Above Political Correctness

[katiuska]

Originally Posted by Fifthfiend

I didn't realize that couples therapy was based on passive aggresion and denial :/

The notion that people's immediate emotional responses are actually the result of some sort of conscious decision is really going to need more support before I consider it anything more than a spurious claim. And the notion that this somehow removes blaming is also fairly unbelievable since as OC demonstrates above, it is absolutely about blame, IE, blaming the individual having an offended reaction for that reaction.

I think the claim is less that it's a conscious decision and more that our reactions are based partly on how we interpret a situation and that we do have some control over that.

On the other hand, you don't get to define words for other people.

Originally Posted by Krylo

To be fair, I a) don't think that's entirely correct, and b) don't actually care about the political correctness discussion. Just the minor psychology side discussion I started. Which does, admittedly, tie into the political correctness discussion, but I don't really care about my 'right' to use nigger or faggot or whatever in mixed company. I obviously have that right, but if I utilize it I should do so with the full understanding that, right or not, I'm really just kinda asking to get punched in the face.

...Kind of like that.

Like, for some reason, the theater geeks in my HS thought it was funny to call each other "fat" in good fun; this works as long as everyone understands that no one is actually calling anybody fat or expressing any kind of underlying disdain. But I can't talk like that indiscriminately, because a lot of people aren't going to take my fat-calling as an innocuous joke, even if I mean it that way. If I do this to people outside the group not knowing how it's going to sound, I might be forgiven, but at some point I'm going to have to realize that it sounds insulting and adjust myself if I want people to not think I'm insulting them. Once I get to the point where I insist on using "fat" this way at Weight Watchers meetings (or like, with an anorexic girl, expecting her not to take it personally), then I'm just being jerkish.

Originally Posted by Fifthfiend

EDIT: I should say, I can certainly see where there is a place for the sort of thing you're talking about, but really, it likewise shouldn't take a lot to see where that sort of thing can easily be used as a shutdown tactic against people's entirely valid reactions to injurious conduct.

Which is why I ultimately come down more on the side of political correctness. There's an argument to be made that words are just words, but a lot of times when people say they're against political correctness, I end up getting the impression that the person just wants to say hurtful things without being called out on the fact that they're hurtful.

EDIT: Man, I'm slow. This conversation kind of went in another direction in the time it took to type all that.

[Amake]

A cannon fires only once, but words detonate across centuries.

Don't underestimate the power of your words. They will likely survive you, at the very least.

Just saying.

[Overcast]

Admit it IQ, you are just trying to be deep now.

As for me, I'm not trying to get away with being able to say hurtful things, but I want to believe that something hurtful should be based on intention of the phrase more than the words that are in them. That what is polite is not universal, and people should think about what someone is saying before they automatically explode.

[Amake]

It's a deep question to me. Something I've dealt with every day since I was five years old and my mom told me one thing that's always stayed with me, long and deep I've wondered about its meaning and blah blah.

She said, "Think before you speak."

[Seil]

and people should think about what someone is saying before they automatically explode.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HQh4...eature=related

[shiney]

And people should post more than youtube links. Moved on from webcomics, have we? :p

I see both sides of the debate. I think there's a lot of focus on being offended lately, and very little focus on the intent of the speaker (particularly in cases where a word was used that isn't derogatory)...people are quick to feeling an injustice, and cool to measured responses. There's also a lot of people out there who simply don't care about anyone else's feelings, and when their lack of sensitivity is brought to light, double down on it and claim moral high ground. We saw both sides of the debate, I find myself falling more on the side of "they're just words" to the degree that if a speaker isn't using a derogatory term, and someone is offended nonetheless, and it is explained that the term was not being used offensively, then people need to acknowledge this. Otherwise we may as well go about censoring any word that might possibly offend everyone, and restricting the use of non-derogatory language as a means of coexistence is ridiculous in my opinion.

I guess I just find there's too much focus on "you hurt my feelings" and not enough on two-way communication. If your feelings were hurt then I'm sorry, but if your feelings were hurt as a matter of course using terminology that doesn't have a derogatory connotation then you probably need to suck it up a little bit. It's like doctors getting sued for stating their patients are overweight. "How dare he!" Well, you're overweight. What do you want them to say? Sorry you were offended, but you're overweight. It's your doctor saying it, and not wanting to offend but stating a clinical fact, and the fact that you were offended rests solely on yourself.

[Specterbane]

Just to toss in my own 'two bits', after having looked over all the stuff that's started this up and looking at both sides as objectively as I can here are the said 'two bits'.

The whole PC language idea stems from a desire to have calm discussion that doesn't offend people, but clearly that can have devastating failures. Sure the 'anti-PC' group can say that they don't give a fuck what people care, but that shouldn't give you some right to be an ass about not caring and you certainly shouldn't start getting self righteous about it. Likewise, if you've been offended it's still not helpful to lash out in anger like a toddler having a tantrum. But like it was said (I think by RPGdemon) it's easier to be offended.

For the talk of 'common decency' that's come up, no one actually said that this whole issue could have been avoided if BOTH sides had simply stepped back and said they were sorry for lashing out. Words are words, but how they're taken gives them a great deal of power and meaning; we've seen what being mistaken can cause and few more words of an apology would have over come and quenched the flames that got started.

[Solid Snake]

I see both sides of the debate. I think there's a lot of focus on being offended lately, and very little focus on the intent of the speaker (particularly in cases where a word was used that isn't derogatory)...people are quick to feeling an injustice, and cool to measured responses.

Frankly, I don't think the intent of the speaker should matter. If I as a beneficiary of institutional privilege by being born a heterosexual white male am having a conversation with someone who is in an oppressed minority group and I happen to make a reference to them being "abnormal" or women being "emotionally unstable" or gays being "extravagant" or black people liking offensive "ghetto rap music," the fact that I may have intended to simply make a joke, express a lack of understanding for a "foreign" or "unique" culture, or make a broader and unrelated point has no bearing on the fact that I just said something stupid and really offensive.

Now there are two ways that the person I've offended in this hypothetical situation can respond to this: they can let it slide (in which case the privilege just perpetuates, and I continue to say stupid untrue generalizations because I've never been called out on it, and I continue to inadvertently offend people out of ignorance) OR they can get angry and call me out on it.

Personally, I'd much prefer the latter approach. NonCon and a few other people here had to basically call me out for my stupidity over several years, and had they not done so as aggressively and convincingly as they did, I'd still be an ignorant asshole conservative Republican. Like, I cannot emphasize enough how people here on NPF were largely responsible for converting me to "liberal New Deal Democrat" precisely because they were overtly hostile in a way that I originally felt was politically correct and absurd and offensive. Had NonCon or Smarty or Fifthfiend or whoever else basically been like "Oh that's okay, I disagree with you but you have a right to your own opinion" I might still be marching to the tune of George W. Bush and John McCain's lunacies.

Fact of the matter is, hostile confrontation works, particularly if you actually happen to be in the right and the other person is wrong. Granted, some folks here can sometimes take this a bit far into an extreme and yes, sometimes a better wording of criticism would suffice, but if I say something ignorant and privileged I fucking want you to call me out on it and bash my head in. I will frankly despise you for days or weeks or maybe even months but eventually if I'm subjected to being persuasively and overtly told that I am dead wrong and being an asshole long enough I will eventually come to my senses.

[CelesJessa]

Originally Posted by Solid Snake

they can let it slide ... OR they can get angry and call me out on it.

Or there's always the choice of a not-so-hostile confrontation. Personally, it's always been my experience, at least in arguments/debates that the minute you insult your opposition or belittle their side of the argument is the minute you've lost the debate, because the nature is to shut down and not listen when someone is being rude and just be like "well so-and-so is just being an asshole so I don't have to listen."

I mean, I used to be pretty ignorant and conservative too but getting me to really listen to the other side has always been a case of logical points being brought up and blah blah personal anecdotes don't hold much weight.

I'm not saying that a hostile confrontation can't work (getting mad can be super very effective, usually depending on your demeanor 99% of the time), I just wanted to point out that the decision wasn't so much a binary "let it go or get mad" option.

[shiney]

So because I'm not in a minority somewhere, I should have to tiptoe around what I say, taking into account the potential that someone MIGHT get offended by a word or nomenclature I use, and instead strive to use vanilla terms that are either not as effective or not as descriptive to get across the point which I am trying to make? Saying women are emotionally unstable is a crass generalization so it's a poor example. Ghetto rap music as a phrase is derogatory in itself, classifying a subgenre of people as living in the ghetto, so it's a poor example. Both of those terms already have negative connotations before using them. The term or word abnormal may relate directly to something that is, in fact, not normal. Just because I'm not a gay mexican black woman shouldn't mean I need to constantly censor myself to I can preserve the ego of people who might take offense at something. I repeat my position that people need to pay attention to the speaker.

A large problem with this is communication over the electronic medium, where we lose out on tone, inflection and body language, which themselves actually comprise the vast majority of interpersonal communications, so arguing a lot of this over the innernet is difficult when a discussion is largely data.

Your argument is you want people to get pissed off at you when you offend them. That isn't the argument I'm trying to make, which is you shouldn't censor yourself to not offend them. If you did that, then you never would have changed, because you'd have never said the viewpoints that offended them to begin with.