Help me decode what "you were signposting" means?

[isthissignposting]

I said as part of general chat about traditions and rights of individuals:

"I don't think rights and respect of individuals should be at the expense of other individuals, or large groups of society. I agree that society evolves and that greater tolerance is a good thing. But teaching tolerance to children should not involve exposing them to adult ideas which are beyond their understanding."

They said:

"Your views were pretty strongly signposted. I really don't think further discussion would be positive."

I am not certain what they meant by "signposted"

Also would you say that what i said was offensive?

without seeing further context to the preceding conversation that sparked your comment, i can't say if what you said was offensive.

edited to add: and i don't think they took offence, they just decided discussing it with you further would serve no purpose.

However, by 'signposted' they mean your views are being made obvious by what you said.

It means that what you've said has given them a clear enough idea of your views, and the direction you'd take in the discussion (in the way a signpost points the direction to travel in) for them to have concluded there would be no point talking, as no consensus would be achieved.

Your views were pretty strongly signposted
Your views were bloody obvious.
How can you come out with that sociological jargon though and not know what that response meant? Do you only speak sociology?

It just means your views are clear for everybody to "see", i dont actually know the context but that is what they meant.

It means your views on the subject are obvious so there's no point in continuing the conversation.

There were clues

Don't forget that if someone 'takes' offence, thats their action, not yours and they are responsible for their own actions.

You know perfectly well what they mean. You just don't agree with them.
Perhaps you are being a bit ignorant?

To me that’d mean your views were clearly stated. Why on earth can’t people use plain English instead of these newly invented expressions? Are they supposed to sound clever/more sophisticated, or what?

Same as ‘use your words’ which I’ve recently seen elsewhere, when they meant ‘speak plainly’.

what i said was polite absent minded waffle.

what meaning do you read into it?

Could you please speak clearly here and explain what views you think were being expressed and who didn't agree with what, and which bit was ignorant?

I assume this is about the new guidance for schools recently out about biological sex and trans. I think they’re just saying they know what your point of view is and are politely trying to shut down further debate with you.

No it wasn't but they may have thought that is what i was talking about.

What does the new guidance say?

Billocks. You dont write what you put in the OP as "polite absent-minded waffle". And you are being very faux-naive now when you claim that both the person you were dealing with and us now are unclear.

To me this means the following:

”you are using polite and neutral language but we know what you really mean and don’t want to hear anymore about this in case it escalates”

I think the other person was offended / thought you were being unreasonable and decided to cut the conversation dead before your (perceived) prejudice became overt.

No, I can assure you it was absentminded waffle.

@seven201 I just googled and read the Guardian article about the new guidelines. Yes, that is probably what they were thinking about. Thanks.

Oh this is ’no debate’ in action isn’t it? Obviously I don’t know the context, but I’d assume you’ve somehow strayed from the list of approved opinions that all good, progressive people are supposed to hold, so you’re now in the far-right/nazi/bigot box.

I hadn't heard of "no debate" but yes it sounds like that.

I am quite sad actually as this is someone I used to know really well. We have grown apart.

@isthissignpostingyou may find googling ‘purity spiral’ quite illuminating too.

Yes, I googled, very illuminating, thank you.

I agree that they were trying to say that your views were clear and possibly that your views are already publicly known by everyone anyway, so you don’t need to rant on about them again.

But I think they were trying to use a catchy big word in a sentence to sound clever and it didn’t really work, so they sound a bit silly. They would have been better off just saying what they meant.

@littleburn has summed it up perfectly. If the conversation had continued, you probably would have ended up being called a bigot. It's a sign of supposedly tolerant people being intolerant of views other than their own. If they don't want to discuss a topic, fair enough, no one is compelled to, but the way they phrased it shows their disdain for (their perception of) your views.

I haven't seen/heard the word used in that way before. Signposting is usually used to mean pointing people in the right direction to get help/what they want or need. In this case I think they mean your views are clear. They don't want to continue the conversation, because you think differenrly to them.

I can’t imagine why anyone would think you’d struggle to have a reasonable discussion…