Subjective vs. normative offensiveness

Exactly what I going to say. Thanks.

Maybe a word other than normative would satisfy those relativists who don't believe in any kind of normative morality, but still believe that morality within a society is the closest thing we can have. Although, this appears to be more a terminology issue than anything else.

I would say this is error theory, because even if you mean something true when you say that "it is wrong to murder," you do not mean what ordinary people mean, and the thing that they mean, you believe to be false.

If you explain your opinion clearly to ordinary people, I think they will believe that you accept error theory, and they will no longer trust you about anything except when they have a special reason to do so, e.g. if they think you like them personally.

That doesn't stop me from treating murder as "wrong". The word "wrong" here unpacks here as follows: I profit most if neither I nor anyone else murders, so I support the social contract of not murdering, and I punish defectors.

What about a norm that it's OK to murder members of group X (where group X is a group you don't belong to)? That logic doesn't seem to apply in that case.

they can't just equate this with being individual-level offensive

If there is no established standard, I can equate anything with anything. What's going to stop me from calling my personal offense "normative"? I'm sure there are some people somewhere who will be just as offended as I am.

none of my analysis is contingent on people agreeing which offenses are normative

Of course it is. If people do not agree on which offenses are normative, the word "normative" loses its meaning and becomes nothing more than "I want some support for being offended so I'll call the offense 'normative' ". The whole concept of "normative offenses" relies on a large number of people agreeing that the behavior in question is, indeed, offensive.

And by the way, I'm still interested: 20 goats for a bride, offensive or not?

That said, it handles this case fairly well. If someone wants to argue that something is family-level offensive or country-level offensive, they can't just equate this with being individual-level offensive.

Except most people claiming offense are capable of finding or defining some group in whose name to claim offense.

That isn't "another theory", because what ChristianKI was saying wasn't a theory about what determines whether people freak out when approached (but yours is), and it was a theory about how to adjust your expectations concerning freakouts (but yours isn't).

How frequently you make romantic/sexual overtures to women (and how "intense" they are) is not a thing that others can readily observe unless they're with you all the time, and making such overtures and getting turned down flat because you creep the women out is ... not obviously higher-status-looking than leaving them alone.

Even if it turns out that making such overtures, freaking their recipient out, and getting turned down flat is a small overall status gain for you, it still doesn't follow that you should do it -- unless you simply don't care about the women involved except as pawns in your status game. I would guess that being freaked out is an unpleasant experience for most women, and that consequently not freaking women out is a goal for most not-perfectly-selfish men. (It won't and shouldn't be the only goal, of course.)

So your actual rule is, "people who are bad at reading subtle signals should never ask women out"?

The question is not "what should people do" but "what is being creepy about". Being creepy is quite often about not being good at understanding other people and acting badly as a result.

If you are bad at reading subtle sign the straightforward way is to learn to get better at it. For that it's helpful to do bodywork and train to perceive was your own body is doing. It's also helpful to go to workshops with people who give you honest and direct feedback.

Even textbook PUA has it's compliance tests to get information about whether a woman is likely to say 'yes'.

In particular "If you frequently freak out woman with asking them out then you reduce the intensity of what you ask women" is horrible advise since it will make you be perceived as lower status.

If you frequently get turned down in a way that freaks out the woman, that means that you have a lower status. If the woman then tells other people about how you are creepy you will lose a lot more status.

On the other hand asking a woman whether she has is single is in many cases not inherently a low status move. Various forms of flirting are no low status moves.

Even if don't really care about the woman, when a male friends acts in a very uncalibrated way and asks a woman out in a way that freaks her out, he loses status in my eyes. The same is not true with male friends who are calibrated and flirt in a way that the woman could turn down.

If there existed signals that were reliable indicators, you'd expect numerous people to have posted them online.

Only if the signals could be written down in a straightforward way. Any article would give you system II knowledge while the important skill is a system I skill.

It's so funny when people try to invoke canine social structure to predict how modern human courtship will play out. If a man asks a woman out in the forest and there is nobody around to ascribe status to him, can the woman still form judgments as to his attractiveness?

A reasonable person might say that a group being ridiculed deserved that ridicule for a number of reasons, or that the ridiculer is off base. So, two "no answers", two different reasons.

Most people or groups don't "know themselves" so outside information about yourself or the entity that you belong to is almost always valuable.

People argue about what is and isn't offensive all the time.

Sure, but it's really arguments about status and power.

Hmmm, so was the point of the post to say "there's no such thing as objective offensiveness"?

I would agree with that, but I disagree with the "subjective/normative" distinction... it seems like almost all offensiveness is both.

Saying "this is offensive to my subgroup" is obviously normatively offensive within that subgroup, and subjectively offensive within the group where people are saying "that's not offensive".