I honestly thought I was conducting myself with poise and respect. But you, sir, have punctured my bubble. I shall go off in a huff! 
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Good on you! 
Comics who explore provocative subjects aren’t risking their lives or safety or freedom, at worst they might be risking getting a few boos from an uncharitable audience.
Some decades ago comedians started finding out that bucking their teeth and yelling, “ME SO SOLLY FOR ME FLIED LICE!” wasnt going to fly anymore. And yet somehow comedy survived. Rock, Sienfeld and the rest of their ilk complaining about this are this generations “Flied lice” joke-makers noticing that the world is evolving without them. Comedy will continue to get by somehow.
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Zizek seems to be riffing on the argument that C S Lewis made:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
The part where I agree that there’s a risk is where it’s not so much about treating people with respect as making sure that everyone else follows your specific way of doing things, or risks public censure. It’s not enough to treat people with respect, you have to use the right language, which can change arbitrarily. This is not an authoritarianism based on centralised exercise of power, it’s one where accusing someone else is seen as a virtue, regardless of the sentiment behind their words. At the same time, nobody could argue against this because it’s about treating people with respect, not something like labelling people who disagree with you. It can get pretty farcical, as in the example of Tim Hunt (which had more to do with virtue signalling and stereotyping than treating people with respect).
On the other hand, there is a lot to be said for changing language; it does contain embedded assumptions that should be challenged and jokes that were accepted before were from a time when a lot of other things were considered acceptable that should not have been. The idea that smoking laws are overly PC disregards the difficulties some people have being in this kind of environment. Saying that smokers can smoke in that designated space over there is not trampling their rights, it’s protecting everyone’s rights. Good-natured jokes between people of different nationalities is one thing, but where there’s a power imbalance this is not harmless. Even if he made a friend of a disabled person by joking about his disability, Zizek disregarded the fact that he was speaking in front of hundreds of other people, and implied that their perspective was not important. If there’s one thick-skinned person, noone else has an excuse to be offended. Part of telling jokes is to recognise the hidden inequalities they can support; if it’s about treating people equally, this will probably require at least revision of the kinds of humour that that were accepted before.
Another criticism can be where PC language introduces a term that is euphemistic and can even be insulting to the people concerned:
Some individuals may feel that using language considered polite or inoffensive is unnecessary. However, it’s important to keep in mind that offensive language is offensive for a reason; various words and concepts used to describe disability all have their own histories and implications for people with disabilities (Linton, 1998). Being “politically correct” does not make a term automatically inoffensive to a group of people; indeed, many “politically correct” words and phrases used to refer to disability can actually be insulting to some of the people to whom these labels are attached.
Saying “differently abled” or “special,” for instance, may seem on the surface to convey that someone with a disability has positive qualities about them. However, terms like these tend to be euphemistic, and are not frequently used by the people to whom they refer (Linton, 1998, pp. 14-16).
The good thing is that these overcorrections are being corrected by listening to the people affected by them. Outsiders can’t necessarily tell why the difference between disabled person and person with a disability could matter, but after listening to the people affected by a disability, it can help us to be more sensitive and understand why someone would prefer one or the other (or neither). The same goes for different names for black or indigenous people. Not everyone will agree on the terminology, but it helps to give you a more three dimensional view of how the terminology is received (and why it might be good to come to a conversation without assuming a particular term).
Ultimately, a lot of the fears of people calling out against PC culture are not happening, and what is happening is previous barriers being broken down. The real risk I see is a backlash to PC culture that draws on the idea that it’s ridiculous, fake, restrictive etc., in the same way that a backlash against the EU used claims that were often at best misleading. I’d much rather live with PC culture with any niggling doubts slight objections than this “common-sense return to plain language”:
As plenty have said before me, if language doesn’t matter so much, why not make it Woman of the Year, even if it’s a man? I would say that those who oppose PC culture should do the same as those who are “just speaking their mind”. Be aware that people are seeing a less filtered view of you, and that isn’t necessarily a good sight. If you’re going to speak your mind plainly, be prepared to be criticised on it and be open to changing it based on that criticism. If not, don’t complain when people shun you for your honest bigotry.
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True, Ziz is picking up a similar idea there. I agree with your critiques, but wanted to add that it falls down for more reasons. First, whoever the perpetrators of PC are (and they’re usually “they”), they aren’t a state actor and have no actual capacity for tyranny or authoritarianism given the fact that they aren’t a nameable political entity with power either granted to or taken, but a hazy “them.” PC as moral villain is much more a conspiracy theory than a real problem in this sense. In the late '80s there was a movement of academics trying to get new more inclusive language accepted. That movement was dead by '92. The fear of tyranny by the vestiges of a dead movement are overblown.
Second, there are points where people really don’t act in their best interest and some kind of coercion does result in a better outcome. People may well not like paying taxes into social insurance programs they still benefit from, or paying for annual safety inspection on their car, or not being allowed to smoke on airplanes, or having to comply to fire codes, or many, many other things.
Third, the shift to inclusive language and away from terms with roots in past bigotries or with inherent bias is pushed as a greater good of inclusion and removing past biased language. It’s not being sold as “this is good for you,” so much as “consider how this language affects others and try something that’s less loaded with bias against others.”
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True that, but you’re assuming that the jokes which are now falling flat are all going to make women/people of colour/whoever else the butt of the joke.
What people were trying to communicate upthread is that jokes where racism, sexism, and other prejudices are the butts of the joke (ie: pointing out how illiogical and useless prejudice is) are also falling flat – often right after the setup line.
That is, the audience is assuming the joke will be racist/sexist/whatever even before it’s been told. They are slamming a comic whose politics probably have a lot of overlap with theirs.
Of course perhaps the argument is that the comic needs to learn to use more effective setups. Certainly that’s part of it. The other part is that it’s a valid observation that “PC” sometimes (not always!) comes to mean “we don’t talk about that topic.”
Which gets ugly, because then you get “I don’t see colour” and “polite racism” and “locker room talk”. Acknowledging racism and sexism becomes conversation not fit for polite society, so it only gets mentioned in impolite society. And impolite society will not examine and skewer prejudice the way a well-written-and-delivered standup set will.
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That’s all the examples provided as stellar examples of “free speech”.
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This was an excellent post, and then you capped it off with that comic. Perfection!
(Do you have a direct link to the comic?)
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Thanks! HT to @Missy_Pants for the comic, I thought it was great too.
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Clever. I disagree with you entirely - but I did chuckle.
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At least I got one laugh!
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Who was saying that? You? Just then?
That’s not authoritarian at all. But at least you couched your pronouncement of a capability to apply moral standards perfectly, for the benefit of all, against the machinations of caricatured foes, with “at least revision”. I suppose you mean ‘hate speech’ and who wouldn’t want to get rid of that? However, comedy in particular is situational and can be very dependent on context. See Louis CK’s bit where he uses racial slurs in a meaningful way in the context of a joke.
But then you probably don’t mean that we should blanket ban such speech, just that which is truly intended to be hateful… I hope.
Which is why I think it’s counter productive to suggest that there is any intrinsic problem that arises out of prefacing the presentation of those concepts (especially to groups unfamiliar with them) with a dialogue that includes recognition of and prescriptions against the ways in which the system of language can be used destructively. To my mind, it’s not inane to think that the descriptive power of a system of language creates and manipulates power dynamics. The trick is to ensure that those power dynamics are manipulated correctly.
I agree with you and Zizek on this point.
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I don’t think I advocated banning anything, I just said that when we speak, smoke or do anything else that has an effect on those around us, we should carefully consider how it impacts other people. Where somebody wants to smoke in a theatre but it negatively affects other people, the fact that some don’t mind doesn’t mean that everyone else should have to put up with it. The same goes for language, and where people have been ignored and considered less important in the past, we should be doubly careful.
That paragraph wasn’t really a comment on what Zizek said – I’m inclined to agree with him to a point where it comes to e-cigarettes, although I’m actually OK about airlines being extra cautious about what is allowed on board. I did criticise him where he claimed that his speech wasn’t offensive because the person he was talking to directly wasn’t offended, since he also had an audience that he should consider. If that’s how they want to talk normally, I have no problem with that.
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Apologies. I saw a way to eventually agree with you by way of disagreeing with you, by amplifying your argument to absurdity. 
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Oh. I get it. You’re making the “political correctness made the alt right and Trump era” argument by using comedians failing to adapt their sets.
I remain unconvinced. The Trumpette garbage were always like that and smarter comedians will figure out a new approach.
Not in the least! That is absolutely not what I’m saying.
More like this:
Or: just because you’re left-wing didn’t mean you can’t be a jerk – or just plain wrong.
I guess this bothers me because I’ve seen people get shunned by people they completely agree with – even as use inclusive, respectful language. I’ve met controlling, abusive people who claimed to be pro-diversity and were absolutely orthodox about using acceptable terms – yet were very insistent other people conform to the behaviours they set.
I’m lucky that I’m not usually the one being attacked, but I’ve seen people who were definitely both left-wing attack each other viciously, each claiming the other was secretly conservative and just not truly committed to the cause.
Critiquing is one thing, but this reductionist “if you don’t agree you’re just pro-Trump” isn’t very helpful.
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That’s not political correctness. That’s a common character flaw of the left. They would find ways to infight no matter what.
Things don’t go our way politically? Let’s blame each other instead of maybe accepting that there is no outreach to be had with some people.
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It does have to do with political correctness because so often it dissolves into nit-picking over terminology (which brings us back to stand-up comedy) and identity politics hair-splitting.
Look at this thread. Every time someone says “but sometimes PC language is used as a weapon instead of as a means to treat people with respect” they basically get called a bigot.
Words are powerful, but they are not magical. Delivery method and context must be considered in comprehension.
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[quote=“gadgetgirl02, post:214, topic:91700”]
Look at this thread. Every time someone says “but sometimes PC language is used as a weapon instead of as a means to treat people with respect” they basically get called a bigot
[/quote]This thread is terrible enough without basically making shit up.
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