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Philologos
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13 Jul 2011, 11:22 pm

Someone - sorry I did not make a note, I am very bad at names and numbers - reacting against one of my sober and nonpartisan posts, as people will, believing anyone does not agree with THEM must be part of the opposition - came up with a snide remark about the PC Liberals of academia.

While it is sadly true that the Humanities disciplines in the contemporary American university are staffed with more PC Socializers than scholars, and also true that most of those are Liberal in orientation, it needs to be said:

The political correctness fetish common among Socializers and Method Powervolk is by no means exclusively liberal. I have worked beside and had negative interactions with both Liberal and Conservative PC pushers. In a state university or Unitarian , LPC is more common than CPC. In an evangelical church or an Assemblires of God-run Bible college, CPC is likely to be more common that LPC.

But I can tell you, from personal experience, a non-socialized Thinker will find interaction with any PC flavor uncomfortable at best. It is the style, not the specific allegiance.



YippySkippy
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14 Jul 2011, 8:10 am

I hate political correctness.
PC is people saying and doing things out of fear, not real conviction. People using words-of-the-month and pretending to be aghast at anyone who doesn't jump on their wagon. People who create more of the societal tensions they think they are opposing.
Yuck.



visagrunt
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14 Jul 2011, 1:00 pm

PC is nothing more that simple good manners.

I refer to you in the way that you would prefer. I will adapt my vocabulary to suit the audience to whom I am speaking.

Now, it may be perfectly sufficient to put an interpretative clause in a document that says, "All references to the male sex are expressly intended to include the female sex, where such an interpretation is necessary or required." But that does not mean that it is not a preferable approach to make references plural, so that they can be expressed with neuter pronouns.

I will grant you that "disabled people," requires less ink than, "people with disabilities." But when a person with a disability tells me that the former construction creates the impression that the disability is more important than the person, I am quite prepared to take that criticism on board and adapt my behaviour, accordingly.

In my view, a rigid adherence to forms of reference that the author knows will cause provocation is a distraction from the more important substance of an argument. Why waste time arguing over whether we should refer to "welfare bastards" or "children in poverty born to single parents," when the substantive argument over access to social services is vastly more important?


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Philologos
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14 Jul 2011, 1:36 pm

It would be nice if political correctness were nothing more than simple good manners. Certainly some of it has roots there.

I would certainly rather be referred to as a skeptical Nicene Christian [with liturgical preferences and eremitical leanings] than as a damned heretic or a stinking fundie or a New Age dupe of demons. And if the mannerly restricted themselves to neutral characterizations and avoiding such offenses as sneezing on another's face, I would have no complaint. My mother brought me up right.

But - perhaps not in the circles in which you move, but certainly in mine - it does not stop there.

Consider:

The cycle of euphemism - seeing that "old folks" and "slow children" are seen as inferior, we call them "senior citizens" and "special students" to make it sound as if they are not inferior. Since we still know trhey are inferior, the new term quickly becomes understood as derogatory and we need to invent soimething new.

The expansion of taboos - a University operates by rules and prohibitions rivalling Leviticus. In institution that celebrates original thought and free speech avoids them like the plague and ostracizes those who practice them.

As I say, both materialist academics and conservative Evangelicals have their lists of things to be done and not to be done, things to be said and not to be said. No, it was not politesse for the innocent child to point out that the emperor was skyclad. But neither is it politesse when parishioners and colleagues fear to speak truth lest they be expelled or punished, when they try to think "correctly" lest they have to recognize themselves as outsiders.



visagrunt
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14 Jul 2011, 2:34 pm

Philologos wrote:
Consider:

The cycle of euphemism - seeing that "old folks" and "slow children" are seen as inferior, we call them "senior citizens" and "special students" to make it sound as if they are not inferior. Since we still know trhey are inferior, the new term quickly becomes understood as derogatory and we need to invent soimething new.


Do we know them to be inferior? I am not persuaded on that point. And even in the case of people with profound disabilities, a nomenclature that seeks to normalize them can be helpful in providing them with a greater sense of self-worth, and greater motivation to maximize their potentials. I see absolutely nothing wrong in this.

Quote:
The expansion of taboos - a University operates by rules and prohibitions rivalling Leviticus. In institution that celebrates original thought and free speech avoids them like the plague and ostracizes those who practice them.


I don't disagree with you on this score. When academic freedom is threatened by oppostional forces, then we have, in my view, moved into an unacceptable realm. I should have been more circumspect in my earlier statements in order to put some fences around this kind of thing.

Quote:
As I say, both materialist academics and conservative Evangelicals have their lists of things to be done and not to be done, things to be said and not to be said. No, it was not politesse for the innocent child to point out that the emperor was skyclad. But neither is it politesse when parishioners and colleagues fear to speak truth lest they be expelled or punished, when they try to think "correctly" lest they have to recognize themselves as outsiders.


I will try to remember to limit my expressions of support in future to the vocabulary of political correctness, and to expressly exclude attempts to foreclose fields of inquiry or topics of debate.


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Philologos
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14 Jul 2011, 2:53 pm

visagrunt wrote:
Philologos wrote:
Consider:

The cycle of euphemism - seeing that "old folks" and "slow children" are seen as inferior, we call them "senior citizens" and "special students" to make it sound as if they are not inferior. Since we still know they are inferior, the new term quickly becomes understood as derogatory and we need to invent soimething new.


Do we know them to be inferior? I am not persuaded on that point. And even in the case of people with profound disabilities, a nomenclature that seeks to normalize them can be helpful in providing them with a greater sense of self-worth, and greater motivation to maximize their potentials. I see absolutely nothing wrong in this.


Of course we do not know them to be inferior. Christ-informed analysis beats down my own long-established premises to assure me that even the meanest [in both common senses] Dummkopf among the Powervolk are my equals and valued and loved children of God. That the cockroach I step on to keep it out of my crackerbox is just as evolved and perfected as my human body [and arguably more successful].

Thing is - a goodly percentage of the Socializers, the PC Elite - are bloody hypocrites. Not all, no, I have known very good ones indeed. But you get one who has signed off on an ideology that says that a ret*d 80-year old illiterate homosexual Muslim Dinka is his equal - but does not at bottom believe it. You must know some people who talk friendship and overcompensate shaking yoiur hand so as not to cringe, who in your childhood called you "dear" when you knew they did not like you.

If someone is actually trying to make me feel comfortable - fine. But if he is in fact trying to feel good about himself because he does not let his distaste rise to the surface?