pctherapy

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PC as censorship

This is a great article by Anis Shivani about how political correctness is killing literature in America.  The keyword here is “cultural appropriation” — “the idea that writers should not imagine characters and incidents outside their own immediate experience”. As in, if you’re white, you just can’t possible imagine what any other race would go through. If you do, you sure are exploiting other cultures for fictional purposes! It is, of course, a form of censorship. But my favourite passages are more politics related:

“Crimes against humanity will begin anew, while literary folks will feel righteous as they wear safety pins to acknowledge solidarity with Muslims and immigrants, volunteer to register as Muslims should there be a registry, and hunt out every linguistic offence among the avant-garde. [...]

This is no longer a harmless fad restricted to the literary world. Political correctness in the Obama years expanded wildly and prolifically. Having elected the first black president, liberals took a pass on economic or social justice because white guilt was easily assuaged. This is the kind of trap identity politics leads to: the drone warrior par excellence who refused to close Guantanamo and who did not wish to pursue war crimes retribution, was given a free pass because of who he was, not what he did.

The same thing happened with Hillary Clinton. The entire literary world (and I mean everyone who’s anyone vocally supported her) fell in line with the warmongering neo-liberal candidate. She stood for mass incarceration, banking deregulation, illiberal trade agreements, the erosion of welfare, anti-immigrant and anti-terrorist paranoia, and she never met a war or an assassination or a surveillance tool she didn’t like. But to criticise Hillary was to be a misogynist, or even a sexual predator by default since she was taking on the “sexual predator” Trump. [...]

So the next time you hear of a calling out, a burst of moral righteousness — as if human desire could be reduced  to politically correct regulations, minutely defined for possible violations of code — know that this is not something benign or of limited application. It is the rude, hard, clashing sound of a dead intellectual culture coming up against its own limits, rising in anger at its own impotence, mocking and harassing and condemning,\ in a spirit that seems to me the antithesis of why anyone would want to get into the forgiving, humane, open-minded vocation of writing in the first place.”

You can read the full article here.

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Don’t clap, use jazz hands!

You would think the extreme pc was taking place only in the US, but no, it has spread all over the Western world by now. 

Women were asked to use jazz hands instead of clapping during the National Union of Students (NUS) Women's Conference in Solihull, West Midlands.

The NUS Women's Campaign tweeted: "Some delegates are requesting that we move to jazz hands rather than clapping, as it's triggering anxiety. Please be mindful!"

Full article on BBC, disturbingly enough.

 I have to also include this reddit comment from zeebothius, for the sake of showing both sides :):

“ Recent studies have revealed that the most common trigger for all types of post-traumatic psychological disorder is the presence of other human beings. Attendees are requested to each hold their own private conference, preferably in a dark, pillow-lined closet with a cup of lukewarm water and Enya instrumentals playing softly, on loop.”

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In 2007, Santas in Sydney, Australia, were banned from saying ‘Ho Ho Ho’. “Recruitment firm Westaff — which supplies hundreds of Santas across the country — has told its trainees that the "ho ho ho" phrase could frighten children and could even be derogatory to women.” Now this really seems like an April 1st joke... full story here. 

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Political correctness. It’s got the word political in it for a reason, though apparently it only applies to the left. Maybe because fascism is the one nearer to the right, via extreme right. So now, since pc is being seen as such an overzealous, evil and dishonest stance, and fascism has been there ever since the two world wars, there’s nowhere left for those trying to be tolerant and honest to congregate.

"Political correctness is one of the brilliant tools that the American Right developed in the mid-1980s as part of its demolition of American liberalism....What the sharpest thinkers on the American Right saw quickly was that by declaring war on the cultural manifestations of liberalism - by levelling the charge of political correctness against its exponents - they could discredit the whole political project." - Will Hutton

cartoon by Jen Sorensen from here

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Žižek on racism and PC

“Dirty jokes are ambiguous. On the one hand, of course, I’m well aware they can be racist, sexist, and so on. On the other hand, I hate the term “African-Americans.” I prefer black, and they do too. I think African-American as a term is the worst example of apparent political correctness. My best example of this was in Minneapolis, one of the capitals of political correctness [chuckles]. On TV, I saw a debate involving Native Americans, and they referred to themselves as “Indians,” and this white, PC liberal said, “No, no, no, don’t use that colonialist term. You are Native Americans.” And at the end, one of the poor Indians exploded. He said, “Sorry, I hate that term! Please, give me at least the right to call myself what I want. `Native American’ means that you’re making me a part of nature! You are reducing me! What’s the opposite of nature? It’s culture! You Europeans are culture, then you have horses and us, `Native Americans,’ here, with foxes or whatever.” So whenever I meet blacks in this kind of situation, I immediately try to break these racist barriers. And what’s my measure that we truly broke the barrier? Ok, at one level it’s political correctness, but it’s absolutely clear that if you play this game, only politically correct terms and ooooh, this fake interest, “ooooh, how interesting, your culture, what a wealth,” and blah, blah, blah, it will backfire. Blacks confess to me that they secretly despise this kind of white liberalism. What’s the trick? Humor. It’s a kind of dialectical double reversal. And this is when they really admit you. That somehow you can return to the worst starting point, racist jokes and so on, but they function no longer as racist, but as a kind of obscene solidarity.” 

From this interview taken in 2003  

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Apparently teenagers (or more like their mothers) can’t take a joke.  UK company Anatomicals created this hilarious shampoo for suicidal hair, but it was too much to bare for those on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Urban Outfitters realized oh shit, this is not PC enough, so they pulled it from their site and all their stores.  “Although the product’s name is a humorous attempt to market a shampoo for hard-to-manage hair, we reevaluated and felt it was not appropriate and it was pulled from the Urban Outfitters website.” If you really want to read more abotu it you can here, though I pretty much summed it up. I guess this one can go in the category #overzealous #pc #pctherapy

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Meme found and stared at on https://makeameme.org/meme/are-you-tired-rxod80

So the stereotypes at the moment run like this: everyone who voted against trump was a pc liberal whining pussy, and everyone who voted for trump was a stupid racist redneck. Luckily, the world is more than a stereotype, otherwise we need to colonize another planet pronto. 

 #stereotypes #trump #pctherapy

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Definitions II

A more interesting definition for political correctness (especially no 2) was uploaded on urban dictionary by user tradesman:

“1. The laws of moral and ethical relativism; all systems of cultures and thought are equal in value, steming from a perceived guilt from white liberals who believe that the Western Civilization is the root of all evil to the exclusion of all else. 2. A powerful form of censorship. abbr: PC Political correctness has a basic flaw. If all views are equal, why do some who embrace this view feel the need to push this agenda as the “correct” one at the same time demonizing other views as “incorrect”?”

PC is a powerful form of censorship, I guess because it attempts to make racist terms taboo. PC is like quicksand though, taking tolerance too often into absurd regions such as calling a blackboard a chalkboard so as not to offend black people.

And two more urban dictionary definitions:

“ A term originally meant to describe behavior that minimises offence, particularly in relation to minorities. Now the term is an overused strawmen misused against many of those against unfair prejudice. Call a racist irrational and get branded a PC pussy. The term has effectively been used to stifle debate and thought about issues. It has reframed those who want fair and equal treatment of people, to people who have a PC agenda. The term does not censor offensive discussion against minorities, but rather censors discussion for positive social change. People get branded as PC pussies instead of raising debate and free thought.” 

Meok

“Movement in America founded on well-meaning intentions to promote equality in language and representation of diverse groups. However, this has now been oversimplified and misused by politicians in their attempt to win the favour of as many “minority” and interest groups as possible. The struggle to be “politically correct” has made common people easily irritable and oversensitive to the words of others and their own words. It has created a society that walks on eggshells and that has difficulty being personal with each other because coworkers and potential friends can’t joke around for fear of offending the other.” 

Elisabeth

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Definitions I

Since dictionaries have a hard time staying up to date with living and constantly shifting language, and none of the ones I’ve looked at pointed out the pejorative quality of the term as of late, I find the wikipedia definition most fitting (and it has nine citations standing behind it):

“The term political correctness (adjectivally: politically correct; commonly abbreviated to PC[1] or P.C.) in modern usage, is used to describe language, policies, or measures that are intended to avoid offense or disadvantage to members of particular groups in society. In mainstream political discourse and media, the term is generally used as a pejorative, implying that these policies are excessive.[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]” 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_correctness

An amazing juxtaposition results from taking this awful urban dictionary definition, uploaded by a user modestly calling himself Superior Intellect: 

“politically correct

A way that we speak in America so we don't offend whining pussies.

Only pathetically weak people that don't have the balls to say what they feel and mean are politically correct pussies.

by Superior Intellect October 05, 2004 “

This ‘brilliant’ definition was liked by 5380 people, and disliked by only 1402 (viewed in january 2017). The future is bright. 

  #pc #censorship #definitions