Offence and How it Works

Too often I see privileged people make fun of offence or alternatively speak derisively about it. Privileged people take far too much pride in their capacity to ‘not-be-offended’. And the fact that this phenomenon of ‘not-being-offended’ always coincides with privilege seems telling.

So firstly, what does it mean to be offended. Being offended is the state of recognising harm done. It is more than merely being annoyed or merely being angry or having one’s feelings hurt. It is the conscious recognition that something has been done or something is happening that is causing harm. It is the reason why people of colour cannot offend white people, because people of colour do not take part in or benefit from systemic systems of inequality towards white people, but white people do perpetuate and benefit from systemic systems of inequality against people of colour. This is why men cannot be offended by women because women do not perpetuate or benefit from systemic systems of inequality towards men, but men do perpetuate and benefit from systemic systems of inequality towards women. Offence is rooted in power. You cannot offend the burglar breaking into your house. You cannot offend the murderer coming at you with a knife. You cannot offend those who hold a vested interest in your oppression.

So when the privileged speak of offence in dismissive ways, what are they actually saying? They are saying that marginalised people should be ignorant of and incognisant of harm done to them. When hate speech, hate crimes, slurs, and participation in abusive systems hurt marginalised people, those who dismiss offence want the victims of the abuse to pretend that it doesn’t exist. Marginalised people in this way have to shrug off the harm and pretend as if nothing happened or merely accept the abuse as if it is supposed to be that way.

When the privileged make fun of marginalised people who are offended by harm done, what they are essentially saying is, “I’m going to hurt you, and you’re so pathetic for saying anything about it. You should just take what I give you.” This is abusive. When privileged people make fun of the recognition of harm, they are participating in that harm, they are no better than the abusers, because they allow the culture of abuse to continue. This is why rape jokes are problematic. Because taking part in rape jokes perpetuates rape culture which, in turn, validates rapists. Offence at rape jokes is a recognition of the harm done by rape jokes, not merely having your feelings hurt.

As a matter of fact, the privileged like to make this about feelings because this is seemingly good enough reason to dismiss any issue without much thought. Never mind that offence isn’t necessarily unreasonable, isn’t ever entirely just emotional, and is (more than not) something very carefully considered by the marginalised.

This is why I urge privileged people to consider what it is they are saying when they make fun of, dismiss, or deride what happens when marginalised people recognise harm done to them. If you hold shares in a company that impoverishes its employees and you make fun of those employees, and they are offended, and you make fun of them for being offended, are they in the wrong? Or are you just being an arsehole? This is the case for all systems of privilege: white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism and class structures, binary cishet normativity, ableist structures, etc.

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Also read this:

The Gender Police

I guess it's the disease of binary thinking that has people adding value to transgender life based on how well they can pass, how well they can fool, how well they can not-stand-out. It's basically become background noise to me now. And make no mistake, I understand that passing, being stealth, being in the closet (so to speak) for transgender people can be a matter of safety. While at the same time, some people can't pass... as anything. For some people hiding who they are is painful.

The problem comes in when people start policing other people's genders. "You're only really transgender if..." "You can't be transgender if..." "Real transgender people..."

It's tragic really. It erases nonbinary identity, especially if you are nonbinary who identifies as transgender. This gender policing has transgender and nonbinary folk jumping through even more hoops simply for having the nerve to exist as authentically true to themselves.

("hidden" a photo I did as a part of a black and white series dealing with how the abuse I suffered as a child affected by self-image, my body, and my grotesque face)

And the really sad thing is that so many transgender people have bought into this bullshit. I get 'advice' thrown at me about how I can hide my grotesque features: my fat face, my huge jaw, my Jewish nose, my busy eyebrows. I don't exactly exude femininity. And whatever masculinity means to someone who isn't a man, I remember that whenever I affected at masculinity it came out definitively as queer as I was. These things aren't my story: Man and Woman. And yes, I'm fat. Yes, I'm not going to make it onto a runway any time soon. Yes, my body is scarred and called ugly often. But I spent the lion's share of my first twenty years of life being abused and more by a psychopath who told me every day I'm worthless, I'm fat, I'm ugly, I should be a real man, I'm a faggot, I'm a freak. So when people approach me with the same words in their mouths that he spoke to me, I'm sorry, but my immediate response is that I don't trust you.

(I represent myself as multiple, not singular. I don't occupy a single point in the gender volume.)

Feminising my face and hiding my face are two utterly different things to me. It took years of therapy for me to learn that there is nothing wrong with me. Who I am is valuable. Who I am is valid. And if your first impulse is to try and invalidate that, then I'm sorry, I don't trust you. I don't hold much stock with people who's primary impulse is to erase my identity or to police it. I don't discuss how I transition: physically, socially, hormonally, etc... These things are nobody's business. I am transgender, I am nonbinary. These things are true of me whether I wear pants or whether I wear a skirt; whether I shave or weather I let my beard get as annoyingly fuzzy as it is at the moment; whether I wear makeup or not; whether I contour my face or not; whether I shape my eyebrows or not... and my nose? What do you suggest? Plastic surgery? For what? And as for what's in my pants: it is none of your fucking business.

It's the same reason I don't hold stock with transmedicalists/truscum. Yes, some people transition and this is a good thing, but others don't, others can't, others don't have the money, the privilege, the safety, the health to undergo transition. Some people don't see that there is inherently something about their bodies that need changing. And that's okay. What is fucked up is when bigots start policing other people's bodies and genders. There is no standard of gender we have to live up to. All gender is arbitrary and socially constructed, sex is merely just another aspect of gender, biology when attached to sex is merely convention, and all convention can be broken down and rebuilt.

Given all the systemic abuse faced by transgender people, I don't see how us buying into that system is going to liberate us. Yes, there should be medical care for transgender people who need to physically transition as they see fit, but at the same time this cannot be compulsory or indicative of transgender lives. Yes, we should be allowed to express gender as we wish, and we do, and that's great, but there is a huge problem when people get prescriptivist about how, when, and where we express gender. Transgender people are not just the sum of two sexes. Our experience of gender is far richer, far more diverse, and far more complicated than that. I am not what's between my legs, there is nothing wrong with my fat face and grotesque features, I don't need to be 'fixed' as per your specifications. If you want to build yourself to be a certain way, go ahead. That's awesome. And I encourage you to seek the happiness in life you need. But, you do you. I'll do me. That's how this works.

(Dishevelled Unshaved Cookie Selfie)

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Also, I wish I knew who did this: