“I miss the good old days, where you could state an opinion without someone getting offended,” says the older relative’s shared meme, with a random picture of Donald Duck.
“Just be polite and don’t offend people,” I respond, because it’s an easy, free solution.
“That’s the point,” replies the relative, even though it isn’t at all.
“Not really,” I counter, genuinely confused. “This doesn’t promote being polite, it mourns the days before ‘PC culture.’”
Someone else swoops in, a stranger to me but a friend or relation to the relative. “It is absolutely saying you should be polite,” she objects. “But that people these days just have a thinner skin! It isn’t at all suggesting what you say it does!”
“Why,” I ask, “do they need thick skin, if you aren’t saying something offensive?”
The outrage! The insult! That I would suggest that these people missing the days “when they could state an opinion without someone taking offense” in fact miss being able to unapologetically say rude things without consequences…is so ~offensive~! They must express how offended they are at my suggestion of being polite and considerate! They must let me know how offensive it is to suggest they hadn’t been! Don’t I know people these days just have thin skin? So easily offended! It isn’t /their/ fault! The skin! It’s so thin! So thin that polite words tear bleeding wounds, and how can you navigate a world like that?
And I am confused, still, because I have encountered many humans, and they do not all bleed so easily. You just try to be polite, to refrain from speaking from a place of ignorance, and apologize if you misstep. But I have noticed a pattern… That those who complain loudest about others being easily offended, have themselves skin like onion paper.
