In general, the affair was to be a discussion of political correctness, and if or how it stifles open public discussion. The thesis of the debate was “be it resolved, what you call political correctness, I call progress”. There were two teams of two participants who would argue in support of the premise, and against it. The team making the supportive argument was made up of Michael Dyson and Michelle Goldberg, while the opposing team was composed of Stephen Fry, and Jordan Peterson.
It’s rather long to take in unless you’re in a comfortable chair (I wasn’t) and I have no interest in trying to recount the whole business here. But there is one point that Ms. Goldberg brought up that I’d like to comment on.
She mentioned that during the 2016 presidential campaign, as a journalist, she had had the opportunity to attend many Trump rallies all over the country and had used that opportunity to ask fellow attendees why they supported Donald Trump. Being tired of all of the political correctness, she said, was often mentioned. However when asked to specify examples most of her subjects could not. I thought about this for a bit and decided that it was quite understandable for an average person talking to a reporter not to be able to recall any specifics. I couldn’t immediately come up with anything myself. So I set myself to thinking, and came up with the idea that political correctness doesn’t produce major wounds. It’s more like a death from a thousand cuts, as it is meant to be.
The idea, of course, is that if you change the language that people use then you can change their perception. You can actually change the way people think. Linguists, politicians, and social engineers have been aware, and Orwell warned us of this in his book Nineteen Eighty-four.
In any case, even though people may not be able to easily articulate their feelings on the matter there are many examples. At one point we were told that we were no longer to use the term “Miss” when addressing women of unknown marital status. It was dismissive we were told and there was no masculine analog and so it was inherently sexist. It had to go. And then we were told that we were not to use the word “girl” to refer to young girls either as this was also dismissive. These are women, we were told. At one point we saw a female United States senator berate a high ranking military officer for answering a question “yes ma’am” just as he would have used “yes sir” to her male counterparts. It was stupid and petty, and she pretended to take offence for the benefit of a television audience even though no possible disrespect could have been implied. It was a minor annoyance, but it left a scar.
In my life time (not that I’m so aged) I have seen the reference go from “colored people” to “Negros” to “blacks” and finally to African – Americans. Of course the National Association For The Advancement Of Colored People (NAACP) won’t change its brand. The very purpose of a hyphen is to associate two things while keeping them separate. It’s an annoyance.
Mechanics can no longer have “pin up” calendars in their work spaces as it creates a “hostile work environment” for any women that happen to be there. It’s an annoyance.
Children are sent home from school for having “bubble guns”; for nibbling toaster pastries into the shape of a gun; for pointing their finger at a classmate as if it were a gun; for invoking the powers of a magic ring in a threatening manner; for kissing a classmate; for having the wrong snack or packed lunch, or for picking up a brass shell casing off the ground and taking it to school. It’s an annoyance.
We don’t refer to homosexuals as homosexuals any longer, now they’re “gay”, and they’re seemingly everywhere. If someone is uneasy seeing public displays of affection between same sex couples, or if they aren’t totally supportive then they’re immediately tagged as homophobes, haters, and bigots. It’s an annoyance.
I had never heard the term “wet back” until my family moved from the city to a more rural environment in the Midwest. It wasn’t really used as a pejorative, it was just a matter of fact. It described a Mexican citizen who had come to the U.S. without the benefit of passing through the immigration apparatus. No one really cared much that I can remember. They were minding their own business working on local farms and ranches. They weren’t a drain on social services because there weren’t that many social services to drain. Of course all of that has changed in the last few decades. Now “illegal aliens” can apply for and receive a number of social services. Students can receive “resident” status at whatever university they might want to apply to, and have access to well-endowed scholarship funds while citizens have to struggle to pay “out of state” tuition. You see them on the news reports marching, carrying the flags of their native countries, demonstrating against the laws of the country they have chosen to squat in. And the twisting of the language is fairly obvious in this case. The description went from the legally precise illegal alien to illegal immigrant to undocumented immigrant to undocumented citizen in some places. Suffrage for illegals is now being considered in some localities. Rights and privileges which do not exist are demanded. It’s an annoyance.
We were exposed to the “Piss Christ” and most of us were offended. Even the atheists among us. Even those who routinely worked in and around the offending liquid. Although certainly allowed, it was an unnecessary, provocative insult to Christians everywhere. We were told that we had to accept it as an artistic expression, and begrudgingly we did. Now fast forward thirty years (yes, it’s been that long) and we’re told that we may not criticize Islam. We may not be concerned about a radical minority or Islamists who have sworn to, and do on occasion, kill us. If we do express our concern, we’re labeled as Islamophobic. If we have reservations about supporting unlimited access to the country by and the provision of benefits to economic refugees, political asylum seekers and their extended families we are labeled as hysterical haters and bigots. And if we produce any sort of likeness of the Profit Muhammed we are accused of making an unnecessary, provocative insult to Muslims everywhere and we have no right to be surprised and no redress if someone tries to kill us for that. It’s an annoyance.
Free speech and expression are under attack. On many college campuses you can’t pass out copies of the Constitution on Constitution Day without a permit, and then only from the confines of the designated “Free Speech Zone”. Students require “trigger warnings” so that they can cover their ears or get up and leave before they hear anything that would make them feel uncomfortable, regardless if they have a need to know it or not. They need puppy rooms to help them cope with the stress of a pampered life. They are excused from exams and passed regardless so that they may participate in social activism. Some of this activism is spent protesting the high cost, and low value of a college education. The irony here is almost too rich. They borrow money (essentially from the government) fail to learn anything useful because they spend too much time out of class and then protest that they should owe so much and have no useful skills to sell in order to pay back the cost. That they fail to see the irony is pathetic. It’s an annoyance.
Halloween costumes are no longer allowed as they require too much thought. Animals and inanimate objects are all that’s really left. You virtually cannot fart without culturally appropriating someone’s culture, or micro aggressing someone. Any sufficiently imaginative plaintiff can find fault with anything you say or do. It’s an annoyance.
We are told, and expected to believe, that men and women are interchangeable and that any perceived differences are the result of cultural indoctrination by the male patriarchy. Outside of their biological differences that have developed over five million years they’re exactly the same. As if you could swap men and women’s brains en masse and expect a good outcome. People know this intuitively to be false even if they can’t quite express it. And yet we are still bombarded with the idea that it has been the “patriarchy” and not five million years of evolution that has shaped our existence. It’s an annoyance.
In short, the complaint about political correctness isn’t about one word, or two, or even a list of words. Political correctness is an assault on our rationality. It’s a progressive attempt to tear the fabric of our lives so that it can be resewn in a form more to the liking of some academic and political elite. It’s an attempt, through language, to control the way we speak and thus think. People can feel this in their guts. Taken one at a time these things are just annoying. Added over a lifetime they have become a potent political issue.
But that’s just what an average guy thinks.
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