# What's the point of political correctness? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 3, 2020, 8:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-political-correctness/919689 "2020-09-03T08:23:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2020, 9:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-political-correctness/919689/121 "2020-09-05T09:24:06Z")
> [@phs3](#): > > It was an illustration. Someone worried about it, spent money on it. Nobody has illustrated a value to the change yet. You keep ignoring points, like folks’ time. That adds up, is worth something. Every time people talk about master-slave servers at work they always pause and say “hey, that sounds really horrible, doesn’t it?” That time adds up, too. Why not use a less charged term? If it were something actually humorous, the few seconds a day it takes could be rounded down as morale-building, but if anything it is deleterious in a small way rather than droll after the first couple dozen times you are forced to use the terminology. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2020, 10:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-political-correctness/919689/122 "2020-09-05T10:42:08Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > So, what I’m hearing is that your feelings only matter if you’re a minority. What a bizarre thing to get from what I’m saying. That’s not the sort of thing you’d get if you were engaging in good faith. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2020, 10:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-political-correctness/919689/123 "2020-09-05T10:46:00Z")
> [@phs3](#): > > As for making up the example: sure, I made that up FWIW, I misunderstood this quote, thought he was talking about making up the master password debate. Turns out he meant his “offended by the letter P” business. My bad. [I should not have said that was a made-up example](https://support.mozilla.org/es/kb/contrasena-principal-maestra). ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2020, 11:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-political-correctness/919689/124 "2020-09-05T11:01:32Z")
> [@Terwilliger](#): > > Bad PC: [https://reason.com/2020/09/03/usc-communications-professor-on-a-short-term-break-for-giving-chinese-word-neige-as-example/](https://reason.com/2020/09/03/usc-communications-professor-on-a-short-term-break-for-giving-chinese-word-neige-as-example/) Wow. Now I’m _really_ curious what examples are too extreme for the average progressive and social justice advocate to support. I bet **LHOD** won’t call the students who got their professor suspended for saying 那个 without a trigger warning ‘fragile’. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2020, 11:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-political-correctness/919689/125 "2020-09-05T11:23:44Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > Here, iiandyiiii, is another problem with political correctness. This is not really my problem, but one I have heard conservatives complain about. It’s that progressives seem to have tender care for the feelings of minorities, for example those potentially upset by seeing the word ‘master’ used for a password, but if anyone complains these changes are making their lives more difficult, that they are confused by them, feel anxious and insecure, or just don’t see the benefit, they get told to buck up and stop whining, or threatened with being called racist. Sure, you might not change anything for them, but why the total lack of sympathy? Mostly because I think they’re lying. At least in this specific case - I don’t buy that this actually makes anyone’s life more difficult. ---
**Author:** ![phs3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8491ac/32.png) [@phs3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phs3)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2020, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-political-correctness/919689/126 "2020-09-05T14:55:18Z")
Seriously? I’ve been in IT for over 40 years. Nobody has ever said that. Nobody at Mozilla said that when Master Password was introduced. IBM has had a Master the Mainframe program for many years. Master Locks has been around longer (I suspect) than anyone here. But your group is somehow more woke than anyone else? C’mon. Doesn’t pass the smell test. And even if true: so one person in one group thinks something sounds odd. The rest of the world changes to “fix” that? That way lies madness. (Oops, can’t say “madness”, the mentally ill might take offense!) To be 100% clear: I’m not saying no PC terminology changes can ever make sense. I’m saying that people have lost the plot and are making changes that cost (on various levels) more than they help. If every word used by every person in every sentence is to be analyzed, we’re well on the way to thoughtcrime. And if you’re going to defend thoughtcrime… ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2020, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-political-correctness/919689/127 "2020-09-05T19:25:05Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > @BigT has been busy telling me on another thread that it doesn’t mean ‘don’t be a jerk’. And anyway that’s not specific enough; there are _plenty_ of ways to be a jerk without being politically incorrect. If progressives really object to using the words I’m kind of at a loss how I could have phrased the OP, since I’ve never heard of any other term for the phenomenon. (Do we need a politically correct term for ‘politically correct’. 😉 ) I agree it is necessary but not sufficient, but I’ve heard lots of uses of “politically correct” in the context of someone who has said something offensive defending it by saying “sorry I was not politically correct.” In other words, sometimes attacking political correctness is an excuse for bigotry. I’m not objecting to how you used the term, btw. But the way it has been used makes it a bit unsavory. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2020, 9:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-political-correctness/919689/128 "2020-09-06T09:55:26Z")
I don’t think it’s the word “Master” itself, but instances when the word master is coupled with “slave.” Computers do (or, did,) have master and slave drives. Getting away from speaking in that dichotomy is what people are trying to avoid. I’ve never heard anyone suggesting that theater arts stop using the word “Master class,” nor that “Master Lock” someone mentioned earlier, needs to change its name, because it’s not part of a master/slave coupling. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2020, 10:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-political-correctness/919689/129 "2020-09-06T10:28:18Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > I don’t think it’s the word “Master” itself, but instances when the word master is coupled with “slave.” That’s their rationale, but I’m pretty sure there’s no such thing as a ‘slave password’. I just had a look at the Wikipedia article, and apparently Salt is replacing the terms with master/minion. Now that’s the kind of change I can get behind! ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [September 6, 2020, 11:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-point-of-political-correctness/919689/130 "2020-09-06T11:19:20Z")
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