Political correctness is totalitarian ideology

dzheremi said:

Did I not already agree that this is the case with those who embrace a PC stance that says "we want to progress via our use of this word and not this other word (or whatever), as a means of being more inclusive than people were in the past"? I'm not sure why this is showing up in reply to my post as though I didn't already state that. Yes, I agree that the idea that such changes can be socially progressive is at the heart of this ideology.

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I think where our point of contention may lie is that I see absolutely no benefit to be gained by changing terms for this purpose, and damage to be done to our understanding of the past. If "he" instead of "he or she" is not sexist, then there is no gain in changing uses of "he" to "he or she." If someone thinks that there is a gain, it is because he thinks that those who do not use "he or she" are sexist, and thus convicts people of crimes that they did not commit.

Obviously this wasn't a conclusion that I came to based on a poster, it is a larger cultural issue. Mike wanted an example of someone supporting that usage and denigrating those who do not use it, so I came up with one. But as I have mentioned there are many other things from work of the same nature, and innumerable examples from the larger culture.

dzheremi said:

Certainly, but my point was that nobody is immune from seeing themselves as somehow more enlightened than those who came before them, and that this isn't in itself 'slanderous', so that can't be the problem unless you intend to say that we ought not to have changed as societies at all since ____ (whatever indeterminate point in the past when everything was supposedly good and in order), because it's more important that we preserve the honor afforded to dead people (which using the generic 'he' does, somehow?) than to treat living people in a certain way. But I suspect that your criticism is for those who take these things too far, which I doubt anyone here realistically has a problem with or denies the existence of (I too have met people who make it impossible to enjoy an old movie or whatever because "look at how they're treating the women/the Indians/the children" or whatever...well, yeah, duh...that's the point; it's the old west, and this is how white guys treated those people back then).

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The purpose of political correctness is to make the past seem irredeemably racist, which does cause great fallout in how people reject older works out of hand.

I am an enthusiast of speculative fiction (science fiction, fantasy, horror) and I have met many people who do not read older authors, because they are convinced that they are too racist or otherwise impure to have anything of worth to say. I have seen people reject Robert E. Howard due to the claim that his stories are nothing more than glorification of the power of white men over all other races. This despite his character Solomon Kane in his world travels repeatedly saving Africans without hesitation, and working with an African who was shown as noble, more intelligent than Kane and who served Kane partially for his own purposes (and partially out of a sense of friendship).

I have seen the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs dismissed in the same way. Most commonly, it is assumed that since the main character of the Barsoom books was a cavalryman for the Confederacy, that the books must be nothing but racist screeds. And yet John Carter treats all the races that he meets on Mars with respect, gaining great friends with all different sorts of skin color, and longing for the day when conflict between the races will cease. (Also, interestingly, the first group of people that he meets on Mars with a similar color of skin to his own are unambiguously villains).

Hell, I have even seen people say that they cannot read the works of Robert A. Heinlein because they are too sexually prudish. This is the man who did much inspire the hippie movement towards "free love."

As a result there are many in the speculative fiction community currently who are completely cut off from the history of the genre. They have not read older works, and they do not care to read older works since they already know that they are too "problematic" to be worth considering. They believe lies like the idea that women were somehow not allowed to write science fiction until the past couple of decades (which would have been a great surprise to CL Moore among, others). They have been robbed of much that is good and given only sermonizing stories of political correctness in return.

MoonlessNight said:

I think where our point of contention may lie is that I see absolutely no benefit to be gained by changing terms for this purpose, and damage to be done to our understanding of the past. If "he" instead of "he or she" is not sexist, then there is no gain in changing uses of "he" to "he or she." If someone thinks that there is a gain, it is because he thinks that those who do not use "he or she" are sexist, and thus convicts people of crimes that they did not commit.

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Could it not be the case that the gain (if there is one) is in being inclusive, rather than convicting anyone else of anything? See, I can't help but see the way this discussion is going as a mirror image of the PC positions you are against: whereas the PC person might see imagined offenses in the past (and in the present, among those who won't get with whatever the program is now), the anti-PC sees offenses in the PC person's criticism of the past...you're both offended over the 'same thing', broadly speaking (the use of language, either by those who who were racist/sexist before, or those claiming that those of the past were racist/sexist before, and hence wanting others to change their language in order to reflect a more 'enlightened' view), but you're pointing at each other and saying "nuh uh -- he's the problem!" "I think you mean he or she is the problem!"...and on and on it goes.

This is why I pointed out in my first post in the thread that it seems that the anti-PC people have their own version of victimhood that they'd like to replace the current "PC" version with, where instead of not saying certain things so as to avoid offending people, we instead don't say other things to avoid offending other people. It seems you'd both like to not have certain talk seen as acceptable in society, you just draw the line at different places. For the stereotypical PC person, you can't say this or that about a given racial/sexual/cultural/religious group because that's stereotyping, whereas for the stereotypical anti-PC person, you can't say this or that about entire periods of time (or the people in them and the attitudes they supposedly expressed) because that's slanderous and convicting people of the past according to today's morals. What's the difference, really? That one side is winning out in corporate culture while the other side is not, I guess, but it could just as easily be the other way around with roughly the same results.

Obviously this wasn't a conclusion that I came to based on a poster, it is a larger cultural issue. Mike wanted an example of someone supporting that usage and denigrating those who do not use it, so I came up with one. But as I have mentioned there are many other things from work of the same nature, and innumerable examples from the larger culture.

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Yep.

The purpose of political correctness is to make the past seem irredeemably racist, which does cause great fallout in how people reject older works out of hand.

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I disagree that that's the purpose, though that's certainly what a lot of people get out of it. I thought that the purpose is (and I could be wrong; I wouldn't describe myself as particularly PC, so I don't keep up with what might be included in it) to advance policies and language that is inclusive of all segments of society, so as to build a more socially equal world. If that means that saying that in the past the world was less equal, then I guess that's what that means. But that's a pretty long distance from simply dismissing everything from the past as racist. A lot of the most important literary and other artistic milestones of the past that got us to where we are today are full of what people would see today as racism and sexism, and often on purpose in order to make a point about the treatment of black people or women (think Uncle Tom's Cabin or The Scarlet Letter). This is precisely why I personally feel that people who react to these or other works due to the presence or absence of certain words or themes are missing the larger point, but at the same time would not call those who simply notice that there's a lot of what we would recognize as racism or sexism in older works slanderous or oversensitive. Writers are, after all, products of their times, as we all are, and context still matters regardless of what you read into a given work.

As a result there are many in the speculative fiction community currently who are completely cut off from the history of the genre. They have not read older works, and they do not care to read older works since they already know that they are too "problematic" to be worth considering. They believe lies like the idea that women were somehow not allowed to write science fiction until the past couple of decades (which would have been a great surprise to CL Moore among, others). They have been robbed of much that is good and given only sermonizing stories of political correctness in return.

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Well it sounds like this community is impoverished as a result of this kind of thinking, then. That is sad for those people, because chances are they'll never know what they don't know as a result of their own deliberate disconnection with the history of their chosen literary genre. (Sorry, I don't know anything about science fiction, so I can't really say much more specific than that.)

Again, why this is evidence of political correctness as some sort of plot to destroy the past, rather than an example of some people making choices that lead them to have a more one-dimensional reading experience, is not clear to me. If I understand you, there is still nothing stopping said people from going ahead and reading these politically taboo authors. Maybe by doing so they'd even find that their previous concerns were not well-founded. But they have chosen not to, so...okay. More for the rest of you, I guess? I dunno.

MikeK said:

The truth is not the truth, the ramblings of a self-professed know-it-all on the Internet is the truth.

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Not just any know it all. The one who actually does know it all.

MikeK said:

I never did claim to always be right though.

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not all of us can be right, Mike.

dzheremi said:

Again, why this is evidence of political correctness as some sort of plot to destroy the past, rather than an example of some people making choices that lead them to have a more one-dimensional reading experience, is not clear to me. If I understand you, there is still nothing stopping said people from going ahead and reading these politically taboo authors. Maybe by doing so they'd even find that their previous concerns were not well-founded. But they have chosen not to, so...okay. More for the rest of you, I guess? I dunno.

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So far you have agreed that:

-Political correctness is an artificial control over language (as opposed to natural linguistic development).
-That it is based on progressive ideals which, in your own phrase, may be "hooey."
-And that it is having a negative effect on culture.

All that we seem to disagree about is the extent of these negative effects and how much the practitioners of political correctness intend for these negative effects to occur. But you have agreed to enough to see political correctness as something which is unnatural and undesirable. If that's the extent that we can agree, that's fine.

As far as I see it, "political correctness" is not the same as "just being a nice person," because there is actually a "nice guy" trope in the PC movement. If you don't fully and humbly grovel and plead forgiveness in response to someone's ire or out of control emotions, and instead ask for calm rationality, you have committed the sin of "being a nice guy." I can't say any more because I'm a "white cis male".

MoonlessNight said:

So far you have agreed that:

-Political correctness is an artificial control over language (as opposed to natural linguistic development).

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When it comes to language policies in any context (work, school, etc.), the term I'd prefer to use is language planning. These are examples of language planning or language policy. Arguing over whether or not they are 'natural' linguistic development misses the point and is prescriptive in a way that I am very uncomfortable with, since it goes against my training and inclinations concerning how to describe language in its social settings (off-board, I am a linguist, so this is something that I do have some experience with). It is language development, you could say, but what it means to say whether or not it's 'natural' is actually an entirely different matter.

-That it is based on progressive ideals which, in your own phrase, may be "hooey."

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'Progressive' in the sense that the idea seems to be that certain words (or the lack of certain words, in some cases) are thought to signal a progressive social attitude, while others are thought to do the opposite. And 'hooey' is just a personal opinion about whether or not that is actually the case in every instance, not a value judgment regarding particular linguistic forms. The comedian Wanda Sykes (who is a black woman) had a bit several years ago about how she thinks saying "African American" instead of "black" is silly, since it's not like "African American" is getting people home loans or privileges that they were denied when they were 'black'. I would tend to agree with the underlying point there, though I'm not black (or African American) myself, so that's neither here nor there.

-And that it is having a negative effect on culture.

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In some cases yes, in some cases no. Same as most things, really. Any idea, no matter how benignly it is presented, can have a negative effect on people if it is taken to an extreme that makes it unworkable or otherwise burdensome.

All that we seem to disagree about is the extent of these negative effects and how much the practitioners of political correctness intend for these negative effects to occur. But you have agreed to enough to see political correctness as something which is unnatural and undesirable. If that's the extent that we can agree, that's fine.

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In a way, sure, but I mean...we live in a society of competing interests and contesting claims as to how things should be. So I'd prefer not to define what should happen by what is 'natural' (according to whom?) and what I personally want to do. If I wanted to be a stickler for that kind of idea, I could argue that wearing pants is not natural, so I shouldn't have to wear pants to go to the grocery store. That's fine as far as it goes, but they still won't let me in if I try to break that unstated rule. It is just assumed that the individual, throughout the course of their day and the course of their life, will have to make adjustments for the fact that they are not the center of the universe, and so what they personally find acceptable or unacceptable is not going to set the bar for anyone but themselves, and may not transfer over to wider society outside of like-minded people. If you want to make a change in things like communicative norms or other patterns that require widespread acceptance and use in order to become established, then you need to make more like-minded people who don't see a problem with the things that the PC people have declared to be problems. That's social engineering in the other direction, but it's still social engineering (so you're not doing anything different than what the PC crowd are doing, on a macro level). So unnaturalness or undesirability don't really have much to do with it. Things are not like this because it's the best of all possible worlds, but because the people who have wanted these changes are being heard and their concepts and ideas are being adopted, for good or for ill.