Wouldn't alienate me. I have religious friends who call my atheism a "fail". Doesn't both me one bit. Being confident in your believes gives you the ability to weather criticism. Likewise I routinely an upfront with religious friends that I think they believe in made up things, and are wasting their time. It's just a fact that I think that, and it's honest. Again, shouldn't bother well-adjusted religious people. They kinda know that 100% of the earth's population doesn't believe the same things as they do. You kinda get that going in to it.
People should be more open to welcoming differing opinions. No one should have to self-censor their own opinions.
It might alienate some atypically sensitive people, but as someone who has no children, I don't feel particularly alienated by it; and I don't think most people who have no kids take particular offense to it either.
I read it in the context of giving your life to a woman and her company who then marries someone else and has kids. But yeah in hindsight the inclusion of that is not in the best taste, he could be childless for many reasons, none of which should be of public concern.
How am I atypically sensitive if I don’t want to have anything to do with a person who thinks my beliefs and choices are a failure? That sounds like a recipe for disaster. Instead, I choose to be friends with people who accept me as I am.
ETA: Though I wouldn’t want them to not express it, the opposite.
Because most people aren’t so offended by it that they choose to avoid people with such opinions altogether (I’m not talking about not wanting to be friends, but rather, being offended). Such sensitivity is atypical by definition. It’s not intended to be an insult, merely an observation.
Besides, how does it possibly help you (or anyone else) to get emotionally wounded by some random stranger on the Internet's insensitive comments? Most people older than their 20s have figured this out already and are living more productive lives.
Some people use the word failure in a way which – whether by denotation or just connotation – includes an aspect of culpability, blame, fault. If that's your understanding of failure, using it to speak of people in that situation does seem particularly insensitive. On the other hand, maybe other people have a different understanding of the word, in which the element of culpability/blame/fault is either missing, or at least, less emphasised–these people may struggle to understand what others are so upset about, especially if they aren't aware of that difference in the understanding of the word.
If they tried to have kids and were not able to then they failed. There is no "understanding" of the word where that's not true.
And people get upset or offended by anything, it's really not useful trying to shut down discussion by claiming you shouldn't say or think something because allegedly some hypothetical people might get upset.
> If they tried to have kids and were not able to then they failed. There is no "understanding" of the word where that's not true.
"They failed" does have some connotation of culpability though, doesn't it? I mean, the phrase certainly is sometimes used in situations where nobody would understand it as implying any blame; but, on the other hand, there are many other cases in which it is used in a blaming way, and those other cases contribute to its connotations.
> And people get upset or offended by anything, it's really not useful trying to shut down discussion by claiming you shouldn't say or think something because allegedly some hypothetical people might get upset.
I'm not trying to shut down anything. I'm just attempting to produce an explanation of why some people, rightly or wrongly, actually are upset (which is rather apparent from other comments on this post.)
> "They failed" does have some connotation of culpability though, doesn't it? I mean, the phrase certainly is sometimes used in situations where nobody would understand it as implying any blame; but, on the other hand, there are many other cases in which it is used in a blaming way, and those other cases contribute to its connotations.
It usually does have some, yes. For example if you are infertile through some fault of your reproductive system, then that is to blame for your inability to have children.
> I'm not trying to shut down anything. I'm just attempting to produce an explanation of why some people, rightly or wrongly, actually are upset (which is rather apparent from other comments on this post.)
I think they're just vicariously upset. Either way I wasn't wondering about them. Just correcting a misconception about the use of a word.
The genes would see it as a failure, but they don't really have feelings or motivations, so I'm not sure it makes sense to anthropomorphise them. If we do, it's easy to not take offense, you just have a charitable interpretation and move on with your day.
