Are you really saying that there's no middle ground between being actively offensive and being insufferably bland?
The short answer is, yes, there is a middle ground, but it won't stay "middle" for long: the set of "offensive" things expands with time. Many jokes and phrases that were part of the inoffensive "middle ground" twenty or thirty years ago are now considered offensive. To the politically correct, this is mere progress, but to those who oppose political correctness it instead represents cultural and linguistic decline.
I ran into a small example of this recently when discussing the movie "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle". Specifically, I wanted to refer to the ethnic background of Harold. I couldn't remember offhand exactly which country his ancestors came from, so I described him as "Asian". The problem is that, in the modern lexicon, Kumar (being of Indian extraction) is also "Asian". Thirty years ago I could have described Harold as "Oriental" without causing offense, but that changed some time in the mid- to late '80s. (I distinctly remember, some time around 1990, overhearing a high-school teacher instruct one of my Vietnamese classmates not to refer to herself as "Oriental". She was comfortable with the term; he was not. His side won, and we have lost some linguistic precision because of it.)
To cite another example, from 1555 until the 1960's the word "Negro" was a neutral term signifying a person of black sub-Saharan African descent, at which point it was replaced by "black" (or "Black"). This lasted until 1988, when (in a domestic context) "African-American" became the preferred term. Meanwhile, "colored person" was also once a neutral phrase (as evidenced by the NAACP), but now uttering it in the workplace (or in a joke) can get you fired. In contrast, the term "person of color", which is almost semantically identical to "colored person", is not only inoffensive but is the preferred term among the PC cognoscenti. It's an achievement that Orwell himself could hardly have surpassed.
There's a difference, at least to me, about changing standards in language (which, as outsiders to particular communities can seem arbitrary and capricious-- wait a minute, "Queer is OK to say again?" and how is "person of color" materially different from "Colored person") and things like brazen workplace hostility as described in the original blog post.
A lot of being actively offensive is more than just the specific words you use but more about what you say with those words.
Even if you don't use any dangerous words, when the content of your message is sexist and demeaning such as "Oop, Katie's got the low cut dress on today! I know where I'm sitting!" that's where the offense is. Telling someone to knock that shit off doesn't make us insufferably bland PC thought police, it makes us civilized human beings.
"Oop, Katie's got the low cut dress on today! I know where I'm sitting!"
I can easily imagine a world in which such a remark is routinely interpreted as a compliment. I can also imagine a world in which it is routinely considered offensive. The problem is that we live in a world where you can't easily determine a priori what will be considered "offensive", due in large part to a social convention that says: the victim is always right. This attitude was exemplified by a black University of Wisconsin student who objected to the word "niggardly" (which means "stingy"): "I was in tears, shaking," she told the faculty. "It's not up to the rest of the class to decide whether my feelings are valid."*
Political reality makes it exceedingly difficult to draw a line in the sand and say: Your taking offense is what's unreasonable. Stop being such a baby, grow a thicker skin, and lighten up. Absent such a line, the list of "offensive" things grows without bound.
The "niggardly" example is cute, as is not being able to use "oriental" to describe John Cho's ancestry (he's Korean). I think that they serve as a distraction to the actual issue at hand, though. The actual issue at hand is that "lighten up" is such an obvious response, but it's usually not actually helpful.
The problem is that we live in a world where you can't easily determine a priori what will be considered "offensive"
That's only a problem if you're not secure enough to handle feedback on your behavior. The original article is all about how she wants to be able to address these very real slights so that people can know what to do (or what not to do) next time. What happens when she gives the specific feedback of telling people what not to do? They respond with the classic bullying tactic of telling her to grow a thick skin.
So, you make a mistake and offend somebody, fortunately that's not a capital offense. You get to continue living and learn not to say bullshit sexist things and learn how to be a real adult. Easy.
The short answer is, yes, there is a middle ground, but it won't stay "middle" for long: the set of "offensive" things expands with time. Many jokes and phrases that were part of the inoffensive "middle ground" twenty or thirty years ago are now considered offensive. To the politically correct, this is mere progress, but to those who oppose political correctness it instead represents cultural and linguistic decline.
I ran into a small example of this recently when discussing the movie "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle". Specifically, I wanted to refer to the ethnic background of Harold. I couldn't remember offhand exactly which country his ancestors came from, so I described him as "Asian". The problem is that, in the modern lexicon, Kumar (being of Indian extraction) is also "Asian". Thirty years ago I could have described Harold as "Oriental" without causing offense, but that changed some time in the mid- to late '80s. (I distinctly remember, some time around 1990, overhearing a high-school teacher instruct one of my Vietnamese classmates not to refer to herself as "Oriental". She was comfortable with the term; he was not. His side won, and we have lost some linguistic precision because of it.)
To cite another example, from 1555 until the 1960's the word "Negro" was a neutral term signifying a person of black sub-Saharan African descent, at which point it was replaced by "black" (or "Black"). This lasted until 1988, when (in a domestic context) "African-American" became the preferred term. Meanwhile, "colored person" was also once a neutral phrase (as evidenced by the NAACP), but now uttering it in the workplace (or in a joke) can get you fired. In contrast, the term "person of color", which is almost semantically identical to "colored person", is not only inoffensive but is the preferred term among the PC cognoscenti. It's an achievement that Orwell himself could hardly have surpassed.