kind of intolerance towards others that can encourage that kind of thinking among the violent and stupid.

There's just no excuse for ignorant intolerance.

Originally Posted by cenydd

It's a sad fact of life that some people will absolutely 'judge a book by its cover', and that some will even expect everyone in society to conform to their opinions and ideals whether they like it or not. In a tolerant society, it really shouldn't happen, but not all people in all nominally free and tolerant societies are always as tolerant as they should be of people who choose not to meet their personal expectations of how people should look, dress or think, unfortunately. All you have to remember, most of the time, is that that is their problem, not yours! That's sometimes easier said than done at the time, though.

However, there have been far more serious episodes, like the infamous case of Sophie Lancaster in the UK - it might on the face of it sound relatively trivial to some to be abused and harassed just for liking certain music, or dressing a certain way, or being seen as part of a certain 'sub-culture', but threatening and violent exhibitions of bigotry against people for those things can be very, very real (and just as real and dangerous as similarly violent exhibitions of racism, homophobia, and so on) - it is the responsibility of everyone in society not to show the kind of intolerance towards others that can encourage that kind of thinking among the violent and stupid.

There's just no excuse for ignorant intolerance.

I could not have said it better myself. You make a very good point with the murder of Sophie Lancaster. Here in the States (actually I am living Canada now) two girls were shot in Texas, one of the girls died while the other is in critical condition. They were a mixed race lesbian couple so my feeling is they were shot because they were lesbians or perhaps the shooter is racist and shot them for being a mixed race couple. It is so sad when people who are outside of the accepted norm like the teen girls, or a person in the counter-culture like Sophie Lancaster are murdered just for being different.

People who stereotype and condemn a person based solely on the superficial are guilty of taking part in breeding the very hate that killed Sophie Lancaster and the Texas girl. And when parents pass this bias onto their children they just perpetuate the vicious cycle. In my life I have no room for shallow judgmental people. I avoid them like the plague as their hate is poisonous. And you know what the sad thing is? Most people do not see their shallow judgment of the superficial as hate.

http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/20...in-texas?lite/

I am sorry but in the U.S. today there is an absolute right to not be offended. What offends you does not even have to meet some objective standard. If you're offended, that's enough. You can be fired and thrown out of college for "offending" a professional victim.

Originally Posted by PatrickT

I am sorry but in the U.S. today there is an absolute right to not be offended. What offends you does not even have to meet some objective standard. If you're offended, that's enough. You can be fired and thrown out of college for "offending" a professional victim.

Each of us has the right to be offended to be sure, and sometimes this right can be taken to a ridiculous extreme I am sure. But I do not want to live in a society where I have to fear leaving my home out of fear that someone may be offended that I have long hair. Sounds like the book 1984 to me. I say this with complete confidence, that each and every one of us can be viewed as offensive by another. Some people are offended by Christians, some by women, some by models, some by politicians. It does not matter who you are or how good you think you are... there will always be someone out there that will be offended by something about you.