Can something be offensive if it's not intentional?

[Elisto Dragonwings]

This is something that's come up a lot in conversations I've been having lately, and I'm just curious what other people think. If someone says or does something that's offensive, but they didn't realize it was or didn't intend for it to be, how would you feel about that? Do you think it's still offensive in someway, and does their intent play a role?

Personally, I think intent plays a role in how I react to the person who says or does something offensive, whether I hold them accountable or not, but don't think that makes the thing itself un-offensive because I think that's a much a social concept as a personal one.

But what do you think?

[Rozax]

I shall address this with an analogy: A freshly clean-shaven man left home not knowing he still had a glob of shaving foam near his left ear. Most people pass him by, whispering about the glob of foam, but not informing him of his error. When he stops for his morning coffee, the barista asks him if he knew about the foam near his left ear. At this point, the man will most likely wipe it off, as it would be foolish not to do so.

This applies to my grandmother in a very obvious way. Even though she knows that some of the language she uses is wrong, she refuses to fix it because "that's just what we said in my day". Her intent may not be malicious, but that doesn't change what she's doing. And the whole "my day" concept gets under my skin. It seems to imply that you have no responsibility for the today, so nobody can hold you accountable for anything.

My father-in-law is another case, as he goes through life with highly sexist ideals, even though time and again the world around him provides him with examples contrary to his backward ways of thinking.

Neither of my relatives are bad people, and their heart is always in the right place. However, I don't now how much it matters where their heart is if their head is...elsewhere.

[Hakuzo NightFox]

This is something I worry about a lot when I talk to people. I try to be very careful of what I say to people so they don't get mad at something I may say by accident. I try to be mindful of things that make people mad and I avoid trying to say them if I can.

[Maiyrhia]

At my last job, there was a guy I was working with who'd constantly make sexist jokes. Being a woman, and a rather sensitive one, this deeply upset me - for example, he'd make jokes about women drivers when I was failing to use a pallet truck correctly (It's a thing for moving pallets of heavy things. I'd never used one before.) I made it clear to him that I didn't like the jokes, and could he please stop doing them.

Up until this point I cannot honestly call his actions offensive. He did not realise they upset me, and once I informed him of this, if he'd stopped, all would have been well.

Key word there is "if" he'd stopped. He didn't. It still wasn't malicious or intended to upset me - but he knew it was upsetting me and he didn't stop. I went ahead after another day of this (and breaking down crying on the phone to my poor mother ). The company dealt with it as swiftly and effectively as any company should - the man received a friendly, but stern warning. (The reason the repercussions weren't a LOT worse were because I'd asked for him not to be punished, I wanted them to make that clear to him though.)

What does that have to do with the thread? If it's not intentional, no it's not offensive. If it's not intentional and the person saying it has cause to believe it might be offensive, YES it is even if it's just a joke.

[Elisto Dragonwings]

Maiyrhia, I find it interesting to be able to say something upset you, but it's not offensive. I think that's where the difference in perspectives is that I keep coming across, and I guess that's the point that I'm trying to understand. Maybe it's a difference in how different people define "offensive"? To me, if it's potentially upsetting to a category of people, I consider it offensive, although I might not get upset with the person saying/doing it if they really had no clue (ex: a little kid who repeats a racial insult they heard without understanding the meaning of it; I still consider the insult offensive, even if I wouldn't blame the kid directly for being offensive)

[Rozax]

(ex: a little kid who repeats a racial insult they heard without understanding the meaning of it; I still consider the insult offensive, even if I wouldn't blame the kid directly for being offensive)

I agree, because that little kid will grow up to teach their children those racial slurs. Here's another fun question: at what point does it become their responsibility? My grandmother knows better, and though she doesn't use these slurs in public, I still deem it offensive.

Then what do you do if someone feels that they have a right to make these sort of statements? I once had a coworker who felt that, just because he isn't white, he has a license to say anything he wants about anyone. Since my supervisors never corrected his behavior, it would seem he does, but this sort of behavior only fuels people like my grandmother. It's a tiring cycle if I stop to think about it, so I won't.

[Maiyrhia]

Personally I'd say it becomes their responsibility at the same time as I'd deem it actively offensive. When they realise what they're saying can upset people. The little kid might not know any better, but when they're a teenager they do.

[Mankoi]

Personally, I think there's a point where you can be offensive about things you didn't intend to be if you can be reasonably expected to know otherwise. Anyone who knows something is potentially offensive, even if they don't mean it that way is very much responsible for that offense. Likewise, I think there's a point where you should know certain things are offensive. I think in this day and age, if you don't realise that sexist jokes are offensive, you're still at fault for being so oblivious to the outside world to realise that.

It's hard to know where that line is though. Everyone's definition of what they can be reasonably expected to know is different. For example, I was surprised at a story of a woman being terribly offended at the use of the "eeny meeny miny moe" rhyme, because I had used the thing hundreds of times as a child, and I never had any idea that there was issue with it. Apparently the line "catch a tiger by the toe" didn't used to say tiger... Fortunately, in my case, I never appeared to offend anyone.

[Elisto Dragonwings]

It's hard to know where that line is though. Everyone's definition of what they can be reasonably expected to know is different. For example, I was surprised at a story of a woman being terribly offended at the use of the "eeny meeny miny moe" rhyme, because I had used the thing hundreds of times as a child, and I never had any idea that there was issue with it. Apparently the line "catch a tiger by the toe" didn't used to say tiger... Fortunately, in my case, I never appeared to offend anyone.

I have the same uncertainty with the expression "It's a piece of cake" or "cakewalk". I don't think most people know the origin of those expressions, but now that I do, I can't decide how I feel about using it. On the one hand, almost no one's offended anymore because it no longer has the meaning it used to, and meanings evolve, which I think is good. On the other...it has a similar history to the rhyme you mentioned, and I can't just pretend that doesn't exist, so I understand why someone could potentially be offended. Where's the point where the old meaning is gone and insignificant, or does that point ever really come? Or, how does something's meaning change over time without people using it despite it's potential offensiveness, and is that really OK?

[Mankoi]

For my part, I tend to stray away from words and phrases that I know have racist origins. Even if no one is offended, it feels like a passive acceptance of the racism that spawned them. Never a good thing. Usually there's another phrase that works just as well. For example, I can find no racist origin to the phrase "easy as pie" which combines both ease and desserts. Perfect. I think there may come a point, when all have forgotten the root of a phrase where it stops being offensive, but I'm not sure that's something we want. I can't really put my finger on it, but something about letting a racist phrase live on past the time where it should have been stamped out simply because no one remembers it's racist doesn't sit well with me.

I think it's actually easily possible for something to be offensive even if it's not intentional. In some cases, it may be more offensive because it's unintentional. For example, I find the phrase "There are no atheists in foxholes" to be extremely offensive. I don't think everyone who uses it intends to be offensive, but it's worse in a way because that shows they haven't thought it through. Not only are they saying something offensive, but they're demonstrating that they don't care enough about the group they speak of to check to see if the phrase might be offensive, or inaccurate, or dismissive. Similarly, people who haven't realised that sexism and racism isn't okay any more, or think you can joke about that seem so oblivious to the current world political situation that they live in that you can only really assume they haven't caught on because they don't really care.

[Hakuzo NightFox]

so, it it the words themselves that make something offensive or the people that assigned meaning to them? Slang is a very key point in this, What's to say that the color Blue could be associated with something bad. When everyone starts saying it's bad, then is there really a point?

It's all comes down to semantics. In the end, its all just words, meaning the becomes unclear because no two people perceive things the same way. As thus, things lead to miscommunications.



As for things like nursery rhymes and such, I know a LOT of them derive from odd and unusual situations. Yet parents told their children these things to teach them some kind of moral, granted fairly dark like things with that of the Grimm's Fairy tales.

[Maiyrhia]

I'm going to change my mind here and agree with Mankoi. I guess what I was trying to distinguish between was being offensive and taking offense. I didn't take offense at the sexist guy until he knew I was upset - but you're right, what he said was offensive, even if not intentionally.