Public service announcement

[tim]

Dear world:

Please stop using the phrase "I'm sorry if I offended you."

If I'm calling you on your bullshit, your error wasn't to hurt my feelings. If I were actually hurt, I probably wouldn't have the energy to confront you about it, unless you were someone I knew well.

Rather, your error was to say something that made you look like an ignorant clown.

So why are you apologizing to me for that?

Love,
tim

---

Another way of saying it (in re discussion in comments here) is that there is something to learn from any criticism. If "Alice" thinks something you said makes you seem like an ignorant clown, then there's probably something in either what you said, or how you said it, or both, that's worth examining. Unless, that is, you have no respect for "Alice" whatsoever. If "I'm sorry if I offended you" connotes "I have no respect for you whatsoever", is it really a polite thing to say?

Comments

[tim]

Who said anything about rudeness?

[hitchhiker]

you did. it's "rude" to directly criticise someone for a broadcast statement. taking your example, "i think that's racist because..." is keeping the conversation on the same level; "you don't have as much right to decide what's racist as..." is shifting the terms of engagement in a manner that could be perceived as rude.

[tim]

People could perceive anything as rude, which bullshit I will not co-sign.

Some things are right and wrong and ought not to be clothed in therapy-speak "I" statements. Focusing on perceived "rudeness" rather than rightness is ultimately self-sabotaging as it deprives oneself of opportunities to learn; as Miss Manners said, polite people don't point it out when someone else uses the wrong fork.

[hitchhiker]

hm - if you're referring to my "i think that's racist because..." when you say "therapy-speak 'i' statements" ignore that; it was an inadvertent red herring. substitute the plainer "no, that's racist because...". but we have indeed come to the nub of it - "if you don't think you have anything to learn from the other person, what is the correct response?" self-sabotaging, perhaps, but self-consistent withal.

[tim]

If "I'm sorry I offended you" is a genuine attempt to de-escalate the situation, it's surely a misguided one, in the same way that telling people to "calm down" has the opposite effect. If the other person is genuinely offended, how often does an apology unaccompanied by evidence of understanding why the offense took place help? And if the other person is not offended, aren't you suggesting to them the possibility of becoming offended?

And if it's not a genuine attempt to de-escalate the situation, it's disingenuous and (attempts to play devil's advocate aside) I can't see a defense for that kind of mendacity.

[hitchhiker]

it comes down to codified conventions again. what it's saying is "okay, look, if you've been personally hurt, i'm sorry about that; if you haven't, i'm really not interested in discussing the matter further with you".

also, it's *entirely* possible for someone to be offended by a statement i make when i am actually in the right. what's the correct response in this case? from where i stand, i understand perfectly well where the offense took place, and it's from the other person clinging to a view that is *wrong*. but the person is nonetheless offended. i didn't mean to offend him, but i will not incorporate his folly into my world view. what now?

[tim]

I'm arguing that it's incorrect to apply a convention that (at best) comes from interactions with friends to people with whom one is not intimate and thus people whose feelings are not your concern.

also, it's *entirely* possible for someone to be offended by a statement i make when i am actually in the right. what's the correct response in this case?

To not care. It's their problem.

[hitchhiker]

> To not care. It's their problem.

okay, this is where we part company. i try to be mindful of offense i cause directly to other people, and am willing to avoid things i know are personally offensive to them when i am in their company, without necessarily accepting that they have based their offense on correct assumptions.

[tim]

I figure if I say something that I believe is right and someone else finds it (rather than the way I have chosen to phrase it, which would be occasion for me to learn how to better express what I mean, rather than for me to scold them for being offended) offensive, that's their shit and they need to own it. If it's a friend, I might not bring up the issue in the future; if it's a stranger, I would find it as bizarre to be concerned about what they felt as it would be for them to be concerned about how whatever I ate for lunch today agreed with me.

[stolen_tea]

I take it that there is a line that would be crossed, if "offensive" were replaced by "racist" (or perhaps even merely "hurtful"), such that you would start caring what they felt? (Changing "offended" to whatever appropriate.)

Or alternatively, it also seems quite possible that I am missing something vital in your usage of "felt".

(Generally, myself, I tend to agree that if someone feels hurt at something I said, that it's "their shit and they need to own it". But I also think it's bad to cause people to feel hurt, even if they're doing it to themselves, because so many of us are. I'm often willing to put effort into avoiding causing people to feel hurt, and apologize if I did. How much effort is based on a bunch of different factors that I haven't analyzed in detail, but which produces results that I've so far considered acceptable.)

[juli]

Where are these conventions codified? Hopefully not in your observations. Because that does not a codified convention make.

[hitchhiker]

"internalised", if you dislike "codified". it's like grammar, you pick it up by interacting with people.

[tim]

you pick it up by interacting with people.

Apparently I didn't.

[juli]

Then "conventions" are going to vary a lot. I've spent some time in pathologically-confrontational circles and pathologically-avoidant cultures. Also some passive-aggressive. I'd like to imagine that few people's experiences lead them down a single uniform path of people who think and act just like them, but I know better. And of the conflict-avoidant people I know, many of them aggressively avoid any other style and as a community shun people who raise genuine grievances. See also: how geek social fallacies have influenced geek poly communities and their fetish for rationality and "communication".