Do I Need Sensitivity Training?

4 minute read

• by Ken Hiebert

I’ve been told on more than one occasion that I really should be more careful of what I say on social media, so as not to unwittingly offend anyone. My initial response to this is usually something like, “People already know that I’m not an asshole so if they want clarification, surely they could just ask.”

Of course, while I’m making this reply I’m usually thinking something along the lines of, “I don’t really give a rat’s ass what people think anyway, so why should I care?”

Now, I’m not completely clueless and I am aware of a couple of reasons why I should care, not the least of which is the fact that as a self-employed individual I rely on word of mouth and the good opinions of the people in my community in order to pay my bills. Also, I don’t want my kids to have a hard time in school because their Dad is a moron. So, there’s that. Beyond that though, it seems that it would be an exercise in futility, given that the people I’m most likely to offend are already living in a constant state of offense anyway.

A Disclaimer of sorts

It’s occurred to me that perhaps I should preface each post on social media with some sort of disclaimer. Perhaps this would suffice:

All opinions in the following post are mine alone and therefore in the event that an offense is incurred, no other entities shall be blamed. These entities which shall not be blamed include (but are not limited to): my wife, my kids, my dog, the price of oil, climate change. If the following (in whole or in part) does cause an offense, please refer to this exhaustive list of parties that may be blamed: Me.

Or something like that.

Seriously though, I think what bothers me most about needing to start every statement with a disclaimer (other than the time it would take to write it out) is that it assumes that the person listening is not really interested in what I’m trying to say, but is much more interested in what kind of box they should put me in, or maybe just so self-absorbed that they can’t see past their own opinions anyway.

For instance, if I make the political statement, “Justin Trudeau is the worst Prime Minister in history”, many will immediately assume that because I disagree with Trudeau, that must mean I agree with everything Andrew Scheer says, which must mean that I’m also a Trump supporter and by extension I’m obviously a filthy racist getting money from some oil cartel. In actual fact, none of these things are remotely true (except possibly the initial statement about Trudeau) but it doesn’t even matter because in most people’s minds there is no middle ground, but only two extremes (at least when it comes to politics and religion). I actually believe it’s a little bit better in Canada than it is in the U.S. in this regard, but I can see it going south (pun intended) a bit more every year.

Another reason I don’t like to preemptively sanitize everything I say is that I would much rather have an actual discussion about it than just have people tap “like” as they’re scrolling by.

It just bothers me that people think they can and should be able to know me based on a couple of comments, as if all our complexities distill into no more than the world’s worst stereotypes. I mean, we all know that Liberals are mamby-pamby snowflakes who love government control and can’t stand it when someone actually goes out on his own and does something worthwhile. By contrast, we also know that Conservatives are all bigoted, science-denying hippocrites who also happen to be getting rich off the backs of their underpayed employees. Except of course for the inbred hillbillies in Saskatchewan and Alberta living off the scraps that the oil companies toss their way. As you can see, neither of these positions lends itself to calm, rational discussion.

So, do I need sensitivity training?

So, I guess my position on whether I need sensitivity training or not boils down to this:

If you take offense at something I say, I’d like to know - not so I can ridicule you or laugh at you, but because in all likelyhood you probably misunderstood what I was trying to say, or possibly you got offended by a fact of life that I have no control over. Regardless, you can be quite assured that my goal is never to offend anyone, so I would welcome the discussion.

Let’s talk religion - NOT

In fact, if there is one topic of discussion that I almost never engage in online, it would be religion simply because I consider that to be a much more personal and sincere part of one’s identity than politics. Of course in the U.S. they’re pretty much the same thing and I believe that’s one of the things that has made it so volatile down there.

Anyway, if you sense an offense has been committed, please refer to the disclaimer above and remember that not everything you hear comes from one of the two extremes. Those may be the only viewpoints we ever hear on the news, but it’s a tiny fraction of what exists in real life. Most people are much more normal than the ones that make the news - that’s why you’ll never see them on the news. So, maybe if we’d make more of an attempt to actually see who the people are that we engage with on a daily basis, it would be a lot harder to get offended by their different points of view, and we may even begin to understand them.