Political Correctness

[Reforged]

People keep telling me its gone mad.
My response is usually to just throw my own feces at them safe in the knowledge that I'm well within the bounds of political correctness.

[bennyboy]

See, my problem isn't that we should treat people nicely. My problem is the falsehood and condescending bullshit by which fake people try to pad their non-existent personalities.

Basically, we live in a whole culture of college guys pretending to be super-feminist because they hope they'll finally get laid. It's obvious, cheap, and disgusting.

Here's a hint: if you grew up in white suburbia, and have never met a black person, except that 1 friend that everyone claims, you should not bother wearing Black Panther t-shirts when you visit your favorite Starbuck's. Nobody cares.

[Neo-Scholastic]

That's the problem with political correctness. Ordinary folks going about their everyday lives cannot keep up with the preferred nomenclature of consciousness raising minority activists. Just with respect to race, the list of what whites are "allowed" to say and not say gets constantly revised. Why are there groups called the United Negro College Fund and National Association for the Advancement of Colored People but it is racist for a white guy to refer to people with Sub-Saharan ancestors as negro or colored?

  
People are free to use whatever terms they wish, even derogatory ones. It seems that what you actually have an issue with, is others having the freedom to respond using the terms that they wish.

It's not that simple. The responses are not confined to debate and discussion; but rather, include attempts to ruin peoples reputations and take away their livelihoods.
Leaders of private organizations are forced to resign for things said in private. Businesses get subjected to boycotts, not because of actual business practices, but because the owners' personal opinions. PC proponents are coercive and vindictive cunts that respond disproportionately to minor slights.

[Neo-Scholastic]

See, my problem isn't that we should treat people nicely.  My problem is the falsehood and condescending bullshit by which fake people try to pad their non-existent personalities.  

Basically, we live in a whole culture of college guys pretending to be super-feminist because they hope they'll finally get laid.  It's obvious, cheap, and disgusting.

Here's a hint: if you grew up in white suburbia, and have never met a black person, except that 1 friend that everyone claims, you should not bother wearing Black Panther t-shirts when you visit your favorite Starbuck's.  Nobody cares.

It's called virtue signalling, like people who plaster their cars with bumper stickers like "Free Tibet." For Pete's sake what can a hipster urbanite actually do to 'free Tibet'? Exactly zero. People like that think simply having the right opinion is a sign of virtue. And they want everyone to know what a good person they are because they care, they really really care. It makes them feel good about themselves, without doing a lick, and that's all that actually matters to them.

[DespondentFishdeathMasochismo]

I literally just posted this in the wrong fucking thread. Sorry.

[Faith No More]

Basically, we live in a whole culture of college guys pretending to be super-feminist because they hope they'll finally get laid.  It's obvious, cheap, and disgusting.

http://southpark.cc.com/clips/z61jlw/wou...acceptable

[bennyboy]

Basically, we live in a whole culture of college guys pretending to be super-feminist because they hope they'll finally get laid.  It's obvious, cheap, and disgusting.

http://southpark.cc.com/clips/z61jlw/wou...acceptable

Win!

[Thumpalumpacus]

See, my problem isn't that we should treat people nicely.  My problem is the falsehood and condescending bullshit by which fake people try to pad their non-existent personalities.  

Basically, we live in a whole culture of college guys pretending to be super-feminist because they hope they'll finally get laid.  It's obvious, cheap, and disgusting.

Here's a hint: if you grew up in white suburbia, and have never met a black person, except that 1 friend that everyone claims, you should not bother wearing Black Panther t-shirts when you visit your favorite Starbuck's.  Nobody cares.

Here in Austin, café revolutionary may as well be a goddamned job description.

[Thumpalumpacus]

See, my problem isn't that we should treat people nicely.  My problem is the falsehood and condescending bullshit by which fake people try to pad their non-existent personalities.  

Basically, we live in a whole culture of college guys pretending to be super-feminist because they hope they'll finally get laid.  It's obvious, cheap, and disgusting.

Here's a hint: if you grew up in white suburbia, and have never met a black person, except that 1 friend that everyone claims, you should not bother wearing Black Panther t-shirts when you visit your favorite Starbuck's.  Nobody cares.

It's called virtue signalling, like people who plaster their cars with bumper stickers like "Free Tibet." For Pete's sake what can a hipster urbanite actually do to 'free Tibet'? Exactly zero. People like that think simply having the right opinion is a sign of virtue. And they want everyone to know what a good person they are because they care, they really really care. It makes them feel good about themselves, without doing a lick, and that's all that actually matters to them.

^^^This^^^

As an aside, about ten years ago, living in California, I was walking once down to the beach when I came across a Peugeot on which the rear fender, deck, and part of the rear window were plastered in environmentalist/Greenpeace stickers about saving whales and condors, global warming, the whole nine yards.

Tucked into the lower right corner, however was a red tag: a temporary registration allowing the owner to operate the vehicle even though it had failed its emissions-testing.

[TheRealJoeFish]

Here's where I stand on "political correctness": It's just another broad category term that makes it easy to address an incredibly diverse enormous group of things as good or bad without having to go through the task of actually evaluating individual speech.

When people talk about political correctness, I still don't know what the fuck it means.

Is it ok to say "I believe muslims/christians/atheists are the worst thing to ever happen to this planet" in a classroom? It sure as hell should be.
Is it ok to say "I believe blacks/whites/mexicans are the worst thing to ever happen to this planet" in a classroom? It sure as hell should be.
Is it ok to say "I believe niggers/wetbacks/chinks are the worst thing to ever happen to this planet" in a classroom? Fuck no, and I'd be totally fine with a student or professor who says that being disciplined to the extreme.

Is it ok to say "Is it ok to say 'I believe niggers/wetbacks/chinks are the worst thing to ever happen to this planet' in a classroom? Fuck no, and whoever says it should be disciplined" in a forum post discussing political correctness is and the need for evaluation of individual statements? I sure hope so, because if it's not, what hope at all do we have of making any kind of progress in trying to maximize both free speech and individual respect?

What I mean to say is this: When speech is meant to hurt, when it is designed to hurt someone, when speech is fashioned in a lazy way that is certain to hurt someone even though there are far more precise, non-hurtful ways to convey the same point, I don't like that speech. I don't like that speech not because it is "politically incorrect" but because it hurts people for no or bad reasons and that makes me sad.

When speech is meant to discuss or analyze or contribute an opinion or talk about a problem or accomplish an intellectual goal and someone is hurt by it, I like that speech inasmuch as it is not wasted words. I would try to avoid hurting people but not at the expense of quashing thought, of avoiding topics altogether.

I don't know if this makes any sense, or is appropriate, or is stupid, or is obvious, or anything. But I don't think "political correctness" is a thing. I think it's a term that lets us use less nuance and make discourse more divisive and promotes both intellectual dishonesty (by people who say "be politically correct!") and needless bigotry (by people who say "don't be politically correct!"), both of which are bad but easy.