I doubt we’ve even seen the beginning of Political Correctness. And as we move further down the pike I would not be surprised if people start to take to heart the adage “heaven is within (hell is without)” and begin to look for ways for technology to save us from ourselves, like shelling away our brains and hooking them to computers so as to give each person their own brand of happiness via electrical impulses … generating our own little worlds where we safely remain for a very long time (and doing a lot of disgusting and evil things, of our own choosing).
That’s my secular answer. My spiritual answer which (for me) trumps it, is of a Biblical nature involving The Good Lord returning to this Satan-infested world and taking ultimate control with people getting their acts together and living the way He commands of us.
Like most trends we think we see, it’s almost certainly confirmation bias. You want there to be a blow-back, so you are especially sensitive to every example of something that supports that.
One is blind to ignore the increasing trend of social media witch-hunting in which recreational outragers band together to see personal reprisal toward the “offender.”
In other words, political correctness has gotten personal, and oddly, impersonal. Let’s not pretend the internet hasn’t accelerated this trend with poor rebuttals claiming confirmation bias.
We also have the recent Rolling Stone article describing a horrific rape at UVA that never happened. We also have the former Duke lacrosse coach that was fired because of his team’ was accused of ‘rape’ of a stripper in the a highly publicized media scandal that also never happened. It was completely fabricated but he will never get his job back or even an official apology even though the accuser is now in prison for killing her boyfriend after destroying a whole team worth of lives.
The anti-vaccine, organic foods, anti-GMO, animal welfare, radical feminists, anti-nuclear power, various parenting splinter groups and radical environmental movements have gotten equally out of control. There will always be crazy people among us. The difference now is that they have become a collective zombie group with power that we are supposed to tip-toe around so not to offend their insane sensibilities. Request made. Request denied at least on my part.
This board is supposed to have a much higher mission than that. I honestly don’t give a flying fuck what the average Whole Foods shopper thinks let alone the extreme ones. We can deal with the facts using plain language like adults and nobody should be offended if someone uses a controversial word or idea. This country was founded on the free expression of ideas no matter how controversial. That is the true threat that political correctness presents. There is nothing kind about it. The core goal is suppression of thoughts and dissent.
With Bruce Jenner making his transition so publicly in recent weeks, I can assure you that the Pronoun Police have been out and about in force to make sure anyone using “he” or “him” instead of “she” or “her” is give what for.
Total hogwash. Not “equally” by any means, and certainly not “out of control.”
California, one of the most liberal of states, is passing a law taking away parents’ rights to exempt their children from vaccination. The anti-vaccine movement is dead, even here. The organic foods/anti-GMO movement, likewise, can’t even get labelling laws passed.
Yes, we (California) did pass an animal welfare law, requiring better treatment of laying hens. Do you consider that “out of control?”
The environmental movement got a huge boost, although not in the way they would have wanted, from a big ugly oil spill in Santa Barbara. So much for the guarantees that oil pipelines will be free from spills.
None of this comes even close to “out of control.” You’re as wrong as wrong can be.
PC is great. It gives you an opportunity to separate the men from the boys. If you’re constrained by silly conventions or too timid to speak your mind for fear of transgressing on the ever expanding and changing lists of no-go words and topics, then you’re a boy who has still to claim your place in the world. Your opinions also don’t matter. Because boy. And because its not your opinions but just that of the groupthink.
Since most of them seem to believe that “misgendering” a transgendered person is an indication of belief that transgender people are mentally ill or making shit up or something, thus contributing to suicides and murders, I’m not surprised.
With all due respect to the OP, I think this thread is something of a non-starter without a rigorous definition of what Political Correctness actually is.
I mean, when some people think of political correctness they think of stuff like this:
Conversely, if you’re one of those people who justifies being a raging asshole by claiming to just be “speaking your mind”, then you’re also someone too immature to have a place in civilized society. Your opinions also don’t matter. Because asshole.
ETA: For clarity - the above is in response to, but not meant to be directed at, Rune.
To put it simply, I believe that free speech comes before anti-racism. It is a person’s right to be offensive and a jerk. If the matter is going to be judged by how a person feels, then I can write a lengthy and beautiful argument to explain why polar bears are offensive and bigoted, and should therefore be incarcerated.
I don’t get why we’re supposed to be alarmed that a teenager, confronted with her mom saying something embarrassing, lashed out with an ugly and inaccurate insult. KIDS THESE DAYS!
Very few people I’ve met disagree with this. It’s just that if you’re (impersonal you) offensive and a jerk, my free speech rights include mentioning this fact, and my free association rights include not associating with you.
That’s a deal. However, it would only be so if your free speech rights have you express your opinion in my being a jerk and an asshole without seeking to imprison me or suppress my own free speech.
Again, to put it simply: Jerks and assholes are just jerks and assholes. Their opinions and deeds rarely lead to professors being fired, writers being banned from writing, or public figures getting stigmatized. It’s the other way around. People say you’re racist, bigoted, an asshole or sexist and they want you no less than putting an end to your right of being whatever the hell you are.
So what if I say YOU’RE suppressing MY free speech rights by preventing me from calling you a racist, especially if you’re a “public figure” (after all, if you’re so concerned about them being “stigmatized,” it seems evident you don’t want them being called out at all)?
And I’d say that jerks and assholes led to people being fired and worse all the time. Just read any website dealing with the stories of retail workers sometime, or that of any minority group practically anywhere.
Just within the past couple weeks, Kirsten Powers released a book on the subject of intolerant liberals attacking free speech. (“The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech”) She has been on the NYT best-seller list in the past, and this book is probably headed there sooner or later.
In turn, the release of the book is resulting in columns by other national commentators. For example, Peggy Noonan just penned a column entitled “The Trigger-Happy Generation: If reading great literature traumatizes you, wait until you get a taste of adult life.” Peggy Noonan mentions Kirsten Powers’s book but goes on to comment on a case of students complaining about literature they don’t like at Columbia University. And so on and so forth.
So to answer the OP: Yeah, I think there is a little backlash going on right now. But I don’t think it’s a big deal. We did this conflict in the 90s when political correctness first really got underway, and we’re doing it again now. I just see it as a pendulum. Everyone agrees that a certain amount of courtesy and sensitivity to the feelings of others is needed in public debate, and you achieve that by shaming those who speak insensitively. But when the shaming turns into politically correct puritanism, then you tend to see a backlash in the form of ridiculing of the shamers and the pendulum swings back the other way. And you see elements of both sides of the pendulum going on all the time.
BTW, Pam Geller is in the news today for putting up billboards all over Texas with cartoons of Muhammad. You know, Free Speech and all that. I mention this in order to point out that Free Speech is a pretty powerful weapon against everything from religious fundamentalism to politically correct shamers. It’s not like politically correct college kids are killing people or trying to take over the world. I would tend to be dismissive about politically correct college kids and pay more attention to people like Pam Geller, who really are poking a bit of a hornet’s nest to test the true limits of Free Speech in the West.
Put you in jail? I’m unaware of any such attempts in the US in the past quarter-century; bring some up, and barring some crazy unanticipated circumstances (e.g., you’re considering death threats to be “being a jerk”), I’ll join the condemnation of such attempts.
Ban you? Totally different. Banning you from a private place is freedom of assocation, inasmuch as that freedom includes freedom not to associate.
Ban you from a public place, e.g., a public university for singing a massively racist song? Eush. I’ll fall, very reluctantly, on the side of not thinking a banning is appropriate, for freedom of speech reasons.
It isn’t the fact of lashing out that is alarming. It is the fact that certain types of lashing out are taken seriously and given power by the relevant authorities in certain settings where they probably should not be - which leads those inclined to lash out to use those forms, maniputively.
To be fair, this is mostly a phenom restricted to certain settings - where the powers that be (be they parents, or college administrators) take such shibboleths seriously. You are right, it isn’t the fault of ‘kids these days’ that parents, school authorities etc. have made themselves vulnerable by being as tough-minded as sponges when confronted by accusations of sexism, racism, or ‘triggers’ of various sorts.
Nor is this a new phenom. I remember the band New Model Army writing a song on this exact issue back in the '80s called “A Liberal Education”.