‘Offence’ is something of a catch-all term these days. We will often hear people claim that something is ‘offensive’. But is it a microaggression if someone feels offended by something that we have said?

In previous articles I looked at the different ways that microaggressions can impact us through causing shame, leaving us feeling excluded or devaluing us. We also looked at how causing someone embarrassment can be damaging.

But we haven’t yet looked at ‘offence’.

Unfortunately, it’s just not a very useful description when trying to deal with microaggressions in a constructive manner. 

For example, if I am trying to describe to you why something you said impacted me, then telling you that I felt shamed, devalued, excluded or embarrassed means something; you can understand that. It’s very specific, and pinpoints that there was some aggression which has resulted in me feeling less safe.

If I tell you that I didn’t feel any of those, but did feel ‘offended’ you might well think “well so what? What’s the harm?”. Being offended doesn’t hurt me. There’s no consequence to my psychological safety from being offended – because there’s no aggression involved.

In the words of comedian Steve Hughes: “So what? Be offended. Nothing happens”. 

So when trying to analyse why a ‘microaggression’ has hurt you and you can only describe it as ‘offensive’, check what’s really going on. Is it simply that you don’t like what they are saying? Is it challenging your values or belief systems? Is it that you disagree with what they have said? 

‘Offensive’ statements often come down to a difference of opinion or some uncomfortable feedback. You might not like it, but that doesn’t mean it requires a challenge or that it’s a microaggression.

The most obvious example is swearing. Some people love swearing, others detest it. Swearing may be part of a microaggression, or it can also just be used as a communication style, used to emphasise a point or for comedic effect. To some of us, that feels offensive because we have been brought up with a value system that bad people swear and thus we are ‘bad’ if we use expletives. 

Therefore we may get really uncomfortable around swearing. We may feel that it’s highly unprofessional, threatening and uncouth… which we may interpret as ‘offensive’. 

Most of the time though swearing is not, by itself, a microaggression. That doesn’t mean that we have to like it though!

‘Offence’ As a Starting Point

Some people really struggle to understand their own emotional reactions, and ‘offence’ might be something that they use as a starting point. It can be used to roughly describe any level of discomfort and may include multiple emotions such as feeling shamed, devalued, embarrassed and excluded.

In this case ‘offence’ might just be the only way that we are able to express the impact of a microaggression, but that doesn’t mean that it hasn’t hurt us in other ways that we can’t articulate. If we are feeling multiple emotions, we might resort to ‘offence’ as a catch-all to describe the overall impact for us.

With a bit of prompting, we might realise that we are feeling devalued. Or maybe we feel shamed, but can’t talk about what that feels like or describe why we feel it. 

If you see someone else struggling with this, you might prompt them with “I can imagine if this was me, I might be feeling…. how does it feel for you?” to see if that works for them. Just make sure that this is exploratory, rather than manoeuvring someone into saying something that they don’t believe.

What’s your opinion on finding things offensive? Do we have a right not to be offended?