PC
or Not PC?
1/10/07
Well,
that's what happens, I guess. You come out
generally as “against” something, and everyone else who's against that
thing assumes you're on their side about everything else in the
universe. In my case, I criticized PC, and then along came
the emails from people who wanted me to “criticize PC” regarding race.
In other words, to start saying racist
stuff. So, at the top of today's list of things it depresses
me to even have to explain: the fact that I think political
correctness goes too far sometimes doesn't mean I'm racist.
As far as what logical fallacy the people who assumed
otherwise were engaging in, I think it works equally well as either a false dilemma or an affirming the consequent.
Take your pick.
Yes, sometimes
PC overreaches and ends up doing more harm than good. Other
times, however, reactions are unfairly labeled “PC” when
they are
simply cases of people not wanting you to be an unfathomably huge
asshole.
Consider the case of a
little party recently
thrown by
some frat boys in Texas,
as
described in this article culled from the Associated Press:
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MLK
Party Causes Uproar on Texas
Campus
Jan 25, 5:47 AM
(ET)
By
JEFF CARLTON
DALLAS
(AP) -
Authorities at Tarleton State University
said they plan to
investigate a Martin Luther King Jr. Day party that mocked black
stereotypes by
featuring fried chicken, malt liquor and faux gang apparel.
"I
feel
like there is no excuse for this type of ignorance," said Donald Ray
Elder, president of the Stephenville school's chapter of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Photographs
posted on social networking Web site Facebook.com showed partygoers
wearing
Afro wigs and fake gold and silver teeth. One photo showed students
"mocking how African-Americans do step shows," Elder said. In another
picture, a student is dressed as Aunt Jemima and carries a gun.
"That
upsets me," Elder said. "That's someone who knows nothing about Dr.
King, because Dr. King was totally about nonviolence."
Wanda
Mercer,
the school's vice president of student life, said an investigation was
planned
into the Jan. 15 party.
More
than 400
students attended a university-sponsored forum Wednesday night that
Elder
described as "a shaky baby step" in bridging a divide between black
and white students on the campus, which had about 400 black students
out of
7,800 overall last semester.
Elder
said he
sensed a racial divide at the forum, with black students sitting on one
side of
the room and whites on the other.
"It
was
civil, but it also escalated into a shouting match," he said in a
telephone interview afterward.
Some
of the
students shown in the photos apologized, Elder said.
University
President Dennis P. McCabe said the photographs were reprehensible.
"I
am
personally insulted by these photographs and am disappointed that
Tarleton
students have demonstrated such insensitivity," he said.
Stephenville
is about 60 miles southwest of Fort Worth.
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I hope you’ll agree that
someone doesn’t have
to be a
member of the infamous “PC Police” to find this
troublesome — but the non-apology of one of the planners
included the inevitable crack about P.C. (“black or African American,
whichever you deem politically correct”), as if PC itself
were causing
the controversy, rather than racism. The closing of the
non-apology — “I do apologize if you
felt any
disrespect because
none was intended” (italics mine) — can be
roughly translated as “we
can do whatever the
fuck we
want, and if you get mad it's your own fault for choosing to get mad.”
The people whose idea this
charming soiree was are, I guess, attempting to
justify it
as an act of protest against PC, and defending their antics with the
usual “I
suppose you think we should
all go to jail,”
“Whatever
happened to Free Speech?”
and the like.
In
other words, their
explanation
is that they don’t
have a problem with Black people themselves,
just with PC.
....Which is kind of like
saying you don't have a problem with your neighbor, you just coated his
house in grape jelly and bullet ants to protest zoning regulations.
I'm sure once you explain that to him, he won't be mad
anymore.
Okay, no, I don’t think they should be in
jail.
No, I don’t think it should be illegal to
do
this. I'm are also
not going to call them
“insensitive,” because I don’t call
people “insensitive” here — I just call them retards,
and the people who
threw and/or attended this party are retards of the highest order. I
think that people
should tell them to
their faces that they are retards 24 hours a day for the rest of their
lives
(if they ask you to stop, ask them “Whatever
happened to Free Speech?”,
a sentiment with which
they are no doubt familiar). I
think that women should refuse to fuck
them, and that employers should refuse to hire them (if they say this
is
unfair, simply respond that you are against quota systems for retards
and honor
the rights of businesses to hire whomever they please, another
sentiment with
which they are almost certainly well acquainted).
I
would
say that I hope someone kicks all their asses, but if I said that, and
then someone did, they might be able to sue me. It
would be fun to respond to the lawsuit by saying “But
I thought you thought society had
gotten too
litigious! Shouldn’t
you be taking personal
responsibility for the consequences of being retards, instead of suing
me?”, but I’m sure these guys’ dads are richer than my dad, so
I’d rather just
not end up in court with them to begin with.
This is not because they “offended” me, or
“made me
cry.” If I saw a
bunch of people
rolling around on the ground clapping arhythmically and singing
“Rubber Ducky”
while pissing their pants, I would not cry or be offended — I
would just
naturally assume that they were retarded.
So,
one more time: if you are trying to demonstrate
that you think a
rule or attitude is unfair, it is retarded to take it out on the people
that
the rule or statute is designed to protect instead of on the people who
made
it.
This
clarification, though, assumes that their
“we are just
anti-PC” explanation is actually the truth,
rather than the truth being that they are in fact actually
racist and are just using
“anti-PC” as
a cover,
which I have to admit
seems more
likely.
After all, I'm as anti-PC as anybody, and
I don’t
pull shit
like this. Why? Because I'm a smart person
who is actually simply anti-PC, for rational reasons, and not
a bigot using
“anti-PC” as a cover. If
these guys were really
just anti-PC, then it would probably have occurred to them
that the school is now going to have
no
choice but to respond to this by
becoming a million times more
PC. I cannot
stress this
enough: if
you are anti-PC, because you feel
like you are not allowed to say what you want to say, then just do what
I do
and calmly
fucking explain what it is you
want to say, in a neutral environment like the web, and be willing to
listen to
people who disagree, instead of
breaking out the burnt cork and
watermelon.
I've explained this elsewhere on the site,
but once again I'll mention that I can’t believe how misguided the
Conservative “Whatever
happened to
Free Speech?” rhetoric
is. The right wing
was yelling it after
the Michael Richards incident, for example — but what the fuck
were they talking
about? Was Michael
Richards arrested
for what he said? Is
Michael Richards in jail? No.
Is
anyone saying that he should
be? No. So, what
the fuck do you mean by
“Whatever
happened to Free Speech?”,
because Free Speech only
means that you can’t
go
to jail for what you say.
It doesn’t
mean people can’t
be pissed
at you. And
anyone who plans on yelling “Whatever
happened to Free Speech?”
about this horseshit at
Tarleton State, I refer
you to the above explanation — as I will no doubt have to
do again,
the next
time someone pulls some shit and
you all start yelling
“Whatever
happened to Free Speech?”
after
people naturally
get mad about
whatever horseshit that’s
going to
involve.
So much for them.
Anyway, this incident is a useful example with
which to
clarify my
stance on PC as it concerns race issues, which is as follows: To
the best of my
knowledge, there has been
no significant “PC Overreach” where race is
concerned that is hurting society
in any way. Remember,
when I say
“hurting society,” I mean “causing
people to believe things that are not
true.” In order for
PC efforts
against racism to be “hurting society,” there would
need to be at least some
racist ideas that are true — and, as far as I have been able
to discern with
either research or logic, there
are no
racist ideas that are true.
This
doesn’t
mean you can’t criticize
people’s cultures,
because obviously
there can be problems with anyone’s culture,
but I am defining “racist” here as being
concerned with genetics,
and, to
reiterate, I can find nothing
to
support the validity of any
racist
claims with a genetic
basis. Therefore, PC as concerns race is not an
issue
for me, at least
not in any sense beyond a general prescription that all good-faith
opinions
about any
sensitive issue, race included,
should be entertained with an
open mind, and that someone should never be assumed
to be racist just because you suspect
X, Y, or Z about what they might
be
trying to imply. I
trust that no-one of average capability or
higher will have any trouble distinguishing cases covered under this
caveat
from instances of deliberate retardation with malice aforethought, as
in the
excerpted story.
PC as concerns issues of gender, however,
is a
different story.
Recently, I was helping one of my comp
students try and work out a thesis. I
asked what
she was planning on writing about, and she said “the
ways that society objectifies women.”
Okay, no problems so far — it's a legitimate issue and a common topic. When I asked
her to expand on what she meant
by that, however, the problem became clear.
The
young woman thought a moment, during which she
became visibly angry,
before finally exclaiming “I see all
these
women walking around in short skirts and high heels and
they’re just WHORES!”
Whoa. Okay,
let’s
back up here.
Her initial
point,
as stated, sounded like a (legitimate) feminist argument about women
not being
viewed as whole and complete people — as I said, no problems
so far. Her explanation
of what she meant,
on the other
hand,
was a super-repressed right-wing argument about “whores.” And
we’re not
talking about just thinking it’s gross when someone gets fake
boobs the size of
basketballs here — we’re talking about a young woman
who thought
she was making a feminist
point, but was actually just being moved
to white-hot rage
by the
existence of short skirts.
And, unlike our gracious hosts at the Texas
frat house, this person was not trying to protest
against PC — she was trying to be
PC. This is what
this perfectly sweet
and intelligent young woman thought feminism wanted
her to do. This is
how she thought she was supposed to combat
objectification — by
screaming “whore”
at women who wear
short skirts and high heels. In other words, the polar
opposite of combating objectification.
"Yep, you're
sluts. Feminism achieved!"
I think I understand what went
wrong here. Since
Feminism is supposed to help women, it
seems logical to assume that it would be for
things that make women feel comfortable
and good,
and against
things that make women feel uncomfortable
and bad. And,
if you happen to be
a woman, you would probably phrase this to yourself as
“Feminism
is supposed to be for
things that
make me
feel comfortable, and against
things that make me
feel uncomfortable.”
And
here’s where the trouble starts. If
you are a teenager, and insecure
about yourself, specifically
with regard to your appearance — which
virtually all
teenagers are, both
female and
male — then,
obviously, sexy
people of your own gender are going to make you feel
uncomfortable.
And this sucks, but
it
is an inevitable part of being
alive. What no-one
seems to be able to
say here, and what feminism has been in a no-win situation about for
quite a
while, is the following: just
because
something makes
teenage girls
uncomfortable, that doesn’t
mean
it’s wrong — and
it certainly doesn’t
mean it’s sound feminist policy to lash out against it.
Boys go through the
same
thing, you know — we
just never, ever
talk about it. But
if we’re being
honest, we would admit that we can remember being kids and watching
Batman or
whoever punch someone so hard that they go
through a fucking wall and
thinking: “Shit.
I
am supposed to be able
to do that
when I grow up, or girls
won’t like me?” Indeed,
a lot of guys
never get over
this insecurity. Those
are the guys who
make fun of sports. It’s
just that they
don’t develop an anti-sports philosophy and call it Masculinism,
because who would buy it? Who
could possibly
believe
that it’s pro-guy
to not
like sports? I
guess
if most guys were so insecure about their physical abilities that it
made them
hate sports and the guys who played them, then people would
buy it — but this isn’t the case.
Maybe
it’s because guys just
aren’t as
scrutinized as girls, and so we never fully come to grasp all the ways
in
which we don’t measure up to hotter guys — but, for some reason, a
300-lb guy who never gets out of
his recliner can watch a world-class athlete in flawless physical
condition on
TV and identify
with him.
Of
course,
there’s something women can do
about this, if you want: start making fun of guys who aren’t
in flawless
physical
condition. Start
talking about how gross
they are at top volume 24/7, and never sleep with any guy who
isn’t hot. After
all, if you’re still going to fuck
them, there’s no reason for them to change.
To that freshman
girl trying to write that paper, the fact
that people like fucking
seems like
a one-way street: it inconveniences her,
because she has to compare herself to the “whores”
in their talons
hauts,
but it doesn’t
inconvenience guys.
In reality, most of us guys actually
spend our entire lives banging our heads against the wall because we
know we’re
never going to get to fuck the girls she’s pissed about, but she
doesn’t know this. She
thinks we all get to, hence the
whole “whores”
thing.
But we don’t.
Not
all
men get to fuck them, and not all women get to be them, but this
doesn’t mean they’re doing something wrong.
If I was a sexy
chick, I’d go around in
cute outfits too — why the hell wouldn't I? Unless, of
course, I had allowed all the
people who don’t get
to fuck or be me to convince me that I shouldn’t.
But I’m too
smart for that — and, luckily, so
are a sufficient number of sexy chicks.
In
ancient Athens,
the hetairai — a
class of
educated, taxpaying
courtesans — were the only women allowed to participate in the
symposia. Now, I’m
not going to explicitly allege
that women who like to fuck are always smarter than women who
don’t like to
fuck — but hey, I’ll toss the idea out there. Some
schools of feminism
have already been on
this tip for 25 years, courtesy of Madonna, and even more got on board
in the
last decade, courtesy of Sex
and the City — drawing
a connection from the sex drive to the artistic impulse, and
from the
artistic impulse to the intellect…
Just
as men have always done because, hey, we had to convince women to sleep
with us
somehow.
In a nutshell, this
is the difference between
race PC
and gender PC All
race PC does is
forcefully assert that racist ideas are not valid — which is
fine, because it is
in fact the
case that racist ideas
are not valid. Gender
PC, on the other
hand, has had to negotiate the Scylla-and-Charybdis relationship
between the
fact that most women don’t consider themselves to be
especially attractive and
the fact that the ones who do still count as women and have the right
to act how they want just like other women do — and this
has led to the
dissemination of attitudes that are not logically justifiable.
To me, the rule of
thumb
(which is an expression that
originated with carpenters who used to use the distance from thumb-tip
to
knuckle to approximate one inch, and NOT from a law about what you
could or
couldn’t use to beat your wife, since there was never any
such law, and if you
think there was then it would still be in old law books so go find it,
hey did you find it yet, yeah neither has anyone else, because it's
completely made up, sorry)
is
whether the so-called “PC” is being used against
false things or true things. If
someone is telling you that something is
not true, and it really
isn’t true,
or that there’s a problem with something, and there really
is a problem with it,
then they
are not being “PC” — they're just being accurate.
Oh, and sorry for titling this
article via the “(blank)
or
not
(blank)”
device, because I
know it’s really cheesy, and it usually annoys me when people
do it too.
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