The comedian, Jimmy Carr, said once that he thinks offense is taken, not given. If you’re not British watch this to familiarise yourself. I was thinking this evening about what offends me and why, and I reached an impasse; nothing does. Nothing causes me offense. I can literally think of nothing you could say to me that would upset me. I am essentially, untouchable. Go after my mother, my intelligence, my looks (good luck finding an angle on the last two) and it rolls off me like drool off a window licker’s tongue.
The whole concept confuses me. Rude, hurtful or ‘offensive’ behaviour essentially means to cause someone psychological harm through your actions and/or language. Take ‘nigger’ as the quotidian example of an offensive term. It’s offensive because at its offensive origin, the implication is that the target of the term is somehow inferior to the user of the term. By sheer association of the word to the concept, the word has become just as unpalatable; as is the case with most offensive terms. We find people who think that way to be offensive, we therefore find the associative word offensive, even if the user doesn’t necessarily believe in the concept. Nigger, Kike, Spastic, Wog, Chink, Fag and I think I already used Window Licker. Similarly, jokes about sensitive subjects like the Holocaust or Gay marriage, leads people to assume that the joke-teller is anti-Semitic or homophobic. This is simply not the case, and this is where my confusion is seated. Blacks (or anyone else who takes offense) aren’t offended by the word, ‘nigger’, but by the underlying concept of hatred. They are hurt by the viciousness of the opinion. If I had to sum up offense in three words it would be ‘hatred of haters.’
Having said all of the above, I suppose it would be prudent to take notice of the fact that I’m not a member of any real minority; I’m white, I’m middle class, I have a job, a car, and am in full control of all my mental faculties (although, I fear this article is one day going to be used as evidence to contest that). I don’t really know what it means to be on the receiving end of such ignorance-induced hatred. You could argue that I'm therefore not qualified to discuss such matters. Or, alternatively, you could claim that my lack of bais gives me the perfect non-partisan credentials. Let's go with the latter, shall we?
I think the hurdle to overcome here is to focus on the fault with the offenders, not the damage done to yourself. The problem lies with the person giving the offense. What does it matter to me if there are people so obtuse that they still have a staunch belief in xenophobia, racism or sexism? It’s like the deeply religious taking offense what they consider to be blasphemy. I curse and routinely point out the absurdity of religion in general. Come the apocalypse, and I’ve made some terrible mistake and am now abandoning all hope as I enter the seventh circle of hell; what difference does my blasphemy make to the Christians stood around chatting the shit with Saint Peter. Right now, my opinion means precisely dick to those Christians, despite all the time they spent being offended by them. We need to stop worrying about the imaginary damage caused by offensive words, but by the actual damage caused by dangerous beliefs.
Perhaps the vantage point of absolute nonchalance with regards to offense affords me the opportunity to point out the ridiculousness of it all to those who still take offense. I think this is why I like to cause offense; I don’t like needlessly upsetting people, but I do like to highlight the absolute absurdity of the concept. There’s a girl at work who’s teaching me sign-language, and when she started I though it was hysterical to ask her ‘how do you say that in deaf?’, or to refer to deaf people as ‘deafs’. Within a couple of months, other people at work are now using the same terms. The state of affairs which I have quite brilliantly, albeit unwittingly, brought about is to disassociate the term from the concept. Calling deaf people ‘deafs’ has become the norm. It’s not British Sign Language anymore, the language that deafs speak is called ‘deaf’; i.e. ‘how do you say “hello” in deaf?’ To an outsider I’m sure it would seem incredibly offensive, but what the hell do they know? They’ve not read this article, they’ve not met me, and they’re probably so ignorant that they don’t even know that it’s OK to be as offensive as you like so long as you make an overly wordy argument, justifying why it’s not just OK, but in fact right for you to be as rude as possible.
