Ooh no no no no, nope, no way - you know what they say: Road to hell is paved with good intentions. Nothing should be off-limits especially when it comes to joking.

It's just a word. It doesn't have any power on itself. It's only you who give it that power. When people say online they got raped, they mean no disrespect to anyone.

That pretty much amounts to "I'm not going to stop stabbing people because physical contact might hurt someone so what would I have left".

Here's a very short, easy to remember list of speech related things that may really hurt someone:
-using anti-group-X slurs on a person who has had to endure real discrimination for being in the group-X
-reminding people of really traumatic experiences
-threatening them

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posttraumatic_stress_disorder
Here's a link to what really hurting someone might mean. It's not really comparable to being offended by someone saying your butt smells, even if someone has lived such a happy life that they can't think of anything more offensive. It's not comparable even if someone left you because your butt smelled and you're really sad about it.

I'll accept this as your real opinion after you make a youtube video of going to a hospital, searching for trauma victims and joking about their experiences to their faces, and add your name to it. Bonus points if you tell the butt ends of the jokes your name too.

You can't even speak or write English without fear of reminding some people of the horrors of the colonial era.

Exactly this. I say all the time "for god's sake" even though I am an 100% atheist. IT's just a common phrase.

We can argue if some phrases should disappear from common language, but it will not happen overnight. People who use them are not bad people, they just have old habits.

You don't even know a difference betwen joking and harrassing.

Wow. Talk about missing the point.

So lets prentend I have some mate in the gog BloodBowl forum have a match and one of us happens to mention: "You really raped my team in that match :D ".

Then some third party reads the public message in the thread and gets insulted for whatever reason.

What would you think?

----

I think the whole point here was about people speaking "in general" and then some third party getting bad mood because of that. Anyways, atleast i have not been talking about specifically stabbing to peoples weak points - thats whole different thing.

Or should we always speak and write in the manner that "in case someone else is listening or reading this he/she/it wont get insulted"? That is rather big thing to ask.

We wouldn't be allowed to joke and talk at all. Almost all jokes are based on trivialisation and stereotypes. It's virtually impossible to not offend anyone in a group this big as GOG forums. Which is obvious, because almost every thread now turns out to be a huge internet drama.

On the other hand, I personally have a problem with common use of the word gay and queer. I use it from time to time almost automatically, even though I mean no disrespect to anyone by this. It's just a phrase that was used commonly during my teens and it's really hard to overcome. But I want to overcome it for myself, not forcing or lecturing anyone how they should speak and/or joke.

I used an obvious example of being so sure of your jokes being funny and harmless that they're obviously ok everywhere. Rape jokes are rarely any better.

Care to enlighten me then?

I would think that there was absolutely no reason for the person to say that his team was raped when it obviously was not. The insulted party, on the other hand, saw it because it was a public message.

First of all, not all online matches are public.

BUT person in public should be ready that there might be some things which would make him or her uncomfortable. IT's just a "feature" of being in public.

..and this is why it's more unreasonable to ask for people to stop misusing the words than to misuse the words without even having any real reason?

The latter would recquire reinventing like half of the language.

Also, people are not obliged to use the words in their primary meaning.

When I am in public place, I am ready to see or witness things I'm uncomfortable with. IT's more reasonable than recquiring entire world to adapt for me.

like " I think I was going to die!" - did your life really was in jeopardy? did you really think that? Because you know, there might be someone listening, who nearly died and now is upset by hearing this being said by you after jumping into a pool.

there are so many words not being used in their primary meaning, it really makes no sense to choose one word over another.

So you basically aren't doing anything else in your life.

Reacting to the stimuli around me? Yeah, sounds pretty accurate :p