The latest in a category I’m calling: “something on the internet is WRONG!”
(I self consciously suppressed writing about these kinds things for a while because I thought, and still sometimes think, that they may be relatively unimportant. (Relative to working, sleeping, saving lives, making money . . . ) Also, when I first heard the description “angry behind a keyboard,” it was used as a pejorative and it did bring up the image of a ridiculous looking person. But, like my close and patient friends already know, these are things that I will really dwell on. I’m also increasingly considering content created for the internet to be as fully worth critiquing or commenting on as non-online content. Finally, I like talking and I’m compelled to share things that I stress out about and when I’ve depleted the receptive ears around me, I start shouting into the internet.)
SMBC comics just about always strike me as witty, insightful, informative, and funny. This one, however, me unsettled. After closing my laptop lid and tossing around in bed for a while, I’m back up to write why I thought it was off mark.
One of the points is that “offensive” is meaningless; it’s an entirely subjective judgment; there is no way to verify whether something is objectively offensive or not; nothing is demonstrably offensive. We should say that we are offended, not that something is offensive.
However, something can offend because it is racist or sexist or cruel. Words like these are meaningful and verifiable. We can define racism–a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race (Merriam-Webster)–and then confirm or deny that a statement like “Black people are mentally slower than white people” demonstrates racism. (A more fruitful distinction to remember in conversation, I think, is between “that’s racist’ and “you’re a racist.” Jay Smooth has a great videoblog about this.)
Also, I think you can think of offensiveness is a cultural construct informed by what offends many individual people in a society. Offensive can describe when something violates a social norm within a culture enough so that people of that culture are offended by it. We can say: in Japanese culture, it is offensive for a subordinate to maintain eye contact with a superior at work and have it hold as a general truth without it needing to be true in the opinions of all Japanese people.
I get that it’s sometimes not productive to take something that offends you and say that it offends everyone ever. But, if you say “that’s offensive because it’s racist,” even a listener who is a racist and disagrees with the idea that racist speech or actions is wrong understands that you have expressed a general truth about a social norm.
Hello, nice article and well phrased.
You however did not disagree with what Zach Weiner said. “It’s offensive” may be defined within the confines of a majority, but still has no objective basis, especially since when you define majority you do it within temporal and social context.
I will use your racism example to explain my point. Let’s take the phrase “Negro bitches are dumb and ugly”. While most people in the current western world will be offended to some degree upon hearing this phrase uttered, I doubt that it will be easy to find two persons who will agree upon what part of it is offensive.
Hi Seeker. Thank you for your reply and apologies for continuing the conversation so much later. (I recently moved and lost track of a lot of things on the way.)
I think you’re absolutely right. I don’t have objective knowledge about what is offensive or not. If I did, I would do much more than write a blog post. At least write them on stone tablets or something like that. I agree also that majority opinion is hard to pin down. It’s composed of the opinions of many individuals and their instances of offense–none of which are the same event and all of which are context dependent. Not to mention we have yet to come up with a way to poll everyone about the offensiveness of everything all the time. Do you think terms like racist or sexist are more precise or verifiable? Do you think anything universally offends? Near universally? Are there things that get especially mixed approval? (I think “gay” as an adjective meaning somehow bad in American English gets mixed responses.)
The danger I see from holding a narrow definition of offensive is dismissing others when they express that they are offended and seem to also, rightfully or wrongfully, broaden their experience to others by saying “that’s offensive.” If it can be inferred that what they mean is “that’s sexist and I’m offended” or even “that’s sexist and I’m offended and I think many others would be offended,” then the conversation can and should continue. What I would like to guard against is the response “offensiveness is meaningless. I won’t apologize.” So, while the word “offensive” is imprecise, I wouldn’t like for it’s use to condone people being willfully insensitive (or assholes) on account of a badly paraphrased sentiment or the general poverty of language. This is the point I hoped to make.
Hello Amyziz, thank you for your reply.
“Racist” and “sexist” are indeed more verifiable and tangible. Racist is someone who considers another as inferior only on the basis of their race, sexist is someone who considers someone inferior only on the basis of their sex. Please be aware that I am talking about no other basis than that. Saying for example that women are in general physically weaker when it comes to muscular strength than men is something that does have a statistical basis. Saying that men are dumber than women is however sexist.
I also however understand the point you are trying to make. I’ll be rather stringent on choice of word however saying that “offensive” is not the same as “harmful”. E.g. saying to someone “you’re ugly” may offend the person on the receiving end and refusing to apologise does make you a dick but doesn’t make you harmful. Saying something like “Jews are liars” offends Jews but can also be harmful because it legitimizes to some degree treating that particular ethnic group as inferior.
The reason I’m engaging you in this discussion is that I also fear political correctness past a certain degree. People should be protected from harm, not from being exposed to something different just because “it offends them”. Otherwise some extremist groups will be justified to marginalise homosexuals, unmarried mothers et al. simply because their way of life “offends them”.
Agreed. Especially on the last point. I think “you’re ugly” does inflict harm on an individual scale. We do actually try to curb these individual unkind acts in some areas of society, at least in schools when it takes the form of bullying. Your last example of being a homosexual or an unmarried mother, I think, is a better one for demonstrating offensive but harmless behavior/attributes.