It's a term I loathe and which I normally feel has no place in political debate - in its modern usage, "PC" is coined and defined by its opponents and in actuality means "Anything I do that offends other people but I want to keep doing." It is useless except as an ad hominem, an emotional attack on people who are being disrespected and want respect.
True story: I once stopped a man from hitting his female companion in a parking lot and he accused me of political correctness.
But the truth is that sometimes people do seem to be quick to be offended, to demand that certain terms and phrases not be used because they're offensive, and it gets to a point where it stops being consideration for others' feelings and starts simply being oppressive.
And I feel this latter phenomenon is creeping more into the discourse here on DKos, and I know of no term to describe it other than "political correctness."
I expect this diary, to the extent that it is read, will earn me no small amount of flames and probably a few donuts, but I'm going to stick my neck out anyway...
Look. You know what? Rush Limbaugh is fat, Ann Coulter dresses to flaunt her feminine assets but does, in fact, look like a man, Sean Hannity is wimping out on his pledge to be waterboarded despite his bluster (and he's fat too), and Michelle Bachmann is bugfuck insane.
And yes, it is juvenile to make light of these things, but I'm tired of seeing people try to censor those who do. The reasons are thin, the outrage is excessive, and the reaction is occasionally abusive. Accusations of bigotry are common; in one instance I saw someone leap into an unrelated thread to HR someone who uprated a comment the person found offensive and say he'd remove the HR only if the other removed the uprate. In short, it's not only censor-worthy if you make a remark that someone interprets as being tied to a marginalized group, but it's censor worthy to think the remark isn't offensive. Is this really where we want to go as a community? Where we can never use a metaphor as an insult for fear of offending some group? I realize we have some standards of community conduct here but we do give each other a broad range of freedom to kid around, trash talk, even make schoolyard insults. Do we want to take that away?
Here's where I don the asbestos longjohns and get into some specifics. I will not be linking to actual threads here, for reasons of decorum, but I have seen examples of each of these in the last seven days. And yes, I realize that I'll be opening myself up to accusations of railing against, as I said above, "Anything I do that offends other people but I want to keep doing." Well, bring it on. I'll make my case; you'll have plenty of space to make your case in the comments thread.
I'll start with the one where I'm in the so-called discriminated group: fat people.
Quit making fun of Rush's weight! You're adding to discrimination against fat people.
Oh, God, spare me. Look. I'm fat. I've been fat since my teenage years. I'm fat because I let myself become and remain fat. And I have Type 2 diabetes because of it now and so I'm working to reverse that.
Most people who are fat, like me, are fat because we allowed it. The so-called "thyroid" or "glandular" condition happens, but it's rare. If you see a fat person, in all likelihood he or she is fat due to his or her own choices.
Does that mean we deserve to be discriminated against? Of course not. But you know what? Fat holier-than-thou fucks are fair fucking game. Rush Limbaugh is a big fat idiot, and that shot we've all seen of him at AIPAC bouncing his flabby jowls up and down as he chants "Rush Rush Rush" along with the crowd is disturbing. Call him a big fat idiot all you want, as long as you have the minimum brain wattage necessary to understand that the rest of us fat people aren't necessarily idiots.
Calling Ann Coulter a man is transphobic! People who say 'Mann Coulter' hate the transgendered!
This is the one I've seen the most of. Look. I totally sympathize with the transgendered that they would not want to be associated with Coulter. I certainly don't want to be associated with Rush. But you're comparing apples and oranges.
Coulter dresses for "fan service" - that is, she knows a significant percentage of her fans find her attractive and she uses that to her advantage (her photo gallery being one notable example). The fact that she's not particularly feminine becomes an obvious point of ridicule.
Does that mean the message is "Ha ha, Ann Coulter is a transsexual and transgendered people suck"? No, the message is "Ha ha, Ann Coulter is trying to flaunt her stuff with so very little to flaunt." Juvenile? Yes. "Transphobic?" No.
And I'll go further with the transgendered than I will with us fatties: People who do disparage transgendered people they dislike for being transgendered deserve to be rebuked. But "Mann Coulter" or "Noted female impersonator Ann Coulter" (tm Stephanie Miller, gling! ) is a far cry from that. Female impersonators are not transgendered. They're men in drag.
Calling Sean Hannity a pussy is misogynist!
Really? So if I call O'Reilly a cock, Newt Gingrich a dick, Glenn Beck a weiner or George W. Bush a putz, am I misandronist? If I call Michael Savage an asshole do I hate all people?
Look. Genitalia, both male and female, have been used to describe people and they do not necessarily carry implications associated with gender stereotypes. "Cock" implies arrogance and self-centeredness. "Wiener" implies weakness and cowardice. The two are almost exactly opposite. "Dick" implies ruthlessness and causing harm. "Putz" implies ineptitude and foolishness. Four different meanings for four words with the same literal definition.
"Pussy" carries connotations almost identical to "wiener." "Dick" carries almost exactly the same meaning as the dread C-word, which I'm too much of a wiener to even type out. So how can these words imply anything in particular about genders when words associated with both genders mean the same thing?
Sean Hannity is a pussy. He's also an arrogant cock, and judging by his Dijon attacks on Obama, he's also kind of a putz. Come on. Let's not take this to absurdity.
It's wrong to say 'welsh' on a bet or 'Indian giver' because that's offensive to the Welsh and to native Americans!
Disclosure: Like most French-descended Americans, I have a sprinkling of native blood.
Oy. This ranks right up there with people insisting 'history', being short for 'his story', needs to be changed to 'herstory' or 'theirstory'. (Etymologically, 'history' is not derived from 'his story' at all.)
"Welshing" refers to a habit by some Englishmen to flee to Wales rather than pay their debts; it's not at all an insult to the Welsh. "Indian giver" has an original etymology that was a slander against Indians but later became far more generally understood to refer to the American government's treatment of Indians - to 'give' them territory and later take it back. Either way, the origins of the words are not well understood and as such are not at all going to perpetuate stereotypes anyway.
Don't offend people struggling with addiction, alcoholics, the mentally ill, etc. etc.
Disclosure: Alcoholism killed my father. He was a good man, he was also an alcoholic.
One of the worst things I've seen in our society, particularly here in Minnesota, is the "Beans in your nose" syndrome. Your roommate is ready to go out on the town and has beans sticking out of his nose. "How do I look?" The response is often "Uh, fine..." for fear of causing embarrassment, but to spare embarrassment whilst out on the town, it's far better to say "You got beans in your nose."
Why do we have to pretend chemical abusers and crazy people aren't what they are, or at least that this isn't a bad thing? For God's sakes, the former enables the abuser, and the latter leaves crazy people where they can harm themselves or others. (Case in point: What if enough people start believing Bachmann's rhetoric?)
I could go on, and I've already gone on too long. People, the point is this:
Let's quit trying to find reasons to be offended by each other and instead deal with the real issues facing us.
And yes, I will post a tip jar, and if what I've said here is terribly offensive, I'll reluctantly accept your donuts. But at least try to consider what I've said first. Please?