Disregard the exclamation point, and that’s just a statement of (possibly incorrect, but objectively discussable) fact, and so long as the person doesn’t object to it being handled as such, I think it’d be okay. I’d even consider ‘you have just called me a bad person, and I feel offended’ to be okay if handled as a fact; as far as I can tell, the situation turns problematic when people start handling emotions as problems to be solved rather than facts to be observed. This does intentionally imply that the problem can be caused by any member of the conversation: If I say I’m offended, and don’t intend that to be taken as anything but an observation, but the person I’m talking to takes it upon themselves to try to un-offend me, that’s also likely to derail the conversation, as is a third party trying to force the offender to un-offend me.
(That’s not to say that it’s never useful to try to avoid offending someone, but such situations also seem to work best when they’re primarily handled on a fact-based level. For example, someone can say ‘I find it very distracting when I’m offended, which will happen if this topic is discussed in that way; could we discuss it in this way instead? Otherwise, I’ll have a hard time contributing and may decide to leave the conversation’, and the answer to that can be yes or no depending on whether the other people in the conversation think that the change is worthwhile.)
Disregard the exclamation point, and that’s just a statement of (possibly incorrect, but objectively discussable) fact, and so long as the person doesn’t object to it being handled as such, I think it’d be okay. I’d even consider ‘you have just called me a bad person, and I feel offended’ to be okay if handled as a fact; as far as I can tell, the situation turns problematic when people start handling emotions as problems to be solved rather than facts to be observed. This does intentionally imply that the problem can be caused by any member of the conversation: If I say I’m offended, and don’t intend that to be taken as anything but an observation, but the person I’m talking to takes it upon themselves to try to un-offend me, that’s also likely to derail the conversation, as is a third party trying to force the offender to un-offend me.
(That’s not to say that it’s never useful to try to avoid offending someone, but such situations also seem to work best when they’re primarily handled on a fact-based level. For example, someone can say ‘I find it very distracting when I’m offended, which will happen if this topic is discussed in that way; could we discuss it in this way instead? Otherwise, I’ll have a hard time contributing and may decide to leave the conversation’, and the answer to that can be yes or no depending on whether the other people in the conversation think that the change is worthwhile.)