There is no such thing as objectively offensive material.
Offence is a social construct. What offends one group delights another. Across time and space, generation and location, what upsets people is as different as is absolute their certainty that they are right and everyone else is wrong.
This raises two questions. How do we know when what we write is offensive? How can we control whether our material is offensive if offense is subjective? Is it justifiable to offend and what if we want to anyway?
Difference between that is offensive and I am offended.
If there is no such thing as objective offensiveness, then it follows that there is no such thing as an offensive book or story. Instead, rather than saying something is offensive, the reader should say “I am offended.” That’s actually a pretty good guide for conversation generally: if you say “I am offended” then there is room to talk about our differences; if you say “this is offensive” you are closing down and excluding any debate about why.
However, the writer can’t get away with saying “all offense is subjective” because, if offense is a social construct, that means it is a product of society – of groups – and that means we can predict things offend these groups of people. Starting off with the easy stuff, most societies find sexual violence against children offensive. On a very different end of the scale, surse words are specifically designed to offend, and so we can safely predict that some proportion of our potential audience will be put off by their presence.
Getting more specific, I know Catholics who are offended by mentions of the Devil, men who get offended by a strong female protagonist (“She’s just a Mary Sue, she’s not a real character”), Canadians who are offended if you don’t use the exact right term for certain indigenous peoples nobody outside of Canada has heard of [I’m English, for goodness sake, it’s progress that I’m not building concentration camps. Seriously. Check out the Boer war some time. There’s a reason we’re always the bad guys in films]. Yes, yes, yes, obviously not all Catholics/men/Canadians. But when groups of people come together, then they will inevitably find shared things that offend them [my spelling, grammar, and generally carelessness when writing this blog has been known to bother some!]
Are there times when we want to or don’t care if offend people?
Which raises a question. There’s a significant group of people who are offended by people who aren’t straight. My stories almost always have an LGBTQ+ [LGBTQ blah blah up your bum] element. There’s a decent chance that some homophobes will be offended by my stories. [Actually, the LGBTQ+ scene is notorious for breaking up into tiny little groups and coming up with lists of things that offend them about each other, so my portrayal of non-straight characters probably offends some of them as well!]
Does it bother me that they’re offended? Not much. Am I trying to offend of provoke them? No. Gender and sexual fluidity is an important part of the world in which I exist, so naturally it enters into my stories. I should recognise and acknowledge, however, that by putting gay stuff (as I friend and I we’re referring to it the other day] in my stories is going to upset some people, and that’s their business. I don’t get to shout at them for not buying my books.
Should I be trying to offend them? Are there times when it is valuable to offend? In this case, I’d honestly rather to the opposite. I’d like for my characters to be so real and relatable that they make people who are bothered by queer relationships a bit less bothered. That would be nice, if a little much to expect.
However, provocation is valuable and valid. The history of great literature is filled with examples of great books that were banned: To Kill A Mockingbird, Lady Chatterly’s Lover, The Colour Purple; books that challenged and enhanced our understanding of society, social justice, sexuality and race, almost always end up offending a great many people – particularly those tied to the status quo – and very often the author knows full well that the book will offend or even be banned. But if the subject if big enough, then offend away. Hell, getting you book banned is probably the best publicity you could get short of Richard and Judy’s book club!
Don’t offend people without reason.
If you do it, do it for a good reason. It’s hard to convince, persuade, or engage people who are offended. Offense will shock the reader into focusing on that which offends, so it must be tied to the question central to your text.
What this means is that being deliberately offensive is an extremely effective way of highlighting what your story is about. If by being offensive you distract people from your story, you are actively making it worse. To give an example, the play that led to the “gay stuff” conversation was a short in which I’d made one of the characters gay, and there was conversation around that. The problem was that this was a short play that wasn’t really about sexuality. By getting people to focus on that, I distracted them from the real subject. There was nothing wrong with the gay stuff in and of itself, it just wasn’t in the right play (when you’re writing shorts you need to make sure each and every line speaks directly to the central point – you don’t have time to do anything else, even if you think it is important.)
And if your book is about being deliberately offensive just to annoy people, well, you deserve all the hate you’re going to get (if anybody bothers reading). There are plenty of people making a living just by being annoying. Hell, a certain President and Prime Minister spring to mind…
So how do I know if I’m going to offend?
If enough people read your book, someone is going to be offended. That one-star amazon review? It’s coming. You know it is. Don’t worry about it. (You will but try to chill. Getting some hate means you’re being noticed, which his far better than the alternative.)
What you must do is think about, and choose, your audience. Sure, we all want everyone in the world to read your book. Not everyone in the world will read your book. Hell, 500 million copies of the Harry Potter books were sold. That’s huge. Except when you consider it as a fraction of the 7.7 billion people in the world. And a lot of those copies were bought by the same people more than once.
Ducking out and pretending you’re writing your book for everyone is a cheat. If you don’t choose your audience and write for them, then your book isn’t as good as it could be. You’re engendering a social experience – reading – and you should take think about who you’re doing it with.
You’re going to start, I’m afraid, with people a bit like you. I’m a white male European intellectual. Stuff that offends me is probably going to offend my readers. The stuff I find interesting and write about is likely to be the sort of stuff that interests people like me.
After that, look to your first readers. My very first reader is my wife. If she finds something offensive, and I don’t want it to offend, I change it. After that, I look to my friends (those who are patient enough to read drafts). The more diverse your friendship group, the better the chance you have of writing for a wider audience (also, the better your life is likely to be. Seriously. Go meet some people.)
Once you know your audience, you also need to think about your subject. If you’re going to write about poverty in rural Indonesia, and you’re not a rural Indonesian who lived in poverty, you should probably find someone who is. Do your reading. Meet people who’ve had the experiences you want to write about. If you can’t do that, read their writing. Otherwise you’re going to offend by accident, and there’s nothing that says amateur faster than being insulting without knowing it (do I need to make another President/Prime Minister remark?)
An example of something I find particularly difficult is the current resurgence in Westerns. I love a good Western, but the great examples of the genre are not exactly enlightened. When a white middle-class American sends me a play about Cowboys and Indians I have no idea where to start. I’m not American. I’m not especially interested in American culture. It is very difficult for me to tell if a wider audience, and particularly if a Native American audience, will find it offensive – and if that offense is appropriate. So, as an editor or producer, I’m immediately reluctant to dive in. I need some proof from the author that they’ve done their research. Or, better yet, a sense of reality in the writing that makes me feel that this is authentic. Or, stick them on spaceships and don’t worry about reality.
Only offend with a purpose (and don’t worry about the people who will be offended whatever)
Writing may be one of the few occasions when it is perfectly okay to offend people on purpose. Just make sure you know why you’re doing it, and when you’re doing it. If you’re offensive without knowing, you’re just losing readers that might have loved your story with a little re-write. Get a diverse group of readers, and if you’re writing about a sensitive or specific subject then do your research and if possible talk to someone close to the experience.
If you’ve decided you want to smash your point home, then be offensive. Rape, murder, sexual predation, blasphemy, heroic Tories: anything can be justified IF it is tied closely to the central question of the text, and if in doing so it drives that question home with the reader. Don’t be afraid to offend – there are plenty of people out there who hate you just for being alive. But when you do it, do it right. Don’t be cheap. Make them pay.
