Taking offence has become a norm, but it doesn’t have to be like this

Quick question: how did you feel when you woke up this morning? Forget the crick in your neck or the hammies you know will complain with the day’s first steps, I’m talking about your mood. Were you tired? Crabby? Rapt? I’m asking on behalf of a woman whose life mojo I quite adore, singer Pink.

Pink has just spoken about how she refuses to be cowed or censored amid the rise of cancel culture – “I’ve been cancelled so many freaking times” – and said her history of speaking out on social and political issues including abortion and gay rights sees her get death threats “all the time.”

Singer Pink believes everyone wakes up offended.

Pink shrugs that off: “Just me getting out of bed with a vagina offends some people. These days, everybody wakes up offended.”

After writing celebrity features for magazines for decades, it takes a lot these days to get me interested in anything stars say unless I’m looking for unwitting comedy, i.e. model Helena Christensen recommending a daily “wild cold water” swim in the handy little river that runs through your backyard.

But Pink has me thinking. Is she right? Are we all waking up offended?

Maybe all is overkill, but I reckon a lot of us take offence fast where none is intended. Offended is becoming 2023’s default setting. We see insults instead of humour. We see right-wing beliefs instead of common sense. On the flip side, we slam as woke those who support gender-neutral bathrooms, pride flags in coffee shop windows, affirmative action, pronoun badges, safe spaces.

Check out your community Facebook group. Mine is a hotbed of hotheads taking umbrage about dogs off leads, dogs on leads, people from Melbourne taking all the good parking spots, a local reporting her thongs stolen from the beach (“I don’t get why you’d leave your shoes”), a woman sourcing a clown costume for aversion therapy was mocked. I’m still not sure if that’s funny or not, but I’m terrified to say it in case it offends anyone.

Rebel Wilson defended her decision to attend parties a week after her daughter’s birth.

This week we saw a rich vein of offence taken. An Australian transgender reality star was offended by trans women accepting endorsement deals from tampon brands. A MAFS bride was offended when her fella didn’t realise “my love language is affirmations”. And Rebel Wilson took offence at detractors who were angered when she attended two parties in the week that she took delivery of her surrogate daughter.

We will have lost those of you who’ve jumped to the comments’ section to say you’re offended by my reference to the taking delivery bit but for those still with us, Wilson told a podcast the response was sexist because “Chris Hemsworth goes to the gym and people aren’t yelling, ‘Where’s your kids?’”

Asked Wilson, “Why do they do it to every woman?” Um, they don’t. And as a woman, I’m offended when the misogyny card is played carelessly and a toe is dipped into what’s being called victim feminism. Sheesh, this offence thing is like wrestling an octopus.

Scientists have weighed into the offence trend, trying to give clarity on terms students of ecology and evolutionary binary should use. “Male” and “female” should be phased out because they reinforce ideas sex is binary, US and Canadian scientists from the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Language Project suggested.

Instead, the boffins suggest “sperm-producing” or “egg producing”. Other problematic words: mother, father, primitive, alien, advanced, exotic, invasive. Even “survival of the fittest” is no good because it discriminates against people with disabilities and is linked to eugenics, the scientists say.

Enough of that O word. I say we ditch it for another one. Let’s wake up with optimism.

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