Apolygys

[Crossposted to Official Shrub.com Blog.]

Amy Gahran has a good post up about apologies and why they're necessary.

The post was sparked by Amy Alkon's advice column about cheating, entitled "Along Came Polyamory."  Understandably, many polyamorous folk were miffed at the equation of the concepts.  (It's hard enough figuring out who's okay with the concept without it being confused with unethical behavior.)  But rather than apologize for causing offense, Ms. Alkon decided to take the offensive, complaining that those who had a problem just didn't understand her irony, and basically just being a big bully.

Coincidentally enough, I had just discovered Ms. Alkon's anti-feminist screed "Victims Gone Wild" the other day.  She seems to be one of those "postfeminists" in the vein of ifeminists or IWF that figure that since they're privileged, anyone who complains that they're not is just adopting a "victim mentality," and that feminism is unnecessary because of what someone said Dworkin or Mackinnon said a couple decades ago.

Ms. Gahran's post, though, could have been sparked by any of the non-apologies of late (Ann Althouse, Harlan Ellison, and so on all the metaphorical way back to "she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.")  Why is it so hard for people to apologize for offending people?  It can be done.