This post is part of the ongoing Alphabet Series. Listen along to my recording on YouTube and/or read the article below ♥♀

It seems like these days
No matter what ya say
Someone’s losin’ their ever lovin’ mind
It’s like they’re lookin’ for a reason
To have their fragile feelings
Hurt every single time

~ John Rich, from his dumb song “I’m Offended”.

No offense John Rich, but your song is kinda dumb and a bit reductionist. The first few lines, which I included here, have a ring of truth to them, probably by accident, but I don’t believe that this is a recent phenomenon – and I’ll get into that later. I didn’t include the rest of the song, but I’ll just say that I think Johnny-boy missed something crucial. It is entirely possible that he doesn’t know what ‘offended’ means – I mean, it’s country music, which notoriously caters to simple thinkers and religious hypocrites, and he is a male, which means he’ll never be censored, even if he is truly offensive (which he is – don’t watch the video for this song). And besides, his man-solution is to pour beer on the entire problem, so how seriously can you take this song anyway? In my experience, alcohol makes everything worse, especially in combination with an emotional male.

So what does ‘offensive’ actually mean and is there some kind of objective universal standard for determining whether you should be offended or whether you are just oversensitive?

As a basic definition, to be offensive means to inspire feelings of extreme anger, insult or disrespect in another person or group of people. The offensive content could be as casual as a comment or behaviour, or as official as an article or book, a piece of art, or a policy. Note that offending a single person in a private setting and offending people, usually strangers, publicly are a little bit different, even if the word used is the same, and I’ll get into both of them later. For both situations, however, I’ll say here that offensive status is subjective – feelings are subjective, by definition, as we all know. But for general public offense, it is the public majority that defines that which is offensive. Note that even if the majority believes something is true or moral, doesn’t make it so. So a person who offends the general public may in fact be correct in what they say, highly moral, and contributes more to the greater good. The majority may rule, but it doesn’t necessarily make them good people or correct in what they believe and do.

So let’s break this down into giving offense and taking offense.

Giving Offense

Intentional Provocation. There are those in this world who enjoy riling people up by saying inflammatory things. These are mostly men and say, the occasional NPD woman – those who need to antagonize in order to feel a sense of power and control over others. Males are generally untouchable when they say things to deliberately hurt people, and interestingly and unsurprisingly, they also comprise the vast majority of people who tend to comment on and complain about people being offended. Men often comment on their victims using terms like ‘oversensitive’ or having ‘fragile feelings’, and this is typical of people who are untouched by oppression and who lack empathy and insight. Personally, I don’t think oppressors and perpetrators of crime should be defining the offensive acts and actual crimes they commit. For example, rapists shouldn’t be defining what rape is and is not, and males should not be dictating how females react to offensive and antagonistic male comments and behaviour.

Unintentional Offensiveness. Every single one of us offends at least one person some time in our lives without meaning to. That seems to be the nature of complex human interaction, and it is usually due to either misunderstanding, ignorance, or just a difference of opinions for the average offended reaction. And of course, we all know actual oversensitive people – yes, that does exist – so it is always possible to say something innocuous and have it offend someone who is reacting based on a personal trauma or mental health issues.

The important thing here is to deal with the offense you’ve given in an appropriate way. If you actually said something inflammatory out of ignorance, then the best policy is to apologize and learn from it. But much of the time, the unintentional offense-giving is not worth that much attention, especially if you’re a woman. Like I said earlier, people can get offended at just about anything, so unless you either want to shut up completely or to spend your entire life apologizing for everything you say and do, it’s best just to put on a brave face and hold your ground. The best policy is to be aware of whom you’re speaking to, and only speak about things you know about. This tends to be a big problem for men, as they tend to bullshit and make things up in order to cover up their insecurity, gain control over situations, and garner admiration from other people. Hint to all men: you have two ears, but only one mouth. You seldom use the former and overuse the latter. Please fix.

A note on offense-giving. Sometimes, it is not the content, but the speaker that makes the material offensive, and this is shown most clearly in reactions to male and female speech. A male and female can say the same thing, and only the female will inspire offense. Female speech will provoke a greater and more violent reaction than will male speech. A female will experience more serious consequences for less provocative speech than will a male. If you cross even slightly provocative speech with female status, not only will people be offended, but threats and other violence can ensue. We see this all the time with women who call themselves feminists. Feminists are universally hated, and are always considered ‘offensive’ by the majority of the population, although ‘offensive’ is the very least of what they are called and what is done to them.

Taking Offense

The Legit. Yes, offense is real, but as I said, there is no objective standard. It makes it difficult to know whether your feelings are legitimate, and of course, it is therefore easier to be manipulated by the more powerful if you choose to let people know your feelings. If you’re offended by a person you know, this is little easier because you should have some defined parameters of mutual respect within your relationship. It might, however, be difficult to address your feelings with the person, especially if your relationship involves a power imbalance. If you are offended by public material, there is not much you can do about it, especially if you are in the minority. For example, the majority of people may accept femininity and the assorted practices women adhere to religiously, but you, as a gynocentrist find femininity rituals offensive because they force women into a position of subservience and humiliation. Even if you are 100% correct in feeling offended, you are in the minority. Voicing your opinion will bring a rain a heterosexual shit down on you, mostly from women who enjoy their slavery, sadly. So what can you do? Well, you have a choice. You, of course, can do nothing – just accept that which you cannot change and keep doing what you’re doing. Or, you can voice your opinion without giving into the majority. Write articles, make videos or podcasts. Ignore those who will try to take you down and provide logical arguments for why the material is offensive. You may actually help a few people, even if you can’t take the offensive practices down.

The Woke. I hate this word with a passion, but it is what it is… I’m talking about politically and socially motivated people who feel a need to react to everything. Sometimes there is a kernel of reality in their feelings and reactions, but then they take things too far. I’m talking about people who, one day, for whatever reason, start to see reality, but then they start to colour everything with their new political viewpoint. They muster up offense, tears and anger for absolutely everything, and start attributing causes and motivations for these things, where often none, or something completely different, exist. They may have started with good intentions, but they end up getting caught up in looking good instead of doing good. Unfortunately, a lot of these types have set their sights on feminists in recent days and have done a lot of damage in erasing feminist material on the internet.

The Oversensitive. Unfortunately, there are truly fragile people out there – people who suffer from a mental illness, or who have been deeply traumatized in life. But also unfortunately, these people often like to hang out in public forums where they are exposed to all the garbage the internet has to offer. Now, men will tell them that they should get the hell off the internet if they can’t handle the turds that men drop. While I don’t agree with this and think it is disgusting that men dictate the environment of the net, I do question the desire of a fragile person to put themselves deliberately in places where they know damn well they will be hurt or ‘triggered’. Anyhow, legitimately fragile people tend to be offended regularly, and when they choose to enter feminist circles, they can do a lot of damage when they lose control. I wrote a little about this in a post on Oppression Olympians.

The Cognitively Dissonant. These are the folks who can’t handle the truth, and I myself tend to fall prey to them as I am an unrepentant truth-teller. They tend to claim offensiveness when really, they are just having a hard time dealing with the fact that their beliefs and actions don’t match or they feel guilty about something they do. Note that there is a difference between telling an unnecessary truth in order to harm someone (for example, something men do to women all the time to take them down a notch), and telling a truth because it is really important for the dissection of faulty thinking, lies, and misleading information. A lot of gynocentrists and even liberal feminists fall victim to accusations of disrespect and offensiveness when they dare to question a patriarchal practice, when really, all they are doing is pointing out a truth that makes people uncomfortable.

Are We More Fragile?

I’m going to say yes and no here. I think it is quite possible that people may have been more easily offended in the past. I can’t speak for cultures outside the West, but it seems that there were so many more social rules in the past than there are now, and you could cause offense and destroy your social standing by simply wearing the wrong outfit or addressing a person in the wrong way. But of course, these days, we are all very socially aware, and it is equally possible to be destroyed by very simple words or actions. So while standards of acceptable behaviour have changed, the ‘fragility’ of our feelings probably hasn’t.

But of course, it seems we are more fragile these days, which is why so many people, especially men, comment on it. Like with many social phenomena, loneliness being one that I’ve commented on before, I think media and social media have helped to highlight both the phenomena and the things that we are supposed to care about. And of course, with media, and social media especially, what we hear about is very sensational and misinformed. Things get blown out of proportion and people get emotional because they are told that they should in order to be a good citizen or on the right side of history or something like that.

The take-home message here is that offense-giving and offense-taking are real things, and it is a normal result of complex human relationships and communication, and sometimes, power imbalances. It’s probably a good idea to sleep on something that offends you before you decide to react to it. And finally, it is also a really good idea to question why you are offended by something. Is it an issue you have that is triggered or is it a legitimate social or political issue that requires you to speak out?

♀️ If you care to support Story Ending Never, we are appreciative. ⚢