Does PC cause people to be oversensitive or vice versa?

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The instance I'm talking about was in a thread about dealing with intimidating people. I was telling them about my kid's jr high principal. He can be a very intimidating man, but he has to be because of his job. I was telling them about my first encounter with him and I described him so that people could get a mental picture. He was a big tall black guy with a bald head and a deep voice. Thats exactly what he looks and sounds like. Nothing wrong with that. He had the authority of the school board behind him and he didn't put up with any crap from anyone. He always intimidated everyone and I think a lot of it was on purpose. When i first met him and he started in on me I told him to cut the crap, he wasn't intimidating me and if he wanted to talk about the issue like adults, we could. That is exactly what we did and he and I became friends. There was mutual respect and unlike a lot of parents I like him very much and think he does a good job. When he got cancer, I made him a mojo hand that he still carries and he told me that.

The guy who jumped on me for that insisted that I'm racist because I mentioned that he was black. Apparently, he decided that I felt that all black guys are intimidating. I don't. Nor do I feel that all big guys are, or guys with bald heads or guys with deep booming voices. It was his personality that made him come across as intimidating, not his race.

This is just another aspect of the insane PC culture we live in. It's wrong to call people with leprosy "lepers" because thats used in the vernacular to mean outcasts, it's wrong to say that something bad is "lame" because people who can't walk may think you think they are bad, it's wrong to say that someone with intellectual disability and very low IQ is mentally ret*d, even though it's a medical fact and not used as an insult. We can't mention that someone has any type of disability, we have to call it a difference. We can't even suggest that not everyone should or could go to college. We can't suggest that women are usually unable to do the same physical things that men can do, to the same extent they are so we physically dumb down the physical requirements for jobs that require physical strength. I could be in a 5th story walkup that's on fire, be in a wheelchair and possibly not be rescued because the FD was forced to hire a woman who is smaller than me and doesn't have the upper body strength to carry me out the window and down the ladder. I would be called insensitive and a traitor to my own sex by even suggesting that there are some physical jobs that most men can do better than most women because most men are physically stronger than most women, although there are exceptions. It doesn't mean we are the "weaker sex". I can hold my own in a fight with quite a few min, but throwing and taking a punch isn't the same as lifting something heavy or carrying it.

Everything is a no no now. Everyone's reasons are called into question and always suspect if they say anything that doesn't toe the sensitivity line.

It's ok to realize that some people are too sensitive. It's ok to want them to toughen up. It's ok to not tailor every word you say to suit them. It's not ok to purposefully offend that person because you know they are a cry baby, not at all. It's polite to try to not offend them, but we don't have to assume that the entire world is like them and we damn sure don't have to want to teach everyone else to be like them. Its ok to expect people to change, to grow up, to learn how to deal with negative things, to get a clue about the fact that their self worth isn't dictated by anyone else, to roll with the punches and to stand up for themselves and to let things go and when to do each.

It's really ok to expect grownups to be grownups.

I agree with OliveOilMom, and others, who have said they're sick-to-death, of "PC"!

In answer to the title question: I think PC has caused people to be over-sensitive. IMO, it is like what I have learned about other things: The more I am exposed to something, the less sensitive I am, to it----for instance, if it's noisy around here, I get used to it; if it's quiet, for long periods of time, the first noise that occurs, makes my head feel like it's going to explode. I feel the same principle can, maybe, be applied to "PC"----the more one is exposed to being called a name, for instance, the less it should affect one, when it is heard; and, conversely, the LESS someone is called a bad name, the MORE it can affect them.

Uggg I hate PC esspecially when it goes overboard and has to dictate my life and s**t! I feel like I have to feel uncomfortable and walk on egg shells 24/7 without offending someone overly sensative to everything.

I agree but I also think that all the crap people hear about this being offensive and that being hate speech and the other thing being something that should get us all upset over and over tends to make people second guess their own judgment about whether or not they are or even should be offended by something. People are starting to get offended as a knee jerk reaction now when they hear something rather than taking the time to think about whether it's offensive or not.

Take the recent instance about a year or so ago of when some politician used the word "niggardly". It means cheap. It has nothing whatsoever to do with race. It's not slang. It's just a word that isn't used very often. Because it simply sounds like the other n word, people were up in arms. Why did he have to use a word that sounds like a word that truly is offensive? The other n word is offensive! Without a doubt it is. It's not polite to say it at all. However, just because the word used by the politician sounds similar to it doesn't mean it's offensive or insulting to anyone. We are now a society that is so over sensitive that we can't even tolerate words that sound like the words that actually are insults.

Look at the the article on here about the mentally disabled lady in the UK who would die if she has another baby and they want to steralize her so she doesn't have another baby and die because of it. Simply because it sounds like eugenics it must be wrong. What the actual reasons are don't matter, what matters is what it sounds like the reasons are. If it sounds offensive, it must be.

I've met people who will go to crazy lengths to keep up to date and comply with all the things that we are now supposed to be upset about.

Look at college campuses where they tell you to ask every time you do anything at all with a romantic partner. While nobody thinks disregarding another persons wishes for sexual contact is ok, not stopping to ask at every juncture "Is this ok? Can I do this? Are you sure?" is not what is needed. Because a handful of girls might have trouble speaking up or feel that they shouldn't say anything, or because a handful of guys might not be able to read the signs that say stop without her saying something and getting upset with him, the campuses have created a whole culture of fear and tension surrounding sex. People are afraid that if they don't get verbal permission on ever move that they will be called a rapist.

There are so many ways that people go overboard right now and people seem to be more and more afraid to be the one to speak up and call them on it because they don't want to be labeled whatever type of bad person that someone can force them into the slot. We are just as afraid of offending someone as we are of hitting them with a car now and so many people seem to feel that it's just as bad. While feelings are important and should be considered, they aren't the most important things in the world. It's not possible to live in the world and not get your feelings hurt from time to time. Sheltering people to the extent that they feel justified in filing a lawsuit because they are offended is going to be just the tip of the iceberg. We are taking grown ass men and women and teaching people that they should be just as touchy and emotional as an emo 14 year old girl on her period when her kitten got ran over by a car, her boyfriend broke up with her, she got a D on the math test, her grandmother shrunk her skinny jeans and her mother threw away all the razor blades. We teach children to ignore people who call them names and brush it off, that just because some idiot called them poopyhead or says they are wearing stupid pants that it's no reason to cry. We teach them to not base their value of themselves on what others say about them, and we try to foster their self esteem by telling them to ignore the idiots they encounter, then as they get older we turn right around and encourage them to whine and complain when someone says the equevilant of poopyhead or stupid pants.

Most of my generation isn't so quick to believe that someone else is trying to be offensive, unless it's obvious. Most of us have been insulted at some point in time or been picked on here and there and we realize that we aren't going to fall apart when one person doesn't like us or says something rude to us. Most of us at least know that we should speak up when someone is offensive and we know that some people are not going to like us no matter what we do. Many have the common sense to know that someone can dislike a person from a particular group without being discriminatory against the entire group. I don't know where the next generation is going to go with this PC crap, and where those of my generation are going with it, when they are so willingly gullible as to readily believe that it's what normal adults do to take someone to court over hurting their feelings.

I'm certainly not advocating for people to be insulted. It's not polite to do that. I'm advocating for people to relearn the skill of brushing off an insult or not taking offense to things that aren't meant at all to be offensive. There isn't anything wrong with helping people learn to toughen up and expecting them to deal with things like adults and not like 2nd graders.

It just blows my mind how it seems to be wrong and evil to even think that someone else is overly sensitive. While sensitivity is a very good trait, being overly sensitive is not good, attractive or helpful at all. It's ok to realize this.

Gypsies were misidentified as being Egyptian, even though their origin is Northern India.

They tend to use Roma, or Sinti, or whatever their specific group is. Gypsy isn't the term they tend to use, nowadays.

Some use Romany as this is this is the old name.

You do get "Roma Gypsies" becuase other travailing groups are now called Gypsies, especially Irish.

Yes, the whole PC movement has gotten ridiculous in this country. One thing I find odd is that it's mostly attributed to the political left, despite the right having their own version of what is considered politically incorrect speech .

I'll be sure and tell my friend that he's either wrong for doing it or that he really doesn't do it, he just says he does and I completely misheard for years and years. Somebody from the internet told me, and thats much more reliable than first hand experience.

My bad.

BTW, my friend told me that he and his family hate it when Irish travellers are called "gypsies" because they are not gypsies, that only the Rom are. Of course that could be entirely wrong too and they secretly sit around laughing at pulling one over on me by telling me such a whopper of a lie. Especially when it wasn't ever a big deal and only told to me in passing. Too bad the internet wasn't around way back then so I could double check everything he told me with an expert who isn't a member of his ethnic group.

???

Btw you live in the states. The population of gypsies in the states are tiny. The areas where there are the most gypsies aren't even anglophile so their either use their own language or a word in the language of the country that they live in. This may translate as gypsy but won't have the same etymology.

Regardless why the snark attack? Or did you misinterpret my post or something? I really don't care what people call themselves.

OliveOilMum, I've noticed you've made a lot of posts moaning about political correctness in the last month or so. Did a particular incident trigger this?

Noticed that too!

Several LENGTHY posts.

Whats behind this sudden obsession?

Didn't mean to be snarky. I forgot the winky face. It sounded like that because I was trying to get across the irony of two people, neither of who are part of the particular ethnic group having a debate/discussion etc about what they should be called and call themselves. Also the whole "It's on the internet so it must be true" business.

Yeah I do live in the states, and they do speak English. They have another language that they know and the older people speak among themselves but my friend and those his age and the younger folks only use it when they are talking to the older ones who use it a lot, even though they speak English. He means it the same way, as the ethnic term we use. He gets a lot of people asking if he's Muslim because of his coloring and such but he tells them he's a Gypsy. It's insane the number of people down here in this town who think it's a religion or a made up thing. Someone even told him they "didn't believe in Gypsies" because they are Christian. A ton of people don't know it's a for real ethnicity, although it's an ethnicity without a country because he said some don't believe the originally from India belief.

It's the internet that's really causing this whole PC thing to gain momentum. You see it everywhere. People on FB telling others that something inoffensive is terribly offensive and self proclaimed experts of PC chiding others for silly things that nobody in their right mind would find offensive, such as saying something is "lame" because it might offend people who can't walk, when in fact that word isn't used very much at all for humans who can't walk, only horses.

I went over the top about your post because it was an example of the over the top culture of offense on the internet. People can easily sit back and say that that something is offensive to this group or that group or people who do this or think that and nobody calls them out on it because because they don't really know whether to believe them and actually feel bad about it or not. The internet is all over the world and for all the original offender knows, it could be a well known offensive thing to say in their part of the world, so people don't ever challange it, they back down and accept it.

I remember some either joke or troll post on here a few years back where someone said that it's offensive to black people to say "blackboard" like in a class room. While a lot of people argued with it, there were some who accepted it and were happy to comply with never saying it again because some stranger on the internet said it was offensive and wrong.

So, nowdays we are so afraid to offend that people are willing to take anything as truth of whats offensive and nonoffensive from anyone with a computer and half an opinion. I didn't mean you were being that way, it was just an in general b***h about how the internet is never wrong and people like you and me who have nothing to do with that culture or ethnicity can put our noses into what should be someone else's feelings about what bothers them and doesn't bother them. I just didn't think about the at the end. Usually if you have any questions about whether or not I'm being mean, I'm not being mean because when I am it's real obvious lol.

It's not an obsession, it's something I've been against for many years and spoke up about. I've just been talking more about it because I see more and more about it now. I can't go on FB without seeing someone complaining about someone else being offensive when they really aren't, can't read the news without seeing some other instance of zero tolerance BS taken to the nth degree and having the opposite effect than it's supposed to. It used to be something that you saw occasionally but now it's something that you can't avoid for a week. It doesn't limit me because while I don't go around insulting people for no reason, I also don't refuse to change the things that aren't offensive just to fit in with the PC rules.

As for them being lengthy, it takes space for me to feel I've fully explained it. If you would rather not read them, it's no skin off my nose, and as far as I know the forum has unlimited space so I'm not taking up someone else's room.

Social media does do that- pump up the pace of social interaction-including increasing the rubbing of sore nerves.

A young guy joined WP a couple years ago, and the first post he made was to complain about a particular person (not me) using... take a guess WHAT word! The first conversation he encountered on WP got him upset because someone used this particular word.

Take a WILD guess what word offended this guy.

The word was "aspie" (about the MOST commonly used word on WP! LOL!).

He didnt know that. To him it was some horrible epithet that nice folks dont use, and he went into high dugeon about it.

No one took his side, and everyone ridiculed him. I dont think he ever returned to WP.

But who knows- I am sure in some quarters "aspie" probably has degenerated into an epithet.

In others its risen to become a word that denotes affection.

And -guess what! Even the affectionate use of the word offends some people!

A young lady here once posted about how offended she was about how people will describe a person as "my aspie".

Who is this "us" that is being divided by political correctness? If there is an "us" being divided by political correctness, perhaps there is a "them" who are the driving force behind it and who are trying to benefit from it.

I've heard that the columnist Joe Sobran once said that political correctness should really be called semitical correctness, since that term more accurately reflects who it is designed to serve. I don't know if he really said that or not, but it sounds like an apt term to me.

It seems like "My Aspie" in this context is somewhat equivalent to "my coolie" or "my n-word."

It's like you're somebody's employee or puppet.

I would find that offensive, unless it was explained to me.

And I'm no PC guy--trust me!

No one uses the expression that way.

It was the use by gf/bf/spouses (and maybe parents) of aspies that this girl objected to. "What ARE they? Your pet or something!".

I dunno. In all fairness if a non aspie (even a hot lady friend) referred to me that way- I dunno- I might have mixed feelings about it. Will have to ponder it.