Yodelling Llama

“I’m offended by purple dinosaurs,” I overheard someone say at a bar last week. His friend disagreed, calling him a liar. He accused him of posturing to make a point, and that he was thereby insulting those who are genuinely offended by things.

“What if I accused you of losing your cherry in an outhouse with your mother?” he asked.

“My mother is dead,” explained the fellow who had a problem with purple dinosaurs. “She died before I hit puberty.”

That killed the conversation, of course. I think the two went on to talk about basketball or something else with which I have little concern. So I stopped listening.

However the underlying question is an interesting one. When is it that we’re willing to say someone is legitimately offended? And when is it that we’ll draw the line and alternately accused the allegedly offended of being full of it, or of being too “thin skinned?”

The Associated Press conducted a poll recently that looked into Americans and their relationship with profanity. [Note: for those of you who know me, you likely know what I think of the results of this poll in terms of accuracy. Which I suppose means I don't care whether the following "mosts" and "mores" are true; I'm just using the poll to illustrate a point.] The poll found that most people encountered profanity, they encountered more than they used to, they themselves use it more, but the find others use it too much or in inappropriate situations. “Inappropriate” seemed to have both an audience component–were there children around?–and a context component–were they using the word in a normal conversation, or did they just bang their shins on the car door?

My question is this: should we treat the person who claims offense at having heard “bloody” as similar to the purple dinosaur fellow? Tell him he’s a liar. What if he demonstrates he is actually offended? Should we then tell him to “grow up” or “get some thicker skin?” If we do so, aren’t we really telling him that he’s somehow wrong to be offended? Is there anything wrong with that?

“Taking offense” cannot mean simply that someone does not like what they’re hearing. I feel that way about most country music, but I’m only really offended by Alan Jackson’s third album. It cannot even speak to the depth of the dislike. I really, really disliked Street Fighter (the video-game-sourced mid-90s action film starring Van Damme). But I cannot in all honesty claim to have been offended by it. Dictionary definitions on point (see Merriam-Webster’s third definition) seem to combine “dislike” and “annoyance,” with a dash of “custom.” So when I’m offended by something someone said, it is because I (1) don’t like what I’m hearing, (2) am annoyed at the speaker for having said it, and (3) believe that the speaker is breaching some custom. It’s a manners concern, based on generally recognized principles, with a “knew or should have known” standard.

The problem is, when you have–and I know, I’m using the poll again–64% of Americans using “fuck” at least a few times a year, and often multiple times in a day, I’m not sure it is generally recognized anymore that use of profanity offends. That’s true in two senses: (1) that the speaker may not be expected to know that others around him are prone to taking offense, any more than you would be expected to know that the purple dinosaur fellow would have gone into a fit of rage if you brought up the topic of Barney, and (2) that the speaker may be right, in terms of what is “proper and fitting,” to use profanity in that situation. You, the offended listener, are wrong to be offended.

In the end, I do not really know how to draw the line in a satisfactory manner. I suppose all I’m suggesting is that there is a line. That the offended party does not always have the moral high ground.