Chait is complaining about “political correctness”. Fine, complain away; there are even lines I would draw that partly coincide with the lines he draws. He begins with an anecdote about angry students who littered a conservative columnist’s hallway with defaced copies of a ‘satirical’ column, and threw eggs at his door.
Don’t throw eggs at people’s doors, OK?
There are things you shouldn’t do, like damaging property or sending death threats or harassing people to interfere with their lives in destructive ways. Sometimes people on the left do cross those lines; I’m happy to join Chait in deploring those acts.
But don’t call it “P.C.” That’s a term that raises my hackles straight from the onset: it’s the disparaging phrase used solely against liberals, judging them not by their actions but their purpose. Vandalism and harassment are not ideologically-specific tools, used only by the left; let’s deplore the tactics no matter who employs them, but as soon as you attach the P.C. label, I know right away that you are trying to target liberals only.
I knew immmediately what specific recent events he was going to complain about. It wasn’t going to be about the Florida students who picketed a talk I gave several years ago, or the administrators who lobbied to have me ejected; those were conservative and anti-choice people, no one would call them “P.C.”, and besides, I’m just a relatively unknown college professor. It wasn’t going to be about a wealthy donor to St. John’s College getting a liberal faculty member’s contract denied; that’s definitely not politically correct, to fire liberals, but that’s perfectly OK. It’s not about teachers who proselytize in the classroom, because while they’ll moan that they’re being persecuted for being not-P.C., they’re also part of the dominant religion. Complaining about religious intrusions into secular institutions is very P.C., and therefore bad, while not being politically correct is supposed to be good.
So, no, I predicted he wouldn’t say anything that would reflect badly on conservatives, and would instead go after those strident activist liberals, instead.
After political correctness burst onto the academic scene in the late ’80s and early ’90s, it went into a long remission. Now it has returned. Some of its expressions have a familiar tint, like the protesting of even mildly controversial speakers on college campuses. You may remember when 6,000 people at the University of California–Berkeley signed a petition last year to stop a commencement address by Bill Maher, who has criticized Islam (along with nearly all the other major world religions). Or when protesters at Smith College demanded the cancellation of a commencement address by Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, blaming the organization for “imperialist and patriarchal systems that oppress and abuse women worldwide.” Also last year, Rutgers protesters scared away Condoleezza Rice; others at Brandeis blocked Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a women’s-rights champion who is also a staunch critic of Islam; and those at Haverford successfully protested former Berkeley chancellor Robert Birgeneau, who was disqualified by an episode in which the school’s police used force against Occupy protesters.
Bill Maher has criticized Islam badly, and also has a lot of other ugly baggage under his belt, such as his casual contempt for women, and his bizarre alt-med conspiracy theory nonsense. To imply that it’s simply an effort to suppress criticism of Islam is a bit dishonest. When he was given the Richard Dawkins Foundation award, there was a great deal of discussion and anger about it — he’s not really pro-science — and none of it was about the fact that he opposed a major world religion. I have serious objections to Maher, and it’s not because I want to protect Islam.
But wait…what did the students at Berkeley do? They put together a petition.
What’s wrong with that, Jonathan Chait? Are students expected to simply acquiesce and not express discontent at any administration decision? Nobody should be required to respect Bill Maher (or me, or Bill Donohue, or even, most horribly, Jonathan Chait). Students are allowed to protest peaceably. I would encourage them to protest.
Look at the other examples Chait cites. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a “women’s-rights champion” and “staunch critic of Islam”. Well, gosh, from that description, I’d be horrified at any rejection, too: the people leading the charge must have been MRAs and Islamists. But no. Ali has a very complicated reputation: she’s against Islam, but she’s suggested that Christian priests be sent to Islamic countries to convert them. She’s a feminist on a very narrow dimension; this is someone associated with a strongly right-wing, no-nothing conservative think tank. Why shouldn’t students be encouraged to protest against such people, and any others who they feel poorly reflect their values?
As for Condoleezza Rice, Chait says nothing to justify her status as a highly paid speaker. I guess as someone who was in favor of the Iraq War, he’s not going to have any ready objections. But I do. She’s over-priced as a speaker, with a history that makes her a war criminal, or at the very least, a collaborator with war criminals. I am so freaking happy to see students rising out of passivity, drawing a line, and refusing to endorse such people.
Again, what is wrong with those “P.C.” students who protested, petitioned the administration to refuse to pay for a monstrous person like that to speak on campus, and succeeded in some instances in turning her away? That’s what free speech is about!
Did they egg her door, perhaps? I’d oppose that. But organizing and petitioning and protesting are exactly what I’d like to see done by my students, at least.
At a growing number of campuses, professors now attach “trigger warnings” to texts that may upset students, and there is a campaign to eradicate “microaggressions,” or small social slights that might cause searing trauma. These newly fashionable terms merely repackage a central tenet of the first p.c. movement: that people should be expected to treat even faintly unpleasant ideas or behaviors as full-scale offenses. Stanford recently canceled a performance of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson after protests by Native American students. UCLA students staged a sit-in to protest microaggressions such as when a professor corrected a student’s decision to spell the word indigenous with an uppercase I — one example of many “perceived grammatical choices that in actuality reflect ideologies.” A theater group at Mount Holyoke College recently announced it would no longer put on The Vagina Monologues in part because the material excludes women without vaginas. These sorts of episodes now hardly even qualify as exceptional.
I teach genetics and developmental biology, and I’ve always warned my students before I show slides of deformed fetuses. It’s a courtesy, it allows them a chance to avert their eyes before a giant picture of a dead damaged fetus is flashed on the screen, and it makes it clear that this is about the information, not about shocking people. Making students squirm uncomfortably in their seats is not setting the right environment for them to learn — I’m not playing a game of “Aha! Gotcha! Look at the blood!”.
So I think it is entirely reasonable and appropriate that students get advanced warning that emotionally difficult material is coming up. It’s clear to me that it’s a signal, not to run away and hide, but to prepare oneself to examine a concept carefully. That the material might be psychological or sociological does not mean it is OK to spring it on students without preparation; somehow it has become acceptable that civilians who haven’t been up to their forearms in guts ought to be given the courtesy of a warning before throwing gross and graphic images at them, but it is unacceptable molly-coddling to show similar courtesy to a rape victim before slamming them with a story of a traumatic situation.
Again, what does Chait want people to do? Be brazen and rude and shocking even in situations in which we are trying to encourage cooperation and learning?
As for that story about the proper capitalization of “indigenous” — for shame, Jonathan Chait. Perhaps it suits your intent to make it seem that those students were protesting something so trivial, but was really just one small piece of a whole pattern of behavior.
“A hostile campus climate has been the norm for Students of Color in this class throughout the quarter as our epistemological and methodological commitments have been repeatedly questioned by our classmates and our instructor,” the group’s letter reads. The statement accuses “the professor” (it does not identify Rust by name) of correcting “perceived grammatical choices that in actuality reflect ideologies” and “repeatedly questioning the value of our work on social identity and the related dynamics of oppression, power and privilege.” The “barrage of questions by white colleagues and the grammar ‘lessons’ by the professor have contributed to a hostile class climate,” it continues.
You know, if I, as an atheist, used my biology classroom to belittle my students’ religions (beyond obvious contradictions with the content of the course), if I created a “hostile class climate” for Christian and Muslim students, they yes, they ought to complain. They ought to march in and have a sit-in and tell me I can’t use my bully pulpit to disparage their beliefs…and they’d be right to do so, and I’d actually be perversely pleased to see that kind of gumption. (Of course, I don’t use the classroom to criticize religion — that’s entirely extra-curricular).
What the hell is Chait complaining about? I don’t know.
As for the Vagina Monologues story, I think it’s a good thing that there has been an emerging awareness that there is an oppressed group that doesn’t fit neatly into the absolutist, simplistic gender compartments we took for granted for so long. And why shouldn’t students discuss the plays they perform and evaluate their merits and think about new ideas? Is every college now expected to show the Vagina Monologues every year? Is it mandatory?
As is usual with the examples Chait gives, the story is also much more complicated than he makes it out to be. The students argued about what play to put on — oh be still my beating heart, that students would actually dissent and debate rather than passively accept the status quo — and even the creator of the play has no problem with new choices.
In an interview with arts advocate and writer Howard Sherman, Ensler said her play was never meant to speak for all women and that she supports the creation of new plays. Women with and without vaginas need a voice, she said.
Nowhere does Chait explain why this kind of discussion and change is a bad thing. There’s a general statement about why P.C. is so horrible…
Political correctness makes debate irrelevant and frequently impossible.
But all of his examples are of people debating vigorously! It seems to me that it isn’t that it’s become difficult to debate the issues, but that people who hold views that make him uncomfortable are actively, and apparently effectively, arguing against him. There is a legitimate argument to be made against certain tactics — dishonesty, faked evidence, intimidation and harassment — which crush debate, but that’s not what the people he’s complaining about are doing, and he seems to freely equate bad tactics with subjects that bewilder him.
I’m thinking that what he needs to do is follow up with an essay that isn’t about the broad brush application of a label, but with some constructive description of what his ideal solution would be. My impression from this essay is that in his perfect world, everyone who is more liberal than he is would be simply shamed into silence.
Dang, I went to St. John’s University, and I had no idea that they did that to Nick Coleman. I did know about the pedophilic priests though.
The only real change since the 90s is that the voices of criticism coming from farther to the left than Chait now have reach and amplification thanks to the internet.
“Politically correct” is a right-wing dog whistle essentially complaining that they are unable to control the debate, and that people the right-wing considers less than a cis-white-male-rethug will argue with them, tell them they are unethical and hypocritical, and be factually right in doing so. The wailing that their privileges not being enough to control the debate is music to the ears of those less privileged.
Who?
Small correction: it was the ‘Richard Dawkins Award’ and it was given by the Atheist Alliance, not the RDF. But yes, that was a fuck-up.
Eve Ensler is a bit problematic, by the by. She is the playwright; she’s the only one who can licence the play to be performed. Such contracts regularly include things like such a character must be played by a woman, or this speech must never be cut down, or whatever.
So why would it be so hard to simply add a scene about a trans woman’s relationship with her vulva? Or about her longing for one? Write the scene, add it to the play, and say that the contract mandates it can’t be cut (as other scenes already are so protected). The solution is right in front of her.
But instead, the answer to exclusion of the marginalised is “go make your own”, knowing full well that transphobia means such a play would not get performed outside small queer theatre groups.
She’s always sort of flirted with the TERFs, but I’m not needing more evidence for me that she’s well onside with them.
Not that I have an opinion or anything, ahem, as a feminist trans woman involved in theatre.
Piffle.
I’m reminded of the hue and cry when my alma mater changed the annual LBT pride fest’s name to make it more inclusive of trans students (IMO, the sloganeering actually improved: I quite like the ring of “loving without boundaries”). Some people complained. The student body, as a whole, shrugged. Curious, I asked some current students: most are not only unaware of the name change, but see it as an utter non-issue: of course it was changed.
Incidentally, The Vagina Monologues has some…iffy…bits even besides what CaitieCat said. The line “if that was rape, it was good rape” comes to mind.
@CaitieCat #6: Are you intentionally referring to something that has actually happened already? ‘Cause that happened. I’ve been doing sound and lighting for our campus’s production of TVM since I was a student, for almost a decade, and it’s been updated with new scenes a few times since I’ve been doing it, including one about the experiences of a number of trans women that was added a few years ago. The play still isn’t devoid of representational problems, but Ensler does seem to be responding to criticism in good faith, at least to some degree.
@Esteleth #7: That line doesn’t appear in the play, at least not in the current version licensed for college productions. I’m looking at the script right now: some form of the word “rape” appears four times – one is a direction to facilitators concerning reporting rape statistics for their own country/state/region, two are in the introduction to the “My Vagina, My Village” piece about rape as a tactic of war (in which said rape statistics are reported to the audience), and one is in the introduction to “The Little Coochie Snorcher That Could”, noting that nearly all of the homeless women who Ensler had interviewed had been sexually assaulted or raped.
It’s amusing to see someone use politically correct unironically, then complain about The Vagina Monologues being dropped. Doesn’t Chait know that feminism is one of those PC things you’re supposed to oppose?
It’s always a dead giveaway (besides usin the obviously loaded term “PC”) when they only examples they choose happen to be liberals/progressives protesting some conservative or right wing cause, no?
One would think, that if Chait were reallyM/i> concerned about political correctness or championing free speech, there would be some consistency and he would be equally outraged over the various right wing organizations demanding we boycott…something….for doing something as horrible, as say, acknowledging that LGBTQ people are also, you know, people….
Marginalized people say: “I find your use of discriminatory or bigoted language to be offensive. I hope you will choose to moderate your language to avoid offending people who belong to oppressed groups, but if you don’t I will voice my criticism.”
People like Chait respond: “This PC stuff has gone too far. Can we return to a time when marginalized people didn’t feel safe speaking up about being offended or discriminated against and thus remained silent?”
I missed one additional instance of “rape” in the gerund form; it’s in the piece “My Short Skirt” – “My short skirt is not a legal reason for raping me”.
There’s been plenty of push-back on Chait’s article (the best is probably this one from Jezebel, though Salon, Gawker, Forbes, and several others are good as well), which was frankly as horrible as Chait articles come (and that’s saying something.) With exactly zero surprise, we see that Hot Air and Reason and The Federalist are the outlets that have jumped to Chait’s defense. I notice, Dr. Myers, that you don’t even mention the idiotic and unethical interjection of a snippet of a Facebook conversation from a private chat-group that he only ever saw a screenshot of as a cornerstone of his argument. The real issue with Chait’s article is that he confuses critique with suppression of speech and paints the whole “left” with a pretty broad brush using shitty little anecdotes as his ‘evidence’. He’s essentially handing AK-47’s to conservative assholes to decimate bales of straw with. And undoubtedly innocents will be caught in the crossfire.
Nobody who complains about “political correctness” ever insists that we should all stop reading Judith Martin, and yet the central tenet of what they’re criticizing was something she said in a book back in the 1980s, before the term even became a conservative obsession: don’t call someone something they don’t want to be called. She didn’t call it “political correctness”, she called it by its true name: being polite.
PZ:
Before he does that, he needs to write a prequel essay explaining how he defines PC.
Chait is still licking his wounds from two recent events: his public dialogue about a year ago with Ta-Nahisi Coates about race and culture (in which Coates very politely ran rings around him), and some of the reaction to the recent changes at his former workplace The New Republic. (Chait was shocked to learn that not everyone was tearful about TNR’s “demise,” and even dared to criticize the magazine for its narrow focus on white-slightly-left-of-centerism and its apathy towards racial minority concerns — when it wasn’t publishing racist tripe like The Bell Curve, of course.)
Speaking of PLAYS: Too bad Chait didn’t see the MIT Shakespeare Ensemble present the play: Othello, with a female in the titular role. Or last year’s Hamlet with a dual Hamlet (to reflect his dual personality): one male, one female (actors, not personalities). I think it would have asploded his brain; that Shakespeare’s plays could be “gender swapped”. Is that too “politically correct” for Chait?
Well, I think I know pretty well what he wants: He really wants everybody else to shut up. Because what he is complaining about is speech, dialogue and debate. Just not the voices he’d like to hear exclusively
Also, fuck Eve Ensler. Seriously, she’s White Feminism™ embodied.
Please beware that “PC” expression, while it seems competely biased (from conservatives toward progressives) in its use in the English world (USA, UK and Canada, but maybe more places), has other meanings at other places (well, at least one, guess which one?).
In France, its use is either from right- or left wing with frequency increasing with departing from the average center-leaning opinion (yes, I know, French people always seem to do things differently and not always in a good way, always adding to the confusion it seems! ).
In general from French contextual use, “PC” is something moderate (the majority/consensual choice), typically aiming at making the lowest disagreement level. Typically, politicians tend to be “PC”, but the strategy is perfectly understandable: they aim to get elected, so they must manage to provide the most midle-ground posture if they want to achieve any victory. The more eligible they are, and the more “PC” they will behave. (Though that is a itself a generalisation and certainly does not reflect the real world exactly).
For example, if both French and Chinese prime ministers meet together and the French pm avoids mentionning the Tibet issue but tries to sell a train or a nuclear plant, critics might claim as to how this was just a “PC” meeting.
The move to death penalty abolition in 1981 was clearly not PC (approval of the move was very low in the population). Going back to it may still be a “PC” position (I dont know what the numbers are currently, maybe they are more than 50% of people against DP today but I’m not so sure -it was slightly below 50% in 2013, slighly more in 2014). Fortunately none of the current politicians plan anything about it (but two FR).
(This was just a counter-example, politicians may be “PC” with regard to vote-fishing, but it doesn’t imply they are constantly so fortunately).
He’s playing the Dawkins Gambit: “They’re silencing me! How dare they criticize what big, smart, powerful ME has to say!”
But… that’s not what a microaggression is. It’s not something that causes “searing trauma” it’s a small thing that alone will seem harmless but is part of a larger pattern of discrimination, with the small pieces being wearisome for people suffering the discrimination.
The entire point of the term is to emphasize this and yet. *headdesk*
Tony @ #12
It’s pretty much the impression I get from people who complain along the same lines as Jonathan Chait; that they’re really just upset that they don’t control and dominate the debate anymore and they can’t possibly have been wrong this whole time and aren’t they the oppressed ones now under this new regime of
political correctnessmutual respect and understanding.At least, that’s the impression I get when they’re not just plain wrong about everything from what political correctness is (or was) to what actually constitutes a microagression. It’s very difficult to do anything other than nod while looking perplexed when someone rants like Chait. The first response I’d have to such a rant would be something like, ‘What are you even talking about?’
And from the way in which such ignorance is presented it’s quite clear that someone ranting from a position such as Chait’s is already firmly entrenched in their particular ideology. I”m glad PZ found a way to respond constructively (well, maybe), because it’s utterly beyond me how to engage when the person first needs an education in order to even understand how to articulate the problem they think they have*.
*’Think they have’, because hopefully that education will allay that ‘problem’.
#15:
Seconded, that’s what “PC” is or should be.
Good essay in the Guardian by Jessica Valenti about this: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/28/pc-culture-freedom-of-speech-freedom-to-be-offended
Okidemia @ #20, Even in contemporary English the term has many meanings (uses) and has a colloquial meaning that’s quite separate from that in academics. I presume that the term was loaned into French from English and from one of the variations in English usage came to have the meaning you describe as applied to politicians. Regardless of the origin or the actual use in French, there really should be no confusion about what usage we’re referring to here, so I’m not sure how it is relevant to point out that there is a meaning particular to colloquial French.
In case there is confusion, as has been pointed out, the term as used here is meant to disparage liberals by implying that they want to control the actions and language of other people, even censor them, to prevent perceived or non-existent harm (that liberals are authoritarian/socialist/fascist whiny babies.)
_____
The Vicar @ #15
I’m not sure Judith Martin is the best example to bring up, except that conservative minded (American) people might largely agree with her, because there are some rather problematic aspects of the etiquette she espouses, least of which is how arbitrary and culturally-dependent some of it is.
I remember when Political Correctness first came on the scene. It was the idea to use language to lend dignity to people who were generally marginalized. It always seems that the folks who complain about PC would like the physically handicapped, mentally challenged, and African-Americans to go back to being Cripples, Ret@rds, and Ni66ers.
Well, something I once read in a German newspaper article made much the same argument, only from the current perspective: “Political Correctness” is what people call basic human decency when they want to be assholes
Well, of course, I should add that on the specific point you made, The Vicar, she’s correct. Somehow, though, I actually think in practice that conservative minded people who might be inclined to following her advice would not actually follow that bit or conveniently forget it (no one is perfect) if it suited them ideologically or otherwise.
Ever try to get a conservative to stop referring to gays as ‘homosexuals’? Merely pointing out that you’d rather if they referred to you in a particular way only encourages them to keep on as they have. The intent is to insult, because freeze peach.
Are there words that automatically get a message deleted or held for moderation?
This may be petty, but it is incredibly irksome to see words elided through the use of symbols. If you aren’t comfortable using a word I’d rather see it alluded to than written in a garbled way. It instantly makes me think of pearl clutching and, frankly, I think it diminishes the reality/importance of the word and helps to erase its history.
And what makes it okay, kirklarson, to spell out the word ‘cripple’ but not to spell out the word ‘retard’? It’s aribtrary, really. Just write the words out.
Thomathy @26:
And it’s fucking stupid that anyone whines about “PC”. No one is attempting to control the actions of others. No one is trying to control the language of others. All people are doing is requesting that others use respectful language. *That* is something these fools (lots of conservatives, libertarians, and some liberals too; though curiously, I don’t know many progressives who complain about “PC”) can’t handle: their speech being criticized and people holding them accountable for what they say.
And like you, I found it bizarre that Okidemia felt the need to explain that PC has different meanings in different regions. Yes, Pharyngula has a global readership, but the article is discussing PC as it is used in the United States.
Thomathy @30:
PZ does have a filter in place that sends comments containing certain words into moderation. That’s why you’ll often see commenters use symbols in place of letters in certain words that are on the filter list. The latter two words in Kirklarson’s #27 would have tripped the filter.
#26 Thomathy, Such A ‘Mo
It’s a semi-private hint.
Sometimes one uses some wording that is misleading. Of course, one’s guilty for that. (I did). It makes for unhappy shared confusion.
Sometimes generic terms are still used for their genericity. In comment #20, the minister example is not about being polite to the majority. (Only to the guest, and only with some vested interest).
The fact that this expression is echoing differently among users is not always easing discussions.
I do. Political correctness, as Chait and his ilk see it, is objecting to facts about the world because someone is offended by them. They never seem to get that the criticized positions are rarely factual, and the other reasons for objecting to them go far beyond a moment of offense.
The best retort to being accused of being politically correct is to say “correct will do nicely”.
Thankfully, Tony, those words don’t get used too often outside of discussing them and their use. Still, so what if it trips the filter? Just be patient and wait for the comment to get rescued …right? Or rephrase it. Is it always necessary to go to the (seemingly) worst possible example just to make a point? I can think of a whole bunch of others words that make the point kirklarson was making without having to use the latter two choices. I suppose for punch they have effect, but neutered in that way they seem differently offensive.
(I won’t bring this up again here, to keep the thread on topic and I’m also going to stop responding for now because I’m posting too much I think!)
“politically correct” == using words that won’t offended (when “those people” need to be offended).
and
“politically correct” == too wimpy to insult those who need insulting.
are the defs I got from the discussion in this thread.
umm, also: …== altering one’s speech to camouflage one’s disparaging intent. Free Speech means using all the nasty words one wants to, don’t garble your language, PC’er.
@36
“troll” = someone who posts specious inflammatory comments solely to provoke a response
re @37:
sorry
PZ: Some of Chait’s criticism hits home. I’ve also noticed a growing tendency among lefties to hunt for heretics and excommunicate people rather than persuade. Why, you did it just yesterday, regarding Wikipedia. Your exact words: “I’ll be telling students to not trust Wikipedia at all, and to steer completely clear.” You could have just warned people that some Wiki articles have anti-feminist bias so watch out for that.
This “EXPEL THE IMMORAL BROTHER!” attitude is what led the GOP to become bereft of new ideas today. Do you really want lefties to suffer the same fate? We used to be proud of our willingness to engage and persuade. I’m hoping we don’t lose that.
I’ve been telling students for years that they can’t cite Wikipedia. This is not some kneejerk response to one category of articles, but a recognition of deep problems in the concept: the superficiality of the content, the unreliability of the sources, and now added to that, political bias.
Shall I let the students start citing Conservapædia, too?
Didn’t see anyone else post it so here’s a cartoon response I found amusing.
https://medium.com/the-nib/chaiters-gonna-chait-705625306497
joel @39:
Really?
Where has this heretic hunting and excommunication happened at? I’d love a link or two.
Such as?
joel @ 39, way to completely and absolutely miss the point. Then you criticize other people for what you mistakenly assume they are doing, instead of checking yourself. Wow.
I know PZ responded, but joel is going to misunderstand that, too.
No wonder he is supporting Chait’s misunderstandings.
PZ: Your words again: You used to tell your students “If they see something in the wiki that they’d like to use, they have to go to an original cited source instead.” But now you’re telling them “not trust Wikipedia at all, and to steer completely clear.”
This in spite of the enormous library of Wikipedia articles on technical subjects that are spot-on accurate. Which, by the way, is the difference between Conservapedia and Wikipedia: Conservapedia is nothing but bias. Wikipedia is reams and reams of good information with some bias in the mix.
What pushed you over the edge into renouncing Wikipedia was the discovery of sexism in it. Do you think your students are too stupid or too sensitive to see through that and filter content as needed? More importantly, do you really think your demonstrated willingness to renounce a resource that’s far more accurate than not is healthy?
We’ve seen what has become of the Republican Party after building an echo chamber around themselves: Not only have they lost touch with the real world, they have also gotten so unused to dealing with opposing ideas that they have completely forgotten how to persuade. Let’s not become like them.
joel @44:
Are you have difficulty understanding what PZ is saying? He has never endorsed his students using Wikipedia as a source.
Yep, a bad policy decision made PZ change his mind. What is your problem?
Nice lie. PZ knew there was sexism. The decision of the arbitration made it plain that the sexism was rampant, out of control, and made tainted everything by not adhering to the facts, but rather the golden mean. Which if applied to other articles, would diminish their usefulness.
When the arbitration board doesn’t care about facts, or looking beyond a very narrow view, the enterprise is not to be trusted. Trust is hard to build, and easy to destroy. And Wiki destroyed trust yet again.
Amanda Taub said it better. Political Correctness doesn’t exist.
http://www.vox.com/2015/1/28/7930845/political-correctness-doesnt-exist
joel, mentioning ‘echo chambers”?? How original.
joel sez:
The only examples that even come close seems to be when people no longer want to deal with harassers. So sorry that we aren’t dealing with abusive people properly. You can feel free to do it Right. Show us the way, infallible one.
“Steer clear of biased website” is apparently equivalent to a heretic hunt and excommunication? I hope everyone realizes that you are just quibbling over word choice. PZ said “steer completely clear”, you say he should have said it has ” anti-feminist bias so watch out for that”. This is essentially the same fucking advice.
Do you sincerely think the only issue with the GOP is the lack of ideological novelty?
Also, pro-tip: A key issue with the GOP expelling people for immorality has to do with what they consider immoral or not….
Are you too stupid or dishonest to realize that it isn’t obvious or easy sometimes to determine when bias is at play in what otherwise appears to be a presentation of facts? You seem to think it is trivial, but when you are learning something fresh and have no background knowledge, you can be swayed pretty damn easily. And it is damn hard to correct misinformation once it is “learned”.
You first.
Chait said:
Or, to put it more accurately: “Political correctness” makes debate more difficult and inconvenient for people who have obviously abhorrent positions.
My response is: good. If morality and logic become enemies, morality should win. But usually, I just think the asshole deliberately using logic as a toy or a weapon should just shut the fuck up anyway.
Joel:
PZ teaches at a university. His students are adults. He can tell them “don’t trust Wikipedia,” but if other people tell them “sure, use it as a pointer to real sources,” they can ignore his advice. If he’s wrong, and it does lead them to good sources, he’s not going to mark them down because he somehow knows they were looking at Wikipedia.
@26, Thomathy, Such A ‘Mo
Well, yes, it’s a little hard to take Miss Manners seriously when she continues to champion the idea that ice cream should be eaten with a fork because That Has Always Been The Established Precedent™ (probably, given the combination of making the task more difficult and archaism, dating to Isabella Beeton, who was never afraid to let ignorance or inconsistency stand in the way of issuing dictates). My point is, though, that if you aren’t being PC, the chances are that you’re being rude. Not that this is news, exactly, but I am citing a pre-existing source which is not influenced by either side in the later debate. Since etiquette is necessarily a game where arguments from authority hold water, this is a necessary thing to do.
Interesting to hear that PC in France means politically expedient. Here in Quebec it is a precise synonym of the english term, and it’s used by the same segment of the commentariat as in the US and Canada (sometimes by the very same people, since many people write in both languages).
joel
That’s a very nice narrative you got there. Wouldn’t it be a shame if reality happened to it?
First of all, “excommunication” is a bullshit word to start with. There’s no central authority that inflicts serious consequences on the person. It smells of the infamous “witch hunt”, to which you alluded with “hunting herectics”. How many people have been burned at the stake by now? You’ve been asked to provide some evidence that this is happening, and you came up with the Wikipedia example, to which I’ll come in a minute. That is really poor evidence. I suspect that what you’re thinking of is the exact same thing Chait whines about: People deciding that they no longer want to have anything to do with somebody, like Rebecca Watsons infamous “Richard Dawkins Boycott”, aka a woman deciding that she’ll no longer throw money at a rich guy who belittled her and no longer encouraging others to do the same.
So, tell me, how do I know which articles are spot in and which are bullshit? PZ and others have pointed out that there’s a serious flaw in the whole process which makes the whole thing unreliable. If it was clear that a food company had serious issues with their production process which means that 0.01% of cookies end up with rat shit in them, but you can never tell which ones, and furthermore the company decided that this was not an issue because 99.99% of cookies are just fine, would you think that warning people to steer away from those cookies was unfair?
Let’s see if I can get a Bingo by the end of the thread…
+++
Also, if you wonder and debate about the term “political correctness”, please remember that the term has a history and that it’s actually a case where the right won the war on definition. With the help of the “edgy lefties”. It used to be a term that described the elimination of discriminatory language. End of story. Then the right spun it into this Behemoth we see today. It’s used to dismiss whatever argument and complaint marginalised groups have.
Think of the struggle to reclaim the term “feminism” in a “postfeminist” world, how we’re constantly being strawmanned as a bunch of bitter ugly butch political lesbians in horrible purple clothes who want to kill all men and who scream RAPE whenever a man so much as looks at a woman.
Not that there’s anything wrong with being a butch not conventionally attractive political lesbian dressed in purple, mind you…
craigmcgillivary @47:
Thank you for that link. Amanda Taub did indeed say it better. She gives what is, for me, the final word on “PC”. Now let’s bury the fucking term. And no zombie jesus resurrection.
Here’s someone else who hates political correctness: some guy named Nick Cohen.
So stop caring how your language makes other people feel, hey?
See that? New opportunities to intimidate and control!!! Yup, the Language Police are on their way, dictionaries in hand, wielding proper spelling and all the synonyms for bad words you could ever want!
“Political Correctness” is to ideas what “Ad Hominem” is to people. If you can’t win an argument against a person by using reason and evidence you might say that person is jewish or black or whatever, implying that their arguments should be dismissed. If you can’t successfully argue against an idea or position using reason and evidence you accuse it of being “politically correct” in order to dismiss it without actually having to demonstrate why. Both are, at heart, diversionary tactics intended to direct attention away the weakness of one’s own position.
The only version of “PC” that isn’t completely incoherent, and refers to an actually widespread thing, is Patriotic Correctness (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Conservative_correctness).
I find that the moment someone unironically brings up “political correctness”, you can completely ignore the rest of what they’re saying without the loss of anything important.
another take here by Freddie Deboer https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://fredrikdeboer.com/2015/01/29/i-dont-know-what-to-do-you-guys/&gws_rd=cr&ei=_5vKVKv5OZL7sATnu4DYAw
TWIBFM also did a spectacular beatdown of Chait. Starts at 6:06 and goes almost all the way to the end. Enjoy.
@ #58.
I’m sorry, I’m sticking to my own native use, because it’s easier to me (and despite making it sound a bit confusing to English-w natives –for which I apologise —and yes that’s some lazziness from my side):
That’s a really good point. Ultraconservatives* are actually highly “PC”**. They repack their wording into apparently innocuous expressions that in reality are hiding their really scary worldview. Here (like in “probably not where you are”), it becomes things like “these people” (being vague enough to mislead anybody who don’t see the implicit target is just PoCs), “bearded” to target muslims (also confused as necessarily radical terrorists).
Though it is obvious that the strategy for this kind of PC is not harm minimisation (does this word exist in English? sounds straightforkward) but “correctness” mimicking. It’s awkward when a discussion suddenly take a different turn and meaning than what you thought someother was speaking about.
* in which I’m really PC, since I’m trying not to pool ultraC and baseC.
** in which I’m really PC, but not Patriotically C, since I first admit to my prefered use but actually abbreviate so that both are conflated and no harm is done.
———————-
That’s an interesting construction. I’m not sure I would have used it (I’m not native) (not sure what I would have writen neither, maybe [she/he] ). Please anybody can give a grammatical comment, I’m taking it. (That’ll be a bit off-thread, but one comment or two won’t change the discussion flow that much).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmsV1TuESrc One of my favourite standups, Stewart Lee, on the subject.
Here’s an article at The Atlantic by David Frum that echoes Jonathan Chait’s whining about political correctness.
Now for some mansplaining.
To this guy watching you argue about microaggessions is as amusing as watching strippers wrestle in a tub of jello.
http://theweek.com/articles/536299/whats-wrong-political-correctness-few-observations-from-amansplainer
wow, useless observations by some fuckwit who gets a kick out of being a fuckwit.
color me shocked.
did you have something to add to that, Kappa?
joel
too late, you already have.
It’s probably just because you’re too lazy to follow the arguments beyond a single post though.
Ichthyic,
read him again carefully, there is some sympathy for your side.
Remember when the Dixie Chicks were attacked by the right for criticizing their President?
Chait begins by launching into an attack on MacKinnon’s activities in 1992.
MacKinnon’s tactics were pretty awful. But she only gained national attention because Meese chose her for his anti-porn commission as a person who was known to support his desired conclusion and could be presented as being from the ‘left’. MacKinnon was and is an unapologetic Marxist and an authoritarian. She is not a liberal by any stretch of the imagination. The relevance of her lifelong project to develop a Feminist theory of Marxism kind of lost relevance when the Soviet Union collapsed.
After bashing MacKinnon for a while Chait then goes on to ask, in all seriousness why nobody on the left thought to follow up a condemnation of the Charlie Hebdo murders this month with a condemnation of MacKinnon’s activities in the 80s and 90s!
The game Chait is playing here is setting himself up as arbiter of who should be condemned and whether the condemnations are sufficient. Which is of course the game that Fox News plays constantly. Its a McCarthyite tactic. Lagarde and Rice were being criticized for the organizations they were there to represent and the actions they took, not what they might say.
The rest of his recitation of ‘evidence’ is simply a description of the sort of thing that undergraduates have always done. When I was at Southampton University, the student union banned the Pig Fondler’s Guild over a satirical publication I wrote, arguing that they could do this because the publication was *not* racist and thus not protected under the policy opposing the NUS ‘no platform’ policy. That wasn’t a PC attack, it was a response to being shown the inconsistency between the modern definition of rape and Mathew’s account of the immaculate conception.
Trying to suppress unwelcome speech is not a liberal or a right wing tactic, it is an authoritarian tactic. And there are plenty of authoritarians on both sides. One of the problems with power is that people who get it tend to become authoritarians.