Maybe the people who make such ridiculous claims think that their ‘sacred vows’ only have any meaning if that particular institution can be denied to others?
Like Tobin L said upthread, when you’re used to having all the advantages, all the time, actual equality feels like “oppression.”
Whenever someone says that all I hear is “My boyfriend is pressuring me to leave my wife!”
It only took one example to counter the implied narrative that “political correctness does not exist, righties made it up to claim victimhood.” I took that as the meaning of the previous poster, although I cannot speak for him.
And since a pro-life guy just got flagged out of existence in another thread for engaging in the same kind of snark the rest of us do, and I’ve been called out for using “hysterical” in its correct modern meaning (as Popo was just called out for using “articulate” correctly), I think political correctness denialism is itself an infinitely recursive hole of what Melz called the Persecution Olympics.
@Max_Blancke, you are right, obviously, that political correctness does exist, and my own experience has been that both the right and the left have obsessive, annoying language police who don’t like the way I talk and would like to shut me down.
But as @popobawa4u has already pointed out, if you allow yourself to be muzzled that’s not victimhood, that’s either apathy or cowardice.
Victim-blaming/shaming is awesome!
You presuppose victimhood, which was ruled out in context. I am not “victimized” by people criticizing my posts, nor by BB deleting my posts if they so choose. Failing to speak is apathy, which I am rapidly approaching, or cowardice.
Civility matters. People with differing views but a respect for civility can discuss their differences, and sometimes come to a compromise. Without it, people are more likely to resort to irrational outbursts, which further polarize their viewpoints, making compromise unlikely.
In a civil society, people with widely diverging viewpoints can occupy the same space without conflict.
If a civil society existed we wouldn’t need to get mad about the issues that mattered to us.
You prefer tone to justness, you really don’t care what happens to a person so long as you don’t have to listen to a raised voice.
Your opinions are no better for politeness.
That one drives me spare.
It seems to me that people in secular countries often don’t consider how much baggage they inherit from religious attitudes. It is almost as if the US simply filed the serial numbers off of Christian marriage and slapped a label that says “secular” over it, assuming that that really covers all legitimate eventualities. Technically, Hindus or Druids getting married would still be an affront to Christian vows, but the differences are waved off as being insignificant.
But when the people who choose to wed are the same sex, or more than two, suddenly the incompatibilities with religious marriage become apparent, with no cogent explanations why they should matter for secular marriage.
It’s one area where I think libertarianism is completely justified. If “marriage” is a contract between two (or more) people, then it is between them to decide what that consists of. Rather than some token thing determined by the state. If it is not a contract, but a ritual, this begs the obvious question of why to favor one groups ritual over another.
If I was being called out, then somebody should perhaps have articulated what bothered them. All I read and interpreted was an obvious reiteration of what I posted, with no further context or critique provided.
I did not draw attention to the word choice because I thought it was being used incorrectly. Its use was technically accurate, but in this particular thread was at best tone-deaf and possibly (considering the source) even meant to be provocative…and not in a positive way.
Ok I’m about to make a weird observation, so be forewarned.
Over the thanksgiving holiday we made an unplanned trip to Iowa (with our 3 kids) as my father in law is not doing well and some in the family think he won’t make it through the year. It went reasonably well, about as well as a trip with two four year olds can go, and they had a lot of fun because there were some other kids around for them to play with that were friends of one of the aunts. Two of these kids happened to be black kids.
I enjoy kids, so I was playing with them a fair bit. At one point I wanted my son or daughter(s) to sit with me (probably to calm them down, and briefly interrupt whatever crazy kid hijinks were ensuing) and they wouldn’t. So this 6 year old black girl says “I’ll sit with you” and sits with me, literally cuddling up to me. Now I love holding kids whether they belong to me or not, but it was strange because this is the first time I had ever held a black person. I mean I’ve known black people, I’ve been friends with black people, but I have never held a black person.
It was a strange feeling, to confront how “other” it was, and yet, at the same time, it wasn’t – I was holding a warm, breathing, loving kid, like any other. And I never would have thought about any of this if she hadn’t been around, decided she liked me and wanted to sit with me.
It really made me think about the way I saw other people. And how not being around different people affects you in ways you just fundamentally can’t understand.
Fair enough. You and I are parsing the conversation up to that point differently, and will fundamentally see this differently. I try to read each post of a user independent (emphasis on try) of anything from the past; unfortunately I’ve seen that user repeatedly make seemingly balanced comments only to throw it hard to one side in the closing line. I have no patience for that and cannot read their posts without context which is why I try to not respond to them. Hence the ‘I broke my own rule.’
Where and when you say something makes a lot of difference if something is offensive or not. If anyone operates under the delusion that Bb’s bbs is a fair and balanced kind of place I’d kindly direct them to review Doctorow’s posts to get a feel for the climate. I do not go into my brother’s fundamentalist Christian household and start knocking young Earthers. I do come here and snark the hell out of them.
I’ll admit I flat out didn’t understand that exchange at all. See ultimate point.
No argument from me on this, however it’s not what I see here. But that’s what makes horse races, right?
That mirrors my own experience as well. As a RTBA (borrowing the phrase) democratic socialist I’m a jackbooted moronic commie pinko wherever I go. Shrug.
This Steinbeck quote has framed my world view since I was a boy:
And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about.
So I freely engage in the hypocrisy of trying to silence ideas that run counter to a free and ranging mind.
failing to speak is very often a reflex conditioned by victimization. silence can be from apathy, but it’s not exclusively resulting from it.
Political correctness exists sort of, though its nature is the trick. By and large it’s just a means of being polite/empathetic about the effects one’s language can have on others, and in that sense it’s just normal human group behavior of establishing a set of manners for how we treat each other so we can get along. Using “articulate” when referring to African-Americans is impolite since it has its roots in an ignorant prejudice about African-Americans being crude, ignorant, and stupid, where a person’s taken to be unique as an African-American for not being crude, ignorant, and stupid. The term “hysterical” also has been used in a misogynist way to suggest women, unlike men, are incapable of controlling their emotions and it still carries that baggage. There’s lots of words that carry baggage. And, for what it’s worth, sometimes people can go overboard. The Political Correctness movement of the 90s did go overboard, and in so doing was mocked and ultimately rejected. The basic idea of not using language that was ill-mannered and put other people off by insulting them existed before and after (ethnic slurs were rude well before Political Correctness was a word), but after the PC movement ended, the label stuck around and groups pointing out rude speech now get labeled as PC. So if you want to be technical PC is dead, but it’s still around as an informal (and usually pejorative) label for things we’ve always had other words for.
The part that’s baseless is righties claiming victimhood. When @chgoliz pointed out @popobawa4u was using “articulate” to talk about an African-American they were giving a social signal/reminder about acceptable mores (one that was missed), not shackling their liberty. When people are rude and are called out on it, that can be socially uncomfortable, but it’s not victimization. And the way the term’s used by the right wing today is either propagandistic, a delusional fantasy of self-pitying victimhood, or some loose and usually confused extension of the term.
This is the year my ‘children’ will no longer go to an annual extended-family holiday event. The younger generation is now 16-26 years old and it turns out they aren’t as able to mask their prejudices in civility as the older generations. Thanks to Trump winning the election, my daughters were fearful enough that I was finally told that the conversations my daughters witness are very different than what the ‘adults’ say in the next room, where I am.
I didn’t know how bad it had been for them for all these years, because they were too polite to tell me (they thought it was important to me to go to the parties) and the older generation knew to hold their tongues around me.
Civility means my children suffered in silence for years. It also means that half of this country didn’t really know how much we are hated by the other half, until the election of Trump brought those buried hatreds to the fore. At this point, my opinion is that civility can DIAFF.
I’ve never been in a black person’s house. Not that I can think of. I’m not a racist, I swear. Indian, Asian, Jewish, Hispanic, gay yes. Black no. I’d like to change this but it’s a little awkward inviting myself over to my closest black friend’s house. We typically meet up for lunch somewhere. Maybe next time I’ll say “Hey listen. I’ve never been in a black persons house – how about we do something about that?” Or I can have him over a bunch of times and then wait for my opportunity.
I’m just going to leave this here as an observation in juxtaposition of Max’s requests for “politeness”.
Alright, so I did a web search for “articulate black” (try it!) to try to get some background for what @chgoliz neglected to articulate. One word can make all the difference in meaning:
Malcolm X was an articulate black man.
Malcolm X was articulate for a black man.
So, if people choose to equivocate these statements I think is disingenuous. The very reason why I respect that somebody carefully articulates their views is because they are making the deliberate effort to be thoughtful in how they communicate, including their choices of words. So I think it would be in poor form to casually imply that a person meant to say something less favorable than what they in fact did say.
One might suppose that context matters here. I do not encounter many people who I consider to be articulate. And by this I do not mean that they do so with the trappings of any particular culture or vernacular, but rather simply having the patience and deliberation to try to communicate effectively in whatever speech is natural to them. It has not been my experience that race or ethnicity make any essential difference as to people’s ability to communicate. And my respect for an effective communicator does not diminish the value, dignity, and rights of anybody else. FWIW I am biracial and not invested in “whiteness” nor the perceived propriety of European-style manners.
I hope that’s clear.
