PC Language Rules, Part Deux

I'm Leftist: I believe in affirmative action and other legal protections for women, ethnic minorities and non-cis-hets. I believe in higher taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations, and more spending, much more, on the social safety net, education, the transition to carbon-free energy, modernizing the grid, reforestation, afforestation, restoration of wetlands, getting Nazis off of police forces and innocent people out of prison, etc, etc. I'm completely in favor of more care, love and respect, much more, for those who are outcast, neglected and abused.

I am NOT in step with most leftists when it comes to PC language rules. Telling people that there is a politically-correct and a politically-incorrect way of phrasing things is not helpful with any of the goals listed in the previous paragraph. It's not helpful with anything at all, except for the power of those who impose the PC rules on the rest of us. It's a huge waste of time and energy for everyone else.

Political correctness is so stupid, and so many people submit to it, with conviction or out of fear, that it provides a lot of political ammunition to the Right. They can claim they they're not allowed to say this and that. That's nonsense, of course, like most of what the Right says. Everyone can say whatever they want, and take the consequences, now as always. The consequences now do not include imprisonment. Political correctness has not actually enacted any laws. But so many people voluntarily submit to its rules that the Right can claim that they're not allowed to say this or that without getting laughed out of most rooms.

In the mid-20th century, when there were actual laws against saying or writing certain words, Lenny Bruce and others heroically protested. Lenny spent a lot of time in jail for the sake of free speech. 

 

It was done then, it can be done again. For the time being, it can even be done without risking going to jail for it.

We really need to take the issue of free speech back from the Right. They're doin' it wrong. It shouldn't be something that's good only for those who already have the most power.

Is it so Important that the Dixie Chicks are Now the Chicks?

I'm not asking rhetorically. It's more like I'm asking for people's opinions, because I don't know what to make of the name change. One way or another, their new video, "March March,"



is badass.

Did they need to drop "Dixie" from the name of the band? Are Klansmen very pleased by this change, shouting, "Yes! Finally!" ?

Another thing that it makes me think of is that some people at some times in history would still greatly object to the name Chicks and call it degrading to women. "I'm not a chick -- I'm a WOMAN!" I say "at some times in history" because I don't know whether and/or how much these things have changed. I know that in 1989 and 1990, when I was 28 and 29, I was friends with a 19- and 20-year-old woman who got mad whenever I called her a girl instead of a woman, and the last time she got so angry that for 30 years I've been very careful not to refer to a grown-ass woman as a girl. Well, maybe I've loosened up about that a little bit in the past couple of years.

Anyway, in 1989 and 1990, this 19- and 20-year-old woman was a huge fan of Sinead O'Conner, so big a fan that she was seriously considering shaving her head, which was somewhat more unusual for women to do in 1990 than it is now.

And then in 1992, Sinead O'Conner released her 3rd album, and its title was Am I Not Your Girl? and I laughed and laughed and laughed, although I was still so scared of the white-hot anger of that women whom I had not seen for 2 years that I was still very careful to use the term "woman." In fact, by then it had become ingrained habit. Even though by then the Riot Grrrrl punk rock movement was underway, and then a little later there came the Dixie Chicks, now the Chicks,

and it seemed as if the term "girl" and other similar terms, like "chick," might have changed a bit in their usage. But I haven't actually talked with any feminists about this.

Hey, I could do that now!

We could all do a lot of talking to each other now about language and respect and preferences and whether I should have laughed so much when I heard the title of Sinead O'Conner's third album, and all sorts of stuff.

Be sure and watch that new video by The Chicks.

I Agree With John Cleese And DL Hughley That PC Speech Rules Are Bad

Cleese says that political correctness "began as a good idea." I disagree, I don't think it was ever a good idea. I think that the GOAL of political correctness is good: greater power and autonomy for people who historically have been abused and exploited. I'm 100% in agreement with that goal. I just think restrictions on speech are a particularly stupid and useless way to go about achieving that goal. You can use politically correct speech and still be a horrible, evil, hateful person. You can break every PC language rule and still be a good, loving person who enriches the lives of all those around him.

Cleese says you can't have comedy with political correctness. He's right. Well -- at the very least, you can't have comedy which is very funny at all.

Over and over on this blog I've praised Bob Fosse's movie Lenny, released in 1974, about Lenny Bruce, a stand-up comedian who broke every PC language rule and was a good, loving person who enriched the lives of all those around him, and about his fight for freedom of speech, and wondered whether that movie could even have been made after decades of political correctness.

Another comedian opposed to PC language rules is DL Hughley. Hughley and I are far from agreeing about everything, but, as he puts it: "Either you believe in freedom of speech or you don't," and we both do.

Some time during the last few years Hughley did a stand-up special for cable TV, on which he talked about the word "(n-word)" and how white people like me aren't supposed to use it. He said that the white people in the audience were getting all tense, because he, Hughley, was saying "nigger," and because everybody knew that Hughley and all the other black people were allowed to say it, but they weren't.

And then Hughley said something like, "But as soon as those white people are in their cars going home tonight, they're going to be all, 'Ohhhhh -- (n-word n-word n-word n-word n-word n-word) [...]'"

And I was offended when I saw that. I was all: I've never talked that way in my entire life. And it's true, I never had. Until then. But since I saw that comedy show, many times, when I've been alone, I've said, "Ohhhhh -- (n-word n-word n-word n-word n-word n-word) [...]" And laughed, and laughed.

And it's all DL Hughley's fault.

Anyway, when DL Hughley said that stuff on his comedy show, it seemed to have the same effect on the audience as when Dustin Hoffmann, playing Lenny Bruce in Bob Fosse's movie, intentionally and pointedly used every offensive ethnic slur he could think of in the space of 30 seconds or so: both times the audiences laughed hard, and seemed to relax. It seemed to lessen inter-racial tensions, not increase them. It seemed to get people to look at each other and think, Wow, what silly things make barriers between us! Smashing the barriers is exactly what PC-speech advocates are trying to do by trying to get everybody to stop saying certain words. Bruce and Hughley go 180 degrees the other way: the smash the barriers by using those very same words. They use the words in a way that takes the hurt out of them.

In the video above, John Cleese says he's been advised not to perform on college campuses, because the political correctness there has become so extreme that he's bound to cause a controversy. And when I heard him say that, I thought: All the more reason for you to perform there. If we're against PC rules, we should confront them. But I don't know whether Cleese in fact does disregard that advise, and perform on college campuses, in order to confront the political correctness with which he disagrees.

I should not neglect to mention that I don't know whether or not it's true that political correctness is particularly extreme on college campuses.

In writing this blog post, I debated with myself whether to write, as I ended up doing, "Ohhhhh -- (n-word n-word n-word n-word n-word n-word) [...]" or if I should write out the n-word. I don't know whether it's cowardly for me to praise Lenny Bruce and Cleese and Hughley for sticking their necks out, and then not stick my own neck out.

On the other hand, I don't know how funny this post is, and the positive effect that those comedians have had has been in large part because they've been so funny.

I'm conflicted about this. On the one hand I feel like a (p-word for female genitalia) for not sticking my neck out, for not putting my money where my mouth is, so to speak; and on the other hand I don't want to increase tensions instead of lessening them because I went about things in an unskilled manner. I know that good intentions by no means always equal good results. I've done a little bit of stand-up comedy myself, and I wasn't very good at it at all.

"Pope Francis' [BLEEP!] May Be Bigger Than Anyone Dreamed"

The title of this blog post is an homage to Jimmy Kimmel's brilliant "This Week In Unnecessary Censorship," a recurring bit on Kimmel's show in which video clips of mostly politicians, but also other famous people are shown, altered by Kimmel's staff with unnecessary bleeps and blurs to make it look as if, for example, George Bush Sr were swearing like a sailor, or as if Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain and Northern Ireland were mooning the public before hot cameras. Kimmel is too modest, of course: what he's doing is quite useful in pointing out how ridiculous censorship is. Here comes the headline from this blog, but uncensored. Clutch your pearls:

"Pope Francis' Reforms May Be Bigger Than Anyone Dreamed"

I bet a lot of you were thinking that the bleeped word was a lot naughtier than "reforms"!

What has prompted me to such disgusting behavior? The Ban Bossy movement, is what. Sheryl Sandberg, CEO of Facebook, wants us to stop saying "bossy" because it discourages girls from leading, or so some people say. I don't want to discourage girls from leading. But I also don't want people to tell me stop using this or that word. Telling me to do that is... Oh, what's the right word for something like that? ... It's on the tip of my tongue.

As I pointed out in two recent Wrong Monkey posts, here and here, and in other blog posts and elsewhere, I don't think that banning individual words is a great idea. Or even so much as a mediocre one. I agree with the goals of the PC speech movement: empowerment. Overcoming discrimination. Increasing people's respect for one another. Yes, yes, yes! Sign me up for all of that. But I think that the method of the PC speech movement, identifying individual words and then discouraging people from using those words, is just fucking awful.

You want to talk about language? Okay, let's talk about language. Let's get down and dirty and nitty and gritty and talk about it. Kim Keating has jumped aboard the Ban Bossy bandwagon. What's that? you never heard of Kim Keating? Me neither. Let's see how she describes herself in her HP Blogger's Bio:

"Kim Keating is founder and managing director of Keating Advisors. With over 18 years of experience, Kim serves as a trusted advisor to individuals and leading organizations. Under her guidance and expertise, Kim helps organizations develop a clear talent management vision and strategy. She specializes in working with leaders to align their strategy and build compensation systems that are objective, transparent, and support fair and equal pay. She help individuals negotiate more effectively and women, in particular, to level the playing field by providing customized compensation data."

Never heard of Keating Asvisors? Let's see how they describe themselves:

"Keating Advisors is a strategic human resource consulting firm that helps clients develop innovative talent management strategies and reward systems."

For all I know, Ms Keating and Keating Associates may be brilliant at helping companies, and, in particular, at getting fair and competitive pay for women. And if they are, that's great. That's very important work. But if after 18 years as a human resources consultant, she can't hire somebody who can write better than that, then she's one of the last people I want telling me how to use language.

We've got POETS for that sort of thing. I can't say it enough, I want the same things that advocates of PC speech want, and I couldn't disagree more strongly with their methods in trying to achieve those goals. I'm not going to support PC speech, and I'm not going to try to advance someone to the chairmanship of General Electric based on her or his skill at writing sonnets. And that's that.

An Open Letter To John C McGinley About His Article 'What Really Happens When You Use the R-Word'

Mr McGinley, I think you're an excellent actor. One example: your work on "Scrubs." Let me ask you something: what do you think of the hundreds if not thousands of times over the course of that series when your character called Zach Braff's character a "girl" and/or called him by a woman's name? It wasn't the high point of the series for me. The clear implication was that there was something wrong with being a girl and/or a man's being effeminate and/or emotionally open and sensitive. These sentiments were constantly slung af Braff's character in order to get laughs. I suppose we should stop using the word "girl." Clearly, using the "G-word" is hurtful.

What's that? I'm being ridiculous? You're right, I'm being completely ridiculous.. And you and all other advocates of PC speech are being just as ridiculous, because the problem is not particular words, it's how those words are used. It's racism and sexism and other forms of prejudice. The problem is a lack of love and a lack of common decency. It's using words to hurt. The words themselves are not the problem, and focusing on them in this way is only a distraction from the actual problem, and the entire PC-speech movement a huge waste of time. And I say all of this as an autistic who is occasionally called the "R-word," and who happens to find the word "autistic" very useful and doesn't want to see "the A-word" be tabooed. But that's the direction we're headed in.

We want the same thing here: more respect for each other, more caring in the world, especially for people who are relatively defenseless. Please don't think I would ever wish any hurt to your son. I wish you all the best, and I wish him a long life full of love and joy, surrounded by people with hearts as good as yours.

Open Letter To Amanda Gutterman

Dear Ms Gutterman, the following is in response to your Huffington Post article What I'm Actually Giving Up For Lent, about your participation in the campaign to stamp out "the R-word." I originally posted it as a Reader's Comment under your article, but it occurred to me that I might want to save it and publish it here, rather than wait and see whether it was going to pass through HP's moderation. In my original Reader's Comment I wrote "the R-word" rather than "retarded," but this is my house, and here people can say what they actually mean, so I revised my comment:

I'm against PC restrictions on speech. I'm sometimes called retarded, and it doesn't make me fall to pieces. Technically it's incorrect to call me retarded, because I'm a high-functioning autistic with a high IQ, but to some people, I seem retarded, and that's not going to change by tabooing the word. Will it soon be taboo for people to say "autistic," will we be pressured to say "the A-word" instead? It's ridiculous. You can use each and every un-PC word on a regular basis and still be a loving, nurturing person, and you can avoid them all and still be quite hateful. If you rub shoulders with celebrity supporters of causes like the Special Olympics, you might have occasion to talk to the Farrelly brothers, who agree with me on this subject. I suspect you might not want to talk to them because of that. I hope I'm wrong, that you're not that closed-minded. You wrote: "The Medievals [sic!] were right in that words have magical power in a way that is both social and scientific." No, medieval people were completely wrong about that. That's an utterly ridiculous thing to believe. The truth is closer to the opposite: words have MORE power to hurt when we taboo them. Not less. As always in discussions about things like this, I urge you to watch Bob Fosse's movie Lenny.People who watch that movie with an open mind might learn things about the benefits of free expression and the hateful ugliness of censorship.

PC Language Rules Are Wrong

American Congregationalist church communities tend today to be very liberal. Which is very good. It may surprise some people -- perhaps even some Congregationalists -- to learn that the 17th century English Puritans were Congregationalists. Including the Pilgrims. Including the authorities who presided over the Salem Witch Trials in 1692 and 1693. As far as I know, no Congregationalists today will try to kill you for being a witch. But many of them are strong advocates of PC speech, which to my thinking demonstrates an unfortunate persistence of self-righteousness and the desire to control the actions and speech and, yes, thought of their neighbors. Yes, there has been definite improvement in the progress from killing witches to advocating PC speech, but, yes, there is significant room for improvement still.

What got me thinking about this today is that I have been attempting to debate against a pronounced advocate of PC speech in the Readers' Comments at Huffington Post. I say "attempting," because, ironically, it seems to me, HP, whose moderation is very PC, has no intention of publishing anywhere near all of my comments about PC speech, even though I carefully avoided all non-PC terminology in those comments.

But, of course, if PC is not actually about avoiding bad words, but is an attempt to restrict the free exchange of ideas, then there's nothing ironic about it at all. It's not about being kind or caring, because, as we all know, PC speech can be thoroughly unkind and prejudiced, while spectacularly un-PC speech can be thoroughly kind and bravely loving. If we don't actually all know this yet, that's what this movie is for, which I very frequently recommend: Bob Fosse's Lenny, starring Dustin Hoffmann as Lenny Bruce. Watch it while you still can.

PC Speech

Someone mentioned that using the term "Moslem" instead of "Muslim" tends to correspond to less enlightened and more bigoted attitudes toward Muslims. I don't doubt that it generally does, because language usage and beliefs generally tend to be group phenomena. On the other hand, I may sometimes write "Moslem" because I've read a lot of books written in the mid-20th century and earlier, and the current preferred usage has slipped my mind. I apologize if I've caused offense in this way.

When I notice that the preferred name for a group has changed, I tend to change my usage. A more complete description of my situation is: I change my usage, and I resent it. I'm with most progressives on almost every issue, but I hate PC language rules. When this topic comes up I often mention Bob Fosse's movie Lenny, starring Dustin Hoffman as Lenny Bruce. I love that movie. In one scene, Bruce starts off a stand-up routine with a little speech containing every insulting term for ethnic groups you could think of, including an insulting term for his own ethnic group. He makes the point that they're just words, and that they hurt more when we taboo them, not less.

There's a musical from the 1970's called Don't Bother Me, I Can't Cope. It makes a similar point when a father remembers when he was a boy decades earlier, and he insisted on being call a negro. On the playground a white kid called him black and he hit the white boy in the eye. Then his son talks about how today, in the 1970's, he insists on being called black, and on the playground a white boy called him a negro, and he hit the white boy in the eye.

One more example of the silliness, that's right, I said silliness, of PC language rules: at the end of the 1980's you could infuriate a lot of feminists by referring to any full-grown human female as a "girl" and not a "woman." I knew one of those feminists, who happened to be a huge Sinead O'Conner fan, and in 1990 I infuriated her in that way several times without wishing to cause any offense. Her response was so angry that I changed my usage. Two years later, not only was grrrrl feminism everywhere, but Sinead O'Conner herself released an album entitled Am I Not Your Girl?

Back in 1990, after the last time I had forgotten and called my friend a girl and she became infuriated again, I apologized again and promised, again, to try to remember not to do it again, and then I asked her whether I had ever treated her disrespectfully, or as if I thought she was not an adult. She said no. I wonder if she got my point. I wonder if she thought about that conversation in 1992 when she learned the title of Sinead's next album.

Sticks and stones will break your bones, and words will hurt about as much as you allow them to.