# Why Political Correctness stinks **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [April 29, 2005, 8:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-political-correctness-stinks/301687 "2005-04-29T08:43:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![guinnog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/7993a0/32.png) [@guinnog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guinnog)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2005, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-political-correctness-stinks/301687/81 "2005-04-30T14:35:19Z")
> [@LifeOnWry](#): > > What bothers me about the whole politically correct thing is that it makes the assumption that ALL handicapped people prefer to be called “differently abled” or that ALL black people wish to be called “African-Americans” I suppose you must mean all black Americans here. I agree it is a minefield. How often does someone who is not a racist actually need to identify the ‘race’ they perceive someone to be at all? ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2005, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-political-correctness-stinks/301687/82 "2005-05-01T06:01:54Z")
I have never actually heard a short person say that she or he prefers to be called “vertically challenged.” Can any of you honestly say they someone said that to you seriously? How about “differently abled”? Have you personally been corrected on that one? I think that these are extreme examples that aren’t really even a problem. The only ones that have been an issue in my lifetime for me personally have been with various nationalities and ethnic groups and with jobs and positions of authority that seemed to be linked only to one gender. Maybe one or two others have come up from time to time. As a teacher of language arts, I’ve been very aware of how the language changes. I was also very active in the political movements of the 1960’s and the 1970’s. We did not use the term _politically correct._ My earliest memories of its usage stem from the late seventies or early eighties and it was used as a perjorative. I noticed it first when women wanted non gender-biased terms used to describe jobs. It wasn’t the women who were using the term, but the people who _objected_ to the change and wanted to trivialize the need for change. I believe in freedom of speech. That includes your right to use perjorative terms and my right to tell you that I think you are an asshole for doing it. Some of you forget that part. And so you say I’m a _whiner_. Then I say you are _cold-blooded._. And the world goes round and round. Seems to me it would just be easier if you had more confidence in your manhood and didn’t need beat your chest all the time. ---
**Author:** ![roger\_thornhill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d9b06d/32.png) [@roger\_thornhill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/roger_thornhill)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2005, 7:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-political-correctness-stinks/301687/83 "2005-05-01T07:15:11Z")
> [@Zoe](#): > > And so you say I’m a _whiner_. Then I say you are _cold-blooded._. And the world goes round and round. Isn’t it great that we can still use the terms ‘whiner’ and cold-blooded’, though? It’s all the verbiage that many of us, and I’m pretty sure, Zoe, you too, object to. I’ll do a little research into PC anon (I’m referringespecially to AM Russell’s comments). My own feeling (hypothesis that I will seek to refute) is that PC has been a lo more than just mind-your-language, for which I prefer the term verbal hygiene. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2005, 7:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-political-correctness-stinks/301687/84 "2005-05-01T07:25:38Z")
I prefer “semantic hygiene”, but I’m sure that gives away my pedigree. ---
**Author:** ![roger\_thornhill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d9b06d/32.png) [@roger\_thornhill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/roger_thornhill)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2005, 9:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-political-correctness-stinks/301687/85 "2005-05-01T09:45:52Z")
> [@FinnAgain](#): > > I prefer “semantic hygiene”, but I’m sure that gives away my pedigree. No. Your secret is still safe - at least, with me. ---
**Author:** ![LifeOnWry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/96bed5/32.png) [@LifeOnWry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LifeOnWry)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2005, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-political-correctness-stinks/301687/86 "2005-05-01T14:53:09Z")
> [@Zoe](#): > > . I noticed it first when women wanted non gender-biased terms used to describe jobs. It wasn’t the women who were using the term, but the people who _objected_ to the change and wanted to trivialize the need for change. > > I believe in freedom of speech. That includes your right to use perjorative terms and my right to tell you that I think you are an asshole for doing it. Some of you forget that part. And so you say I’m a _whiner_. Then I say you are _cold-blooded._. And the world goes round and round. > > Seems to me it would just be easier if you had more confidence in your manhood and didn’t need beat your chest all the time. Here’s the thing - I don’t think, for example, the term “chairman” is sexist. I’m a woman, and I truly don’t understand the problem with that word. Nor do I see a problem with the word “secretary.” I object to being chastised for using those words, because I fail to see why on earth they would be considered pejoratives. Insisting on the use of “chairperson” or “administrative assistant” makes our language unwieldy and results in perfectly nice people feeling like assholes as they stammer over the current PC phraseology. In some schools and businesses, they have diversity committees and sensitivity training. On the surface, that doesn’t seem like a big deal, until you realize that a professional woman I know was once sent to sensitivity training for asking a co-worker, “What time is this guy supposed to be here?” She was instructed in her sensitivity training session that it is sexist to refer to a colleague as “this guy.” They gave her a list of verboten words and phrases and corrections and among them were the words secretary (“say administrative professional”) midget (“say person of short stature”) and wheelchair (“say mobility device.”) Now don’t you think there’s a considerable difference in offensiveness between saying “nigger” and saying “secretary”? ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2005, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-political-correctness-stinks/301687/87 "2005-05-01T15:30:01Z")
> [@Troy McClure SF](#): > > I started getting worried when a preview for _Voyager_ heralding the debut of an “African-American Vulcan.” 😕 They didn’t want him confused with [this guy](http://www.seanbaby.com/superfriends/bvulcan.htm). ---
**Author:** ![Contrapuntal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e274bd/32.png) [@Contrapuntal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Contrapuntal)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2005, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-political-correctness-stinks/301687/88 "2005-05-01T16:07:14Z")
[QUOTE] > [@\*\*Left Hand of Dorkness](#): > > \*\*Strangely, the death knell for PC ought to be linguistic research showing that language **doesn’t** alter the way we think: we think naturally in a languageless state, which we then translate into words. Orwell’s Newspeak is a scientifically flawed concept, however ingenious it is as fiction. > > This at least according to Stephen Pinker. I’m not sure I buy his reasoning here, but he makes a powerful case. > > Daniel Can you point me toward some of that research? Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![asterion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/4da419/32.png) [@asterion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asterion)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2005, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-political-correctness-stinks/301687/89 "2005-05-01T16:09:45Z")
> [@Bryan Ekers](#): > > They didn’t want him confused with [this guy](http://www.seanbaby.com/superfriends/bvulcan.htm). He prefers Supervolt. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2005, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-political-correctness-stinks/301687/90 "2005-05-01T16:12:58Z")
> [@Zoe](#): > > I have never actually heard a short person say that she or he prefers to be called “vertically challenged.” Can any of you honestly say they someone said that to you seriously? How about “differently abled”? Have you personally been corrected on that one? I think that these are extreme examples that aren’t really even a problem. Count me as someone else who has _never, not even once_, heard a short person referred to seriously as “vertically challenged.” And it’s only on very, very rare occasions that i’ve heard a disabled person referred to as “differently abled.” And i say this as someone who’s spent the better part of the last decade within the walls of that stronghold of “political correctness,” the university. A Google search for the term “disabled” within my university’s domain name turns up almost 20,000 hits, including hundreds from the university’s guides and publicity material. A search for “differently abled” turns up exactly 34 hits, and some of those are actually articles that critique the use of the term “differently abled.” A search for the term “vertically challenged” brought up two instances. In one, a guy was referring to himself (at 5’ 9") as vertically challenged, and was clearly doing so ironically. The other instance was an essay in which the person says “You do not often refer to short people as ‘vertically challenged’, so why should it be wrong to refer to others as black?” As for the use of the term “chairperson” rather than “chairman,” i’m not sure i see the big deal. It’s _one extra syllable_, and sounds perfectly euphonious to me. Hell, if you’re so keen to economize on syllables, why not just use “chair”? I have no trouble referring to anyone, man or woman, as a secretary, if that it indeed the person’s job description. For a long time before the twentieth century, most secretaries were, in fact, men. To tell you the truth, i think that the shift from “secretary” to “administrative assistant” is not so much a PC thing as it is a strategy of corporate types to make people in these jobs sound and feel more important without actually paying them any more money. It’s like referring to the teenagers who work in the gap as “sales associates,” or whatever the latest buzzword is. While conservatives in the corporate world often complain about political correctness, the corporate world itself is probably responsible for more bastardization of the language than any university. Now, if you’ll excuse me i have to go and leverage my synergies. ---
**Author:** ![whiterabbit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/cab0a1/32.png) [@whiterabbit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whiterabbit)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2005, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-political-correctness-stinks/301687/91 "2005-05-01T16:30:17Z")
As far as I know “vertically challenged” was intended to be a joke, making fun of militant PCness. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2005, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-political-correctness-stinks/301687/92 "2005-05-01T17:02:27Z")
> [@whiterabbit](#): > > As far as I know “vertically challenged” was intended to be a joke, making fun of militant PCness. I think you’re right. Why is it, then, that some people now actually use it as an _example_ of what is wrong with political correctness? ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2005, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-political-correctness-stinks/301687/93 "2005-05-01T17:13:50Z")
I should like to point out that an incapacity to detect irony and/or humor is one of the most common signs of Cognitive Dissonance, the number one threat to the Republic. Due to a woeful lack of research in this area, there are no reliable statistics as to the prevalence of that affliction amongst our more conservative citizens. ---
**Author:** ![roger\_thornhill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d9b06d/32.png) [@roger\_thornhill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/roger_thornhill)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2005, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-political-correctness-stinks/301687/94 "2005-05-01T17:26:16Z")
> [@whiterabbit](#): > > As far as I know “vertically challenged” was intended to be a joke, making fun of militant PCness. The reason why ‘vertically challenged’ is sometimes mistaken for a genuine PC phrase is that it’s not much different from some of the other phrases on offer. One of the greatest services that _The Office_ (BBC version) rendered was the clarification of just how a ‘midget’ differed from a ‘dwarf’. Fighting ignorance and providing a laugh at the same time. A must see for progressive and conservative dopers alike. ---
**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:** [May 1, 2005, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-political-correctness-stinks/301687/95 "2005-05-01T17:35:40Z")
[QUOTE=Contrapuntal] > [@](#): > > Can you point me toward some of that research? > > Thanks. Sure! I’m currently reading _The Language Instinct_, by Stephen Pinker. Chapter 3, “Mentalese,” sets forth the case that: > [@](#): > > The implication is heavy: the foundational categories of reality are not “in” the world but are imposed by one’s culture (and hence can be challenged, perhaps accounting for the perennial appeal of the hypothesis to undergraduate sensibilities. > > But it is wrong, all wrong. The idea that thought is the same thing as language is an example of what can be called a conventional absurdity: a statement that goes against all common sense but that everyone believes because they dimly recall having heard it somewhere and because it is so pregnant with implications. He later says: > [@](#): > > A graduate student once argued with me using the following deliciously backwards logic: language must affect thought, because if it didn’t, we would have no reason to fight sexist usage (apparently, the fact that it is offensive is not reason enough). As for government euphemism, it is contemptible not because it is a form of mind control but because it is a form of lying. Which is fine as far as it goes, but consider the following sample sentence: **Although Milli Vanilli, Madonna, and Debbie Gibson are all crappy musicians, each had his own fan club during the mid-eighties.** Grammatically correct, if “his” is the gender-neutral pronoun to refer to a member of a mixed-sex group. However, it most likely grates on your ears, since using “his” to refer to a woman is not a natural pattern. The sentence strongly, strongly suggests to me that when we hear the masculine pronoun used to refer to a nonspecific member of a mixed-sex group, we end up assuming that we’re talking about a male member\*. In one respect I think he’s right: Orwell’s Newspeak, in which the reformation of language makes thoughts like “liberty” literally unthinkable, is not the way the mind works. In another way, I think either I’m misunderstanding his point or he’s overstating it: certainly the reason governments use words like “cleanse” to describe what the military does to an enemy base is because using words like “slaughter,” “incinerate,” “destroy,” and “kill” have negative emotional connotations, and it’s the job of government spokespersons to make government programs as emotionally palatable as possible. We may not think in words, and words may not circumscribe the thoughts we may think, but certainly they **influence** the thoughts we think, and I believe they often do so without our realization. Daniel \*(Oi! mind! out of the gutter!) ---
**Author:** ![Contrapuntal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e274bd/32.png) [@Contrapuntal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Contrapuntal)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2005, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-political-correctness-stinks/301687/96 "2005-05-01T17:44:09Z")
[QUOTE] [QUOTE= **Left Hand of Dorkness** We may not think in words, and words may not circumscribe the thoughts we may think, but certainly they **influence** the thoughts we think, and I believe they often do so without our realization.[/QUOTE] Thanks for the reference. I agree and probably would state it more strongly. We certainly think in words _sometimes._ And consider the (apocryphal?) wolf-boy. Surely a human raised without access to language would be incapable of higher order thought, perhaps permanently so. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2005, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-political-correctness-stinks/301687/97 "2005-05-01T17:53:20Z")
> [@tdn](#): > > To those of you deriding political correctness – is it OK to call someone a nigger? Why or why not? Well, that particular example seems to be one of those cases of “hey, I’m the only one who can beat up on my brother!”, since I hear black people using that word constantly. And it’s completely ridiculous to yell at someone who says Negro (pronounced negro, not nigro like in English) during a conversation in Spanish about a black party dress. PC, to me, is 1. people who think _they_ can use a certain world, but if anybody else does then it suddenly becomes impolite. 2. people like the yeller in the example above. 3. people who think they need to invent new words because, you know, the old gender-neutral is Not Polite Enough. Myself and my 2 female teammates, all of us engineers, actually got called Engineeresses once :eek: Case 1 corresponds to people with no manners, case 2 is general stupidity, case 3 is done by people who ARE racist-sexist-whatever and trying to hide it. I don’t feel offended when people call me an engineer, I feel offended when they tell me “you can’t be an engineer, you’re a girl” OR call me an… engineeress… I spend 20 years learning their language and then it’s them who massacre it, worse than I ever did… ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2005, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-political-correctness-stinks/301687/98 "2005-05-01T18:10:19Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > I should like to point out that an incapacity to detect irony and/or humor is one of the most common signs of Cognitive Dissonance, the number one threat to the Republic. Due to a woeful lack of research in this area, there are no reliable statistics as to the prevalence of that affliction amongst our more conservative citizens. You’d better be careful with your use of language there, or the OP will have to start [another pit thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=277880) to tell you what you can and can’t say. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2005, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-political-correctness-stinks/301687/99 "2005-05-01T18:22:10Z")
I’ve never met a black person who had a problem with being called black or insisted on being called an African-American. Frankly, I’m baffled as to why it is considered a “PC” term, because it was not coined to replace black, only to distinguish a subset of blacks (descendants of American slaves) from the larger pool. So when the anti-PC patrol point to “African-American” as being one of the most egregious examples of PC, my eyes can’t help rolling in their sockets. So-called politically correct terms are nothing new. Euphemizing “shit” with “poop”, “fuck” with “sex”, and “damn” with “darn” has been with us since English was born. What is the fundamental difference between such word swapping and what we are seeing today with sociocultural lables? That said, people need to just chill. Calling someone “Oriental” is not a crime and should not be treated as such. There is nothing wrong with calling someone black, so “African-American” shouldn’t be viewed as some extra-enlightened term. And if a person voices objections to someone else’s use of “handicapped”, then perhaps that person is not acting in step with some vast, left-wing movement to censor words, but instead is representing only themselves and should be ignored. ---
**Author:** ![Askia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@Askia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askia)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2005, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-political-correctness-stinks/301687/100 "2005-05-01T18:22:32Z")
**Nava.** I admit I wasn’t there but I suspect they’re saying “Nigga,” not “Nigger” – a subtle but useful distinction. Not that you can go around spouting that off, of course. To your 1) point, which I disagree with. Use of certain derogatives within a group of people is different from when they’re used as invectives from someone outside the group. When homosexuals say faggot, Jews say kike, women say cunt and Mexicans say wetback, it’s just different than when the terms are used by someone else. Only you can call your kid an idiot. Someone else does it, it’s cause for a fight. Hypocritical? Sure. And absolutely human. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-political-correctness-stinks/301687.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-political-correctness-stinks/301687.md?page=6)