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 Sigvatr wrote:
PC is the biggest bane we have in post-modern societies and is the most dangerous threat to freedom of speech.

PC in itself is very important, but the problem is what people make out of it. In many cases, people oppress others / their respective opinions by claiming a violation of PC and an offense when in fact there is none. RE: tumblr. If PC makes you feel uncomfortable about a joke in modern media such as video games, then PC has gone too far and threatens freedom of speech. PC should make people be aware of problematic behavior, right now, it's making people turn away from discussing said thing altogether - which is a terrible idea and goes against everything freedom stands for. People are afraid to speak out and people who abuse PC never learn to deal with problems which leads to them being even more pitiful than they were before.

In the end, most PC issues nowadays would be better solved by just throwing a "Deal with it" at people's faces.

To add on to this, there's also a huge problem with the PC crusaders who are helping to erode our own culture, under the guise of not wanting to insult & be 100% inclusive of minority cultures.

For example, many schools here in Ontario are ministry mandated to no longer refer to Oct.31st as Halloween, but instead as now being "Black and Orange Day". Why? Because the social elitists don't want to offend minorities who don't celebrate the holiday, or various religious groups who don't observe the one-time pagan festival or it's modern version.

Some schools, (by the order of the principal), have taken the issue so far, that they've even banned the kids from wearing their costumes to class!
Why? Because again, they don't want to offend any minorities/religious beliefs, but also because they think that somehow the day might socially and/or mentally scar for life the one or two or so children who perhaps won't have a costume due to their parents own beliefs/not having the money to buy a costume.

Same deal with Christmas too... A larger and larger number of our schools and even government buildings can no longer call it Christmas, (it's too overtly Christian and thus offensive to non-Christians). The kids can no longer have their Christmas concerts & other holiday activities, and Christmas Trees are an absolute affront to everyone who doesn't celebrate the holiday!
Instead, the kids get, "Red & Green Day" activities, while if you're still even allowed to put up a tree, it must be reffered to as a "Holiday Tree" so as not to insult anyone's religion.

And god forbid you EVER say "Merry Christmas" in public to someone these days! Gotta maintain that PC inclusiveness and make sure to never insult anyone by always just leaving it at "Happy Holidays"... (excuse me, but it always has been, and always will be "Merry Christmas", so deal with it!!)



More and more we're eroding our own social cultures & beliefs in this inane idea that we must never offend in any way minority populations and their cultures. And why is this foolishness being foisted upon us? Because of vote pandering by selfish politicians.

Has this whole "No gaking in the street" thing gone too far? I think so. There was a time when a man could take a gak nearly anywhere he wanted. Some of the greatest thinkers in history lived in grand cities where the streets were literally covered in gak. If you don't like the way gak smells, that's your problem stop impinging on the freedoms of everyone else. Maybe you think it isn't a big deal that you can't just gak in the street whenever you want, but they won't stop there. Pretty soon they'll be telling you how to gak in your house, or making just having to take a gak a crime. Don't put up with it! Take off your pants and your panties, gak on the floor. Those over-sensitive types can deal with it.

 Sigvatr wrote:
PC is the biggest bane we have in post-modern societies and is the most dangerous threat to freedom of speech.

PC in itself is very important, but the problem is what people make out of it. In many cases, people oppress others / their respective opinions by claiming a violation of PC and an offense when in fact there is none. RE: tumblr. If PC makes you feel uncomfortable about a joke in modern media such as video games, then PC has gone too far and threatens freedom of speech. PC should make people be aware of problematic behavior, right now, it's making people turn away from discussing said thing altogether - which is a terrible idea and goes against everything freedom stands for. People are afraid to speak out and people who abuse PC never learn to deal with problems which leads to them being even more pitiful than they were before.

In the end, most PC issues nowadays would be better solved by just throwing a "Deal with it" at people's faces.

I can't say that has been my experience.

It seems to me that a lot of people are far more worried about the lack of research into a new generation of antibiotics. Many bacterial infections have gained wide-spectrum immunity to currently available medicines.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
PC doesn't take away any issues, it just beats it down until it can no longer be contained, at which point it will come squirting out in a shower of trouble.

I agree with this wholeheartedly, but still I am amazed at how often people mistake "basic human decency" for "PC-ness".

As for Zizek... well, let's just say he's a walking compendium of all things wrong with the European left these days.

 Steve steveson wrote:
"Political correctness" is a term mostly used as a term by people who want to be racist, homophobic or sexist to attack people who criticise them. Yes, there are people who are overly sensitive, but my experience has been that there is far more of a problem with people being upset when society deams their views wrong.

Being white and male I can't speak with much authority on how much racism and sexism still exist (although I have seen examples of both), but what I do know about is disability. I have seen people attack political correctness for not being able to use terms like "cripple" and "spastic", both very offensive terms, which were in common use not that long ago. Also, much of the issue seems to be in the minds of the media. Like complaining about "Health and safety". Except "Political correctness" is not a law or regulation, there are no bounds to it, just a word to describe treating people appropriately, or an excuse when it is taken it to far.

I pretty much agree with all of this. My parents read the Daily Mail, so I associate "political correctness" as an insult with one of these things:

--An invented or wildly exaggerated attempt to get people angry about Those Other Stupid People, such as the "Winterval" or "Personhole" fabrications.
--A sly way of putting the boot into out-groups who are getting uppity.
--A way for middle-class white people to feel cool and oppressed.

Political correctness, as I understand it, is making a conscious effort to "drain the swamp" of attitudes that are rife in our culture, where some minority groups are okay targets and it's okay to make jokes about "trannys" or "fairies" because we can be sure that we won't be called on them. Both because they produce a hostile attitude in a way that you don't notice if you're not part of that group and can dismiss it as "harmless", and also legitimise more serious offences. A gay man gets beaten up and eh, he should have known what he was getting into by pushing his deviancy into our faces (by holding hands with his boyfriend in public). A woman gets raped and well, she had a bit of a reputation for being a tease, know what I mean, and did you see the way she was dressed? And so on.

So that in itself is laudable. The problem comes when it gets filtered through the internet, which is full of people who want to win arguments without actually arguing. And accusations of bigotry are good for winning arguments, because they're hard to counter while remaining sympathetic. I have met people for whom the term "social justice warrior" was justified as an insult, where it was more about rousing a mob against anyone who didn't accept their wisdom, and feed their self-image of being wonderful enlightened people tut-tutting at those degenerate, wrong-thinking masses.

But of course, those people are great to be grabbed as handy examples of how the army of PC warriors want to brainwash us all--and if they're all nutcases like that, we can dismiss all their points unseen, breathe a sigh of relief and feel comfortable once more. After all, we're not like the really bad people, so we don't need to fret about if we're contributing to a culture that's the thick end of some very unpleasant behaviour.

So in the end, you have an issue that's defined by two small groups of idiots on opposite sides of the spectrum shrieking at each other and people settling into camps who assure each other they're right and that other lot are terrible and beyond redemption. See: Gamergate. This is why the internet is so bad for discussing anything.

On a side note, it'd be interesting if everyone who is waxing lyrical about how PC is the insidious totalitarian end of civilisation would reveal if they are heterosexual cisgendered middle-class white First World man. Jussayin'

 Sigvatr wrote:
PC is the biggest bane we have in post-modern societies and is the most dangerous threat to freedom of speech.

PC in itself is very important, but the problem is what people make out of it. In many cases, people oppress others / their respective opinions by claiming a violation of PC and an offense when in fact there is none. RE: tumblr. If PC makes you feel uncomfortable about a joke in modern media such as video games, then PC has gone too far and threatens freedom of speech. PC should make people be aware of problematic behavior, right now, it's making people turn away from discussing said thing altogether - which is a terrible idea and goes against everything freedom stands for. People are afraid to speak out and people who abuse PC never learn to deal with problems which leads to them being even more pitiful than they were before.

In the end, most PC issues nowadays would be better solved by just throwing a "Deal with it" at people's faces.

The 1st Amendment in no way protects you from other private citizens thinking you are a reprobate donkey-cave for making sexist/racist jokes and treating you as such.

People aren't "afraid to speak out" because of "not being PC", they're afraid to speak out because their opinions are reprehensible, and they don't want to be (rightfully) judged by the rest of society for holding that opinion.

 Psienesis wrote:

 Sigvatr wrote:
PC is the biggest bane we have in post-modern societies and is the most dangerous threat to freedom of speech.

PC in itself is very important, but the problem is what people make out of it. In many cases, people oppress others / their respective opinions by claiming a violation of PC and an offense when in fact there is none. RE: tumblr. If PC makes you feel uncomfortable about a joke in modern media such as video games, then PC has gone too far and threatens freedom of speech. PC should make people be aware of problematic behavior, right now, it's making people turn away from discussing said thing altogether - which is a terrible idea and goes against everything freedom stands for. People are afraid to speak out and people who abuse PC never learn to deal with problems which leads to them being even more pitiful than they were before.

In the end, most PC issues nowadays would be better solved by just throwing a "Deal with it" at people's faces.

The 1st Amendment in no way protects you from other private citizens thinking you are a reprobate donkey-cave for making sexist/racist jokes and treating you as such.

People aren't "afraid to speak out" because of "not being PC", they're afraid to speak out because their opinions are reprehensible, and they don't want to be (rightfully) judged by the rest of society for holding that opinion.

Y'know, or wrongly judged and have their lives destroyed by a rabid mob.

 Psienesis wrote:
The 1st Amendment in no way protects you from other private citizens thinking you are a reprobate donkey-cave for making sexist/racist jokes and treating you as such.

People aren't "afraid to speak out" because of "not being PC", they're afraid to speak out because their opinions are reprehensible, and they don't want to be (rightfully) judged by the rest of society for holding that opinion.

This feels pretty nail on the head.

 Bromsy wrote:
Y'know, or wrongly judged and have their lives destroyed by a rabid mob.

If that is what one worries about then the problem is probably not on the side of the 'rabid mob'.

 Knight wrote:
The masses in pursuit of political correctness demand a ban on any sort of art/speech (or establishment of a strict criteria that "artist" needs to follow) that could potentially offend any party, re-write of historical events to fit in the idea of present day political correctness. The government surrenders to the pressure.

And there you go proving my point. I’m not a huge fan of most PC, and certainly not a fan of the high and mighty shame campaign that most PC efforts are made under, but the actual impact of PC on people’s lives is reasonably close to irrelevant. And yet it gets mentioned constantly, and with great emotion. You describe it as a demand to ban any sort of speech or art that could potentially offend any party… that’s past hyperbole and in the realm of wild fantasy.

Exactly why people have made PC to be vastly more than it is or ever could be is the big question. I gave my answer – I think it’s because people need to fight against things in order to feel good and brave, and it’s easier to battle fictional gibberish than actually take on real problems. There’s probably other answers, but whatever they are, we won’t find them by just continuing to pretend PC is this great horrible monster that threatens all our liberties.


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 H.B.M.C. wrote:
But that's not what they do.

"Don't use racial slurs" morphed into "White people are all racists, and POC can never be racist. Ever!"

Those two sets of ideas come from entirely different movements, and those two movements are as much at loggerheads with each other as with people outside the left. That’s the problem you get when you try to lump all of the left together in one movement, you miss all the complexity within. You end up with a caricature.

It's another form of extremism, only rather than being Bible-thumping anti-abortionists "MAH GUN RIGHTS!" nut-cases or Allahu Akbar human bombs, it is instead women with odd coloured hair and stupid piercing screaming "1 in 5" and "The patriarchy!".

And just as it’s stupid to see a few extreme anti-abortionists or Islamic terrorists, and conclude that the whole lot of either group are terrible and we’re all doomed, it’s just as stupid to take the most silly elements of PC and claim the whole thing is just about that.

But, of course, people do claim such ridiculous things about all Christianity, about all Islam, and about any effort to tell people they shouldn’t offend people needlessly. And they reason they do that has nothing to with any of their targets, but about how they want to see themselves.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sigvatr wrote:
PC is the biggest bane we have in post-modern societies…

You heard it here first people. PC is worse than cancer and worse than the 1.2 billion people living in extreme poverty.

 Ahtman wrote:

 Bromsy wrote:
Y'know, or wrongly judged and have their lives destroyed by a rabid mob.

If that is what one worries about then the problem is probably not on the side of the 'rabid mob'.

Tell that to Dr Matt Taylor

 Elemental wrote:
So in the end, you have an issue that's defined by two small groups of idiots on opposite sides of the spectrum shrieking at each other and people settling into camps who assure each other they're right and that other lot are terrible and beyond redemption. See: Gamergate. This is why the internet is so bad for discussing anything.

That was a great post, thanks.

 Psienesis wrote:
The 1st Amendment in no way protects you from other private citizens thinking you are a reprobate donkey-cave for making sexist/racist jokes and treating you as such.

People aren't "afraid to speak out" because of "not being PC", they're afraid to speak out because their opinions are reprehensible, and they don't want to be (rightfully) judged by the rest of society for holding that opinion.

The problem with this sort of absolutist approach - "The First Amendment only protects against government censorship, and that's not happening, so all's good!" - is that it ignores the incremental way advocates for a given cause work in the modern American political environment. Anti-gun nuts and anti-abortion nuts are the two best examples, from opposite sides; both know they're never going to get an outright ban, so they work for bans-in-all-but-name. We're not saying you can't have an abortion, we're just saying you have to have a transvaginal ultrasound and a five-hour state-mandated lecture on how awesome babies are first. Oh, and by the way, we're going to implement laws that make it impossible for abortion providers to operate in your state...but we're not banning abortions! We're not saying you can't own a gun for self-defense, we're just saying it can't hold more than six rounds and has to have its magazine welded in. Oh, and we're turning "shall issue" into "may issue," but hey, we're not banning guns, and the fact that nobody can get a permit anymore isn't reflective of a ban!

The "PC" folks are catching on and starting to act similarly: we're not saying the government has to throw you in jail for saying something we don't like, we're just saying we're going to file Title IX complaints in an effort to muzzle you. Or we're saying we'll eschew gaming federal laws entirely and go straight to trying to get you kicked out of your college for holding opinions we don't like.

 VorpalBunny74 wrote:
Tell that to Dr Matt Taylor

The ‘outrage’ over that shirt totalled to about a 1,000 twitter posts. That’s it. There’s about 3 billion people with internet access, and a whopping total of 1,000 of them were bothered by that shirt. In response to the tweets of 1,000 people, there was I don’t know how many op-ed pieces written, and read by millions, all decrying that PC and/or feminism had gone too far, all failing to mention that it was a tiny number of people who were bothered by the shirt.

I have never met a person, on-line or in person, who heard about that stupid shirt scandal through the original complaints. Everyone I know heard about it through one of the articles written pointing out how stupid the original complaints were.

Years later, that silly bit of internet nonsense gets mentioned by you as an example of someone being taken down by a rabid mob. Because the worry over PC just nothing to do with reality.

 sebster wrote:

 VorpalBunny74 wrote:
Tell that to Dr Matt Taylor

The ‘outrage’ over that shirt totalled to about a 1,000 twitter posts. That’s it. There’s about 3 billion people with internet access, and a whopping total of 1,000 of them were bothered by that shirt. In response to the tweets of 1,000 people, there was I don’t know how many op-ed pieces written, and read by millions, all decrying that PC and/or feminism had gone too far, all failing to mention that it was a tiny number of people who were bothered by the shirt.

I have never met a person, on-line or in person, who heard about that stupid shirt scandal through the original complaints. Everyone I know heard about it through one of the articles written pointing out how stupid the original complaints were.

Years later, that silly bit of internet nonsense gets mentioned by you as an example of someone being taken down by a rabid mob. Because the worry over PC just nothing to do with reality.

When that Robertson duck guy said all that stupid gak, the first I heard about it was when people were complaining about the people complaining about what he said.

These people end up shouting down the people they accuse of shouting people down.

Seaward wrote:
Anti-gun nuts and anti-abortion nuts are the two best examples, from opposite sides; both know they're never going to get an outright ban, so they work for bans-in-all-but-name. We're not saying you can't have an abortion, we're just saying you have to have a transvaginal ultrasound and a five-hour state-mandated lecture on how awesome babies are first. Oh, and by the way, we're going to implement laws that make it impossible for abortion providers to operate in your state...but we're not banning abortions! We're not saying you can't own a gun for self-defense, we're just saying it can't hold more than six rounds and has to have its magazine welded in. Oh, and we're turning "shall issue" into "may issue," but hey, we're not banning guns, and the fact that nobody can get a permit anymore isn't reflective of a ban!

That happens on both sides. People wanting to be as racist, homophobic, sexist and offensive as they can, and accusing anyone who is offended of being a "PC fascist" or some such. The same with guns, where there is a large group who view any reasonable attempt at any sort of changes to the law as completely unreasonable and paint any discussion about regulation, security or safety a "slippery slope". The assumption that you make that "may issue" is automatically "will not issue", and that putting in regulation that is still way more liberal than most of the world will suddenly ban gun ownership. Or on the abortion issue, the painting of calls for some form of counseling as "a five-hour state-mandated lecture on how awesome babies".

All of these issues are argued on the Internet and in the media using the very extreme views, which are not representative of most. Extremists on all sides will hijack any argument and try and shout anyone down who disagrees.

Anyway, "Politically Correct" is a term originally coined as a pejorative term by those attacking equality movements. It is not a term that defines anything in particular, other than the users own views as to what is right and wrong. You need to discuss specific instances, not vague terms.

 Psienesis wrote:
The 1st Amendment in no way protects you from other private citizens thinking you are a reprobate donkey-cave for making sexist/racist jokes and treating you as such.

People aren't "afraid to speak out" because of "not being PC", they're afraid to speak out because their opinions are reprehensible, and they don't want to be (rightfully) judged by the rest of society for holding that opinion.

I mostly agree with this. It's not like PC is some kind of government conspiracy. Usually it pertains to things that have already been discussed ad nauseam, and which no longer need or deserve to be discussed further. The flat Earth analogy is becoming a bit of a cliché, but I think it's still a great example of how ignorance can lead us to assume things which are demonstrably untrue. I think it's good to be respectful of people's opinions, but respect works both ways. If I'm going to to do someone the courtesy of listening to (and debating) their ideas, then I expect them to do me the courtesy of not wasting my time by speaking from a position of absolute ignorance. If someone comes to me and says that they think "the Earth is flat" (read: "bigoted statement"), then unless they're 5 years old, I'm not going to waste my time trying to educate them on the basics. I'll probably just call them an ignoramus and tell them to feth off.

If this keeps happening to them, then they may pull themselves up out of their ignorance. More likely they will just learn to keep their ignorant opinions to themselves, without really understanding why no one wants to engage with them. And then they might end up yammering on about "political correctness" and how "you daren't open your mouth these days!"...

However, I will say there is another side to that. There are people who seem to just be waiting to be offended. Even if you don't actually say anything offensive, they will just take something out of context and run with it. I remember one conversation here on dakka where I was saying something about how shorter words and abbreviations were more likely to become taboo, because they are more likely to be used as slurs by common people, and that this might explain society's preference for more ornate and contrived language when discussing things such as race (or disability). That was enough to get me called "an out and out racist" and ignored by one user here, who I won't name. But seriously feth that guy. Even though I would be a staunch opponent of racism, because of him I have now resigned myself to never discussing racial issues again. It has become such a minefield that avoiding the subject altogether is the only smart move. I think that's sad and possibly unhealthy, but that's just the way it is.

 Smacks wrote:


However, I will say there is another side to that. There are people who seem to just be waiting to be offended. Even if you don't actually say anything offensive, they will just take something out of context and run with it. I remember one conversation here on dakka where I was saying something about how shorter words and abbreviations were more likely to become taboo, because they are more likely to be used as slurs by common people, and that this might explain society's preference for more ornate and contrived language when discussing things such as race (or disability). That was enough to get me called "an out and out racist" and ignored by one user here, who I won't name. But seriously feth that guy. Even though I would be a staunch opponent of racism, because of him I have now resigned myself to never discussing racial issues again. It has become such a minefield that avoiding the subject altogether is the only smart move. I think that's sad and possibly unhealthy, but that's just the way it is.

The final few lines of this, to me, perfectly sum up what it was Zizek was saying. Because of the backlash you've experienced over this, you're removing yourself from any further engagement with it. In doing so the extreme PC crowd win. You're not resisting in any way, and the overly sanitised view of society some want propagated remains intact

This whole thing has nothing to do with PC. It has everything to do with intolerant loudmouths feeling tough on the internet who drown out other people.

For every person that is claiming that every white male is just a "racist -cis pig set on oppressing everyone different everywhere" there is also another person painting everyone as a "tumblerina feminazi SJW" while another group is painting every person that has any opinion about any possible new gun law as a "liberal totalitarian freedom hating communist" while the pro-gun control group is painting them as "idiotic backwater trigger happy gun-nuts just waiting on an excuse to shoot a black man" and yet another group is calling pro-choice folks "child murdering heathens who are just having another life sucked out of them as a form of birth control while talking on their Obama-phones" and pro-choice folks are yelling back that the pro-life group "just wants to own women's bodies and deny them health care while popping their own insurance covered Viagra ready to impregnate another woman". Over in this corner of the internet we have the atheists who are happy to point to the idiots who "believe in the sky fairy and who are too stupid to let go of their childhood delusions and can't make any decisions of their own without having a giant book of lies tell them what they should think" while the religious folks like to talk about "evil amoral devil worshippers who just want to fornicate and do drugs while they sacrifice animals and babies to the god of atheism". Liberals are shouted down for wanting to steal everyone else's money while they are being lazy and destroying everything that made this country great, and conservatives are shouted down for being racist elitist who don't give a gak about anyone other than themselves and other rich white people. Heck, just look at most threads on Dakka involving religion, guns, immigration, Muslims, Israel, abortion, etc and you will see loud extremists in at least two camps shouting each other down while most normal people are able to disagree politely.

The fact that this guy was able to voice his opinion and that Wiggins was able to post it here (thanks Ebola for sparing his life) and that others here are able to voice their agreement with it is a pretty good example that PC isn't really doing anything to keep people down. It's like those threads that pop up every now and then asking "are we living in 1984 yet", if you can ask it or complain about us being like 1984 then it is pretty likely that we are not like 1984.

tl;dr

Loudmouth opinionated jerks on the internet belonging to certain groups have always tried to shout down every other group that they don't agree with. The "PC" crowd is not the only one, they weren't the first, and they won't be the last.

Seaward wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
The 1st Amendment in no way protects you from other private citizens thinking you are a reprobate donkey-cave for making sexist/racist jokes and treating you as such.

People aren't "afraid to speak out" because of "not being PC", they're afraid to speak out because their opinions are reprehensible, and they don't want to be (rightfully) judged by the rest of society for holding that opinion.

The problem with this sort of absolutist approach - "The First Amendment only protects against government censorship, and that's not happening, so all's good!" - is that it ignores the incremental way advocates for a given cause work in the modern American political environment. Anti-gun nuts and anti-abortion nuts are the two best examples, from opposite sides; both know they're never going to get an outright ban, so they work for bans-in-all-but-name. We're not saying you can't have an abortion, we're just saying you have to have a transvaginal ultrasound and a five-hour state-mandated lecture on how awesome babies are first. Oh, and by the way, we're going to implement laws that make it impossible for abortion providers to operate in your state...but we're not banning abortions! We're not saying you can't own a gun for self-defense, we're just saying it can't hold more than six rounds and has to have its magazine welded in. Oh, and we're turning "shall issue" into "may issue," but hey, we're not banning guns, and the fact that nobody can get a permit anymore isn't reflective of a ban!

The "PC" folks are catching on and starting to act similarly: we're not saying the government has to throw you in jail for saying something we don't like, we're just saying we're going to file Title IX complaints in an effort to muzzle you. Or we're saying we'll eschew gaming federal laws entirely and go straight to trying to get you kicked out of your college for holding opinions we don't like.

Seaward has a point.

 d-usa wrote:
This whole thing has nothing to do with PC. It has everything to do with intolerant loudmouths feeling tough on the internet who drown out other people.

For every person that is claiming that every white male is just a "racist -cis pig set on oppressing everyone different everywhere" there is also another person painting everyone as a "tumblerina feminazi SJW" while another group is painting every person that has any opinion about any possible new gun law as a "liberal totalitarian freedom hating communist" while the pro-gun control group is painting them as "idiotic backwater trigger happy gun-nuts just waiting on an excuse to shoot a black man" and yet another group is calling pro-choice folks "child murdering heathens who are just having another life sucked out of them as a form of birth control while talking on their Obama-phones" and pro-choice folks are yelling back that the pro-life group "just wants to own women's bodies and deny them health care while popping their own insurance covered Viagra ready to impregnate another woman". Over in this corner of the internet we have the atheists who are happy to point to the idiots who "believe in the sky fairy and who are too stupid to let go of their childhood delusions and can't make any decisions of their own without having a giant book of lies tell them what they should think" while the religious folks like to talk about "evil amoral devil worshippers who just want to fornicate and do drugs while they sacrifice animals and babies to the god of atheism". Liberals are shouted down for wanting to steal everyone else's money while they are being lazy and destroying everything that made this country great, and conservatives are shouted down for being racist elitist who don't give a gak about anyone other than themselves and other rich white people. Heck, just look at most threads on Dakka involving religion, guns, immigration, Muslims, Israel, abortion, etc and you will see loud extremists in at least two camps shouting each other down while most normal people are able to disagree politely.

The fact that this guy was able to voice his opinion and that Wiggins was able to post it here (thanks Ebola for sparing his life) and that others here are able to voice their agreement with it is a pretty good example that PC isn't really doing anything to keep people down. It's like those threads that pop up every now and then asking "are we living in 1984 yet", if you can ask it or complain about us being like 1984 then it is pretty likely that we are not like 1984.

tl;dr

Loudmouth opinionated jerks on the internet belonging to certain groups have always tried to shout down every other group that they don't agree with. The "PC" crowd is not the only one, they weren't the first, and they won't be the last.

In fairness, this is exactly what over 10 years of Liberal stupidity has done to the province of Ontario...

It's interesting that someone would quote an article from FIRE as an example of someone violating federal law, when even the article in question states that the university is a private university not bound by the 1st Amendment. And that they keep on referring to some sort of university policy that they claims that they promise that a student has the right to say whatever they won't while linking to a policy that only addresses demonstrations and protests and even then requires that speech must comply with university rules that require respect of all individuals. The fact that the story doesn't link to the offending posts so that we can evaluate them to see if they may intact violate the university guidelines doesn't help their case any.

But hey, I'm sure that a student being punished for violating the rules she chose to agree to after deciding to attend a private university is a perfectly valid example of PC totalitarian overreach.

 sebster wrote:

 VorpalBunny74 wrote:
Tell that to Dr Matt Taylor

The ‘outrage’ over that shirt totalled to about a 1,000 twitter posts. That’s it. There’s about 3 billion people with internet access, and a whopping total of 1,000 of them were bothered by that shirt. In response to the tweets of 1,000 people, there was I don’t know how many op-ed pieces written, and read by millions, all decrying that PC and/or feminism had gone too far, all failing to mention that it was a tiny number of people who were bothered by the shirt.

I have never met a person, on-line or in person, who heard about that stupid shirt scandal through the original complaints. Everyone I know heard about it through one of the articles written pointing out how stupid the original complaints were.

Years later, that silly bit of internet nonsense gets mentioned by you as an example of someone being taken down by a rabid mob. Because the worry over PC just nothing to do with reality.

...and to be fair, while I hardly thought it was something to get that angry over it was pretty unprofessional. I couldn't wear that shirt to work and I work in an office that's fine with people coming in T-Shirts and flip-flops. Really who could wear that shirt to work and not get in trouble for it, I can't really think of anyone. Secondly the stupid shirt was ugly as gak, it was too busy and prints like that just don't belong on shirts with buttons.

He is a scientist.

They are more interested in doing SCIENCE! than in spinning the PR.

Let me reiterate the important thoughts of this thread for others who joined late:

1.

 Ouze wrote:
Totalitarianism is a system in which the people hold very little to no control, such as a dictatorship. Political correctness is social pressure that is generated from the people, and perpetuated by media institutions. It's almost totally the opposite of totalitarianism. TLDR people aren't being prosecuted or sanctioned by the state for saying things that aren't politically correct and if you want to criticize it you should probably make anti-groupthink arguments.

2.

Steve steveson wrote:"Political correctness" is a term mostly used as a term by people who want to be racist, homophobic or sexist to attack people who criticise them. Yes, there are people who are overly sensitive, but my experience has been that there is far more of a problem with people being upset when society deams their views wrong.

3.

Agent_Tremolo wrote: As for Zizek... well, let's just say he's a walking compendium of all things wrong with the European left these days.

4.

Psienesis wrote:
The 1st Amendment in no way protects you from other private citizens thinking you are a reprobate donkey-cave for making sexist/racist jokes and treating you as such.

5.

Elemental wrote:So in the end, you have an issue that's defined by two small groups of idiots on opposite sides of the spectrum shrieking at each other and people settling into camps who assure each other they're right and that other lot are terrible and beyond redemption. See: Gamergate. This is why the internet is so bad for discussing anything.

At about 6:10 he mentions "shared obscene solidarity" and I know exactly what he's talking about. I recently showed a friend fear and loathing in las vegas... and the experience left him thinking hunter s thompson was basically a hick/hill billy and nothing more. The second he hears racial handicap the blinders go up and he thinks the movie may as well have been directed by the klan and not the brilliantly talented Terry Gilliam. Other than a love of firearms hunter s thompson was a lib as they come. I can understand coming away from the movie thinking the man's insane, but he never struck me as bigoted or small minded. He's having fun with all of it


There's nothing noble to me about being the type a narcissist with a bachelor's degree in forced validation lecturing the other 5 people in the room playing xbox about how what not to say. If your high minded bs could actually transform an idiot into a reasonable human being I'd see some merit but all it does is chill discussion. And how am I supposed to know who the idiots are if no one can ever open their mouth?

There's just something I'd like to add on a personal note. I have an autistic spectrum disorder, so when someone uses "autistic" or "on the spectrum" as an internet insult, I'm going to Notice It. The person who did that probably doesn't have anything against people with autism--to them, it's just a handy word used to designate someone who's being too geeky or anal about something. To them, it's probably just harmless. To me, it's uncomfortable, and says there are people out there who think it's okay to use part of what I am as a casual insult or the butt of a joke. Each incident by itself is insignificant, and not something I'd be justified in getting upset about. When there are several in succession, it creates a feeling of being unwelcome.

And I've got it easy--the worst I'll have to worry about is some mean insults. Were I black, gay or female, I'd know the stakes could go far higher. That person who just called me a slur almost certainly isn't going to kick me to death when he's got a few of his mates and a gutful of beer. That guy who wolf whistled me almost certainly wouldn't rape me if he got the chance. But the important word in both those sentences is almost.

So to me, that's what "political correctness" is trying to address, and I'd like people to bear that in mind when they're making fun of those who abuse it to feed their own egos. I'm not sure that it isn't simply pushing the problem down, or that it isn't a slightly heavy-handed and mistrustful way to modify the way people think, but I think it comes from a good and worthy wish.

 Elemental wrote:
but I think it comes from a good and worthy wish.

It does, it comes from the wish we all have to at some level get along with everyone. For society to function we all must suppress our lesser urges and do our best to get along with our fellow humans. At the same time though, we all know deep down it's not realistic to suppress everything in all contexts and sometime, well, it's nice to just have a drink and shoot the gak in some sort of safe space, the problem is a bunch of dock worker's will probably never gel with say a marketing director for peta. I'm sure they could all be adults, act false, put on a tense smile and be positively agreeable with one another for a short period of time, but let's be honest, if you have to watch what you say 100% of the time for fear of being reported to the thought police or hr, it gets to be a tad oppressive. Often it's not a question of not wishing to be responsible for what one says, but simply finding fewer and fewer places/times that are truly private.

Realising that not everyone will get along is just being realistic, people's "safe spaces" will always look different. I don't think it's realistic to imagine being friends with every single work colleague. A blue collar dive bar in the most progressive of cities is still probably not the most open place to host a slam poetry night. I don't think that's cause for one more crusade, it's closer to "get a tetanus shot and forget about it".

Kareem Abdul Jabbar wrote an op ed in today's Wash Po. Where he addressed his views of political correctness in comparing Trump to Sanders:

"Trump’s rationale for avoiding Kelly’s debate question – that neither he nor America has time for “political correctness” – taps into a popular boogeyman. The term “political correctness” is so general that to most people it simply means a discomfort with changing times and attitudes, an attack on the traditions of how we were raised. (It’s an emotional challenge every generation has had to go through.) What it really means is nothing more than sensitizing people to the fact that some old-fashioned words, attitudes and actions may be harmful or insulting to others. Naturally, people are angry about that because it makes them feel stupid or mean when they really aren’t. But when times change, we need to change with them in areas that strengthen our society.

It’s no longer “politically correct” to call African Americans “coloreds.” Or to pat a woman on the butt at work and say, “Nice job, honey.” Or to ask people their religion during a job interview. Or to deny a woman a job because she’s not attractive enough to you. Or to assume a person’s opinion is worth less because she is elderly. Or that physically challenged individuals shouldn’t have easy access to buildings. If you don’t have time for political correctness, you don’t have time to be the caretaker of our rights under the Constitution."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/09/02/kareem-abdul-jabbar-this-is-the-difference-between-donald-trump-and-bernie-sanders/

 Gordon Shumway wrote:
If you don’t have time for political correctness, you don’t have time to be the caretaker of our rights under the Constitution."

I don't have time to be lectured to about political correctness. Because 90% is one saying to the other "you can't possibly be stupid enough to think I was serious" while the lamenting party regales you with tales of the coming utopia if only the right words are expunged. I've read 1984, it's not my job to force them to. In either case, most social media is just image crafting nonsense, news feeds full of people competing to be the most noble, the world citizen. More Important to look like we're making a difference. A lot of it is just narcissism and validation posing as progress. I'm surprised going to comedy clubs and having an awful time as self flagellation for every disenfranchised soul at the perceived end of every joke hasn't become more of a thing, one more struggle to overcome I guess. Sure, gallows humour may have been the only thing keeping up your grandfathers morale in the great war, but feth him, world ward 2 was a long time ago and grandpa needs to get with the program.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

And mr abdul jabar is correct it would seem:

 Gordon Shumway wrote:
because it makes them feel stupid or mean when they really aren’t.

The heart is in the right place, but I like my idiots with as little self awareness as possible because "educating" them only shuts them up, it doesn't make them less idiotic. I want the common idiot/donkey-cave to not be well versed in public relations. All the well meaning have ever achieved is getting the brute to shave and put on a 3000 dollar suit.