Actually, I wasn’t thinking of opinions about specific individuals. I was thinking about opinions about a class of things. Such as, to use @WasCy‘s example, one might say, “I don’t like the ‘hooker’ look.” A woman might take exception to that, and say that hookers aren’t dressing for you, the implication being that they dress like a hooker, so therefore they are taking the opinion as a judgment of them.
Is it a judgment of individuals if you are stating an opinion about a look? It’s not as if you’re saying “I don’t like Republicans.”
People state an opinion about musical tastes all the time. “I don’t like rap.” Are rap aficionados going to take that personally, seeking to somehow defend the genre? Are they justified in taking it personally? Should I take back my comment because they think it’s none of my business to say I don’t like rap?
Like if I say, “I don’t like football.” And someone responds, “What do you mean you don’t like football? I’m offended. We’re not playing football for you.” And then I ask a question about whether anyone else doesn’t like football, and all the football players get in my face telling me I have no business stating an opinion about football since I am not a football player. Huh?
This is why I ask the question. I think it’s ok to state an opinion or a preference. But it seems that my opinion is seen as a judgment, and some people get outraged that I have this opinion. I guess they take it personally. They are offended.
I totally agree that you don’t offer your opinion gratuitously to someone’s face. But to offer your question as a kind of general thing and to have random people tell me my opinion is unwanted, especially when I wasn’t even talking to them in the first place… it’s not that I mind so much. It lets me get into a brawl with no guilty feelings. But what is going on? Is this part of the PC thing? No bad opinions about anything?
I want to know why people play football. I never would have said that I didn’t like football except that people asked for an example. Maybe I should have said, “Forget it. I shouldn’t have asked.”