Are certain statements offensive simply because people are often offended by them? Or are they inherently offensive no matter what the target thinks of them?

Comments

I'm not sure how to answer your main question: It seems to me that to say that a statement is offensive is to say that people tend to be offended by it, and so I don't have a clear sense of how a statement could be "inherently offensive" if by that you mean assessed with no reference to individuals' dispositions to judge it offensive.

A related question may be whether, as an empirical matter of fact, there are some statements that exist some statements are held to be defensive by an overhwelming majority of a given population in many contexts. Probably so, but even then I imagine that are few or no statement that offend all individuals in all communicative contexts. For example (and hopefully not to offend readers by this usage of the word), many statements using the word 'cunt' are extremely offensive and yet there are some usages of that word that many find empowering -- I have in mind, in particular, the popular monologue about "reclaiming 'cunt'" that has been included for many years in Eve Ensler's play the Vagina Monologues.

A third issue your question raises in my mind is whether there exist strong argument that some statements ought to be considered offensive by all, for example, statements that express racism, classism, sexism, or other forms of hatred or bigotry. Maybe so, but when one confronts someone who is not so offended I'm not sure that the best way to describe that situation is that he or she doesn't understand that a statement is inherently offensive -- it seems to me a more promising way to understand this case is to try to understand that individuals' moral perspective, which I think is a broader matter than understanding whether or not he or she is offended by statement that many judge morally offensive.

A fourth related question may be whether, if there are no statements that are universally accepted as offensive in all contexts, this means that individuals' judgments about specific statements used in specific contexts are therefore somehow illegitimate or wrongheaded. I don't think this follows, and so I don't think that we need to ground the legitimacy of our own judgments about what is or is not offensive on a foundation of "inherently offensive" statements.

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