PC or not PC ?

[garote]

I believe it was that venerable old film Crocodile Dundee II where a woman visiting a group of Aborigines attempts to take a picture of them and is told “you can’t,” by one of them.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she says with a mixture of politeness and condescension, “You’re afraid that the camera will steal your soul, right?”

“No,” says the man. “You left the lenscap on.”

The woman makes an embarrassed face, everyone laughs, and then they take the picture.

Now, basic politeness declares that the woman should ask to take a picture before doing so. At which point the man could have just said “No,” and there would be no misunderstanding about soul-stealing either way because he would not need to give a reason for declining. That’s obvious.

But if we skip over that and assume she didn’t ask, a question about political correctness comes up: Would the woman be an asshole for assuming that the man believes his soul is at risk? Or would the woman be an asshole for assuming he was entirely comfortable around cameras? Or is there no good assumption here, and instead she should ask what he means by “you can’t”?

Or is the correct reaction - and I believe this is the one that modern political correctness favors - that she should just shut the fuck up and not ask him why he doesn’t want his picture taken, and just not take the picture, because he said “you can’t,” and asking for a reason why is considered a microaggression?

While you're pondering the right move here, I'd like to throw in a few related questions to ponder as well.

There is political correctness, and there is call-out culture. Attempting to scrub the media and our language of damaging stereotypes is political correctness. "Naming and shaming" individuals or groups that employ these stereotypes is call-out culture. The two are almost always mixed these days, but it's possible to separate them.

How much of call-out culture exists entirely online?

If we could get rid of call-out culture but keep political correctness, should we keep it?

If so, should we keep the political correctness of the 90's, or the political correctness of today? Or are they identical?

Comments

[mahnmut]

You want my brain to assplode or what!?!

[garote]

A little assploding is perfectly natural! Happens in the animal kingdom all the time. Proust pretty much does it every 5 or 6 pages.

[johnny9fingers]

There is political correctness, and there is call-out culture. Attempting to scrub the media and our language of damaging stereotypes is political correctness. "Naming and shaming" individuals or groups that employ these stereotypes is call-out culture. The two are almost always mixed these days, but it's possible to separate them.

I think that is a good insight. The conflation of these two things has enabled the folk who want to use those damaging stereotypes in public piggyback onto the objections against call-out culture.

And most civilised societies/groups have norms of behaviour. For example, T_P is slightly more heavily moderated than 4chan, and behaviour here is expected to be different. We enforce our standards here without qualm, in fact they are part of the rules you agree to when joining. If people think that it matters very much, I suppose they could go around using the N-word or other offensive language; but I don't see much of that sort of behaviour around here. Everyone who is a member of T-P is perfectly happy to adhere to a set of rules which are pretty much PC in their entirety.

These points are interesting debating only if you think that language is capable of conveying anything more than a brute approximation of meaning; then arguments usually devolve to hair-splitting semantics and quests for definitions. Or sometimes a complete and utter philosophical refutation of the idea of completely unmoderated free-speech being a good thing; and then it comes down to where you draw your line in the sand beyond which you will not go.

We should remove damaging stereotypes from our language and culture. If that's political correctness then I'm all for it.

Should we hold folk to task over their opinions? Depends on the opinions, I guess. If they happen to be socially divisive and damaging to a selective part of society, then yes. If they are unjust or unfair, then yes again. If they are blatantly hypocritical yes too. But it doesn't have to be a confrontational or ill-mannered challenging of opinion.

We all challenge folk's opinions on here all the time; mostly we can manage with a bit of snark as the major weapon of a socially acceptable kind. The anti-PC brigade seem slightly more weaponised.

[garote]

Well it’s also a fact that this is an invitation-only group. How much of “free speech” still applies inside a voluntary barrier erected to keep the ruffians out?

[johnny9fingers]

True, and cultures aren’t invitation only; though some folk might prefer it if some were.

[garote]

There are shades of it with our border policy. It's way, way easier to emigrate and become a citizen if you have a relative who is willing to sponsor you, for example.

In spite of all the traveling around I've done I'm still not sure if it's better to twiddle the federal knobs towards "more discriminating" or "less discriminating". Every time I settle on a direction I run into a compelling counterexample.

[johnny9fingers]

Sometime or other you too will be red-pilled. When it happened to me I reacted exceedingly rationally and turned into Spock examining each hypothesis presented to me and giving a proper analysis thereof. And I don't suppose that most of those chaps doing the red-pilling had close relatives who not only fought against the Nazis, but helped prosecute them after the war, or were in chambers with folk who had helped with the prosecution. Some of us know, anecdotally speaking, what those folk did, and what ordinary human beings are capable of.

To me it is perfectly simple. I estimate the moral weight of each side of the argument. Then the practicality. When the two conflict, as they often do, IMO the moral argument always wins, because doing the right thing is right, if you will excuse the tautology, as well as a necessary part of leadership. Though that hasn't helped Mrs Merkel in the harsh and uncompromising new political environment of the Alt-Right era.

You should never, ever give in to evil and wrongness. But the world is as it is, and folk do what appears best and easiest for them.

[oportet]

At some point, the pendulum will swing the other way. We'll get so caught up in how every detail of life can be offensive to someone, we'll over-correct - and instead of a nice, even, 'try not to be an obvious asshole' approach to everyone and everything - we'll just stop caring as a whole.

[garote]

I think that was called “The 70’s” the last time it happened ...