I swear I read this in the USA Today letters to the editor section. This was back in '90 or '91, I can’t really remember.
A few weeks before, USA Today had run an article about Ross Perot and called his followers “crazies” in the headline of the article.
Someone wrote a complaint, stating that folks with mental problems prefer to be called “mental health consumers”.
I will not stand for all of this PC-bashing!
(Ooh. “-bashing”. There’s a stupid PC term no-one has mentioned yet.)
It pains me to defend political correctness, given that I loathe it myself, but nonethelesss I must say:
Like Wendell said, a lot of these are jokes about PC and not actual PC term.
PC did not envent the euphemism. Or Newspeak.
Shell shock became PTSD, but in between it was combat fatigue. Every war has it’s own term.
Retarded became mentally hadicapped but retarded was the “PC” term of the time to replace moron and idiot (they were medical terms).
And is there a PC term as “Newspeak” as the ones the military comes up with? Is “Negative Paitent Outcome” any more stupid (and not as horrible if you think about it) than “Collatoral Damage”?
Spritle in absolute agreement here. Hurtful nomenclature must be changes to be more sensative. Retarded, while technically meaning “slowed” in precesses, etc. may be a correct term to describe an individual, it is hurtful. Also, many of these terms (retarded, dumb) were born of ignorance. Aye, change should come swiftly.
[soapbox]
That said, there is a limit to which people should slant this approach. We fear offending those who may not be offended. To this end, society (or parts thereof) has gone to make sure not to say anything even remotely offensive for fear of, Idunno, lawsuits? It is a useless and distracting extension of the legitimate need to “clean-up” some terms that gives PC a bad name.
[/soapbox]
I started this thread simply 'cause I read another thread wherein the OP was concerned how to refer to “non-whites” on a web page. The ensuing discussion reminded me of other concerns that lead to PCism.
NB: This post is NOT meant as a bust on anyone who has posted here. betenoir, I did not take your post as bashing my thread and I would not want you to think that I was attacking you. I’m just soapboxing.
Isn’t “Politically Correct” a politically correct term? 
The one that always gets me in trouble is the stewardess/steward title.
I was taught that when addressing a female attendant on a flight, or some such situation, the correct and proper inquiry was ‘stewardess’. Likewise, when dealing with a male in a similar situation the proper term was ‘steward’. Well no more!
The correct and proper term is ‘Flight attendant’. Alrighty then, no problem from me, but don’t get your undies in a bunch when someone says ‘stewardess’.
I mean, sheesh, airlines complain about passenger ‘air rage’, but what about their own employees rage. Try saying “stewardess” on a flight around here and watch the shit hit the fan.
For instance, I was on a red-eye to LA a while back and hit the little help button, “Excuse me, stewardess, could I get some headphones here?” I swear the vein on that gals neck was about to explode. That and the fact that she handed me the headphones much like a nurse (Is that right anymore?) hands a surgeon a scalpel. Me: “Headphones please.” Her: “HEADPHONES” ::SLAP OF HEADPHONES ON HAND:: Me: “Well, ahh, thank you.”
Needless to say, I didn’t see that woman for the rest of the flight. Did I say something that bad that you needed to avoid me?
And while I’m on that topic, if your so damn sensitive about the issue, then why not go after the makers of that little help button. It didn’t go unnoticed from me that the image pictured was that button thingy was of a svelte little thing wearing a pretty low cut skirt.
What about that? Huh!?!
:humming: You ain’t nothing but a waitress in the sky.
While, I agree that we should avoid using offensive terms in casual context, no one but me seems to realize that this is quick-fix to a deeply-rooted socio-historic problem.
Since the dawn of proto-literate humankind, we have looked at the differences of our neighbors with disdain. It is unfortunately, a distinctly human trait to look down upon those different from ourselves in order to make ourselves superior. This makes it all the easier to subjugate and enslave others idealogically and philosophically with our own supposedly heightened state of existence. In case of point, just about every group of peoples have been physically enslaved at one point in history or another. This means that just about every cultural group have been slave masters at some point in history as well.
I believe this is quasi-intinctual behavior in humans that we have carried with us from our evolution from the apes. As a matter of fact, Chimps and Apes (as well as monkeys, to whom we are not so closely related)are the only other animals who actively engage in war against each other.
So, I guess my main point is that if we think we can avoid the tides of human prejudice with the simple expediment of “trading labels” we are quite mistaken. I say that Political Correctness is a surface band-aid that barely covers a deep and festering wound, while allowing the blood of the ages to swirl around the edges.
A couple humorous ones…
I am not “short and fat”. I am “condensed”.
(though I am still chuckling over “Gravitationally Enhanced”)
He/she has “an arthripoidal invasion of the lower alimentary canal” rather than “a bug up the butt”.
I’m not “politically correct”. I’m “societally conscientious”.
I think this needs further explanation Devorzhum. Don’t all territorial pack animals fight each other for resources? What’s so special about apes doing it.
I agree with your other points, though. Indeed I’ve also posted elsewhere about the irrelevance of PC in dealing with genuine problems. Using the ‘right’ terminology with sarcasm or without bona fide intentions is just too easy and I believe that this constant dictionary laundering invites contempt for, not respect for, the intentions behind it. This is why there are so many jokes about PC.
Oedipus, I did realize that within these spatial parameters I was not able to fully develop my thesis. If you are interested in following the thread of my argument, I will refer you to a conclusive book on the suject called, Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence by Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson. This book offers concise explanations of not only socio-biological and root evolutionary causes of warfare and violence in humans, but also illuminates the inceptions of prejudicial and segregational attitudes that have been genetically passed along to us from our primate cousins.
I know, I’m not brilliant - I am highly cerebrally expansive.
From Jim Hightower, what he claims are actual corporate euphemisms for mass layoffs (aside from the obvious “downsizing”):
[ul]
[li]“Release of Resources” (BankAmerica)[/li][li]“Competitive builddown”[/li][li]“Career-transition program” (GM)[/li][li]“Employee outplacing”[/li][li]“Schedule adjustments” (Stouffer Foods)[/li][li]“Reengineering”[/li][li]“Management Initiated Attrition”[/li][li]“Normal payroll adjustment”[/li][li]“Negative hiring”[/li][li]“Decruiting”[/li][/ul]
Oh, and I agree with betenoir. Political correctness is mostly a partisan shibboleth.
Apparently we have moved from “down-sizing” to “right-sizing”.
“Strategic movement to the rear”, with optional “to secure a previously achieved objective” will always make me laugh.
“aerodynamic personnel decelerator”
“inventory leakage”
“waste-management compartment”
“selective ordnance”
“saddleblock anesthesia”
“free trade”
“authentic reproduction”
“A Dictionary of Euphemisms and Other Doubletalk” makes wonderful bathroom reading.
It also touches a bit on the history of this sort of thing. The current PC movement is a resurgence of something that never quite went away. IMHO, the last time it reached this kind of pitch was the Victorian Age, when you could no longer refer to the legs of a table or the breast of the turkey, and women were never pregnant, but “enciente”, or “in a delicate condition”. :rolleyes:
Also interesting, according to this book, if a word has two meanings, or has meanings that go either way, the more unpleasant meaning will eventually take over. The example used being the word “stink”. It originally just meant “odor, scent, or fragrance”. Lavender had a good stink. Manure had a bad stink. Over time, however, stink was more and more closely associated with unpleasant odours. Now, if something smells yucky, it stinks. If it smells nice, it either smells nice, has a pleasant odour, or is fragrant.
Tisiphone
I think that there needs to be a sharp distinction drawn between baffle-gab psychobabble and legitimate elimination of gender specific titles. One of my very first threads* at these boards dealt with this exact topic.
However much we need to incorporate gender neutral terminology there are limits. Firefighter is better than fireman, letter carrier is more precise than postman. I draw the line at someone trying to eliminate waiter and waitress in favor of, get this; “Waitron”. What policy wonk came up with that one?
Anyway, feel free to bump the thread if you have something to add to it.
I’ve heard
overweight = volumetrically challenged.
ANd how about
lousy in bed = horizontally challenged
Of course that would assume that sex has to happen in the horizontal position.
I went to school to become a draftsman. Now there are draftsmen, draftswomen, or drafters. I’m female, and I still think the term draftsman is OK. “Mankind” vs. “humankind” doesn’t particularly upset me. I think it’s silly to “un-gender” every word that has been around forever. What did you call a female wine steward prior to political correctness? (Probably weren’t any, ha!) People shouldn’t be so damn sensitive about everything!
Not to stomp on any toes here, but I kinda lean towards de-genderizing of occupations (that sounds pretty PC itself, don’t it?) Why do we need to know the gender of the person performing a job? IMO, a job title with an “ess” at the end has always sounded a little patronizing, like it’s not the real job, just the female version of it.