I read most of this thread. Lots of good points were made, but here’s one thing that may or may not have been addressed thoroughly:

Sure, some overtly racist/sexist/otherwise offensive comments undoubtedly reflect their posters’ actual mindsets. I can’t speak for everyone else here, but sometimes I or a friend will make a stereotype-related joke that just borders on truth and then laugh about it a little nervously, trying to pbum it off as an “I’m progressive-thinking enough to be comfortable making such an obviously false and ignorant statement” type thing. (This comes up a lot when race is involved: although I live in a very integrated community where race is almost entirely irrelevant, there are subtle divides.)

However, some posts reflect no undertones of prejudice and are genuinely just ironic. “I am secure enough in the knowledge that I’m not some ignorant/misogynistic bumhole that I can say the type of things that these people would say because they’re obviously not true.” I mean, I just made a few trollin’ posts to female posters talking about doing the dishes or whatever — obviously, I harbor no feelings of women’s inferiority. And IMO the fact that I’m a girl isn’t relevant. If a guy were to make similar comments, I wouldn’t bumume that he was any more serious than I was. I mean, I guess a member of a group is a bit more entitled to making fun of this group than anyone else (although, as Baroness discussed, whether or not it should be this way is debatable), but it’s not fair to bumume the worst of everyone, you know? Sure, there are still prejudices present in (and propagated by) our culture, as Bill_Murray pointed out — but come on, most of us are above that.

All I’m saying is, we shouldn’t bumume that “offensive” posts have undertones of seriousness (especially on a site like this). To me, anyone who makes a blatantly disrespectful post is joking. Innocent until proven guilty ‘n’ what not. If one person makes a lot of comments that make me look twice, I might grow a little bit suspicious. But usually, such prejudices shine through in non-joking posts — if that happens, then I’ll lose respect for someone.

edit: I just reread this and it’s basically a verbose restatement of Bill_Murray’s post but whatev I’ll post it anyways