interesting definition

[ZEZOZE]

Originally Posted by Listener

What's P.C. for atheist?

nothing- they don't exist.

[seebs]

When I was in college (late 80s up through maybe 1990?), we had a group that I think was actually pretty close to what the conservatives were making fun of. They insisted that we should avoid ALL language which COULD offend ANYONE. Their words, not mine. These were the people who gave us things like "hoping to see the state's budget back in the African-American".

The problem, I think, is that with any attempt at courtesy or common decency, you're going to have people who think it should OBVIOUSLY go much further, and people who think a given rule is OBVIOUSLY excessive, and since they're both talking about something "obvious", they don't really have the tools to start hashing it out.

Is "black" a bad word? Is it a good word? Is "African-American" better? Is it better when applied to a little angel figurine being put on a Christmas (or Yule?) tree somewhere in Europe?

Without a clearer discussion of what the underlying goals are, I think that a number of the criticisms are reasonable, and others not so much. Objections to words like "handicapped", and the sincere suggestion of "differently abled", strike me as kooky. My mom can't walk without a walker. That's not "differently abled". That is disabled.

But what do we do when it comes time to, say, talk about family units? Are we justified in calling some families dysfunctional? Who draws the line? Is someone who sincerely believes that gay parents cannot provide a child with good role models right to persist in calling them dysfunctional? If not, then why do many people seem to think it's okay to call drug dealers "dysfunctional"?

In the end, there is a real and underlying disagreement in many cases, and there are a lot of things which are in a grey area where it is possible for reasonable people to disagree about whether a given term is offensive, or whether a given judgement is accurate, making it impossible to assert an obvious universal norm for whether or not something could be reasonably called dysfunctional, or whether or not a given term is offensive.

[Adam]

Any talk of the "inception of PC" and what it did or did not entail, misses the point. The term "politically correct", as livius correctly noted in the post vm quoted, has very rarely, if at all, been used by anyone seriously advocating the supposed tenets of political correctness. The closest we can come to identifying to any event that could be called the "inception of PC" would be the general trend, starting in the second half of the twentieth century, for behaving like an inconsiderate jackass toward members of minority groups to be regarded as socially unacceptable. While this was going on, "politically correct" was an obscure Maoist term that had nothing at all to do with stomping all over our precious freedom to be rude cretins to anyone we pleased. The term came into popular usage in its current form, not among those supposedly insisting that we all be more politically correct, but among those who were shocked...SHOCKED!...at the idea that their previously acceptable jackassery was now viewed with contempt.

[Watser?]

Originally Posted by yguy

Would that there were no more to it than that, in which case it would not have received nearly so much opprobrium from the right, which could not help but note the proclivity of PC advocates to insist that others adopt their sensitivities.

Fuck that, Christians have been trying to purge the goddamn language for as long as Christianity exists, insisting that everyone adopt their sensitivity to cursing.

[Clutch Munny]

Originally Posted by yguy

the right... could not help but note the proclivity of PC advocates to insist that others adopt their sensitivities.

Those PC advocates certainly do get pushy in hysterically foisting their sensitivities onto those who'd rather say "Happy holidays!" than "Merry Christmas!".

[Alex]

Whatever their provenance or morality, politically correct assumptions and attitudes have become ubiquitous. They are no longer, as conservative critics assert, just part of the mental furniture of the "liberal intelligentsia", but are now encountered everywhere among both educated and uneducated people.

So is political correctness just a humour of the times that will fade away as other things do? Or is it something so deeply rooted in contemporary social morality - perhaps like the concept of the chain of being which was essential to the medieval world picture - that it will take centuries to dissipate?