If you use the phrase, “I’m offended” or “That’s offensive”, I want nothing to do with you.
I’ve worked hard to create a life where I can say what I want. As I live this vision, I encounter increasingly few people with the temerity to tell me they’re offended by things I say.
Nobody in Pico-Robertson, for example, gives me a hard time to my face. They’re too afraid of my blog.
Still, the easily offended pop up in my world from time to time. To the best of my ability, I shut them down right quick. I ain’t going to be emotionally blackmailed into swallowing my views to accommodate your delicate sensibilities, even if you’re hot.
I’ve gotta say that women are at least five times more likely to take offense than men. Somehow much of the fairer sex think their exquisite feelings entitle them to shut down troublesome views.
In many contexts, I restrict myself. In shul, in school, and in the workplace, I put my desire to get along above my desire to speak my mind.
Other than that, I want to roam free the internet highway.
PS. I don’t ever recall saying “I’m offended” or “That offends me.”
I do take offense at things people say and do.
For example, I was at a party the other day. I was having a nice conversation with a young woman and I offered her my new business card, saying I was excited about it.
“Why would I want that?” she said. “I’ve got nowhere to put it.”
Now that was just rude. I’d just been describing my Alexander Technique practice and how jazzed I was to finally have a business card. And she shot me down.
I admit I took offense at her manner. I didn’t say anything. I just resolved to never extend myself to her again. She was hard and nasty, much like the boss she’d been complaining about.
I have the heart of a human being. If you prick me, do I not bleed? I take offense as regularly as anybody else, I just don’t think that my hurt feelings are ever an excuse to emotionally blackmail you to stop sharing your opinions on matters of politics, literature, and the like. If you advocate hurting innocent people based on sex, race or religion, then you are evil and I want you crushed.
If you are rude, if you poke unnecessary fun of people for their looks or for their clothes or for things not under their control, then you’re a jerk and I will sometimes speak up against you on that basis, but I’ll never claim that my negative emotional reaction to your words or deeds justifies shutting you down.
A friend of mine regularly disturbs the waiting room of my therapy center with his loud phone calls. So after the second time it happened with me there, I Facebooked him and told him to take it outside, to his great offense.
I don’t want people to tolerate bad behavior, but please don’t argue from the standpoint of your hurt feelings, or, if you must speak from this place, then say, “It hurts me when you…”
Don’t resort to the emotional blackmail of taking offense.
Michael Covarrubias: So, apparently, Luke, you believe there’s an important difference between “I’m offended” and “I took offense.”
Otherwise, why did you admit the latter in your post?
Luke: Feelings are fine. Feel everything you want, including offended. Just don’t use “feeling offended” as the basis for asking people to change their behavior and speech. If you must and if you are close to the person, then feel free to argue “I feel hurt when you do X, Y, Z.”
Joey Kurtzman: I don’t think we can feel “offended,” I don’t see it as an emotion. Anger is an emotion; “offense” is the assumption that other people should feel ashamed because I’ve managed to make myself angry. “I’m offended” is an intrinsically comical statement, because it’s presumptuous to the point of absurdity.
Michael Covarrubias: i tend to agree, Joey. i believe we can put too much faith in some of our immediate emotional reactions, which then influence beliefs. or at least influence which arguments we’re confident we can make effectively.
often, as you say, Luke, th…at expression is an attempt to stanch someone else’s expression. but expressing a reaction honestly is perfectly ok. i have no problem with you saying that you were hurt by the woman being dismissive of your new cards and the new direction they symbolize for you. that’s an honest expression.
when you say you were offended by it, i then of course wonder about what lines you draw in the challenges, to your expressions, that make you, in turn, dismiss others. i wonder what i might not be able to say when trying to sustain a conversation with you. how blunt can i be? how much can i challenge?
the statement “i’m offended” is less important to me than the way it’s used.
if, as a strategy for inviting and eliciting conversation, someone claims to be offended, i have no problem with it. in fact i relish the opportunity to understand that person more, because it seems that’s what they’re trying to do as well. the fact that they’re “offended” doesn’t matter to me. — i don’t pity them, judge them, or respect them any differently for that reaction.
if someone shuts down and stops listening to a conversation or processing an argument, that’s what i have no use for. i’ll simply be bored by their silent obstinacy. all i will judge is how interesting to me they promise to be.
