Any type of communication is, of course, open to interpretation from person to person. If it's abstract, that interpretation can vary wildly. An instrumental piece of music is a perfect example. It's extremely abstract, yet it's still a form of communication, and everyone walks away with something different.
Words aren't immune to that either. People often read into what you're saying and decide that your position somehow aligns with their own, even when it doesn't.
Case in point: My line of work sits adjacent to everything from boudoir, which I consider both a legitimate service and a legitimate form of art, all the way to pornography, which is also legitimate in its own right, even if I have my own concerns and convictions about that entire world.
I work in intimate portraiture. I create images that are often beautiful, often provocative, and often sexualized, but in my own mind, never too far. I don't try for vulgarity. I don't pursue explicitness simply for the sake of being explicit. Shock value has never interested me. Meh.
What's interesting is that when I publicly say, "Let's not shame or dismiss intimate portraiture quite so quickly," I'm trying to encourage people to pause and examine the subject a little more carefully. Sexuality can be empowering. It can be a form of reclamation. It can be a form of rediscovering yourself. Sometimes it can simply be beauty for beauty's sake, a celebration of a part of humanity that we've become strangely uncomfortable acknowledging.
Those statements make good sense to me. I stand behind them completely.
But think about how differently they can be interpreted.
One person hears that and says, "Yes, I understand. It's about empowerment, reclamation, and celebrating beauty and human sensuality." They may have a different threshold than I do when it comes to sexual imagery, but we're mostly aligned.
Someone else hears the exact same words and concludes, "Great. That means my tacky, vulgar, explicit and unsophisticated glamour shots are art too, and anyone who criticizes them is just closed-minded."
Another person hears it and says, "Exactly. The exploitative pornography I produce should be celebrated the same way."
Then someone else arrives at the opposite conclusion entirely. They say, "I understand what you're saying, Nino, but I think you're still exploiting people, specifically women. You're part of the problem."
Same words.
Wildly different conclusions.
That's the fascinating part to me. People will often interpret things however they were already inclined to interpret them. We all filter ideas through our own experiences, biases, values, insecurities, and assumptions. That's simply part of being human.
The part that becomes frustrating is when people stop treating their interpretation as an interpretation. Somewhere along the way, they decide they've uncovered the author's hidden intent. They stop saying, "This is what I heard," and instead say, "This is what you meant."
Those are two very different things.
None of this means communication is impossible. It simply means communication requires humility from both the speaker and the listener. I have a responsibility to express myself as clearly as I can. The audience has a responsibility to recognize that clarity doesn't eliminate ambiguity, and that their interpretation isn't automatically the same thing as my intent. Clarification is often needed, and should be welcomed.
And ok fine, sometimes people will still misunderstand me. Sometimes they'll disagree with me, and that's perfectly ok. But I think we'd all benefit from remembering that hearing someone's words is not the same as fully understanding the worldview that produced them.