He twisted off a couple of times on the list, but was able to step back and own his part in what happened and apologise. That's most cool. I admire him for being able to do that. It follows that same knee jerk hit back reaction. The long haired boyfriend is offended, he hits back hard, and confirms the other person's stereotype of those evil long haired people.
Someone here is offended by choice of words, and does the labeling thing.
You see, conflict is a part of relationships. We can choose to do the default knee jerk thing and hit back. After reading the last couple of digests, I noticed a call from listvillians for peace. It's how we deal with those differences that's important. Given that new people show up in Listville every day, that we talk often about core values, and that our default tendency is to hit back, I think we do pretty well.