Fuck Political Correctness.

The BBQ Pit
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Political correctness is a widespread movement and, yes, not all proponents of it have the same ideology or take it to the degree that some of its most virulent critics allege they do. However, it is equally fallacious to claim that the extremists have not effected changes our society.

I presume everyone has heard of the banning of Huckleberry Finn from the English curriculum at some Connecticut and Pennsylvania schools. If affecting public school education isn’t an example of influence, I don’t know what is. Though we may all point and laugh at such idiocy, we must remember that there is a very serious issue at stake. Censorship is censorship no matter what you call it and the use of euphemisms such as “courtesy” or “political correctness” does not change reality. Ultimately, the omission of facts is much more frightening than the poor delivery of them, and one cannot deny that the PC movement has resulted in the suppression of certain opinions. How can a person discuss anything when the definitions of the very words he uses are being altered to suit someone’s fancy?

To take up some aforementioned examples:
[ul]
[li]The word gay currently has two definitions: homosexual and happy. It is difficult to see how the two could be confused. It is also hard to imagine how–in a given social situation–the intentions of a person using this or any related word can be misconstrued. If someone calls a person a faggot, it may or may not be offensive. (gobear, would you consider the HOMOPHOBES ARE FAGS t-shirts to be offensive? After all, the creators of the shirts are using the word in a way that suggests it’s something negative. No? Didn’t think so.)[/li][li]The word niggardly means “miserly” or “meager.” If someone is intentionally stupid (or “aggressively ignorant”) enough to think that it means something else, they deserve whatever mental pain they are inflicting upon themselves. The thing that gets ignored too often is that people can actually tell what a person is really saying based on context, tone and other factors.[/li][/ul]

If someone calls me a kike, I would attempt to figure what their motivations are. If they said it in a joking manner then I might just smile and nod. (I don’t think it needs to be explained that such jokes are digs at racists and anti-semites, parodying them.) On the other hand, if someone called me a Jew and did so sneeringly, I would be offended. And that’s my problem with the PC movement: it attempts to stigmatize words. It ignores the fact that every word has a specific definition(s) and that the emotional aspect of every word is engendered by the speaker and interpreted by the listener. Believe it or not, people can usually tell what a person means. And the overly sensitive are only outwardly so (that is, they claim to be hurt in order to garner respect, sympathy, etc., even though everyone can have those feelings [of being hurt]). [Allowances must be made, of course, for disparities among individuals.]

In short, I would rather be offended than be lied to. If I found that someone I know is a racist, I would rather they be up front about it and talk about their feelings, than try to hide them in the name of PCness. That way, there is at least a chance that they might change, whereas if I shunned them they would simply wallow in their own hatred–something that’s bad for everybody, not just the racist.

The following quote is very fitting for the PC movement:
“Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.” --Oscar Wilde

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On the other hand, I rarely encounter this stuff that you claim is a “constant barrage,” but I do get tired of the horde of whiny white guys who frequently post on these boards pissing and moaning about these other groups (who seem to be mostly figments of their imaginations).

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[QUOTE=Ferrous]

Right, like the time that group of black people chained you up and forced you to work in their cotton field? The time when those women tore up your voter registration card and made you stay home and cook dinner? What the fuck are you talking about?

[QUOTE]

Ah yes I’d forgotten I’d done those things last tuesday. Silly me, Here I was ranting about being tired of people insinuating that I owe them reparations and I thought I was innocent of such charges. Yes I was ripping those voting cards in half last tuesday. How could i’ve forgotten my small purchase at the slave auction?!

FUCK YOU. That’s My exact Point. NONE of us have done any of those things. For fuck’s sake anyone who did is either dead or damn near dead by now. The People whinging about that shit have never endured the things they’re whinging about.

The Oppression is over. ( gays exempted from that comment) What we’ve got is lingering pockets of bigotry and racism. The best way to deal with it is to expose it for what it is, not hide behind token PC gestures. You think that Black History Month makes it all good? Fuck No it doesn’t. Neither does encouraging people to pay the goddamn race card for every hardship they endure. What will make things better is to fucking STOP all the PC special terms and protected language and simply NEVER refer to race or sexual orientation unless it’s relevant. Who gives a fuck if an Inventor is black? we don’t mention “the famous White inventor so-and-so”. Why do it the other way around?

Now as for people bothering ME with PC shit. As you may or may not know i’m a sculptor and special effects artist. That means i have to deal with the mercurial world of art. What’s hot today is gone tomorrow and so forth. Right now, the hot item is “art from traditionally oppressed groups.” It’s not about the work it’s about the story of the artist behind it. I’ve been barred from shows after passing the jury because my work wasn’t from a woman, or a minority or a homosexual. When I DARE speak up on what i felt to be an unfair descision, i was decryed for a bigot. Fuck THAT! Further, My sales have been seriously impacted due to this reverse discrimination. The only way I could garner attention and thusly sales was to be absurdly controversial, something I haven’t done due to personal standards. I’ve had professors and collegues tell me not to bother entering certain shows, i’ll be turned down on the basis of race and sexuality.

Want another? The local feminazi’s decided to hold up everyones progress in certain public areas to get their point across. Having little choice in the course of what way i got to my shop I just had to go through them. I’ve been called nasty names and spit on for simply being male. Fuck THAT as well. I’m a good boyfriend. I’d NEVER do any of the various and sundry evil things that i was accused of doing by the feminazis; But if I disagree with that agenda hell, i just MUST be against all women’s rights.

Lastly I’ve WORKED for everything I’ve got. I was taught that if you wanted something then you had to earn it. I wasn’t part of those problems in the bad ol’ days and i’m not going to feel a smidge of guilt for it. TODAY I do have a few groups who are actively working against my race/gender/sexual preferance group so I think i’ve a right to bitch about it.

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I don’t believe I have made that claim, or at least didn’t mean to. I do deny that the kind of personal discriminaton the OP is decrying exists.

Hmm. I had forgotten about that, and I agree that it was a mistake. However, I’d have to say that the fact that some schools in two states don’t teach Mark Twain is not exactly a major societal change. It’s perfectly possible to get a good education without reading Twain (I did it), and kids can still get those books elsewhere if they want to. I know, slippery slope and all that, and I don’t approve of censorship in any form, but let’s not blow it out of proporton.

What ideas have been supressed, apart from notions like one race being in some way superior to another?

As to the rest of your post, regarding the words, I believe that’s been addressed already. Suffice to say that I agree with the above posts by gobear and you with the face on the subject.

One thing though…

Yes, it’s still offensive. The word “fag” is traditionally an epithet for gays. Using it as a general insult is to equate homosexuality with badness.

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I never said you did those things, moron. You claimed that “historically oppressed” groups were acting “just like their oppressors”. I was asking for examples of such behavior. Calling someone a big meanie is not “just like” enslaving someone.

(I’ll address the rest of your post later, I’ve got to run now.)

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Right. I’m back. Now then…

Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. The reason I pushed you so hard in my post a ways back (#121) is that I’m just sick of all these vague rantings (I’m not just talking about you here) about “those people” doing things, with no specifics supplied. I wanted some concrete examples, and now you’ve supplied them. And I have to say that if what you say is true, you may have a point. I still have a couple problems though…

First, if you’re really upset because this PC discrimination is directly affecting you proffesionally, why didn’t you say so before? That would have gotten you a lot more support than this vague whining about being the poor, put-upon white man. It strikes me as odd that you would go on for three pages with this crap about how it’s “offensive”, while all the time not mentioning the one thing that might be seen as a legitimate beef. Since you bring that up only when directly pressed for specific personal examples, perhaps you can understand how one might harbor just the teeniest suspicion that you are making shit up.

Second, what kind of shows were these? If they were specifically set up as showcases for minority artwork, you’ve really got no cause to bitch. If it’s a private gallery, the owners have every right to display whatever artist they feel like displaying. If they feel like they can make more money by displaying minority artists because that’s the hot thing right now, they have every right to do so. When you have your own gallery, you can show whoever you want as well.

If it was a public institution, you may have cause for complaint. Although—and this is pure speculation on my part—is it vaguely possible that your not being a minority was only an excuse? Maybe they really just though you sucked, and were trying to soften the blow. I’m just saying…

Finally, if all that you claim is true, then I would concede that you have indeed been discriminated against, and have a legitimate grievance. However, I’d still say it’s a virtually unique grievance, and one that applies specifically to you, or at most to white hetero male artists in your circle, and not by any means to white hetero males in general. Which again makes me wonder why it took you so long to mention it.

Now, as to this…

I know it’s bad form to question personal anecdote, but I do find this hard to believe. At least that it occurs with any regularity. Surely if anyone behaved this way, they’d be arrested, no? You never mentoned what city this was in. Do they condone ths sort of thing? Did it ever make the news? Seems somewhat newsworthy to me, and if it did, we ought to be able to find an online reference…

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Hey, fuckface, mind if I answer instead of you treating me like a ventriloquist’s doll? YES, I find that offensive. I am not fond of homophobes, but I fucking LOATHE that word. I don’t use it, I don’t like it being said of gay men in any context. I’m a man, not a fag, or a queer, or a fruit, or any term that denigrates me and mine as a lesser order of being.

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[QUOTE=DeaganTheWolf

The Oppression is over. ( gays exempted from that comment) [/QUOTE]

Amazing. Simply amazing. Enjoy these [url=“http://www.pjstar.com/news/local/b27q8r4d012.html”] links.

Took me thirty seconds to find them. No digging required.

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I concur. I can’t think of a usage where faggot isn’t offensive.

132

by sleeping

Oh come on, it’s quite easy to imagine! If I informed a man that he looked rather gay and spiffy on a particular day, do you think he would automatically assume that I was talking about his happy disposition? Maybe seventy years ago in a London tea house, but not in the year 2004, in America, where gay = happy has basically gone the way of Colecovision. Even if context was set in such a way that my meaning was 100% clear, to describe someone or something as gay nowadays is to be deliberately provocative. Why? Because everyone who is not living in a cave knows that the “gay = homosexual” definition has a much greater familiarity than the “gay = happy” association. So you’re inviting some kind of reaction by using it, and that strikes me as juvenile.

It’s all about the intent behind word choice, man. I see I’m going to have illustrate my point to make it crystal clear to all the idiots who refuse to see that communication means shit unless it is effective communication.

I’m a veterinarian, right? An elderly couple comes in to see me. Their precious poodle is having female problems. I should add that these are clearly people from a generation that was raised to consider even words like “damn” as tickets to Hell in a Handbasket. I need to make a good impression and do a good job, which means making sure they trust and understand me. Right? So what is the best thing to say?

A. “Female dogs, like Fifi here, often have these kind of issues when they have not been fixed.”

OR

B. “Bitches, like this particular bitch here, often have these kind of issues when they haven’t undergone the ovariohysterectomy procedure.”

I trust you can figure out the correct answer, but if you can’t here’s a hint: it is not the choice that involves using language that, due to the way it sounds and/or dual meangings, detract from the message I’m trying to send. If I’m misunderstood or cause offense, it is NOT my clients fault. It is mine, because I’m not being sensitive to their point-of-reference. “Bitch” is a perfectly valid term, but because it has another, much more inflammatory meaning (and connotation), perhaps, particularly in this situation, other words may fit better. “Ovariohysterectomy” is equally valid, but if my clients don’t know what the hell I’m saying because it is not in common usage by lay folks, doesn’t that make me the doofus for using it?

True, but if you have to rely almost completely on context and tone to transmit your message, you might as well not be using real words at all. Gibberish will work just fine.

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A diverse vocabulary is a wonderful thing.

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Fuck off, Fear Itself. It’s clear from the context what I meant. Idiot.

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Well, in a lot of college towns where the students are particularly political, it’s pretty common. My assumption from this anecdote was from when he was still a student at FSU, which, from my experience, is a school with a very political set of feminist students. (They make me wish there was a term that’d differentiate between my views as a feminist and the craziness they incite as Feminists.) In the years that I’ve attended this school, I’ve seen the misguided attempts by the Feminist activist groups on campus to “train” the male population into being better citizens. Their method for informing people is mostly insulting because it assumes that all males are raping, oppressing neanderthals who take advantage of their female companions. A good example is their yearly equation of Valentine’s Day with sexual abuse on females while ignoring the concept that males have been victims of sexual abuse as well… and that, well, sexual congress in Roman society may have been the basis for Valentine’s day, but it was never a day that was centered around abusing one’s sexual partner.

Activism on political campuses can go further at times than activism in a non-political, non-college area. It’s just a fact of life that there’s normally a vocal minority of a subset making the rest of the subset look bad in the area where I’m going to college.

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Ferrous, It’s the pit, so I didn’t feel a need to cite or back up a general complaint at first. I also don’t like grieving exceptionally personal problems since it’s hard for others to weigh in on such a unique position.

On to the art. Negative on a minority arts show, as well as a private show. These were all-comer juried shows, in which I passed the entrance jury. The jury’s job is to judge which pieces would fit best within the show’s concept. That means I should have had a piece in said event. Later, after I’d gone to trouble of hauling heavy stone and metal art around I was informed, that the space was going to a late entry. Besides the fact that the entry was LATE and didn’t have to pass jury, The artist was a lesbian transfer student. The show had NO sort of minorty connection to it, it was based on the concept of modern expression of ancient myth. Her piece was poorly constructed (parts had to be glued back on the eve of the show as I recall) and her concept was trite. An amalgamation of Ancient goddess iconagraphy ala warhol. I had constructed a bas-relief based on scthyian design, reflecting my central asian heritage. That culture was unique in the show which had a lot of neo-celtic art, as well as some latino and african influence. I decided to complain, and rightly so since I’d paid the entry and exhibit fees. I was told that my work wasn’t from the demographic they were trying to reach. Bullshit, since I’d already Passed the JURY! I lost my temper at that point and verbal nastiness ensued from both sides. I DID get my fees back though. My show of temper got me banned from several other shows in which said promoter was involved. After all to quote her “No one cares what a straight, white man has to say, you’ve had YOUR chance in art already.”

On to the feminazis. It WAS indeed at FSU, indigo is correct. The police don’t bother to get involved unless someone is Physically assaulted. Spit doesn’t count for that, apparently. FSU has a good long history of allowing groups to come in and hold little protests and rants that hold up pedestrian traffic. Other groups have included Pro-lifers with disgusting signage, Bible thumpers who decry all the women getting an education as evil etc. We’ve had Hippies camp out on the green to protest some sort of problem with where the university’s t-shirts are being made…all sorts of stuff.

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Well, clearly someone was confused. You said:

[QUOTE=DeaganTheWolf]
The show had NO sort of minorty connection to it
…but a show official told you…

…so I don’t know. It does seem odd, but I’ll just take your word for it.

However,

Frankly, this sounds less lke your work being affected by PC attitudes than your work being affected by you being an asshole. If I was a promoter and you’d freaked out on me for whatever reason, I’d feel less inclined to deal with you in the future.

Hmm. Maybe Santa Cruz isn’t as bad as I thought. We never had any of that sort of stuff.

Anyway, I still maintain that if you had talked about this sort of stuff in the OP rather than vague complaints about oppressed white guys, you’d have gotten a lot more sympathy. Seems like another lesson on Effective Communication.

Now let’s all hug and cry and learn and grow.

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I thought it was quite obvious that I was holding it up as just one example. There are plenty of similar instances.

Well I don’t know about you, but I think that racist statements deserve refutation, not suppression.

Either you’re out of touch with what really goes on college campuses today or you’re intentionally ignoring it. Frankly, the latter seems more likely.

In many ways, I think this is one of the main reasons for people raging against the PC movement. The moderate, sensible people refuse to acknowledge that their ideas are being taken to ludicrous extremes by that “small minority” and that those people are having an impact on society and that, in many cases, they dominate college campuses.

Fine. You don’t like it. But other people–other gays–use it. And I’m sure you knew that. Now, you can call them irresponsible for it, but you certainly don’t speak for everyone.

First of all, the inclusion of the word spiffy changes the context. I agree with you that the most common usage of gay refers to homosexuality, but it’s also important to remember that the reason this is so is because gay liberationalists popularized it. What strikes me as juvenile is the constant barrage of “oh no you can’t say that” by people who clearly have nothing else to do.

That’s not an analogous example. The word niggardly has one definition; it just happens to sound somewhat like a racial slur. Seeing as how as I have fairly good diction, I don’t see a problem.

How about neither? It’s a word, plain and simple. I don’t see why someone would have to be a pedant to use it. As for the latter case, you are again ignoring the fact that people actually have brains. If someone says “NIGGARdly” (and I assume you are also imagining a scornful tone that would likely go with it) people will know that the person is a racist. The PC movement tries to systematize something that doesn’t need to be systemized.

Where did I say that one has to rely “almost completely on context”? You’re being ridiculous. When someone says something, you typically know what they mean. If you don’t, you ask.

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OK. I take it back. Maybe you really are just out of touch.

Yeah, I understand where some of the PC supporters were coming from in this thread, given the OP going a bit overboard. But I still think it’s important to note that the moderate PC crowd looks the other way when the extremists take hold. I suspect it’s because the idea of PCness was originally implemented to guard minorities when they were still developing their movements on college campuses. Now that it’s mainstream, however, they don’t want to criticize the extremists out of a fear that it may give people the impression that the entire PC movement is wrong. Yet, by refusing to distance themselves from the extremists, they create the very image of agreement (with the extremists) that they are trying to avoid.

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Who’s refusing? Okay, here you go: I hereby officially Distance Myself from the PC extremists. In fact, I don’t really consider myself a PC supporter at all. It just seemed to me that the OP was arguing the other extreme, that there is no value at all in attempting to avoid needlessly offending people. I’m all about the happy medium, baby. And statements like “white males are the most discriminated against group” and crap like that are clearly nonsense.

Now that the OP has clarified what the hell he was really complaining about—finally, after a three page shitstorm—I concede that he has a point.

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Hee. You’re so my favorite.
That is all.

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That was pretty funny. But seriously, I do think it’s important for moderate PCers to expressly disavow any association with the extremists and to criticize the extremists when they attempt to institute stupid rules and regulations.