Between blotch and blok

the kind of person your expressed opinions suggest that you are

I wouldn't make assumptions like that, if I were you. I fool a *lot* of people online, and I've already found holes in your assumptions about me once today.

I'm also fascinated by the way that every time it becomes clear that in terms of facts you can't argue me down, you come up with some social sin or other I'm committing. Thus far, we've had denial, which is very amusing since I happen to be well aware that denial is the last problem I have; we've had bigotry, the eternal catch-all; and now, since you have nothing more concrete to go on than the fact I won't back down and stop disagreeing, you decide I have a "sense of entitlement". As far as I can tell, that's simply feminist jargon for "confidence in opinions I don't agree with".

But there again I don't think this is about my opinions at all, I think it's about the fact I don't have the grace to feel hunted and oppressed. I can't possibly be right to be happy with the status quo because it's so hideously unjust: yet you haven't been able to force me to see my terrible insensitivity and acknowledge the error of my ways. I must be driving you nuts.

However, it strikes me that nobody else has jumped into this conversation to fight your side against me. If my opinions really were "broadly offensive", experience tells me they would have done exactly that: this is the internet, after all. The fact that they haven't makes it look rather as though it's you personally, rather than the whole world, who is offended.

To me, along with the right to freedom of expression comes the responsibility of dealing with the fact you won't always like other people's opinions or the way they express them. The only thing I'm "entitled" to is a fair hearing - but that's precisely what you're either unable or unwilling to give me. For a whole constellation of reasons I'm damned if I'll lie about the fact I find your opinions distasteful, but I'm more than happy to debate them anyway; you, as far as I can tell, will neither answer my arguments rationally nor back up your own with anything other than political rhetoric and personal insults. Now charitably I could interpret this as a simple communication problem, but I'm much more inclined to think that you're one of those people who just doesn't deal well with my forthright manner; you don't seem to have a great deal of ability to separate the content from the form. And quite honestly, while I'm well aware that arguing with me is a challenge and I don't expect everyone to cope (you're doing pretty well, by the way), it's also true that if you can't debate sensibly with people unless they're being gentle with you, you're not likely to get very far in proselytising a cause. I just don't think the world is ever going to be a lovely safe playground in which nobody ever has to cope with hard stuff, so I don't see any reason to laboriously make myself unthreatening just because some people find it a chore dealing with me as I am. Everyone's got to learn to cope with the rough stuff somehow, and some of them will learn a little by tangling with me; that, thanks to the marvellous sense of humour of the Fates, appears to be my gift in life.