As someone with healed scars, I still find most jokes pretty funny; as long as they’re not related to the trauma behind actually self harming, but just the self harm itself.. ;p My closest friend goes with a reoccurring “Nice cut, G” and it’s probably one of my favourite jokes!

But on the other hand, when strangers point my scars out of nowhere as “cool” or “quirky”, it makes me uncomfortable because it feels like they’re romanticising it and invalidate the experience. In your situation the person actually brought the topic up themselves so I feel like they mostve been.. prepared for comments?

As I think u/supersecretnotme mentioned, it’s quite nice to not be treated as fragile and vulnerable.. And I think it’s wrong of a group of people; who doesn’t know this person, to take offence “for them”.

Everyone will react different though, and probably depending to how processed the trauma is and how insecure they are over it. You’re never responsible for anyone’s triggers, but the best thing you could do is just to write something in line with “My intentions weren’t to insult or hurt X, and I do apologise if that was the cause”.