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Also, why do people actively try to perceive everything said to them in the most offensive way? Why do they seek to get offended? I don't understand.
Almost everything nowadays is offensive. And I'm getting pretty sick and tired of political correctness enforcers, who go and get offended for other people. What the hell?
What the f--- do you mean by that?!?
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It's a sign of our advanced society and enlightened approach to resolving disputes.
When Egill Skallagrimsson, the famous poet (and example of someone with a less enlightened approach), got offended by something many people might consider marginally offensive (not being served beer immediately, when his host had beer to serve) he broke into the other man's bedroom while he was asleep and tore out the offender's eyeball with his bare hands, leaving it dangling on his cheek from the optic nerve as a message never to try that sh*t again.
However, as a result of deciding that this sort of response to trivial insults is perhaps just slightly less than ideal, society encourages talking things through instead. Sadly, though, progress has only come at great cost. You, indeed, sometimes have to listen to this process occurring as people attempt to resolve disputes (trivial or otherwise) through dialogue rather than violence.
Now, no argument, it's one heck of a cross to bear. Perhaps the old ways would be better?
A sp*c is a racial slur for Puerto Ricans.
Google is also your best friend ;)
For Hispanics in general, actually.
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Also, in case people think this is only in American culture, I recall being on the EU forums on the League of Legends website and the s%!#storm that ensued when they labelled Kosovo and Macedonia as their own countries. It was... wow.
Macedonia is it's own country, only the greeks have a beef because they don't want them calling the country Macedonia. As for Kosovo, it's a pretty touchy subject for us Serbs, mostly because a lot of us cannot see the facts and understand that we are pretty much powerless to change the fact that they broke off.
For Hispanics in general, actually.A sp*c is a racial slur for Puerto Ricans.
Google is also your best friend ;)
That is true. Depends on the region. Down here in the South, it's usually for Puerto Ricans and Cubans. Although I have also heard it in regards to Italians. *shrug*
Also, in case people think this is only in American culture, I recall being on the EU forums on the League of Legends website and the s%!#storm that ensued when they labelled Kosovo and Macedonia as their own countries. It was... wow.Macedonia is it's own country, only the greeks have a beef because they don't want them calling the country Macedonia. As for Kosovo, it's a pretty touchy subject for us Serbs, mostly because a lot of us cannot see the facts and understand that we are pretty much powerless to change the fact that they broke off.
I understand, and am definitely not taking any sides on either situation. I am just pointing out that a simple misunderstanding done by a video game company got a massive negative response by offended people. Just like how a simple misunderstanding a girl had about you and your friend led to a negative response from her. Now granted, it wasn't really her business to butt in, unlike the video game business where they kind of have to take feedback about their game. But I feel like getting offended over a listing the name of a region for a tournament is about as inconsequential as getting mad at some guy calling his friend a f&%.
Honestly, people have been getting offended for things either inconsequential or serious since the dawn of history. Personally, I'd rather people be more open to me whenever I piss them off. I prefer not acting like an a%$&!$* and people to be more truthful to me about my actions. Offending people can usually be more attributed to ignorance and accident than to malice I find.
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Also, why do people actively try to perceive everything said to them in the most offensive way? Why do they seek to get offended? I don't understand.
Almost everything nowadays is offensive. And I'm getting pretty sick and tired of political correctness enforcers, who go and get offended for other people. What the hell?
I think Penny Arcade said best when they postulated the Greater Internet F!%$wad Theory
Of course they were talking about video games but I personally feel it can be used to describe both sides in the political correctness debacle...errr...debate.
Also, why do people actively try to perceive everything said to them in the most offensive way? Why do they seek to get offended? I don't understand.
Almost everything nowadays is offensive. And I'm getting pretty sick and tired of political correctness enforcers, who go and get offended for other people. What the hell?
Agreed.
Anything can be funny or inconsequential in the right light and some people have no sense of alternate perspectives. Couple this with the general miscommunication that comes standard with eavesdropping and offended sensibilities can be found right around the corner. One person's obscenity is another's punchline.
A few years ago, I started tutoring (English) off and on for cash and ended up meeting the students in coffee shops and whatnot. Etymology discussions usually bring me back to early Christianity's influence on the English language and I treat the religion just like any other mythology. Fortunately, most card-carrying bible-belt eavesdroppers have the courtesy to adopt a passive-aggressive stance and express their distaste by loud huffs and noisy exits, but an occasional "missionary" feels the need to intrude.
They have no idea what's actually being discussed, yet they demand the subject matter (bibles, churches, and wafers) be treated with reverence. Once they say their peace and it becomes painfully clear that I'm going to ignore them, they mutter something impolite and scuttle away. The worst encounter was a thirty-something self-proclaimed "youth pastor" poking me in the chest while I was seated. Thankfully, all I needed to do was stand up and offer amateur chiropractic services to get the point across.
All of these unpleasant experiences could have been avoided if people would only mind their f$*%ing business and not interrupt a conversation between two people they've never met.
SILENCE!
I am offended!
You're welcome.
There's something to be said for the civilizing effects of the fear of a good eye ripping.
Certainly motivates the staff a bit more than a 2 dollar tip...
Situations like this make me wonder what is the cost of not calling your gay friend a f** in front of people you don't know?
I have a few GLBTetc friends, and none of them has ever been offended when I didn't call them a f**.
None of my black friends ever pulled me aside to quietly ask me to call them n*****.
Ditto really every other slur of any kind I can think of.*
Of course you're free to use those words. You're also free not to. People will likely form opinions about you by the words you choose in these (and other) situations, and they're free to.
They're even free to express those opinions. Even if they're not the same opinion you have of yourself.
Freedom of Speech: Why Does Everybody Else Get It, Too?
Usually.
Oh, everyone else SHOULD have it, too. The one right you do not have in a free and open society is the right not to be insulted. Or otherwise put, you can't keep a free and open society if people ARE protected from being insulted.
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People were certainly just as easily offended in ye olden days. You tended to stick with like minded people though and your words were rarely broadcast to the entire planet.
Not just that but people also understood that there was (and still is, though less used) publicly acceptable behavior. General consensus is that people can say whatever they want, whenever they want and the truth is they can....but as with everything every action has a consequence. Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins so to speak.
-Vaz
No. It ends where I don't want to face the consequences of me hitting your nose verbally. Act as you wish, and accept that you're being judged.
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Situations like this make me wonder what is the cost of not calling your gay friend a f** in front of people you don't know?
I have a few GLBTetc friends, and none of them has ever been offended when I didn't call them a f**.
None of my black friends ever pulled me aside to quietly ask me to call them n*****.
Ditto really every other slur of any kind I can think of.*
Of course you're free to use those words. You're also free not to. People will likely form opinions about you by the words you choose in these (and other) situations, and they're free to.They're even free to express those opinions. Even if they're not the same opinion you have of yourself.
Freedom of Speech: Why Does Everybody Else Get It, Too?
** spoiler omitted **
Believe me, he calls me worse things...
I'm pretty sure the OP just found the perfect trolling post. ever.
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I'm pretty sure the OP just found the perfect trolling post. ever.
We tried with this one, but it never even got locked.
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I've got nothing against increased sensitivity, but I'm pretty sure the OP's point is bullcrap.
Random examples:
(The Decameron? Really, Boston? Really?)
People were certainly just as easily offended in ye olden days. You tended to stick with like minded people though and your words were rarely broadcast to the entire planet.Not just that but people also understood that there was (and still is, though less used) publicly acceptable behavior. General consensus is that people can say whatever they want, whenever they want and the truth is they can....but as with everything every action has a consequence. Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins so to speak.
-Vaz
And back in ye olden days publicly acceptable behavior included calling black people n&$!&&s and calling homosexuals f*+**%s and various demeaning terms for women and for other ethnic groups. I'm sure they were offended, but they had to take it. Because if they did anything about it, it would go badly for them.
Over time, that's changed. The whole attack on "Political correctness" was about trying to stop that. To change it back.
No... There are many other reasons for criticising political correctness. Don't make assumptions.
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I would like to summarize every non-ironic complaint about political correctness ever written:
*deep breath*
*lengthy stream of slurs directed at various races, religions, sexualities, and genders* never used to complain. Back then they knew their place. Those were the days.
Now *same lengthy stream* act like they're as good as the rest of us. What are we, a bunch of *same lengthy stream*?
That's it? Well then, good thing you have it all covered. In short, those who consider political correctness to be problematic are all racists. Good to know.
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There's something to be said for treating people like people being politicized.
But there's also something to be said for treating people like people and not @#$%ing all over them.
Sometimes political correctness does run wild.
But hot damn if "political correctness gone wild" isn't a common defense against @#$%%y behavior and situations being called out for what they are.
What do I know? I am apparently just a racist, since I think there are problems with political correctness.
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Perhaps it is a little too easy to offend people these days. Honestly, however, I prefer it to the 'good old days' when yelling racial slurs or telling a women her brain was incapable of handling anything but cooking and procreating was perfectly acceptable. If it means people have to actually think about the things they say then I can live with people being touchy. Maybe we'll slide to a better balance one day, but if we can't, then this is the side of the scale we need to be on.
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What do I know? I am apparently just a racist, since I think there are problems with political correctness.
I wouldn't say that. There are things wrong with political correctness.
But it's also helped a lot of folks as well. One problem is when just being decent to each other gets thrown under the bus in some crusades against political correctness.
Another, and it's probably happening a lot in this thread, is people who would otherwise find a lot of consensus between each other talking past each other. And it always happens because emotions run high on this matter, and it almost always gets dialed up to a false dichotomy of "us" vs. "them".
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Madame Sissyl, how about you elaborate your problems with "political correctness" instead of passive-aggressively acting like Comrade Samnell called you a racist?
In the meantime, everybody knows PCness was a Cultural Marxist plot.
Me and the ghost of Herbert Marcuse are laughing at all of you.
Hee hee!
Everybody knows humor is not politcally correct, Citizen Mikaze.
[Frowns]
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The central, and most dangerous, issue with political correctness is the folly that people think only of people as part of groups. And, while the declaration of human rights specifically states that every right therein is had by individuals, not groups, political correctness today has fallen from that goal. We may be white, brown, yellow, red, green or purple, but we are humans, and we should be humans FIRST. As soon as you start building the asymptotic pyramid of what groups you're not allowed to say what about, identification becomes a function of GROUP, not PERSON.
The second part is that it is downright impossible to know enough about people to BE politically correct. As it stands, we had an american lady coming to Sweden, who told swedish media that it was horrible that we didn't call our dark-skinned immigrants "african-americans". Despite the fact that they actually usually have come from their countries of origin without passing America on the way. Or, you know, didn't come from Africa at all.
The third part is that with self-appointed politically correct crusaders in the media and in politics everywhere, there is an active push to limit discussion of issues of how much control the state should have over the individual. When people try to discuss this, such as what is wrong with our current immigration system, guess what happens? They are called RACISTS, which pretty much ends the discussion. Now, you certainly don't have to do anything as blatant as that to be called racist, generally not agreeing with them, or criticising political correctness, is quite enough. Which we saw an excellent example of above.
1) The communication is text based rather than face to face.
We communicate almost as much with our body language and tone of voice as with our actual words. In a text based medium exchange, that goes out the window. This has a few effects
-The listener isn't getting the entire message. There's no smile to indicate when they speaker is using sarcasm, there's no tone of voice to indicate the joke.
-The text is all at once, so the speaker can't adjust what he's saying on the fly. If you start to say something offensive in person and you see the other person start to glower you might have to rethink your drink. In text its too late, you've already said that and the next six paragraphs after it
-Text is forever. Instead of being said and forgotten, you can read it.. and read it.. and read it, burning it into your head.
2)You can spend time picking apart the exact words in a way you can't do with a verbal communication that you might not remember word for word (unless you're an angry girlfriend)
3)People who dumped charisma (whistles innocently) who would normally stay home are out there interacting with other people.
4) You're interacting with relative strangers. With your friends you know what topics are taboo, and you know where the line is. With people you don't know except through a few paragraphs of text..not so much.
5)) We're still working the bugs out on this whole "respect other people" thing. I mean it wasn't that long ago that we thought it was ok to own other people, hell, we'll still start shooting people if they have something we want (because if they're not in our tribe then they're not people) We've just gotten to the point that we acknowledge other groups of people have thoughts and feelings so we need to work out the exact boundaries for jokes and social commentary.
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I've got nothing against increased sensitivity, but I'm pretty sure the OP's point is bullcrap.
I would like for you to elaborate on my point being bullcrap. I'm really interested in what you have to say.
Some of the people here may have read more into my post than it meant, i am not against political correctness. I think that it is necessary to be polite and considerate to other people. But people take it to extreme limits all the time.
I've read in a newspaper (don't remember which unfortunately) about a latinoamerican woman who sued a man for racist intolerance because she kept pestering him about buying some stuff and when he got fed up, he said "you people never give up do you?". She of course immediately heard that in the most offensive way possible, sued the man and what is the worst thing WON. He had to pay some obscene amount of money because she was pestering him and he got fed up with people like her who go door to door and try to sell stuff to people.
Tell me that that is all right.
I love this song by the way. It explains my point perfectly.
As an offensive person I am very offended by how easily people get offended by the things i do. Can't they respect my culture?
Seriously though, getting offended is an all too easy way to silence dissenting opinions. And that is an actual problem, unlike getting your precious feelings hurt.
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The central, and most dangerous, issue with political correctness is the folly that people think only of people as part of groups. And, while the declaration of human rights specifically states that every right therein is had by individuals, not groups, political correctness today has fallen from that goal. We may be white, brown, yellow, red, green or purple, but we are humans, and we should be humans FIRST. As soon as you start building the asymptotic pyramid of what groups you're not allowed to say what about, identification becomes a function of GROUP, not PERSON.
The second part is that it is downright impossible to know enough about people to BE politically correct. As it stands, we had an american lady coming to Sweden, who told swedish media that it was horrible that we didn't call our dark-skinned immigrants "african-americans". Despite the fact that they actually usually have come from their countries of origin without passing America on the way. Or, you know, didn't come from Africa at all.
The third part is that with self-appointed politically correct crusaders in the media and in politics everywhere, there is an active push to limit discussion of issues of how much control the state should have over the individual. When people try to discuss this, such as what is wrong with our current immigration system, guess what happens? They are called RACISTS, which pretty much ends the discussion. Now, you certainly don't have to do anything as blatant as that to be called racist, generally not agreeing with them, or criticising political correctness, is quite enough. Which we saw an excellent example of above.
I agree with this whole post.....even if it is by a chick. What?!?!
:P
I would like for you to elaborate on my point being bullcrap. I'm really interested in what you have to say.I've got nothing against increased sensitivity, but I'm pretty sure the OP's point is bullcrap.
I think people have always been as easily offended. It just happened in different ways. I tried to provide some examples.
They were mostly American-centric, and I think you live in Europe, but they're mostly about turn of the century Americans getting easily offended. Some of them (the riots against a film extolling the virtues of the Ku Klux Klan) I agree with, some of them are funny (the banning of a novel by a 16th-century (?) Italian writer), some of them sicken me to death (the murder of a black child for whistling at a white woman).
I think humans have been a pretty irritable species since they stopped living in hunter-gatherer bands. Maybe even then.
As for PCness in general, Theodor Adorno told me that we're going to have all of you in our thrall by 2050 or when the IPCC takes over, whichever happens first.
Other than that, I have no particular investment in PCness. Despite its invention as a phrase by Stalinist commies (in different circumstances, I might add), it's mostly liberal academic language policing.
And some of its fine-- calling people slurs should have negative consequences--and some of its silly. Liberal academics tend towards silliness.
I've never paid much attention to it.
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I'm reminded of the family reunion in which I had the temerity to call the guys on Entourage "metrosexuals," IIRC. My brother flipped. I was told that I was a hateful, bigoted slimeball for even using the word (verbatim quote: "That is the most homophobic thing I have ever heard!!!!"), and it was implied that I should be thrown in prison and/or re-educated for the good of humanity. When I said, "Look, that's how they struck me. But, seriously, it's Christmas time, and we're all together, and you're sidelining all that on a quest for speech control, even though you have no means of actually enforcing your edicts." The rejoinder consisted of calling me a lot of much worse things than "metrosexual."
Bear in mind, this is a month after a big show of support for GLBT rights on my behalf -- because an off-hand remark in private is far more important than any actual actions in public.
I'm totally in favor of equal rights for all, and for not calling people really offensive stuff just to be obnoxious. But when all is said and done, I'm still sometimes left with the impression that "political correctness" is often used as a drama-queen card when you're bored and really just want to stir up a lot of argument and animosity, and claim the moral high ground for doing so -- that it has less to do with defending minorities and more to do with certain peoples' need to tell each other what to do.
Or maybe some people just really, really like Entourage, I don't know.
To be certain, the word racist is so overused by now that it is getting a rather bland statement, something along the likes of "you non-politically correct person!" Yes, I do wonder what word would be used to describe someone actually preaching segregation. Nazi, most probably.
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{opens thread. reads...}
Nope! {closes thread}
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Very often I think that offended people are actively looking and listening for offense. I'm not talking about the obvious incidents of deliberate and malicious offensive behavior or remarks, or even the rather innocent incidents stemming from cultural ignorance of a local custom.
Example:
Many years ago, in my office, we had a way of identifying and scheduling responsibilities by organization. It was color coded and the duties worked on a rotational schedule. The colors were red, amber and green. Red organizations were saddled with the most duties for the time period, amber organizations were queued to perform duties the red organizations simply couldn't, and green organizations were free from all duties for the time period. This scheduling was calendar-based and cycled around continuously, year-long. Our decades-old term for this was the RAG Cycle.
No jokes were ever made about this, and no one ever thought twice about it until a female member of the mostly male office indicated that she found the term offensive. The boss said for us to just say GAR instead of RAG, but the offended individual was not happy with this compromise--she felt people would air quote every time anyone said it and otherwise make the situation worse (I don't believe we would have done this; I think we simply would have started saying GAR instead of RAG).
We spent the next several days developing a new system. The BRAG Cycle includes a new category, black, used to indicate an organization that has left a green status and is next in line for red taskings. Green came to mean an organization unavailable for tasks because it was conducting organizational stabilization and sustainment (internal training).
What....i don't even...what.{opens thread. reads...}
Nope! {closes thread}
WEll if you don't know what i did then I'm not going to tell you!
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While there's certainly something to be said for PCness re: racial epithets etc., there are problems with social bullying as a system of censorship.
The farther you get from "average", the more marginalized and smaller an outlier community will be. What goes along with this marginalization, apart from a reasonable level of ignorance about them in the mainstream, is that as a particular community becomes more fractious, there is less agreement as to what is or isn't offensive.
Any person has the absolute right to feel offended at anything; you're going to feel how you're going to feel. But given that it is a personal, emotional response, it's unreasonable to expect everyone else to know your boundaries.
It seems much more reasonable, therefore, for people to grow thicker skins rather than insist that others desist in their practices, assuming such practices are limited to speech.
Example: racist jokes. Yes, they're horrible, but, like offense, humor is a completely involuntary and emotional reaction. Where the line is is different for each of us and, by all means, if something offends your sensibilities tell them. It's unreasonable to ask or expect them to stop, however.
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People are obviously not getting enough My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic in their lives.
Here, allow me to assist: