Rant: PC culture has gone too far

[Crazy Lee]

I've always been a little cautious when I've heard conservatives/republicans complain about political correctness, because most of the time they are complaining about it, they're actually complaining that they can't be assholes without people calling them out for it. It goes like this:
Right winger: "Gay people are all pedophiles."
Intelligent person: "No they're not! You're a homophobe!"
Right winger: "Oh noes, my speech is being oppressed by political correctness! I can't hate anymore! What will I do?"
The typical mainstream right winger doesn't understand that people reacting negatively to their opinion is not political correctness, but a part of free speech. You can say whatever you want, even if it's stupid, sexist, hateful, homophobic, transphobic, or just you being a big dick, and people also have the free speech right to tell you off, tell you you're wrong, disagree with you, or tell you to shut up. Free speech goes both ways, and if you're offended by people disagreeing with you or calling you a biggot, you're just as big of a whiner as most tumblr users.

 

.....but then there's this, that I saw on my FB news feed from an autism support page.

Really? REALLY? Words like "Stupid" and "Dumb" and "insane" are ableist? Are you fucking kidding me?!

Yea, in some ways our society IS becoming too politically cor.... just fucking stupid. You know a society has become truly first world and a little too well off if, instead of worrying about being bombed to death in some civil war, starving to death in a famine, being murdered or tortured for worshiping the wrong god, or getting some plague disease, you can sit in your parent's house on tumblr and whine about words being used too much. Yea, enjoy your "suffering".

[Conker]

It IS a bit crazy. There's a psychological theory about this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs

Basically that the more basic needs are met, the more we focus on ourselves and identity. In this case, all our needs are met that now we can be super offended by the word stupid!

As someone who likes language and poetry, it's really annoying to see something like "crippled" get taken off the table here. Dismantled and crippled don't mean the same thing. Calling a handicapped person crippled? Yeah context says that's maybe not something you should do. But using it to describe a building or economy? It's a valid word. Same goes for insane and psycho.

And I'll never stop saying retarded because it's just so fun to say.

[Alexxx-Returns]

It makes me sick to think that people actually try and empower and support us autistics.

[Crazy Lee]

11 minutes ago, Conker said:

It IS a bit crazy. There's a psychological theory about this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs

Basically that the more basic needs are met, the more we focus on ourselves and identity. In this case, all our needs are met that now we can be super offended by the word stupid!

As someone who likes language and poetry, it's really annoying to see something like "crippled" get taken off the table here. Dismantled and crippled don't mean the same thing. Calling a handicapped person crippled? Yeah context says that's maybe not something you should do. But using it to describe a building or economy? It's a valid word. Same goes for insane and psycho.

And I'll never stop saying retarded because it's just so fun to say.

I have noticed that the richer a society is, the more they tend to ponder/complain about things like human rights, animal rights, veganism (thinking it's cruel to eat an animal instead of "I'm starving and this animal looks delicious"), environmental causes, ect. Of course developing cultures can care about some of these things if it directly affects them, like a poor country being environmental because some company sticks a factory next to their village and now their fish have 3 eyes.

And I've seen people get offended by the use of the word "rape" to describe destruction and damage, even though that was the original use of the word ages ago. The name "Rape of Nankin" becomes offensive but not the actual event that happened.

[Enigma]

Right wing people just like to instill fear or controversy to get attention. PC people are squishy little assholes that try to make the world a padded room. Fuck both of them.

Relevant:

[#00Buck]

Yo that's retarded. 

[Rukh Whitefang]

Kids these days need to grow a spine. Cannot tell you how many millennials I have come across that have a thin skin and are offended by the stupidest things.

[Conker]

1 hour ago, Rukh Whitefang said:

Kids these days need to grow a spine. Cannot tell you how many millennials I have come across that have a thin skin and are offended by the stupidest things.

It's funny because at work, I am that person to an extent. I work with some older maintenance guys who are pretty stuck in their ways and say some fairly offensive shit by Tumblr's standards, though I'm also smart enough to not ever say anything.

Plus, I like using the word "pussy" as an insult

[LazerMaster5]

And here I was expecting a rant on computer gamers. Oh well.

Stupid is as stupid does.

[Zeke]

Both sides are twits, IMO.

 

[Zaraphayx]

Don't worry guys Trump will save us. :^)

[Hux]

It's not like anyone is trying to force you to not be an asshole IRL. Heaven forbid those crazy SJW's get offended when you treat disabled people as your inferiors.

[Another Ampers&]

3 hours ago, #00Buck said:

Yo that's retarded. 

don't ever ask me for a favour again

[Butters]

Sounds like you're getting old fast, OP. Those kids and their damn changes!! There are a lot of terms we don't use anymore. 

Can anybody think of some? ;3

[LadyRadarEars]

9 minutes ago, Butters said:

Sounds like you're getting old fast, OP. Those kids and their damn changes!! There are a lot of terms we don't use anymore. 

Can anybody think of some? ;3

I live in the american south, most of the ones that you're probably thinking of still get used around here, increasingly so in the poorer areas :V

[Vae]

More than half of these words apply to me,
and this level of paper-thin constitution offends me.

[Toboe]

5 minutes ago, Vae said:

offends me.

Good

[Toshabi]

Toshabi still says "That's so gay" when a Reaper get Play of the Game for pushing Q and "Quit being a fag" when someone is acting like a dipshit, despite Toshabi being ultra mega gay. 

[Tsuujou]

saywhatiwant

[Falaffel]

I dunno, mate. I prefer whiny twits complaining about words to worrying about bombings and famines. 

Like, I agree that PC people can be annoying, but what is this statement?

13 hours ago, Crazy Lee said:

You know a society has become truly first world and a little too well off if, instead of worrying about being bombed to death in some civil war, starving to death in a famine, being murdered or tortured for worshiping the wrong god, or getting some plague disease, you can sit in your parent's house on tumblr and whine about words being used too much. Yea, enjoy your "suffering".

If calling a kid retarded is the worst thing we're worried about, I think that's pretty great, honestly.

[kazooie]

12 hours ago, Rukh Whitefang said:

Kids these days need to grow a spine. Cannot tell you how many millennials I have come across that have a thin skin and are offended by the stupidest things.

oh man, the other day i saw someone get offended by a random-ass facebook post, can you believe it?

 

kids these days...

[Faust]

I can understand why a lot of those could be taken as offensive, but as has been said some of those words do not mean the same thing as the words they're supposed to replace, and words like 'Stupid' are necessary to the language. Personally if I was crippled, I'd be more offended if someone referred to me as 'dismantled' - I mean seriously, I'm not a frigging machine here, you can't just unscrew my kneecaps! It's condescending! The word 'Crazy' actually has positive connotations in most use cases - oh you so crazy!

But I think it ought to be mentioned that these things go in phases. Yesterday's euphemism becomes today's swearword as it slowly supplants the previous word that was originally thought too rude to say. A great deal of this is to do not with the words themselves - they're just noises to which we ascribe some communicative value after all - but the context, tone and spirit in which they are used.

The 'N' word is the classic example - a word that is now rude unless a black person says it. I also knew one person who was offended when black people in general were referred to as Nigerians, even if they were from other parts of Africa or the rest of the world. It's not because the words are in and of themselves offensive, it's that people generally use them in an offensive manner so it is assumed that anyone using the word at any time intends offence.

Give it time and I suspect every word in the left column will move into the right and be supplanted by new ones - or ones that are currently in the right column!

[Faust]

Another case in point: Gadzooks was at one point thought terribly offensive because it's a corruption of 'By God's Hooks' (i.e. the nails they used to pin Jizzy Crizzy to two bits of Roman two-by-four) - these days it just sounds silly and many people don't know what it means.

[Feelwell]

9 hours ago, Butters said:

Sounds like you're getting old fast, OP. Those kids and their damn changes!! There are a lot of terms we don't use anymore. 

Can anybody think of some? ;3

Please, thank you, for starters.

Also conundrum, jolly, and swell.

[Vallium]

I think the use of language isnt the language itself, but the context irs used in and who its used around.

The problem is not words being said, but the idiots not knowing when to say certain words and the other idiots getting their panties in a twist with the word itself and not paying attention to the context in which said word was used (i.e is it hateful, scornful, meant to put down? If not, gtfo it)

[Feelwell]

8 hours ago, Toshabi said:

Toshabi still says "That's so gay" when a Reaper get Play of the Game for pushing Q and "Quit being a fag" when someone is acting like a dipshit, despite Toshabi being ultra mega gay. 

Yea whats wrong with that Toshabi guy, right? That dude is crazy.

Idk why they're separated into two posts, I blame @#00Buck because it's obviously his fault.

[PastryOfApathy]

lol tumblr

[Dr. Doggo]

actually i find it annoying how people throw "autistic" around as a way of saying "retarded" in an attempt to sound clever and sophisticated

its ridiculous because these people have no idea how autism actually works

like if you're going to describe something as autism, point to something like somebody playing minecraft for 12 hours straight or being as nitpicky as i am in this post, not because you think something's stupid

if you're going to throw a term around, at least get some kind of basic grasp on its definition

[Enigma]

24 minutes ago, Feelwell the Rabbit said:

Yea whats wrong with that Toshabi guy, right? That dude is crazy.

Idk why they're separated into two posts, I blame @#00Buck because it's obviously his fault.

Toshabi is Toshabi. You get used to it.

[Tsuujou]

38 minutes ago, Feelwell the Rabbit said:

Yea whats wrong with that Toshabi guy, right? That dude is crazy.

He big gay. :^)

[evan]

at any rate i expect there to be a continuation of people having too high a standard for the semantics of language and other people getting either upset or exaggerated about it all the way until i die

 

so far there are no signs of this not being the case

[#00Buck]

49 minutes ago, Feelwell the Rabbit said:

Yea whats wrong with that Toshabi guy, right? That dude is crazy.

Idk why they're separated into two posts, I blame @#00Buck because it's obviously his fault.

Why the basscrimination? All this fishecution is too much for me. It's just retarded. 

[MalletFace]

Behind what many consider PC, there is actually a history of people being more than offended by a word and actually being oppressed. The term PC isn't that old, but people have been complaining about the same idea since the beginning of the enlightenment. People have been complaining about the youth being thin-skinned since at least since the beginning of early Greek civilization.

To start with something not on that list to make it easier to understand, "persons/people of color" has often been labelled as PC. Work towards limiting use of color descriptors like 'black' and outright slurs like 'negro' has been happening in the independent U.S.A. since before the Constitution. This work started because slave laws made distinctions between persons of color and blacks/negros. While they largely failed in ending the use of 'negro,' they did cause some outrage in Southern states that claimed their right to free speech was being infringed upon by Northern agitators. Very quickly, they changed their laws in an attempt to make all terms for African Americans similar to 'negro.'

Quote

     1. Be it enacted, &c., That each and every negro, mulatto or person of colour, imported into this state from any foreign port or place, for a slave, or to be held to service or labor, since the first day of January, in the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, contrary to the provisions of an act of Congress, entitled "an act to prohibit the importation of slaves into any port or place within the jurisdiction of the United States, from and after the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and eight," approved the second day of March, 1807, (except as hereinafter provided,) shall be sold and disposed of for the use of the State.

They were also breaking Constitutional law in writing this law, but that's another story.

All of the terms in that graphic have a history that doesn't involve slavery, but is pretty gruesome all the same. When states considered persons unfit to care for themselves or criminally unfit to take part in society, many of those terms were used in legal texts to condemn these people to prisons. Even families could use these laws to have their relatives taken, should they not be able to care for them.

For example, if you had a dumb (deaf/mute) relative, and it was becoming difficult for you to care for them, you could send them to a prison to be 'cared for.' As they could not speak or hear and were likely not able to read or write, dumb persons were frequently assaulted, underfed, and harassed by those that ran the prison. It is the same case for persons with other disorders

If you've never heard of Dorothea Dix, she's one of the major catalysts for mental care reform in the U.S. during the 1800s. While she did help move ill from prisons to actual hospitals, she was criticized for the terminology she used, which was common, but equated mental illness with Christian sin and demonic possession:

"Wardens are by law compelled to receive, and Masters of Alms-House not to refuse, Insane and Idiotic subjects in all stages of mental disease and Privation."

In the 1940s, terminology (and treatment) for the 'mentally ill' changed thanks to the Civilian Public Service, the National Mental Health Foundation, Eleanor Roosevelt, and many others. Where once there had been lobotomies and shock therapy for the bipolar, dumb, idiotic, etc., there were now pharmacological treatments and engineered alternatives for those with bipolar depression, that are deaf/mute, with antisocial personality disorders, etc. The states fought against this change, but they eventually gave up when they realized the strength and will of the wartime government, FDR, and Eleanor.

I don't blame anybody for asking others to stop using terms that were once (or are) used to condemn them and those like them. It isn't them being thin-skinned; its them attempting to make themselves a new future that doesn't hold onto the bad of the past.

I don't blame people for resisting that change, either. Resisting such change is natural; however, natural is not always correct. Just as 'negro' became unfavorable, I expect the rest of these terms will too. Language tends to work in favor of the most common people of the younger generation, as many 'reformers' and 'catalogers' of English have found. There's a reason Chaucer wrote in common English, and not 'proper' English or standard French.

[Butters]

13 hours ago, LadyRadarEars said:

I live in the american south, most of the ones that you're probably thinking of still get used around here, increasingly so in the poorer areas :V

I lived in the most racist/homophobic part of South Carolina for most of my life. And you ain't telling no lie. (But its said behind closed doors of the nicer places too) 

[Zeke]

There are some areas in the south and midwest that still refer to blacks as negroes, which carried over from their grandparents and so-forth. 

 

3 hours ago, Sir Gibby said:

actually i find it annoying how people throw "autistic" around as a way of saying "retarded" in an attempt to sound clever and sophisticated

its ridiculous because these people have no idea how autism actually works

like if you're going to describe something as autism, point to something like somebody playing minecraft for 12 hours straight or being as nitpicky as i am in this post, not because you think something's stupid

if you're going to throw a term around, at least get some kind of basic grasp on its definition

I hear it often and also misused a lot on WoW as a pejorative and it peeves me when they do it;

"You autistic fucks stop fighting in mid"
"Don't be an autistic fuck and stand in fire"
"Autistic fucks wiped us"
"I would be enjoying myself in this dungeon if it weren't for the autistic hunter and barrage pulling everything"

Of course when you counter with:

"Most autistic players usually play better than the standard player base, so using it as an insult's asinine."

Or 

"Calling someone autistic for being obvilious or making an honest mistake isn't nice" 

You do get yelled at for being a commie "fag" restricting their speech, mostly by the anti-PC crowd who feel that they shouldn't be reported for calling someone a slur or harassment.

My opinion is that a lot of the anti-PC crowd want to remain in that 13-14 year old mindset where they can say or do anything online without recourse and take some personal responsibility. The PC crowd needs to sometimes just take a cup of "Shut the fuck up" tea, grow a thicker skin, and understand that not every PoC needs to be coddled. 

 

[MalletFace]

53 minutes ago, Sylver said:

If many people misuse a word they just update the dictionary to include that usage. 

A word conveys information; has the conveyance of information been hindered by creating new words or using them in a different way, as we have done so throughout history? No. 

i.e. Idiots are offended because they believe a word should only be used to convey one thing and one thing only.

Insults tend to come from something that means one thing, develop another meaning, and then loose the developed meaning.

For example - but in stretched relation to the original topic - it became an insult in Old English to declare that a person has gesóþsægd (spoken the truth). The remnant of this in English is the archaic and ever-fading use of soothsayer instead of prophet. Soothsayer as an insult died out during the enlightenment when a new generation ultimately decided the new use was unhelpful and an easy way to dismiss a portion of the population.

A word doesn't have to keep a meaning it develops, and new meanings actually frequently fade away. If a large group of people decides a word should revert to its original meaning, that is exactly what will and should happen, and that is how it has gone in the past.

[Mikazuki Marazhu]

That's ironic. This place is full PC Liberals and SJW's :V

[Zeke]

Just now, Mikazuki Marazhu said:

That's ironic. This place is full PC Liberals and SJW's :V

It's actually half and half.

[Mikazuki Marazhu]

5 minutes ago, Zeke said:

It's actually half and half.

I have yet to see a poll about it

[Zeke]

9 minutes ago, Mikazuki Marazhu said:

I have yet to see a poll about it

Then make one.

[Mikazuki Marazhu]

3 minutes ago, Zeke said:

Then make one.

Nobody care about me so no need :V

[Sidewalk Surfboard]

PC culture tends to coddle people a bit and it's quite an echochamber. Of course, the other side has this as well, but the PC echochamber tends to be the more annoying one because of their tendency to be shitheads to people. There are many times where I've seen people who preach love and tolerance then go on to send death threats, say extremely hateful things, and doxx people they disagree with or who are the different sex/race/sexuality. It's just not right, and that's my major beef with this whole thing. I don't necessarily agree with a lot of the opinions they may have, but I'd be more willing to listen if people involved weren't like this.  Like I said, there are bad people on both sides, but I experienced this hypocrisy from a person for myself and it fucked with my head for months.

[Feelwell]

The heck does PC stand for anyway?

[Zeke]

3 hours ago, Feelwell the Rabbit said:

The heck does PC stand for anyway?

Politically correct.

Basically, you are refraining from actions or speech that may offend a particular group or groups. It can also include historical erasure to remove content that is deemed racist or offensive in any means. Nowadays, it's a pejorative term for extreme liberalism or remotely liberal ideals.

[Troj]

I'm a bad monkey, because I still say "retarded" on occasion, and I definitely use words like "stupid," "dumb," "crazy," "psycho," and "insane" on a regular basis.

Maybe I'm an out-of-touch asshole here, but these sorts of lists typically reek of bored, privileged 14-year-old Tumblrites trying their hand at Social Justice without actually having to consult with any actual marginalized people.

With the exception of "retarded," I can't recall anyone I know, have met, or have worked with clinically ever taking offense to the above words out of context.

[Onnes]

5 minutes ago, Troj said:

I'm a bad monkey, because I still say "retarded" on occasion, and I definitely use words like "stupid," "dumb," "crazy," "psycho," and "insane" on a regular basis.

Maybe I'm an out-of-touch asshole here, but these sorts of lists typically reek of bored, privileged 14-year-old Tumblrites trying their hand at Social Justice without actually having to consult with any actual marginalized people.

With the exception of "retarded," I can't recall anyone I know, have met, or have worked with clinically ever taking offense to the above words out of context.

It has the ironic consequence of promoting equivalence between words with extinct disability specific usage like "idiot" and those with extant usage like "retard" and the endless autism/asperger's references.

[PastryOfApathy]

>Say "jerk" instead of "pyscho"

THOSE MEAN TWO COMPLETELY SEPARATE THINGS!

[#00Buck]

Just now, PastryOfApathy said:

>Say "jerk" instead of "pyscho"

THOSE MEAN TWO COMPLETELY SEPARATE THINGS!

The whole idea is totally retarded. 

[PastryOfApathy]

6 minutes ago, #00Buck said:

The whole idea is totally retarded. 

M O D S !

[#00Buck]

Just now, PastryOfApathy said:

M O D S !

Mom!

Pastry is picking on me again!!!