I think I'm feeling offended

I often joke that I don't feel offended, but that I know when I should feel offended. It's a very mild warning that you can say anything at all to me without sending me into a hissy fit, but that I am not unaware of when someone may be violating my sensibilities.

People utter a lot of words they wish they hadn't, just as we make many physical actions we later regret. One of my dumbest was jumping over a snowbank and noticing mid-air that my intended landing spot was glare ice. A foot sprain that took years to recover from has, so far, reminded me to look before I leap. My disastrous verbal leaps I have conveniently forgotten, but not without instilling a real caution to think before speaking. Still, there are many people who "blurt" almost non-stop. I sometimes choose to ignore such people, as I think many of us do. They go on blurting, convinced that, because nobody engages them, that they've simply convinced everyone of their rightness. They accept silence as proof of their omniscience.

I really do want to know what others are thinking, and why. What's in their heads affects my life too. I've learned to hear what others say without an immediate judgment... to sort of assume I just didn't understand what they meant, or that they didn't say what they meant, and to then question or very gently challenge to discover what they really meant to communicate. Seldom is what I discover as bad as I might have assumed from the initial comments. Sometimes I discover that what sounded outrageous initially, and that I could have taken offense to, is actually sensible and perhaps even true. Maybe my attitude (which used to be quite the opposite) is why people feel able to confide in me now.

Words often have multiple meanings, and the meaning can vary from one region to another. Our specific backgrounds give special intensity to some words. "Trailer trash" is a good example. Having grown up living in a trailer (and not feeling like trash) I could very easily take offense at the phrase, and explode with fury in response. Not all people living in trailers qualify, in any sense, as trashy people. There's a good chance that the person using the phrase knows that too, but they were referring to those people who are "trashy" and who often live in trailers. Setting aside all of the subtleties that could be involved, my reaction to the phrase can be to seek clarification or to just "take offense".

It's possible that the speaker's choice of "trailer trash" may have been spot-on as a descriptor for who he was referring to, rather than a broad-brush condemnation of those who live in trailers. I might, in fact, even agree with the speaker's point, if I can avoid assuming he spoke with raw bigotry, and instead discover his real meaning.

My point is that, while we have a responsibility to choose our words carefully, we also each have a responsibility to listen without assuming the worst possible explanation of what we hear. Conversation must be a back-and-forth chat to develop real understanding of what we each are intending to communicate. Often, restraint with a mere raised eyebrow or a surprised look can bring clarification from the speaker.

Unfortunately, America has developed a subset of our population who have become sensitized to, and deliberately offended by much of the world outside of themselves... to words that offend them, to odors that offend them, to sights that offend them, and to ideas that offend them.

Even when the "offense" is not directed at them personally, these people take offense in the name of those who are not there, but they will often act offended when no offense was intended... even when nobody else can understand their being offended. It is seemingly enough for them that they alone are offended.

"Taking offense" is a judgment by someone, a decision made for any number of reasons. Some actually seek to be offended, as a means of trying to control an argument or conversation. Being offended makes them a victim placing the other person as the one in the wrong.

Far worse than the sensitivity and taking of personal offense is the attitude that we all share a responsibility to prevent those people from being offended. These folks have no hesitation in seeking organization or government force to prevent and eliminate that which offends them. They beseech officials with a peculiar display of proven methods... victimized helplessness combined with angry, self-righteous fervor. They have learned to expand their effectiveness by claiming that their fervor represents a large number of people who share their offense but who never seem to say so. They have become expert at presenting isolated incidents as indicative of a widespread problem... of presenting their "offense" as merely the tip of the iceberg.

There is at least one group that seems to have developed taking offense to a fine art. I don't mean to pick on this group, but they're the ones who I notice being offended frequently... the Anti-Defamation League, whose aim is to stop the defamation of the Jewish people. They are, in essence, professional "take-offense" folks. Given their aim, and the incentive to keep their organization going and growing, it's only natural that they take offense with great regularity and with furious indignation. I'm sure that their offense is sometimes well justified, but I'm equally sure that their incentive also causes them to be the defaming offender with little or no justification.

I am intellectually offended by those who take automatically quick offense at specific words. Here in Minnesota, one of the primo nanny states, I could walk down the street wearing a shirt with the word "guns" on it, and easily identify some take-offense folks. I would get some dirty looks, and maybe even a verbal attack, just for the word. Some would shield their children's eyes.

A few years ago, I helped with the formation of a local group of the Pink Pistols, a gay/lesbian/etc. gun group. The reaction of others was a riot. We heard "what-the-hell's" from baffled conservatives who were offended by the idea of "gayness" in any form, but admired that gays understood that guns could be used for self-defense. Liberals could not criticize our "gun nuts" because they had already decided that criticizing "gayness" in any way is offensive. I loved the effect of Pink Pistols... it removed the easy "take-offense" attitude from many people, and actually made people on both extremes rethink their attitudes. If I changed my shirt from "guns" to "gay guns" most of the reactions I encountered with just "guns" would disappear.

It's all too easy for us to "choose up sides" and assume that anyone who isn't on our side is an enemy, and to then take specific words and phrases as a gunshot in our direction that prompts an immediate volley of return fire. Those are tendencies we need to strenuously avoid.

I have at least my fair share of furious indignation lurking within me, as a few people would testify to, but I try hard not to unleash that fury until I'm sure it's justified. If we hope to live together peacefully, we each have a responsibility to try to understand each other, and that includes a responsibility to not take offense until we're positive that offense was intended.