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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8239480" data-attributes="member: 6790260">You may notice, I never used the word "offensive" or "offense." Neither in the post you quoted, nor in any previous post in this thread. There's a reason for that.And yes, I certainly agree that behavior in different spaces has different standards. That's why you use a "reasonable person" standard. Because a reasonable person knows that things you can say to your lover are not completely the same as things you can say to your boss, neither of which is completely the same as what you can say to your grandmother, all three of which are not the same as what you can say on national television. Reasonable people understand that community standards depend on which community you look at.Completely agreed! That's why we use this abstracted "reasonable person," not the specific interests of specific people. Because specific people don't necessarily fit in all places. But even your own examples now work against you; did you not just say that "public affairs" pretty clearly hew to a higher standard than private ones? Isn't a comedy show at a public venue--one where the comedians intend to make money--a public affair?Again you focus on "distasteful" and "offensive." I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about what a reasonable person would think causes harm. The two are different. And there's also a reason I didn't use a "man on the street" either; I completely agree that the average person might be insensitive where a reasonable person would not. You shouldn't assume the average person is reasonable. And, again, you may note that I did not use the word "average." There is a reason I chose not to.So....I'm really not sure where we've gone with this digression, then. You agree that intentionally causing harm--which I specifically called "insulting," "belittling," "shaming," and "demeaning," with the hope that that would clearly specify the kinds of harm I'm talking about--to your players is Obviously Bad. It frankly sounds like you just want to have a fight over whether "don't say things a reasonable person would find harmful" means censorship of gaming opportunities.Don't tell people what kinds of roleplaying are okay for them. If they're having fun, it is presumptively okay, UNLESS it's exploitative, coercive, or insulting to the participants themselves. Is that good enough? Have I cleared your hurdles yet?I mean, fair, but I hope you agree that "a stand-up comedian telling jokes to an audience" and "my gaming group talking just amongst ourselves" can, should, and do have different standards for good reasons. There are things you can say in one of those that you should never say in the other, assuming of course that the people involved are reasonable.What's a "line"? What's a "point"?You're asking for definitions of fundamental concepts. There won't be a non-circular definition. The best you can do is provide examples, which is what I tried to do.Real hurt is when you say something insulting, belittling, shaming, or demeaning to the actual participants, peripheral participants (e.g. making a crack about "queers" in the presence of the DM's gay brother), or living personsBut of course, again, this is you forcing a sterile, formal, nailed-down-to-the-letter definition, which defeats the purpose of the test. "Real harm" is what we recognize real harm to be.And when you have hurts repeated, across an enormous variety of circumstances, with victims of a clearly definable class, such as an ethnic group, sexual orientation, or religious/philosophical affiliation?Harm directed like a firehose at anyone who might be nearby is still harm. It's just not totally the same as personal harm. It's the difference between a bullet and a grenade; the former has a name on it, the latter is addressed "to whom it may concern." That's what "group harm" almost always cashes out as, casual attacks on whole classes of people, some of whom will (almost without fail) end up hurt. Addressing these systematic and pervasive things is extremely difficult, especially while also respecting fundamental rights, as you have well demonstrated.This is fair, and gets to the heart of a difficult question: is there such a thing as coercion sufficiently subtle that it is not noticed, but is still coercive? If the answer is "yes," then even so-called "enthusiastic consent" may not be reliable, at which point we seem to have no ability to have confidence in interpersonal relations of any kind. If we say the answer is "no" when it is really "yes," then we are blindly ignoring a serious and insidious problem. If we say it's "yes" when it's actually "no," we have marooned ourselves for no reason.But, at least for the time being, the most useful answer is to say "no, it's not possible for something every participant is 'comfortable' with to cause harm, as long as you confirm that status reasonably often." As with all relationships, this depends on shared trust, forthright (and frequent) communication, and mutual respect.</blockquote>

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