Does PC cause people to be oversensitive or vice versa?

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What do you think? Do you think that all of the ridiculous and overboard politically correct rules about what you can say, do or think have cause people to be overly sensitive or do you think that people being so very sensitive nowdays is whats cause the huge increase in the list of things we can't say anymore?

I don't believe that we should make PC rules based on what a handful of people find offensive vs what the majority of a group find offensive. I think we have gotten to the point where whenever something sounds like it might be offensive when it's not, nor is it meant to be, that people think that they ought to be offended by it so they are and then it becomes just another thing you can't do or think.

Whats your opinion on PC in general? I obviously hate it, and no I don't think disliking PC is just someone trying to find an excuse to be offensive because if you want to be offensive you will no matter what. Why do you think we all need to tiptoe around on eggshells around everyone now, and don't you think that people would be better off if they had thicker skins?

I think if people shush and quit trying to be cute it's easier to get stuff done and I'm all for that! Call it what you will but if people are spending all their time trying to show off and think of cute stuff to say, causing conflicts, it just adds up to a series of distractions that last the entire day. Nothing gets done. It's better to just hush and focus on what you are doing than trying so hard to think of what to say that gets you the most attention.

I don't believe in "sensitivity" pertaining to certain people. From what I can tell everyone has an Achille's Tendon and once someone smashes it. they all go hollering and crying to whomever's running the show. Suddenly freedom of speech is meaningless if it's their tendon that just got tackled.

What I want to know is when did we, as a society decide that we have a Constitutional right not to have our feelings hurt.

This is why it's hard for Hollywood to have bad guys anymore, because they might offend a group.

-Will we ever see Westerns with American Indians attacking peaceful settlers, again?
-Will we see War movies with Asians killing American soliders in Korea, VietNam, again ?
-We we get to see bad LGBT people do horrible things to people ? If a book came along, they would probably have to change it so the bad person was not LGBT, for example, we will ever get to see another, 'Silence of the Lambs' with transgender-offensive serial killer Buffalo Bill?
...
....... etc

Now Hollywood has NAZIs, vampires, ghosts, zombies, and fairy tale creatures as their favorite enemies ....

I was recently informed that we don't say Oriental anymore we now say Asian. I don't understand the difference. Oriental isn't an insult, the far East was called the Orient for a very long time. Whats wrong with Oriental?

Also American Indians are now called Native Americans. The word Indian seems to be a bad word now. However, almost everybody in Alabama has some Indian in them and we all say Indian. My grandfathers mother was full blooded Cherokee, that makes me 1/8 Indian. The Cherokee tribe that I belong to uses the word Indian. It's not a bad word.

Now that whole leper thing. We should call people with leprosy "People living with Hansen's disease" WTF? Also, we aren't supposed to call something lame because crippled people might be offended. I haven't heard the word lame applied to anybody, ever. I've heard it applied to horses though.

Now PETA doesn't want us calling our dogs and cats pets. We are supposed to call them animal companions.

I'm about sick of all this crazy taboo language crap. I don't see why we don't just have a list of the slurs that people use and simply not use them! I've seen other women get upset when referred to as anything besides women. Girl, gal, lady, etc all piss them off. I mean WTF? Who gets upset if you call her a lady?

It's crazy.

ETA; oops, just realized when I hit submit that I'm not supposed to use the word crazy either. It might upset somebody with mental illness.

It doesn't exist to me, the cultural marxists for all their feined love for the underclass only really exist inside the bubble of academia and the media rarely venturing down to where us commonfolk reside. I don't purposely try to hurt people or be rude but context is what truly matter and talking about things candidly with each other instead of creating these imaginary taboos is what is truly civilized. The point of political correctness is to divide us, it doesn't bring us together or deal with anything in any intellectual way but rather stiffles discussion and draws the battle lines between races or whatever cultural grouping. If you can't defend your ideas then they're not really your ideas, I believe what I believe because I believe it to be moral and maybe my morality is different than yours but I am not afraid to defend it or offend by the fact that somebody might believe differently than me.

didn't we stop calling them indian since theres a nation called India whose people are indians, so it became confusing.

It's not really a constitutional right, just how people do business, including the government and those who yelp the loudest when their feelings are hurt are usually the ones who tell everyone else they are too sensitive. That's just been my personal experience.

It's like it's really funny when it's the other guy hardy har har but when it's me by God the Earth will Shake and all will hear my mighty fury and indignation because someone had the gall to hurt my precious feelings exclaims the narcissist.

In Indian country they are still called Indians.

Eskimo Joe's is still Eskimo Joe's.

Oriental just sounds too funny to me so I call them Asians. I usually burst out laughing when my Ma says "she's Oriental." Yeah, she still does that.

Probably. Especially because a lot of them started moving to the US. I remember when people would distinguish what they meant by saying "An Indian from India" and I've actually heard a couple times "Woo woo Indian, not head dot Indian". While I'm pretty sure someone would find that last one offensive, I don't see why they would. The woo woo part comes from how Indians yelled when charging on horseback and the head dot thing came from the women wearing the head dot. It's just fact, not rude opinion.

I've always heard it as feather vs dot Indian, but that may be a regional thing, the first time I ever heard that phrase was actually during a Lisa Lampanelli routine years ago, and it seems to have entered the mainstream vocabulary in the intervening years.

You might enjoy this recent Jonathan Chait article, it really lays out the problems of PC culture concisely and elegantly:

Link

In Japan, the word oriental has been borrowed into their language, but it refers to people from, say, India and not to people from East Asia.

I think there's a fine line between being PC and not being a jerk. Think about the use of the word mudblood in the Harry Potter series to refer to witches and wizards born to two Muggle parents versus the term Muggle-born. The former is an obvious insult and by itself doesn't even make clear what is referred to, while the latter is simply descriptive, being constructed from born of Muggles.

It's also why one would not use the n-word.

Basically, in these cases, using the more insulting term tells a lot more about the person using it than it does about the person who realizes the person using it is an ass hole.

I'm not talking about the n word or insults of that nature. I'm talking about the linguistic gymnastics that we are expected to go through to rephrase and rename everything and everyone just so somebody somewhere who has the thinnest skin in the world, won't get their panties in a wad. You would think that being polite would suffice as well as being PC, but it doesn't. In fact, being polite is in some cases not PC. Take the uber overboard feminists who get offended when a man opens the door for them or flicks a lighter to light their cigarette or stands up when they come into the room. Look at how even with ASD we are supposed to say "A child with autism" rather than "An autistic child". That's ridiculous and nitpicky. We can't call something "lame" when it's not good because it could offend somebody who is crippled. We can't call something "gay" when it's not good because some people take it to mean that being gay is bad or wrong or being put down. We can't even use the word ret*d in it's correct context because people use it as an insult and now it can't be used any other way.

It's the whole concept of people going so far overboard to avoid upsetting, "triggering" or hurting the feelings of someone else when all you really need to do is be polite and sincere. Most people won't take offense to piddly s**t, and I honestly don't care about the feelings of those who are so caught up in it that they go after everybody and everything. People have forgotten that words are just words and unless they are said to you by someone you care about, they can't really hurt you unless you allow them to. By this I'm not talking about bullying, I'm talking about a remark or phrase that isn't politically correct. Like if I were to call an American Indian an Indian. That isn't PC but it doesn't hurt anyone. If the person I refer to as an Indian is going to run off and cry in the corner about it, then this whole PC thing is just making the situation worse. It tells oversensitive people that they shouldn't try and toughen up for their own sakes. It's basically something I refuse to participate in, just like I refuse to label everyone an ist, phobe, ism, etc.

Responding to a previous post, I have mental illness, and I am not offended in the slightest when I hear someone use the word crazy. Does this mean I have low self-esteem or does this mean I have a really good sense of humor?'

I think when deciding what's politically correct, we need to think about what the victims actually think, rather than what we perceive the victims will think. If someone who was a victim of a bank robbery finds bank robbery jokes unfunny then we should listen to them. I don't actually think there is such a thing as a good bank robbery joke but I'm stating this in abstract terms for a reason.

Sometimes there is are "social justice warriors" who don't really understand the victim's experience but perhaps want to fill a void in their own life.

I really think the people we need to listen to are the victims/survivors.

This doesn't mean they can force our hand, just that it might be useful to listen to them.

It means you have common sense. Thats a rapidly diminishing character trait.

Go careful this go careful that its enough to give one an eplieptic seizure. Although the words are now socially unacceptable but the hate is still there just not expressed. Just because you cannot call a person with a learning disability a ret*d it does not mean that neurobigotry does not exist it s just not expressed and is repressed.