Am I easily offended?

Over the last few years, all over social media we have heard people post about “whiny people who are offended by everything,” There are so many opinions about how everyone should be a little tougher. A little more “man up” and a little less “words and actions hurt me.” This is often aimed at younger generations (which I no longer fall into). This narrative bothers me… a lot. Which led me to question “is it me?” Am I easily offended? Was I the one who needed a safe space? So I did some soul-searching; this was a many months long journey, and I came up with a resounding “yes.” It is, I am, and I do.

I’m easily offended. I am. Not so much when it comes to me. I can take criticism, particularly constructive criticism, I mean, I may cry because that’s what I do, but I can take it. You can even come at me, I won’t cry, I’ll come back—hard. We’ll either work through it or we won’t. But neither offend me, I cry easy, I sometimes lash out easily, but I’m not easily offended. If, however, you go after someone else for the sole purpose of putting them down, making them feel less than or for your own feelings of superiority… now I’m offended, likely pretty riled up and ready to go. Not because I know more about oppression than you do; I don’t. Not even because I have been there; very often I haven’t. Because I don’t, and because I haven’t, and for sure, damn sure you don’t and you haven’t, you will never get to decide what is hurtful to someone whose shoes you’ve never walked in.

If a person of color says that a tradition, sign, statue, or frankly anything else is hurtful to them because of their experiences or views, you don’t get to decide that it isn’t. If a woman tells you that her experience is a certain way, it’s absolutely that way. No one gets to challenge that based on their own experiences. If someone who identifies as LGBTQIA+ tells us that they are still being discriminated against, no one gets to question that. We don’t get to decide that life can’t be harder because we’ve struggled too. We have literally no right to tell people how their experiences should shape their world views.

I know that I take things personally, even though it’s not personal to me. As a white, straight, middle class woman who is married to her high school sweetheart and has two kids, a dog (and now a cat) it *has* to be me. Even though I live a relatively “privileged” life, that doesn’t mean that I’ve never struggled. It simply means that I haven’t struggled because of the color of my skin, who I love, or the location that I reside in.

I’m not trying to “steal” someone else’s experiences for attention or to be relevant, yet I do feel like I need to look at most cases of oppression as something that could, and often does, affect the people that I love. I may not be a person of color, but my nieces and my nephew are. I may not be gay but people I love are. I may not be living paycheck to paycheck, but growing up we did and when Mark and I started out, we did. We don’t need to experience something ourselves to have compassion and empathy for those who have. However, when we can’t fully appreciate someone else’s struggles, we should nevertheless stand with people who need us to.

So yeah, I’m easily offended, but not in the way that it’s often meant in those insults, the ones to make someone seem whiny, weak or childish. But if you mean that I try to look for ways that honor people’s experiences and lives, and anything less than that is unacceptable, yeah, I sure am, and I’m not even sorry.  Everyone wants and deserves to feel loved and accepted. Everyone wants people to see the value in them. And you know what? No one wants people to shower them in compliments, well… most people don’t want that. The truth is a little appreciation for human experiences goes a long way towards understanding. Hate can’t handle proximity. Love, respect and listening inevitably encourages proximity.

My point is, we should never proclaim, “I know exactly how you feel — here’s what you need to do,” but rather “tell me about your story and how can I help?” Feeling seen is so much like feeling loved; it’s almost indistinguishable. My story is not yours and your story is not mine but let’s sit and talk for a while; let’s figure this out together. That’s how the world evolves, but more importantly, that’s how we evolve.