Why am I to blame?

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Why is it that if I say something that offends someone else, yet I had no intentions of offending, I am the one held accountable for the other person being offended instead of the other person being held accountable for wearing their emotions on their sleeve and taking offense when I meant none?

its not socially acceptable to hurt others feelings. On purpose or on accident. Just like its not okay to hurt someone physically even if on accident. If you step on someones toes you still apologize, even though you werent intending to. Its the same with accidentally offending someone.

If it's not socially acceptable to hurt someone's feelings then why do people hurt my feelings without giving a crap how I feel? Like when I had two girls laughing and staring at me in Tescos even though I wasn't doing anything unusual, just doing my shopping like everyone else.

Actually I don't like posting things like that on Autism forums because a people on the spectrum immediately assume that just because I'm Aspie it means I am always unaware of my actions and doing something unusual to make people stare and point and laugh, in which I wasn't.

They may not be aware of your intentions. If you apologize and tell them you meant in no way to offend them and they are still upset then I think it's their problem. Unless you are simply not giving any thought to your action and being completely negligent.

The blame is always on the "other" person, it seems. The vast majority of people, at least that I've encountered, always pin the fault on someone else so that they do not have to deal with their negative feelings internally.
If it makes you feel any better, said person isn't likely to stay offended for very long--someone else should grasp their attention fairly soon.

You're cherry-picking though. That's just two girls. Think about how many people you encounter in public - hundreds, usually. I have to go downtown today and just on a rough estimate I'd say I am going to see about 300 people at least, counting everyone on the street, the bus, in the stores I enter, etc. If 2 of them are nasty to me, that's still less than 1%.

I wouldn't want to base my standards or perceptions on the very worst examples.

It's both your fault and theirs, if it really has to be seen as a fault. If it's a thing that would offend most people, they might feel that you should be the one to apologise, on a "should have known better" basis. "Doing wrong" is a relative concept, if most people say it's wrong, then that's as near as you can get to it being wrong, though in absolute terms it isn't, because it could always be argued that their rules were wrong.

Apologising isn't always an admission of guilt.....many people say sorry a lot to make the other person better, they don't really mean to convey any great remorse.

I agree that if you don't know a thing will hurt somebody, you can't logically be expected to admit blame. Though once you do know, if you did it again then you would be more culpable.

But I think it's better if people focussed less on blame and more on responsibility.

Yep, that sums it up nicely.

I remember really hurting the feelings of a young girl at school when I was around 9 years old. Her mother had died suddenly or been killed in a road accident. The teacher told the whole class what had happened and when the girl came back to school several of her friends consoled her with soothing words. At one point I found myself alone with her and tried to cheer her up by saying something positive. However what I said was incredibly dumb and ill thought out. I smiled and said that at least she wouldn't need to spend so much of her pocket money on Christmas presents for her parents now. (OH CRAP ! !!). She burst into tears and ran to her friends and related what I'd said. Nobody talked to me for days and several weeks later her older brother caught me in a public park and physically attacked me.

Looking back I can see that what I said was incredibly insensitive and hurtful, and it was my fault for coming out with such a dumb comment. I was trying to be positive at the time though and desperately sought something to say to help cheer her up, but it had the exact opposite effect. I still cringe when I think about what I said. My only excuse is that I'm an Aspie and I was only 9 years old at the time.

I think apologizing is also about showing your intentions. If you apologize your telling them that you didn't meant to hurt them. If you don't it's seen that you where trying to hurt them.

TallyMan, I have a story that's almost word for word except the teacher heard what I said and I got in trouble. They thought I was trying to be funny.

I have to disagree with some on this subject.

When people like us show weakness we are bullied.

People can stick their offense.

I'm not going to take any crap from a bully but why would that make it ok to be offensive?

What I mean is some people go out of their way to be offended.

I may not be good in social situations and people who get offended at the least thing are not worth the effort.

People like us miss social cues and some people might be offended by this.

We as a group suffer from being picked on due being seen as a soft target.

I am talking about common sense here not extreme cases.

I have a very difficult time apologizing when I don't feel guilty, and I very rarely feel guilty if I did not have mean intentions.

Saying "I didn't have any mean intentions with what I said," is not enough. The other person EXPECTS an apology. It doesn't seem to matter my intentions, because otherwise they would accept it when I tell them I didn't have any bad intentions. I am still being held 'accountable' (to get away from the words 'blame' and 'fault') for how they took my words.

Oh crap, that sucks!! I've had a few similar incidents. But hey, its the thought that counts. It's one thing to do something wrong, totally different thing to do something that you know is wrong.

I agree that if you feel that they are being unreasonable then just tell them so or don't interact with them anymore.