For starters, while I don't think this applies to the OP, political correctness is fairly universal in that it goes by different names, and is NOT limited to 'liberals, feminists, and the religious right'. Some of those names are "decency, removing obscenity, and common courtesy".
What they all have in common is that they're all censure.
Political correctness is mostly seen as a 'liberal' trait, regarding primarily racial, political, and religious topics, though. This is, in my opinion as expressed above, grossly inaccurate. Kind of like how pushing one's own philosophies is fine, but another person's are referred to as an "agenda".
As with affirmative action or hate crimes, I think in a vacuum, we can all agree there's something fundamentally wrong with censure over these subjects. It's in context that these matters get a lot more complicated.
"Political Correctness" in its conventional sense, the one that's blamed on liberals, spawned in time periods where an overwhelming opposite conventional attitude was in play.
Where a 'person of colour' moving into a predominantly white neighbourhood was newsworthy, and not in a positive way. Where people would strive their utmost to make their displeasure known in every respect, be it socially, politically, or financially.
Hence where Affirmative Action comes in.
As with the voting requirements with the grandfather clause, if people can't outright attack or expel a group, they go for the next best thing, which is often aimed at denying them equality in other respects. This is generally through preventing them from attaining employment or a higher education.
It's the exact same way women were subjugated in the past; Keep them uneducated and out of work, and they are most easily controlled.
Political Correctness came into existance, I think, to reduce hostilities in order to let people get a better foothold in life.
Attaining adulthood does not equate to losing all childhood 'sensibilities', so look back there;
Not every person can 'suck it up' in relation to taunting, constant insults, and the non-verbal bullying that generally accompanies it on the side.
It's particularly bad in areas where racism, religious persecution, etc. are still fairly strong. Or homosexuality in even the most 'liberal' schools.
These children are singled out and harassed by many children, day in, and day out, and even if you tried to crack down on the non-verbal bullying, I wish you the best of luck, because it's not going to be effective. Perhaps with a single child, but we're talking about hundreds of children engaging in bullying vs less than a hundred authority figures.
Fast forward a few decades, and this kind of behaviour doesn't stop in many people. They may not flick boogers and push people down in the hall, but that doesn't mean they're any less malicious.
Autists are frequently targeted well into adulthood, to the point where going out into public is a living hell, and a number choose suicide as the more favourable option.
All that being said, I also don't understand the point of hating specific words. I tend to think it empowers them, and I strive my best, to varying degrees of success, to keep that in mind.
Nudity is simply a natural state of the human body for me, and it neither attracts nor repulses me. Most likely, this much is linked to my limited sexuality.
The words of people like Fred Phelps are annoying at best to me, and simply knowing they're ridiculous is enough to ignore them.
However, I think if everyone, or even most people, in my life were a Fred Phelps, I'm not sure how well I could keep that attitude up... It's one thing to steel yourself against a few harsh words, but a constant barrage is not so easy.
I don't think censure is the right way to go about this, and by extension, this applies to 'political correctness' in every sense. That means affirmative action and equal opportunity employment as well.
But, these all came into existance for a reason. Perhaps situations that existed that resulted in people feeling compelled to make them are no longer around, and they've become partially or completely obsolete (well, personally, since I think they're fundamentally flawed, this reaches all the way back to the start too), but I don't think they should be completely discounted for the ridiculous things that occur from time to time, nor their historical context ignored.
Like welfare, I think even if something is could be significantly improved, I can't help but wonder how life would be for some people if they didn't exist.
Though, I must also wonder if these didn't exist, we might work on a better solution instead of sticking with a horrendously flawed patch-up job.
I definitely see where the hatred comes from, and agree on many of the points. Particularly that censure is very undesirable regardless of the motivation behind it, and that I don't think it meets up the the stringent standards that something should in order to warrant it. (Confidentiality, in some instances is a warranted form of censorship. Sometimes, it's not.)
I would just like people to keep in mind that words very rarely remain 'just words'. (Though it's still not the same as causation, nor warrenting of censorship.)
Also that I find that many people freely bash it, and turn around and employ it by another name for their own behest. I don't hear many people considering the indirect, but definitely targeted and intentional, censorship of the Westboro group to be a heinous breach of free speech. Though, as mentioned before, their words were frequently accompanied with harassment, bullying, intimidation, and occasionally lewd and disorderly conduct. (some of the men have been arrested for things like spitting on their targets, iirc).
11 Dec 2006, 10:18 pm
