Offensiveness Heuristics for Liberals and Conservatives

June 9, 2019

The liberal approach to offensiveness is that if something is perceived as offensive, then it is offensive. So white people might not understand why, upon meeting a brown person, asking “where are you from” feels like a “microagression” to those on the receiving end. And men might not understand why them jumping into a conversation to explain something might be perceived as offensive rather than helpful. And while a more conservative mindset defends the status quo, and says, “this guy clearly meant no harm; therefore he did no harm,” the liberal mindset hears the complaint from the recipient of the action that they felt dehumanized or insulted, and takes their word for it: if it was perceived it as offensive, then it was offensive.

To be honest, the liberal position here almost has to be right. Offense is a feeling. Telling someone “I know you think you felt offended by that, but actually you’re wrong because that wasn’t offensive” would be like telling someone “I know you think you’re happy, but you’re not really” or “I know you think you’re angry, but you’re actually not” or “I know you think you love her, but you’re wrong about that.” It doesn’t make sense. What is being happy other than feeling happy? What is loving other than feeling love? These are emotions; if you feel angry then you are angry because that’s what “angry” is: a feeling. And if what that person did made you feel offended, then you were offended.

Which, by definition, means that the act was offensive, because what does “offensive” mean if not “causing offense?” Just like if something made you feel bored, then it was “boring” and if something made you interested or entertained then it was “interesting” or “entertaining.” People can disagree about whether a movie was boring, but neither one of them is wrong. When Jack says “it was boring” and Jill says “it was not boring,” what they really mean here is “it was boring to me” (i.e., it bored me, it made me feel bored) and “it was not boring to me,” respectively. The same with offense. Jack says “it was not offensive,” meaning “it was not offensive to me,” and Jill says “it was offensive,” meaning “it offended me; it made me feel offended.” Jack can say a lot of things here, but one thing he is not qualified to say is that Jill is wrong about this. Not because he’s a guy and guys don’t know about oppression, but because he’s not Jill. If Jill says she felt offense, then she would know, she was there, inside her head, feeling it. Jack may have been close by, may have been standing right next to her, but he doesn’t know whether or not she was offended because he was not inside her mind feeling it.

Note that that’s different than saying her feeling is justified. Whether or not it is justified to feel offense in response to an unintended “microaggression” like holding your hand without asking in a movie theater or accidentally glancing down at your cleavage is a different question, and answering that question for any particular situation is outside the scope of this essay. Other feelings can also be unjustified; you may be happy about your situation only because you haven’t yet realized the full implications of it. You might be unjustifiably bored (or entertained) by a certain activity which no one else finds boring (or entertaining) but you’re still not wrong when you say “parties are boring” or “quilting is exciting” because if you felt bored by something, then it was boring you, and if you were excited by it then it was exciting you. The statements are equivalent. If someone else’s action offended you, then it was offensive to you.

We still haven’t fully resolved this yet: there are two questions remaining for us to address. The first question is whether or not “offensive to you” and “offensive” are equivalent, or whether calling something “offensive” (or “exciting” or “boring”) without appending the “to me” or “to you” part implies a more general level of truth. That is, if a review says a certain movie is “boring,” do we interpret that only as an expression of an individual opinion (it was boring to the reviewer, but it might not be boring to other people) — let’s call this Heuristic 1 — or do we interpret it as a more general statement of fact (it is a characteristic of the movie that it is boring; we can expect that most people will be bored by it) — we’ll call this Heuristic 2? This may not seem like an important question, but this is really what we need to know about “offensive” behavior: if someone on the internet claims that “manspreading” is offensive, then how do we interpret this statement? Heuristic 1 says: this person was offended by it but other people might not be; or Heuristic 2 says: it is a characteristic of the behavior that it generally causes people to feel offended?

This is an important question, because when a liberal complains about being slighted, we have to know how to understand the complaint. For example, “I can’t believe he sent me, the only female in the room, to go get the coffee… what, the men aren’t able to get their own? Or aren’t allowed to serve others if there is a female present?” This person is clearly offended. Is it not then fair to say that the behavior — asking her to get coffee — was offensive? If we interpret according to Heuristic 1, then yes, that’s what offensive means: it was offensive to someone (in this case, to her). If we interpret according to Heuristic 2, then calling the behavior “offensive” may seem like a leap.

What if we learned that she is the most junior employee, and the most junior employee is always responsible for getting the coffee, regardless of their gender, which means 9 times out of 10 it is a man going for coffee, since apparently there are very few female employees at this company (an inference based on the fact that she was the only one in the room). And, by the way, those other 9 guys might not have liked going for coffee, but they were never “offended” by it, because they did not connect it to their gender. In this case, we might say that the woman’s feeling of offense was unjustified — but that doesn’t mean she didn’t feel it. Even with these additional facts, Heuristic 1 would feel comfortable using the word “offensive” to describe the coffee request — despite that no offense was intended, despite that this particular company’s coffee expectations are not sexist, despite that she misinterpreted the situation — none of that matters because all “offensive” means is “she felt offended.” And she did. Therefore, if it caused offense, it was offensive.

Heuristic 2, on the other hand, would likely say the behavior was not offensive, because it uses “offensive” to mean causing offense more generally, can be reasonably expected to cause offense, or has as an intrinsic characteristic of the act that people will tend to be offended by it. Again, it’s the difference between “the movie is boring” meaning simply “it bored the single individual making the statement and possibly no one else” versus “there is something about this movie that has a tendency to make people bored and it will probably affect most of the rest of the viewers the same way.”

Conservatives tend to use Heuristic 2 when it comes to evaluating offensiveness. They have a hard time understanding how a behavior that has existed for centuries, like going in for a kiss without asking first, could possibly be offensive if no one noticed it was offensive until five years ago. It can’t possibly be true that this behavior has an intrinsically offensive character, or is likely to offend most other people, because it never has done so before. Why, they say to liberals, are you taking this previously unoffensive behavior and making it offensive? All of this reasoning relies on Heuristic 2: it was not an act that would generally offend people before, but if liberals keep complaining about it they will convince others to be offended by it, and then it will be offensive, even by Heuristic 2 standards, because if everyone starts getting offended by it, then it will have become a thing that can generally be expected to offend people. Thus, liberals are taking something that was not offensive and making it off-limits, making it offensive. That is why conservatives get so annoyed at the liberal PC police: saying “policeman” was never offensive before; why are you trying to make it so that it is?

Liberals tend to accept Heuristic 1: she said she was offended; therefore what he did was offensive; therefore he shouldn’t do that. Boiled down to its core, it’s essentially about respect, and being nice to others: don’t do things to people that make them feel bad. If this behavior can make people feel “othered” or devalued or excluded or even dehumanized, then of course we shouldn’t do it. If it can — even only sometimes, for only a few people — make people feel disrespected or not listened to or brushed aside or insulted or oppressed — then of course we should stop doing it; common decency demands it. It is just simply a plea for kindness — it is only “heartless” conservatives that see it as policing or as an insult or as oppression of their way of life.

And, ah, there’s the rub. We found it. Liberals care a lot about making everyone feel included and loved and valued and respected, and never stepping on anyone’s toes. Native Americans don’t like that there’s a popular sports team called the “redskins” because they find the name insulting? Well, we should listen to them. Black people say that they feel like the police are focused on protecting others from them instead of on protecting them? We should do something about that. Women say that after they get sexually assaulted they feel revictimized by the implications that it was somehow their own fault? We should believe them. But… do liberals respect the lived experiences of rural/conservative/heterosexual/white/males?

Because here’s the thing: part of the conservative reaction (or overreaction) to liberals’ basic requests for kindness and inoffensive language is simply their own feeling of being insulted by the accusations and implications that they hear in these requests. When you tell someone “that’s sexist” or “that’s racist” or “that’s a microaggression” or “that’s an example of privilege” or “that’s offensive,” what they hear is “you’re a sexist” or “you’re a racist” or “why are you being so aggressive toward an innocent party” or “yeah well you had it easy, you never had to struggle like I did” or “what you did was an act that can be generally expected to cause offense (Heuristic 2) and yet you did it anyway; you offend me as a person; you are on the wrong side of history and morality; you are playing for Team Evil; you are the enemy; you are a bad person.”

And hey, liberal do-gooder, maybe that’s not what you meant! Maybe when you mentioned “privilege” you weren’t trying to say “you’ve never had to struggle in life”; maybe all you were trying to say was “there are certain things that you haven’t had to think about or deal with, and not being forced to deal with them has been a good thing — or has been the lack of a bad thing — in your life, and you might never have noticed; you might not be aware of this blessing in your life, by virtue precisely of never having had to think about it.” Maybe, dear liberal, you didn’t mean to tell that guy “you’ve had an easy life” or “you could never understand” or “you’re a bad person;” maybe you just meant to say “watch out for that from now on, because sometimes saying that or doing that can hurt people, even if you didn’t mean to.” Maybe you were trying to be nice to the offended, not realizing you might be insulting the offender.

But guess what? You don’t get to decide how the “offender” feels about your statement. When you say their “mansplaining” is oppression — when they were just trying to be a part of the conversation — or when you say their asking where you’re from is an “aggression” — when they were just trying to make small talk — and they feel offended by your suggestion that they did anything wrong… yep, I said it. They feel offended. And therefore, by your own definition, by Heuristic 1, what you said (telling them they did something wrong) was offensive. Maybe their feeling is unjustified, maybe they shouldn’t be offended by that, maybe they should try to improve their behavior instead of feeling accused and getting defensive. But you can’t control how they are feeling, and if they feel hurt by what you said, then what you said was hurtful. Heuristic 1. What the liberal did was wrong, by the liberal’s own logic.

Which brings us to the second question: does it matter? If we agree that something is “offensive,” how much should we care? Our first question, above, was how to interpret a statement like “that is offensive.” Is it an individual opinion or a general truth? If we conclude that it is a general truth (Heuristic 2), then I think, yes, it clearly matters. Any behavior that is generally perceived as offensive by most people in the culture (like, let’s say, calling people ugly) should probably be avoided; I think all sides can agree on this. But if we have settled on Heuristic 1, that all it means to say something is “offensive” is that at least one person was offended, then… do we care? The liberal answer would typically be: “Yes! (with an exclamation point) Kindness! Don’t hurt people! Don’t do things that make people feel hurt!” But even putting aside 4-D situations (“damned if you do, damned if you don’t”) where somebody’s going to get offended no matter what you do (two important events to attend at the same time, say), you can still get into situations where what if literally only one person is offended by this act — should we let everybody in the whole culture know to stop doing it because it might, potentially, offend a second person somewhere down the road? That seems like an awful lot of work for very little payoff. Is it worth it? Maybe (you’re still reducing harm), but not obviously (depending on how costly or difficult it is to make the change in our brainspaces, existing literature, publishing/public speaking guidelines, etc.) In other words, there is a balance between how many angry, antagonistic Thanksgiving conversations must be had to prevent how much potential future slight feelings of “otherness.” And maybe that teeter-totter should be all the way over, with one side touching the ground — respecting people is important, and refraining from even unintended insults and accidentally hurtful behavior is worth any and all reeducation pains — or maybe it shouldn’t. But either way, shouldn’t it apply to everyone?

Liberals pride themselves on believing victims, on listening to lived experiences, on reducing unintended harm. But they forget those lessons when the complainant is someone they have already marked as the “oppressor” of the situation instead of the “oppressee.” Oppressors are, of course, people too, and considering that we have entered a space and time where a lot of the “oppression” that is going on is unintentional, “micro”-scale, unexamined or unnoticed by the offenders, then nowadays these “oppressors” are not any less deserving of our understanding. And even if they didn’t deserve it, offering it to them would still be best just for practical reasons.

If you want to take sides and draw up battle lines, then know that you will have an enemy and you will have a fight. It may not be World War I, but people will build up defenses and opinions will become entrenched. And instead of changing existing minds, you might just have to wait for the next generation to accept your version over theirs. Because a lot of people, if you call them bad, will not think “Wow, I guess I’d better be better;” instead they will be like “Well, I guess I’m ‘bad’ then but whatever” or “You have a messed up definition of ‘bad’ and you’re wrong” or even “Who are you calling ‘bad’; I just saw you do X, Y, and Z; you’re the ‘bad’ one and all this political correctness is making the world a worse place to live.”

Now, liberals, you might be objecting to this, saying “but I never called them bad; I just told them to stop saying the word ‘oriental’” — but, you know, what they heard was “you are a racist; you are a bad person,” and your complaint here sounds awfully similar to their complaint: “but I never said anything bad about those people, how can it be offensive, after all they are oriental.” Unless you are willing to agree that it was OK for them to say “oriental” because they didn’t mean any harm by it, then you should also be aware that the same logic compels you to accept that your calling them out on it felt like an insult to them. And if it felt offensive, then it was offensive.

So what’s the solution? We don’t want guys to ask random girls to smile for them because it hurts the girls’ feelings, but we can’t tell the guys that that’s sexist behavior because that hurts the guys’ feelings. (And because not only do they not change their behavior, they get all offended and become even more reactionary.) What are we supposed to do? Is it possible for neither side to offend the other? The answer probably isn’t to grow thicker skin — not because it’s not a good idea, but just because it can’t really be done on purpose; you can’t make those words become not hurtful just by telling yourself that they aren’t.

I think the closest that we can do is to listen to each other and make sure we’re communicating with respect. Make sure that we don’t take sides and draw up battle lines. Make sure that when we talk about “all men” being complicit in a system or all white people having a certain privilege, that we are clear about what we mean and what we don’t mean: acknowledging that, yes, there is female privilege too, and, yes, there is even black privilege. How can there be both black privilege and white privilege? Because “privilege” doesn’t mean what you think it means; it doesn’t mean what those conservative websites told you it means. Every single person has a variety of ways in which they are privileged and a variety of ways in which they are not. You can be poor and feel underprivileged and feel like you had to work twice as hard as everyone else, and you can even be right about that, but you can still benefit from white privilege at, for example, a job interview. Even if maybe you walked into that interview knowing that all else being equal, the company would prefer to hire a minority candidate (just for the self-serving optics of it) — but not knowing that all else is never equal and that the decision to hire you might be made subconsciously in one key moment when you are given the benefit of the doubt and your sparse-resume-plus-confident-smile combination is interpreted as plucky instead of arrogant, endearing instead of threatening, ambitious and optimistic instead of overreaching and out of one’s depth. And that that HR manager’s unconscious reaction — “this is a decent person who will try hard and be able to learn how we do things and eventually become a valuable contributor to the company; I feel like I can trust this person; I have known people like this person in the past; this person seems likeable and would fit in well in this environment” — might not have been the same if you hadn’t been white.

Is it more of a conversation? Does it take more time? Yes. It’s definitely easier to just say “check your privilege” and feel like they should understand what that means. And maybe it won’t always work, explaining. Maybe people need to feel heard before they are willing to hear, and maybe asking and listening is a better first step than correcting and lecturing. I don’t know. I don’t have all the answers. I’m just saying: if the whole point of the liberal movement is to try to treat people better, then let’s stop micro-aggressing against conservatives by saying things that they interpret as insults and “othering” and dismissals of their lived experiences. I know, I know, be deferential to the feelings of the white man? Haven’t we been doing that for hundreds of years? Listen to the white man? Given that it dominates the mainstream, don’t we already know their perspective? Maybe we do. But people are human (even white people, even conservatives). As humans, they deserve to be heard and respected — not more than anyone else, but not less either. We lead by example, and we catch more flies with honey than vinegar. If we want them to listen to us, show that we are willing to listen to them. Is that enough to solve any problems? Of course not, we’ve been hearing them for hundreds of years; if listening to mansplaining was enough to solve all our problems, we wouldn’t have any problems left to solve. But that said, as a good school principal can attest, changing someone’s behavior is hard enough even if you’re in a position of power over them. Like a school principal, to be effective at changing someone’s behavior, make them feel like you care about them, listen to their explanations and motivations, and then have a conversation with them about the consequences of their actions, acknowledging their feelings and their humanity, but explaining that when they choose to act like that, it creates more problems than it solves. It’s not about punishment, for the unruly student or in the culture wars. It’s not about “I’m right and you’re wrong, and I’m good and you’re bad, and you need to change and do everything I say.” Or even if it is about that, that message tends to be poorly received. Better is maybe something along the lines of, “nobody’s perfect and we’re all trying to do better; I understand why you wanted to do that, but here’s what happened when you did.”