Cross-posted from Facebook.
Memo to people who say things.
If you compare someone behaving badly to “a teenage girl” and you get a reaction to the sexism – the right answer is not to call that “PC”.
It’s not “political correctness” (in the pejorative sense) to try to get people to refrain from automatic mindless disparagement of girls&women.
It’s not trivia. It’s not fussiness or pedantry. It’s not a gotcha. It’s not “call-out culture.” It’s not language-policing. It’s not authoritarian.
It’s a long (long long long) term effort to shape a world where girls DON’T grow up constantly being told, directly and indirectly, that they are fundamentally stupider, weaker, more spoiled and whiny, and just overall more annoying and bad and inferior than that other sex.
Why would this not be an important and worthwhile goal? Why would we want to keep half of humanity in a permanent state of attributed inferiority?
The use of the term “PC” is a whine by those who can’t use their favorite sexist/racist/everythingelseist insults anymore. I don’t think I’ve ever heard the term used in an affirmative sense — in fact, I don’t think there is one.
I assume you saw the “Like a Girl” video? Here’s a story about it – and the original video is on the page as well:
http://www.ctvnews.ca/business/likeagirl-how-an-ad-campaign-is-trying-to-redefine-the-phrase-1.1897069
To decrease the amount of competition, obviously!
I think I’ll copy this to my fb page too, if you don’t mind.
Nope I don’t mind.
As a kicker: Understand that the accusation of being “politically correct” is nothing more or less than an accusation of insincerity. It’s a claim that the other person does not REALLY hold these views, but rather that they are attempting to adhere to some perceived standard. The term (like so many others) has been horribly distorted by Rush Limbaugh and his countless successor-clones, but that’s still the derivation.
The proper response, when you are being sincere, of being told you’re being ‘Politically Correct” is to tell the other person to go fuck themselves.
Anyone want to help me drag the phrase “political correctness” out back and bury it for all time?
If we need an analogy for a spoiled, whiny and annoying person, there’s always “dudebro being asked to consider the humanity of women.” It doesn’t get much more spoiled, whiny and annoying than that.
@7: Got a spare shovel?
As a couple of people have already noted, it’s basically just a whine used by bullies whenever anybody stands up to them, but what really winds me up about it is that it’s a silencing tactic based on an accusation of attempted silencing. The message it contains is “It’s bad to try and persuade people to change their discourse, therefore you should shut the hell up about attempting to change the discourse.”