How many times have you been offended this week?
I haven't been counting, but I know I've been offended at least three times today.
Once this morning when I asked my flatmates if we could do yoga this afternoon and no-one answered me, once when I had to walk in the gutter on my way to class in order to get around a group of men, and once more when I got home and found our mailbox full of letters for previous tenants who had neglected to update their addresses.
I am perfectly aware I am the sort of person who is easily offended.
I don't enjoy being challenged any more than the next person, and when I'm hungry I am particularly prone to oversensitivity.
On one occasion, in fit of hungry rage, I ripped up a review of an album that I didn't agree with and vowed to send the fragmented document to the author with an accompanying counter-review.
For the most part, though, I would argue that everyone is dancing around being offended almost every second of every day.
Feeling offended is a near constant state of being when one has to interact with other people.
But when it comes to feeling irked and hard done by it's ultimately what and when you choose to vocalise that is important.
It is interesting that often those who complain the most about people being too easily offended are the exact people who are the most prone to taking offence.
And being offended about other people being offended is pretty ideologically loaded thinking.
What I'm trying to talk about is similar in a sense to the anti ''political correctness'' monster that periodically rears its ugly head, but somewhat more insidious.
What I'm trying to talk about is the sense that your feelings of discomfort make those around you uncomfortable.
A pertinent example might be that at a party recently my flatmate Rosie tried to explain to a man that he couldn't use gendered slurs to address women and his response was ''Well see, that upsets me.''
While people's feelings and interpretations of situations always have a valid emotional basis, there is, perhaps arguably, a point where certain perspectives have to be valued over others.
For example, the perspectives of those who are both systemically silenced and abused.
When somebody in a position of privilege is offended by someone else taking offence to behaviour propagated by their privileged group, they are simply restating that their voice is the centre of the conversation.
This only serves to further marginalise already sidelined people.
To put it simply, to be offended by someone's response to pain, trauma, and/or oppression is absurd and unnecessary.
This isn't a personal indictment on those born into any position of privilege
. It's a pretty normal response to be affronted by perspectives that challenge the thinking you've had imposed on you your entire life.
But people offended by hegemonic thinking and systems are offended because their safety and wellbeing are threatened, those offended by offence are offended because their normalised way of thinking is being threatened.
What people need to remember is that nobody actually enjoys talking about things that impinge upon their quality of life.
Being offended by institutionalised sexism, racism, ableism, and homophobia is not something anybody gets a kick out of. It's far more exhausting to be constantly calling people out than it is to be called out on behaviour that can be easily changed - even if realising that your behaviour was bad hurts your feelings.
Talking about experiences of systemic oppression and abuse are always topics worth talking about.
Airing these experiences is the only way we can eradicate serious instances of offence.
If your knee-jerk reaction is to emphasise how uncomfortable it makes you having your behaviour challenged, then you might like to spend a little more time thinking about the ingrained thought processes that led you to that point.
Millie Lovelock is a Dunedin student.
