Thought 3: Do I have the right to not be offended?

I've been thinking about offensiveness a good bit lately. There are a couple of different perspectives. Do I have the right to not be offended by you? Do I have a responsibility to not be offensive? Is there a time or circumstance where being offensive is ok? Would that line be subjective or objective? If it is objective what criteria need to be met to ensure my actions are objective and not subjective?

I'm going to start with the first question. Do people have an inherit right to not be offended. In other words is it morally wrong to be offensive.

Now let me say that I'm not approaching this from a legal angle. I'm very much a defender of the right of people to express themselves free from legal repercussions outside of a few narrowly defined cases (slander and libel). I think the proper response to people expressing themselves through speech is return speech. If you act like a jerk then I have the right to call you a jerk. Freedom of expression is not freedom to express yourself without criticism. My approach is one of what is my responsibility in dealing with offending other people.

Offense is very broadly defined in our language You can be offended because I am purposefully trying to offend you. You can also be offended by a statement of my beliefs.

So, should we try to differentiate between the two types of offense? The deliberate and the incidental? Should we take offense not at idea, but rather at intentions? If someone says quite sincerely and without malice that they believe statistics teach that [Race X] has [Undesired Characteristic Y] can and should we be offended? What if they restate it as [Race X] has a higher probability of having [Undesired Characteristic Y]?

At what point does a statement of fact cross the line between observation and offense? What if instead of race we used cultural? Poor people are more likely to be in jail. Is that just a fact or is it an insult to poor people? What if we go from a fact to an interpretation of that fact? Poor people are more likely to be in jail because they are barbarians who can't control their urges. If we stay away from the conclusion (which is obviously offensive) and just state the fact is that non-offensive?

My parents have a newspaper that is pretty old. I think it is from the early 40's. In it the writer talks about how it is common knowledge that when retarded savages (Native Americans) drink alcohol it inflames their natural brutishness (or something to that effect). The writer talks about it like it is common knowledge. Everyone just knows when those Indians get some firewater in them they just go crazy!

For us this is offensive. At that time it was seen as a simple statement of fact. Everyone knew it was true. I'm sure most people would've made an argument for that knowledge being objective reality.

We have a few categories. Offensive by belief, Offensive by intention, and Offensive by methodology.

Examples of each:

Offensive by methodology - For Muslims pictures of the prophet is offensive. While there are Muslims who are fine with criticism of their religion they would find certain methodologies (comic strips of Muhammad) offensive. Even if they don't find your belief or intention offensive (if you were say a felloe Muslim trying to purify their theology by criticizing certain beliefs) they would find your methodology offensive.

Offensive by intention - Some people are okay with debates about abortion. People that they wildly disagree with in belief they can still debate in good faith with. Others hate people who disagree with them. They want people who think abortion is okay to be put to death. Their intention is not to make the world a better place or to help people, but rather solely to punish people who do wrong. I find that offensive. We don't seek to do right to meet an arbitrary standard but because we love other people and we want what is good for them.

Offensive by belief - [Race X] has [Undesired Characteristic Y]. Merely by believing that (and stating it out loud) without any other conclusions drawn people will be offended.

I think Offensive by belief is the one category I think is defendable. Methodology and Intention is something we should work on to not offend people. But I don't think people should be forced to censor their own beliefs even if I find those beliefs to be revolting and disgusting. One of the reasons is because then there can be no dialogue about those beliefs which I do believe helps a lot more than people think.