Feeling vs. Being Offended

David Oderberg draws some nice distinctions in his contribution to a new anthology on threats against freedom of speech, namely between feeling vs. being offended. Obviously, these two can come apart, as is often the case when we feel somebody is being “oversensitive” — namely, a sissy.

If I’m playing Jiu Jistu with my son and he gets himself arm-barred because he began to panic and flail and afterwards I tell him, “Silly move, son,” and he’s offended by this… well, the appropriate response, as Oderberg points out, is that he simply needs to toughen up. And that’s exactly what I would tell him. Fortunately, my son is not a sissy.

This is important for the pronoun debate.

For example, I once heard somebody say we should refer to people by their preferred pronouns because we do the same when calling people “mom” or “dad.” This is far from the strongest argument. For one thing, if I ask my children to call me dad (instead of Pat, or him, or sir, etc), this isn’t asking them to affirm something false. I really do bear the relation of father to them. Hence, if they refused to call me dad, my feeling offended would accord with my being offended, due to 1) my actually being their father and 2) their owing me respect in that role.

Conversely, if I asked somebody ELSE’S kid to call me mom, obviously they not only could but should resist this utterly asinine request because I am not only not their mom but a biological male and hence (in case this is news to anyone) incapable of bearing children in that respect. If I were offended by their refusal the wrong is not theirs, but mine. The appropriate response is not just that I need to toughen up but re-align myself to reality.

The point of Oderberg’s essay is not just to show that offense is a horrible basis for enacting law, especially since feeling offended may not track being offended, but also that the positive right to contribute meaningfully to the deliberative process of democracy (of which speech is the most important element) must take priority over the negative right of being having one’s sensibilities affronted by speech. Both of which are devastating rebuttals to anybody who wants to put “hate speech” laws on the book to tyrannize those who refuse to comply with the insanity of gender ideology, or whatever else.