The unbridgeable gap here is that the speaker of a phrase cannot with 100% certainty know whether a phrase will cause offense - "being offended" lives in the li

The unbridgeable gap here is that the speaker of a phrase cannot with 100% certainty know whether a phrase will cause offense - "being offended" lives in the listener's mind. So we have to fall back to a "reasonable person" presumption. To do otherwise is to cede all control of public conversation to people who wield bad-faith claims of offense as a weapon. If I say something, and have a good-faith belief that no one would be offended by it, and 99.99% of people agree that it was not an offensive statement, but one person claims to be offended by it - should I be forced to apologize under pain of being branded an "asshole"? For the sake of argument let's say I'm offended by your "just asking questions" style statement that "Fry doesn't care about other people's feelings". Do you think it would be reasonable for you to apologize to me or retract your "question"?