3. Some of your coworkers may be among that group who finds it offensive or jarring. Maybe this is irrational, but we all are. I bet there's a sequence of ASCII bytes (say, art of certain infamous images from the early internet) that you wouldn't like to stumble across either.
And that’s what drives this ever increasing PC culture strangulating the world: fear.
You have to fear that everyone will react like the most sensitive that exist (as incredible rare as they are). And, you have to fear those who are offended for others even more so, since those are the only ones you’ll have a nonzero chance of interacting with.
I don't like to look at it as fear, but I think fear is what explains a lot of the backlash toward PC culture (people don't like to be afraid; it's common to lash out at things that cause fear).
I avoid offending people not because I'm afraid of being yelled at or cancelled; I do it because I know what it feels like to be offended, and I don't enjoy it, so I don't want to make someone else feel that way.
Certainly I don't always succeed; sometimes I accidentally say something offensive, but we're all human and don't do what we intend all the time. And sometimes I do find it to be a chore, as the set of offensive things changes frequently enough, and it's hard to keep up, or even always agree why something is offensive.
People who get offended on behalf of others are incredibly annoying. I can understand and respect someone calmly saying to me, "hey, you really shouldn't say $WORD because that's really rude and offensive toward people who are a part of $SOME_GROUP", but far too many people get actively angry and try to shame you, often publicly, if you say something bad. And then those same people claim that they would prefer to live in a world where people don't offend each other... while reacting to offensive words in ways that aren't likely to improve things.
Nah, it’s not fear, it’s indignation.
You can see it on full display in the comments here. It’s not, “we shouldn’t have to live in fear of saying the wrong thing.” It’s, “how DARE they try to dictate what I can say.”
It’s obvious when people get so upset over an idea as simple as “don’t curse in your work.” Not even “don’t curse out loud, just “don’t put it in your code.” It’s the easiest thing in the world to do. It’s not like misgendering someone who presents ambiguously. If you’re about to type “fuck” into your editor, don’t. If that’s where you make your stand, it’s not fear.
I think it's, clearly, both. The fear is what prevents people from putting ascii sequences in their code, even though they want to (as this comment section shows).
Fear might be what keeps them from swearing in their comments at work, but it’s not what drives them to come here and declare that writing “fuck” in their work code is actually very important.
You call it fear, I call it respect. I know that some of my coworkers may not appreciate seeing that kind of language, so I don't expose them to it. Simple as that.