system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: Just because you are offended doesn’t mean you are right

I’m completely open to a change of mind here. 

It seems like people who are part of a group that has been discriminated against seem to be more fired up lately than in the past. Furthermore, I’ve never seen so many accusations of racism, homophobia, sexism, etc, particularly in conversations where the person wasn’t intending to be racist, homophobic, sexist, etc. 

The message coming from the offended people (and those who support them) is often a variation of: “I feel this way, and you need to do some research to see why your comments made me feel this way.”

There seems to be no room for explaining oneself or defending a position, nor do the people feel that they owe you an explanation of why your comment offended them.  If you offend someone, you are wrong. Furthermore, you are a jerk. A person could jump to an incorrect assumption about you, and you have to just accept it….and even apologize. The message is often that they don’t need to explain why your comment was wrong, rather you should explore on your own. 

I have largely been on the sidelines of this trend until recently. And admittedly, in the thread where I became the bad guy, I can see where I was wrong. I should have apologized and moved on. But I’ve seen other threads where I 100% agreed with the accused person and felt like they were being gang tackled for something that was not out of line (in my opinion). And if the comment was perceived as such, I think there are more productive ways to address it than virtually slapping them and telling them to do their own research. It seems like we’ve reached a point where debate is not allowed, and if someone is offended, their right to be offended supersedes your right to question the context that brought on the reaction. 

I don’t think that makes for healthy online dialogue. 

Thank you for your responses.
gpt
People being empowered to call out racism homophobia etc does mean that it will happen more and more.  Back in the early 2000's we had shows like The Man Show on air, the entire premise being making jokes about women.  Calling people out for shitty humor, for being racist, homophobic, sexist etc is a more recent phenomenon.  10 years ago popular television would call people gay as a funny insult, nowadays people rightfully call that sort of stuff out when it would have been totally normal a decade ago.  This doesn't mean that it's happening to much because you have started to notice it happening more, you have started to notice it more because the bubble of casual sexism, racism, and homophobia has begun to pop as the younger generations grew up on an Internet populated by a much more diverse amount of people and opinions compared to the early 2000s and people just don't stand by and accept shitty opinions and shitty behavior.  It doesn't mean your right if you are offended, however it also doesn't mean that people getting called out for shitty behavior is just people being offended, it is also an example of in general the internet at large has become less and less accepting of shitty people and shitty opinions.