I usually find the discourse of “offence” to be insidiously disempowering because it normalizes hierarchies of social power. Not unlike public protests, successful use of it involves persuading others with “real power” to act on one’s behalf through opprobrium - whether it is legislature, school administration, corporate HR, etc. It uses real causes but deepens the precedent of conceding the power of social change to those already in power. This trend I think has resulted in the left being increasingly unable or unwilling to organize over the past 40 years or so, and having become far more reactionary in nature.
The left is more able to control its own narrative and agenda I think through a more “cognitive behavioral therapy” model of being trained to recognize and manage one’s own reactions to troubling situations and stimuli. This is done with people recovering from overt trauma, but the methodology is not limited to this. It can be argued that “ideally, people shouldn’t need to do this”, and I could agree. But what is happening here is a form of cultural/information warfare - or if you prefer, a strategic clash of disparate ideologies. Those who have had to personally fend off and/or prevail against violent police, sexual assailants, racist gangs, bigoted ideologues, etc I think can attest to the fact that (for better or worse) a person or group has little chance of victory (survival) without being in control of one’s own immediate mental, physical, and emotional responses. Many on the right are police, military, and businesspeople who know this and have been using to their advantage, while scoring gains in popular media by depicting the left as disrespectful and undisciplined due to this same tendency of harnessing emotional outrage almost exclusively without much consideration of tactics or strategy. Yes, it is hypocritical, as many on the right are fragile reactionaries - but they have had an advantage of more of them being willing to see “the long game”.
