The Martlet

Catherine Shenton and Lauren Soubolsky are members of the pro-life club Youth Protecting Youth.

Reacting appropriately to being offended is an important part of living in an ideologically diverse society.

We may not like the feeling, but being offended offers an opportunity to examine our own views and discuss dissenting ones. Sometimes it seems easier to avoid ideas we find unpleasant, but if we can suppress the urge to ignore or lash out against them — if we challenge ourselves to stop and think about why we’re offended and why the other person would say or do what they did — we can gain a deeper understanding of the issues at hand.

Being harassed is another matter entirely. Harassment is an action that attacks and bullies a single person or a group. Nobody should be subjected to that kind of behaviour. Feeling offended is a natural response to being harassed, but many other actions can also cause offense; so being offended is not in itself equal to being harassed. Assuming that, because someone is offended, harassment has occurred is a form of logical fallacy known as affirming the consequent or denying the antecedent. Harassment is the event that causes the outcome of offense, but if offense occurs, it wasn’t necessarily harassment that caused it.

While a good society provides people with avenues to fight harassment, it does not give individuals the power to suppress messages or ideas that simply offend them. We can’t have both ideological diversity and opinion-based control over free speech. If an idea merely needs to offend to justify suppression, we can’t uphold intellectual liberty.

Harassment isn’t a feeling; it’s a targeted behaviour. If we determine harassment solely based on how an action makes people feel, it’s like judging someone guilty simply because they are accused. This inappropriately broadens the definition of harassment, and leaves no room for the presumption of innocence, which is necessary for due process in determining guilt. If we automatically brand ideas that offend people as harassment, freedom of speech ceases to exist. All ideas should be open to respectful criticism; none should be unequivocally banned.

How then do we weed out the bad ideas? By weighing their empirical truth and tangible merit. In determining the value of an idea, its truth and merit should take precedence over how it makes people feel; an attractive but false idea is ultimately useless. The truth may be unpleasant, but we must still recognize it as truth.

Holding a sign with a picture of an aborted fetus offends many people. Others may be offended by a sign advocating “full access to free abortion.” Both of these may be seen as offensive. Neither constitutes harassment. Making a statement (whether visual, verbal or in print) about an issue of public interest in a public forum sometimes offends people, but it isn’t harassment. While people may have very negative responses to such demonstrations, these people are not being targeted or attacked.

We must challenge ourselves to examine the truth of any claim made. Let us ask if ideas are true, not if they’re offensive, and debate ideas in an open, intellectual fashion. This way we will find out false ideas and dismiss them. The truth may sometimes be offensive, but speaking truth isn’t harassment, and suppressing it doesn’t make it any less true.