What is wrong with Political Correctness in some cases?

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For the most part, I'm against political correctness. But, I feel as though there should be certain cases in which PC should apply.

And, it just seems like conservatives who are against PC (which I mostly agree with) and have their moral codes don't think things through and simply apply things in an iron clad way without any kind of though to any kind of exceptions at all. This is one reason why I get frustrated when I speak to conservatives.

Example 1: Child Pornography. It is despicable to molest a child and child porn is based upon that. Child porn is out right banned and should remain banned and the pedophiles should receive a life sentence in prison. I think organizations like Nambla should be declared illegal.

I do have a question though. Should the FBI use child porn and websites from the servers the FBI seized to lure in child predators. I have mixed bags on this. In one sense it could encourage some of the FBI to well make more and in my opinion the FBI and the agents should be held to the same standards and laws as the rest of us. In another sense, we need to use every tool in the arsenal to protect children from harm. I lean towards a no.

Example 2: There are certain things children should never, ever be exposed to. There minds are not developed for these things. In other words, certain things must be age appropriate and remain age appropriate. In this context, I think PC is fine.

Example 3: In certain contexts I think certain racial slurs should be allowed to be uttered. One of these contexts would be to explain what the slur means, where it comes from and why it is so bad? In other words, if you're teaching what it means from a historical context then I think it should be okay.

I think you use the term "political correctness" but really mean "censorship".

I agree that we need some censorship on contents inappropriate in a given situation (e.g. inappropriate for children in public space), or inappropriate in general.
Totally uncensored (unmoderated) Internet communities tend to drown under spam and malicious trolling.

What I understand by "political correctness" are rather real-time-updated rules of politeness. It's wrong when they become too restrictive or change too fast, it's wrong when politeness rules are abused to bully someone not fluent with them, but it's generally right to try to be polite.

Ok, but there's a fine line between political correctness and insensitivity.

Politically correct is anything that serves the purpose of securing one's social or political status by staying on alert and guarding what you say out of fear of offending someone. I'm not a fan of PC because having to constantly stay on guard and second-guess myself cuts into my personal and public effectiveness. If you have to mold/shape your life around other peoples' opinions, you lose your identity and value. Part of what makes liberals so popular in the USA for the moment is they are artful in staying ahead of public opinion--they are skillful in checking the cultural temperature, keeping a finger on the pulse of society, and then guiding people's attitudes that ultimately favors liberal political goals. And that is an extremely long-winded way of saying they are good at telling people what the people WANT to hear in order to more easily maintain the status quo. PC speech is a highly effective tool not just for appeasing the masses, but for eliminating the language necessary to communicate ideas they disagree with.

There are a few known examples of this. In Canada, racial data is not collected in relation to medical care. When you ask if free health care exists in Canada and if everyone in Canada has access to it, they will tell you yes, health care is free to everyone. If you ask the average, poor, minority person on the street about health care, they might tell you that they were badly treated by rude staff, that they had to wait so long they ended up leaving, picking up Tylenol or whatever over the counter at a drug store and hoping for the best. Sometimes they'll tell you even when they did get the treatment they were abusive towards patients. So then you go back and ask about whether there is racial discrimination, and they'll tell you no, that all Canadians can get free health care. You say, well, I've heard from some patients that they have difficulty in getting access because of skin color. And you'll then be told there's no evidence that's the case. You ask for statistics about minorities getting treatment, and there are none because they don't collect data. Racism is simply ignored out of existence. It's an example of how refusing to acknowledge a problem comes into direct conflict with the narrative.

My first teaching gig was in a school that was probably 98.998% black. I was advised not to say "black" in reference to that school. Not wanting to be insensitive, I wasn't sure how to address racial issues if it ever became necessary, and it was a bit of a culture shock for me. I was told to say "predominantly minority" instead. What effect might this have on the image of a failing school system by erasing "black" people from the picture? Would you prefer to work for a "black" school or a "predominantly minority" school? I'm not going to argue that one is necessarily better than the other. Draw your own conclusions. I just want to point out how language can serve to conceal something people might find unpleasant or inconvenient, or language can be used as a means of showing tolerance and compassion.

Think about how language can be used in critical theory to reshape the narrative. What happens when you stop saying the word "straight" and replace it with heteronormative? Or cis-gendered? When you change the language this way, you impose on orientation and gender a relationship between heterosexual and homosexual that didn't previously exist in the metanarrative--you elevate homosexuality and transgender as normal behaviors with heterosexuality as being the outlier. "Straight" and "heterosexual" cease to exist as words that have any relevant meaning. This implies that "straightness" doesn't really exist at all, that none of us are exactly "normal," but rather there is something wrong with people who tend to fit the mold of the meta-narrative. It is not merely "insensitive" to speak in the heteronormative language. It is morally WRONG to do so. And it is not simply morally wrong to speak that way. It is morally wrong to even think that way. And thus by changing the language, we change reality itself.

THAT is what I hate about political correctness.

Now, I do agree that we should be sensitive and compassionate with our words. It is true we often use racist language and don't even realize we do it. What about every time you've used "Democrats" to refer to policies you dislike without thinking about how many black people vote Democratic? When you say, "ugh, sounds like something a Democrat would do," you might as well just use the N-word because that's what you really mean. Or "That's just like a Republican" when what you mean is "white people"? You can't just lump all black people or all white people together like that. Or all gay people or all straight people, or all men or all women. There are conservative blacks who oppose Biden. And can someone tell me how many black Democratic senators are in office right now? Did I grow up in a black neighborhood as a black person? Do I share their lived experience? Absolutely not. I don't have to fear police assuming things about me at a traffic stop or being shot at while I'm out running. So, yes, when I'm around black people I try to be a little more careful not because I'm afraid of offending someone, but because I wouldn't want people to speak hurtfully and disrespectfully towards me. It's not being PC. It's just trying your best to be a decent human being.

For me, if a thing is cumbersome and doesn't seem like it'll do any good, then I won't approve of it. Example: the person-first thing. It's cumbersome and I doubt that it's helpful, but somebody's made it so that it's hard to get an essay accepted if you don't use it.

I was also bemused by a company that referred to "pregnant people" in its literature. What seems wrong with it is that it tries too hard not to offend anybody.

I'm also wary of positive discrimination. I think it's too blunt an instrument for correcting inequalities, the easy way out for people who just want to cover their backs when they make the rules, like most excessive PC initiatives are.

I don't think you can stop "minor" forms of prejudice by being authoritarian and imposing taboos. Better to try doing that by winning hearts and minds with honest, sound, clear, relevent reasoning. I think prejudice is more about genuine suspicion and fear than it is about a simple decision to be nasty and marginalise a minority group.

I suspect that these over-the-top PC things do more harm than good to the causes they might be trying to help, because they put a lot of people off from sympathising with those causes.

Over the top PC brings to mind this from recent news,

DEI Advocates Accuse Black Arizona DJ of Wearing Blackface at Charity Event, Except It Was His Actual Face
Jeroslyn Johnson April 18, 2022

https://www.blackenterprise.com/dei-adv ... ity-event/

"
Stuart Rhoden and Jill Lassen were convinced that the Scottsdale Unified School District’s Hopi Elementary PTA hired Kim Koko Hunter, 56, to DJ a charity event while covered in blackface, NY Post reports. Rhoden and Lassen both saw a photo of Hunter standing alongside three white men at the ’70s-themed party and assumed the DJ was donning blackface.
"
...

"
Hunter later took to Facebook Live to address the melee and seemingly understood why so many people assumed he was in blackface since he was the only Black person in the photos.

“Was I not Black enough? How Black do I got to be for people to know that I’m an actual Black person,” he said.
"

^

Oops.

How is including trans people who've gotten pregnant "trying too hard"? Not everyone with a fertile uterus considers themselves a woman.

---

Perhaps A Comprehensive "Wiki Definition" of "Political Correctness" May Help To Get 'me Started'...

"Political correctness (adjectivally: politically correct; commonly abbreviated PC) is a term used
to describe language, policies, or measures that are intended to avoid offense or disadvantage
to members of particular groups in society.[1][2][3][4][5] In public discourse and the media,
the term is generally used as a pejorative with an implication that these policies are excessive
or unwarranted.[6][3][7][8][9][10] Since the late 1980s, the term has been used to describe a preference
for inclusive language and avoidance of language or behavior that can be seen as excluding, marginalizing,
or insulting to groups of people disadvantaged or discriminated against, particularly groups defined by ethnicity,

sex, gender, or sexual orientation.

Early usage of the term politically correct by leftists in the 1970s and 1980s was as self-critical satire; usage was ironic, rather than a name for a serious political movement.[7][11][12][13] It was considered an in-joke among leftists used to satirise those who were too rigid in their adherence to political orthodoxy.[14]

The modern pejorative usage of the term emerged from conservative criticism of the New Left in the late 20th century. Commentators on the political left in the United States contend that conservatives use the concept of political correctness to downplay and divert attention from substantively discriminatory behavior against disadvantaged groups.[15][16][17] They also argue that the political right enforces its own forms of political correctness to suppress criticism of its favored constituencies and ideologies.[18][19][20] In the United States, the term has played a major role in the "culture war" between liberals and conservatives.[21]"

It Seems That on An Internet Site Named 'The Wrong Planet,'
Typically, For Those Who Don't Feel Like They Fit in the World
of Culture on the Planet Earth So Far; There Might Be A Smidgen

of Cognitive Empathy For Other Marginalized Groups of Humans
That Through Verbal Abuse of Language in Peer Relationships From
Young to Potentially Old, it May Be Very Difficult Living As A Human Social

Animal With Other Folks Using Pejorative Language Against You For the Marginalized
Way They See You As Not Fitting in the Norm of Crowd Sourcing Cultural Group Think as Such

As That Applies
to Bonding and
Binding Over Common
Ideologies, And Symbols;
Including the Way Other Human
Beings Look And Dress And Their Behaviors
As Well; Ranging From the Way They Walk and Talk
Or Do Not; to What Their Sexual Orientations and Gender
Preferences For Identity May Be As True As Far As the Most

"Scape-Goated" Individuals In Society Today as Even the Pope of the
Catholic Church Doesn't Provide A Reality For Transgender Folks to Exist...

However, If in An Earlier American Indian Tradition Highly Valued As Sacred
And Holy Humans of Divine Origin Named With Two-Spirits, 'Anima And Animus'

For Metaphor in Balance as Such; As Yes, Let's Not Forget The EXTREMELY ANDROGYNOUS
WAY JESUS IS PRESENTED IN RENAISSANCE ARTISTIC PORTRAITS TOO; EXCEPT FOR MICHELANGELO'S

MORE MASCULINE FEATURED JESUS FULLY EXPOSED WITH IN-VOGUE 'VERY SMALL PACKAGE' BY

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN 2017; AS IT'S TRUE THAT WASN'T POLITICALLY CORRECT BEFORE,

BY EITHER HAVING LARGER THAN SMALL PACKAGES OR EXPOSING THEM LATER IN ART TOO;

Yet True, Hallelujah, We Have Separation of Church And State Where Marginalized
Folks May Be Protected By Laws in Social Institutions Supported By Tax Payer Dollars;

So All May Get A More Even Handed Place in Life, Than Separated And Bullied and Abused By The Rest;

So Yes, Rules Must Come into Play to Protect Those Marginalized Folks As Language is Core to Culture
And A Fastest Way,

if Any Way at All

To Change Culture

is To Rule Language With

What Harms Folks Less Than a Frigging
Free For All Where Trump Incites Deadly 'Twitter Insurrections'
to Silence Our Most Precious Freedom of Expression in Voting
to Maintain A Representative Democracy, Where The Big Bully Doesn't

Always Get His
Way With Language
to MaNiPuLaTE Others
In Doing Bad, Bad Things
to Others That May Not Only

End our Representative Democracy

Yet Fail to Do That And Get Them Put in
Jail For Practicing the Ignorance Spoon-Fed in
CuLTuRaL MaNiPuLaTiVE Ignorance to Them, Yuck,

Like a Leader Who Advertises He Can Shoot Someone in
Public On 5th Avenue, And His Followers Will Still Follow Him 'Blindly' AS Such...

Well, Well,

And Not So Well,

If A Society is Gonna Survive;

Ya Gotta Have Some Ground Rules

That Balance Freedom With Safety For All'

Best We Can And Will Do for A More Perfect Union Now....

That Takes Freedom And
Safety And Actually Rules For
Language too Where Church
And State Are Separated More Now...

So, This is What We Get; People's Opinions And
At Best Organized Change From the Representative
Democracy Free At Hand; It's A Never Ending Seesaw

Game of Freedom and Safety; And Sure, Control With
Subjugation to Master Others True too As Well or Not So Well Now...

It's A Work in Progress

It's A Never Ending Art
This More Perfect Union AS Such;

The More Folks Included the More
Perfect it Obvious Comes to Be As

Folks Who Feel Accepted Tend to
Be More Creative And Productive too...


Thing is About Creativity in Autotelic Flow;

You Don't Sink 'Someone' With SLiGHTS; One Now SO
Easily Who Already Generates Their Happiness Within
For What
They

May
Accomplish
Every Day Now;

Yet Not Everyone Has
Mastery over the Within Part;

As Verbal Abuse May Be Brutal
to the Perceptions of Some Marginalized
Folks Looking To Some Kind of Empathic
Caring Healing Authority to take Care of Them now...

"So the Powerful Play Goes on And You May Add A Verse"

Per Whitman or Have its Taken Away, if it Doesn't Meet Politically
Correct Language That Protects Marginalized And Exploited Folks As Well;

It's True the Algorithms Make Mistakes too As That FB Algorithm Erased one
of my Posts Just A Couple of Days in Mistaking A Couple of Long Free Verses
Quoted By Whitman in His "Preface to Leaves of Grace" As Frigging "Human Exploitation"

Which is Definitely

Opposite of What
IT IS Actually Doing
STiLL iN Inclusion For All;

Yet Hey; i Understand Robot
Algorithms Don't Always Get
Human Deep Metaphors of Free
Verse Poetry; Heck, it Was Harder for
me to Understand, Before i Gained a
Bit More of that Kind of Human Exclusive Intelligence...

It's A Free Service; You Get What You Get; And You Get to
Play By Whatever Their Rules are As A Corporation Delivering

Again A Free Enough
Service and Resource for me...

It Was A Bit Disappointing to Hear
'the Robot' Say it might Not Be Able
to Find A Human to Rectify the Obvious Mistake...

Yet the Free Service Came Through As it has A Couple
of Times in the Past, And Almost Immediately Corrected the
Mistake i Reported to them; And This is why i Have A Website

of my Own i Pay for With 318 Dollars A Year; And True Why i Don't
Put all my Eggs of Creativity in One Basket Either; As CR8P Happens

You Don't

Park Your
Car Close
to the Edge of A Cliff;

And If You Have Empathy

You Do the Best to Give, Share,
Care, And Heal Others With Least Harm Now...

It's Hard Work; This Human Endeavor is Full of
Never Ending Change for What May Harm and or
Help Others; if Anyone Thinks it's Ever Gonna Be Perfect;

That Ain't Gonna
Happen unless

We Become
Simpleton Machines...

Not Somewhere i'm Willing to
Go; So, i'll Grin and Bear The Mistakes
of Others Building Now This More Perfect
Union that Obviously Not Every is Gonna Agree
With

Unless
They Are
Duplicate
Machines of
Each Other in
Echo Chambers, YUCK!..

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

---

Personally, I like to say that being straight is the most common outcome / demographic. Normal tends to have the connotation of anything else being bad. Average holds the connotation of being boring and mundane. It comes down to how language is typically used in day to day life. How much this matters depends on the person.

There is a crowd that claims that everyone is bisexual. I disagree with this statement. Straight people are the most common. I am aware that as a gay person, I am in the minority in terms of orientation. Likewise, as a left-handed person, my predominant hand is significantly less common.

I think that there are situations where heteronormative can be a useful word. For instance, when I come out to people, I have on occasion received the response of "who was the man that hurt you?" This is based on the misconception that gay people are traumatised straight people who have lost their way or are otherwise acting unusually due to circumstance. I do not take offense to people assuming that I am straight, but it does irk me when I come out to someone and their response is "No you're not" and they continue to refer to me as such.

From the moment you're born, there's an expectation that you're going to be exclusively attracted to the opposite sex when you get older. This is generally what I'm referring to when I use the word heteronormative. I dislike that living openly is seen as a political move by certain people. My intention isn't to make a political statement, but to simply exist authentically.

I remember when my friend's roommate wanted us to meet her boyfriend. She claimed to be supportive of the community, but her boyfriend was anything but supportive. Which is why she requested that the group pretend to be straight whilst in the presence of him. My friend is in a relationship and has been dating her girlfriend for a while. Neither are closeted. The way the roommate asked was so casual, similar to how you might ask someone to be mindful of a peanut allergy. Understandably my friend did not entertain this request. It was a grim reminder that some people see gay relationships as an inconvenience to hide to suit the sensibilities of others.

Now, I may be wrong, but I don't think there is much call to replace straight as a descriptor with heteronormative. Except perhaps in radical circles that I am unfamiliar with, but in mainstream spaces heterosexual and straight still seem to be used fairly regularly without pushback. I tend not to use heteronormative unless I'm in an in-depth conversation. The world is built up on the expectation that you're straight unless stated otherwise. People look at their barely awake babies or toddlers looking at someone and will claim they're madly in love. I've always found that strange. Their child, in terms of probability, probably will grow up to like the opposite sex exclusively. It's odd to me though, because a toddler doesn't care about such things at that age, they're just trying to make sense of the world around them. It's that expectation which can lead to pushback though later down the line, such as parents mourning the loss of who they thought their child was when they come out as transgender and / or not straight when they're older (or forcing them to leave home because they don't fit the expectations they wanted).

When saying something that offends someone else is prohibited, but you can only find out after someone claims to be offended, then political correctness has gone too far.  It is called an Ex Post Facto fallacy -- a rule is established only after an action is taken that the rule prohibits.

It seems to me that it's trying too hard because I don't see why just saying "pregnant women" could have done any appreciable harm. It doesn't seem reasonable to me for everybody to be expected to scour everything they write and say for the slightest indication that they've ignored a minority group. Brevity often requires some approximation. I sometimes attract contempt when I talk only about men and women if I'm discussing relationship issues. It's not that I don't know of any other sexual orientation, or wish those folks any harm, it just gets cumbersome to always declare that I know about them every time I say anything, and I doubt that I do any harm by leaving it in the form I'm used to.

I get mildly annoyed at being ignored sometimes, e.g. when somebody puts "for your next car" in an ad (never having owned a car outright), but I wouldn't want a law forcing everybody to always include a cop-out clause to show they know I exist. Even if I got it done, I think it would just result in a back-covering job, with no genuine attitude change, in fact I think it might make matters worse because not everybody likes having their language policed to that degree, and they'd be likely to take a dislike to me for pushing them around. An awful lot of politically-correct language comes from people who have little genuine commitment to social equality.

And although I have no problem in accepting that somebody with, say, a penis believes they're a woman, and would defend their right to believe and reveal that as their personal belief without fear of being attacked for it, I don't agree that I should be attacked for not automatically believing them. Similarly I tend to roll my eyes when somebody persistently assumes everybody's gender-binary, and have no problem with men being as feminine as they like and women being as masculine as they like, but I don't expect everybody to know all about every unusual kind of person in existence or to verbally include them with every breath. Not knowing a type exists isn't necessarily an awful thing, and has nothing to do with hating or wilfully ignoring anybody. It's likely just a matter of politely and respectfully informing them of the idea they didn't know about, not demanding to alter every statement that doesn't pointedly include everybody.

This and +1.

On most forms or surveys under the gender section it says s**t like "Male/Female/Transgender/Identify as male/Identify as female" and loads of other options. The way I see it, there should be two options; male and female. If you're "both" then you should just go by what genitals you have. If that is too difficult then you should just go for the gender you identify with. Simple. And yes I'm not forgetting people with both male and female genitals, I think that is a physical condition/deformity more (like being born with two stomachs or something) and I don't know what option that would come under, although being born with both genitals is rare.

Ettina, how is someone with a fertile uterus not a woman? There are only two genders. Male and Female. The only thing that may present some sort of exception is hermaphroditism and abnormal sex chromosomes. Other then that, you're either biologically a man or woman.

Now, I will agree that there are women who do take on more masculine traits (tomboys) and vice versa. But, to call a man a woman when this person is biologically a man is denial of reality.

I have to say that I have even less tolerance for the radical left than the religious Christians.

Radical Leftism acts more so like a religion then even Christianity does in which you can't even question radical leftism's tenets, assumptions, etc, without being considered racist, sexist, homophopic, etc. Radical leftism has it's own form of what is considered heresy and to go against a smidgeon of it is to be considered their version of a heretic.

One thing that is awesome about AngelRho is that I can question him and a. he does attempt to place some logic on the things he says even though I don't agree with a lot of it and a lot of it makes no sense (he still attempts to do it) and b. he has never called me anything that would resemble the word heretic, sinner, blasphemer, etc.

Correction: There are two sexes with exceptions for intersex conditions. That's how humans reproduce.
Gender is the culture-dependent layer of "feminity" and "masculinity" (and, in some cultures, other qualities interwined with them).
Sex is biology. Gender is culture. Let's make sure we're talking about the same things.

Political correctness is rightful to protect those undermined, segregated and and Ill perceived, however not until it is employed to protect mind as separate from matter and religion as fundamentally different from science, but loo! The very segragated and Ill perceived it is supposed to protect in society are the consequences of mind being separate from matter, religion being separate from science fundamentally. So philosophically speaking, political correctness protects the the source of the problem that sustains it's application and moral correctness.