In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Hey, Retarded Homo AIDS Spreaders: Quit Making Me Be PC!

I wish I could have made up that insult all on my own, but I didn’t. It comes from a massive boo-hoo from a poor oppressed white guy who really doesn’t like it when you ask him not to call you the n-word — you’re limiting his right to free speech! Or something. He’s not quite sure.

The best part of the article is when he actually argues that “PC chokes off normal human expression by strangling natural speech, dividing humanity into imaginary classes, pitting races against each other, and polarizing politics.” So… the ideology that racial slurs and sexually harassing comments probably aren’t appropriate in the workplace or classroom pits the races against eachother and divides humanity into classes? Ok, I see his point. It was a whole lot easier when white guys were unquestionably at the top, and all the bitches and the coloreds knew their place.

He also goes the mature route of being politically incorrect in the column itself — because see, political incorrectness is great! And it’s funny!

So don’t go calling me racist, sexist, ageist, lookist, ableist, or heightist – especially if you’re some pipsqueak runt – because I’ll punch your lights out, you retarded hick.

(See, I thought that hicks voted Republican and hated political correctness too. I guess you learn something new every day).

In the good old USA, we celebrated diversity. That phrase is now just code for the idea that we should be happy to have millions of wrecked, fatherless families producing legions of very un-gay homosexuals spreading AIDS.

Yes, remember back in the day, when we had real diversity in places like public pools, water fountains, and lunch counters? You could just look at the signs — “Coloreds Only” — and see how unique and diverse the country really was. Now, because we aren’t allowed to call them negroes and coloreds without getting dirty looks, and because we can’t sexually harass women with impunity, they’ve gotten all out of hand and have started producing homosexuals by the bushel (and by the way, what is an un-gay homosexual? I really don’t get it. Does he mean “unhappy”?).

The whole “Being PC has ruined America!” argument is a little silly. Can I see how people would get tired of being super-sensitive to every little thing? Sure. But generally, I think most “PC” language just falls under the heading of basic manners and social skills. Using racial slurs, claiming that AIDS is a gay disease and sexually harassing people is generally considered rude — it’s not like liberals are going around slapping you on the wrist every time you call someone a retard, but it’s not considered acceptable in polite company. (And there are plenty of places where rude, un-PC language and actions thrive). It’s also not a violation of your free speech if I tell you that I’m offended by what you say — we’re both exercising our rights there. But when the rest of the argument is so backwards, I guess I can’t expect that this author would be able to grasp such a basic concept.

Posted in Uncategorized

63 thoughts on Hey, Retarded Homo AIDS Spreaders: Quit Making Me Be PC!

  1. …(and by the way, what is an un-gay homosexual? I really don’t get it. Does he mean “unhappy”?).

    I think he thinks the word “gay” is un-PC, while “homosexual” is perfectly PC, so he’s riffing on that.

    Not all that logical, but whatever, he’s a dumbass.

  2. Yes, remember back in the day, when we had real diversity in places like public pools, water fountains, and lunch counters?

    No.

    And come to think of it, neither do you, Jill.

  3. The whole “Being PC has ruined America!” argument is a little silly. Can I see how people would get tired of being super-sensitive to every little thing? Sure. But generally, I think most “PC” language just falls under the heading of basic manners and social skills.

    Decided upon not by the culture itself, but by the most easily offended amongst certain identity ownership groups.

    With the caveat that they can use the words among themselves.

    Sorry, but PC speak and identity politics HAVE hurt this country insofar as it has allowed signifiers to take over for intent, and has made offense a product of simple inference, putting the burden of proof on the utterer to defend himself against charges of bad faith.

  4. I don’t know what WorldNetDaily is paying this man, if anything at all, but it’s certainly not getting its money’s worth from him. He’s at least 15 years behind the times with this argument.

    He also goes the mature route of being politically incorrect in the column itself — because see, political incorrectness is great! And it’s funny!

    I disagree. The author actually dances around what he really wants to say. He makes mention of “persistent differences among races and ethnic groups”, but does not say 1) what races and ethnic groups 2) what those differences are and 3) what the causes of those differences might be. If he’s convinced that these differences are worthy of discussion, then it’s incumbent upon him to do so.

  5. While I am nonplussed at some of the excesses of PC, they’re not as all-invasive as so many would have it (“Roving gangs of thought police roughing up people who fail to adhere to multicultural dogma are ruining America!”). Most people treat “PC” as code for “I wanna talk shit, but I don’t wanna get called out on it.” Well, sorry, freedom of speech runs both ways. Criticism does not equal censorship.

    In the peaceful ’50s, for instance, a man who made a move on a woman in the company elevator would be rewarded with a swift kick in the shins.

    Don’t you just pine for the days when women would have to physically defend themselves from their male coworkers?

    So don’t go calling me racist, sexist, ageist, lookist, ableist, or heightist – especially if you’re some pipsqueak runt – because I’ll punch your lights out, you retarded hick.

    If this homespun rhetoric has already caused a serious fluctuation in your blood pressure, it may be that your sense of humor flat-lined long ago. Or you may just be the umpteen millionth victim of the new junk religion, Political Correctness (PC).

    I was unaware that bald threats were the height of humor.

  6. Evil and blue eyes go hand in hand.

    Even a shade of blue as lovely as yours?

    Christ, what a smooth motherfucker I am!

  7. What’s the deal with white people, anyway?

    Hey now, Allah. Let’s not go dragging skin color into this.

    It isn’t white people, per se. It’s Jooos. Everyone should be clear about that.

    I mean, Christ. Look at Goldstein.

  8. I’m a blue-eyed devil. I’m excluding you.

    I suppose I could complain, but that would mean I’m stifling the discussion of persistent differences between the blue-eyed and green-eyed. It’s clearly the natural order of things that I be excluded and learn to know my place. Pay no attention.

  9. Don’t you just pine for the days when women would have to physically defend themselves from their male coworkers?

    Not to mention the days when female employees subordinate to male supervisors faced the threat of dismissal when they had the temerity to resist their bosses’ advances.

    I mean, really.

  10. Lay back and enjoy it, Linnaeus. Otherwise you’re stifling my freedom of expression.

    Indeed. You’ll get no further complaint from me.

  11. Complaining about PC behavior is soooo 1990.

    The first time I heard the term it was used as in-group liberal teasing. It was soon co-opted by the right as some terrible burden liberals were imposing on everyone else who really had the best of intentions.

  12. Ron, that’s my understanding of the history, too. This, of course, counsels in favor of having no sense of humor. I have embraced the way of the Totally Serious, Insufferable Douche.

  13. We’re all just equally unfortunate victims of a repressive (patriarchal capitalist Christian) society.

    Oooh! The patriarchy (TM) even got a mention.

  14. Ron, that’s my understanding of the history, too.

    Lefties in Berkeley were mocking the concept of PC by the time I got there in 1982. It was seen by many of us as a substitute for actual thought. Rather than having to think about the actual meanings of words we might use, it seemed some people – probably apocryphal people, or engineering students – were incapable of judging nuance, and thus needed an operating manual to politics.

    And there were a few people who thought that changing buzzwords without any intellectual inquiry behind the change would actually change thought,* hence atrocities like referring to paraplegics as “differently-abled.”

    I was thus a little surprised in about 1985, when I first heard the term “PC” used by conservatives as a pejorative term to describe consideration and politeness.

    *which of course only works on Republicans.

  15. Chris, I have heard that the term actually originated with European Communists, in the post-war age of revoked party membership cards for taking the wrong position, and was revived as a leftie-on-leftie jab. I’m not sure that’s true, though.

  16. Thomas, I do think that’s correct in the main. I had always heard its serious use attributed to American Maoists, but we may well be in to urban legend territory there.

    Jeff:
    Keep your peanut butter of out my chocolate.

    HOMOPHOBE!!!1!

  17. A coworker of mine said “Political correctness is going to be the death of this country.” He might as well have had done with it and just said “liberals” instead of “political correctness.”

    Anyway, the only people who even use “political correctness” anymore (the words themselves, that is) are wingnut conservatives. It’s like a strawman chewtoy — they can’t let it go. I can only assume they’re just dying to call people “nigger” and “cripple” (“But THEY get to call EACH OTHER that!”) and are only kept in line by the… fear of… being lectured… by hippies?

  18. I thought it was vulgarity and lack of civility in discourse that was going to be the death of this country.

    Or maybe it was jazz.

  19. Anyway, the only people who even use “political correctness” anymore (the words themselves, that is) are wingnut conservatives

    IME most people who use the term are not lamenting the alleged inability to call folks “niggers,” or “cunts,” etc. Rather, they tend to be curmudgeonly rallying against a bland, “you’re all winners!!!”-type thought-policing/attitude/strain in culture which proceeds from an empty and hypocritical philosophical base purporting to embrace inoffensiveness above all (begging the question as to whether that is itself actually a worthy goal), but often reflecting underlying cultural biases and thereby effectively belittling those it’s supposed to protect–while simultaneously being used as a bludgeon to separate and maintain group identities over individuals, and to support the uneven consideration of “oppressor” and “oppressed” classes as opposed to maintaining consistent and general principles equally applicable to everyone.

  20. People with green eyes have no souls… they are just demons.

    SUBMIT TO THE DEVIL!!!!

    So, like, where are my demonic powers? I tried the eye-ray thing, but it didn’t work.

  21. Rather, they tend to be curmudgeonly rallying against a bland, “you’re all winners!!!”-type thought-policing/attitude/strain in culture which proceeds from an empty and hypocritical philosophical base purporting to embrace inoffensiveness above all (begging the question as to whether that is itself actually a worthy goal), but often reflecting underlying cultural biases and thereby effectively belittling those it’s supposed to protect–while simultaneously being used as a bludgeon to separate and maintain group identities over individuals, and to support the uneven consideration of “oppressor” and “oppressed” classes as opposed to maintaining consistent and general principles equally applicable to everyone.

    That is one LONG sentence… 😉

  22. So, like, where are my demonic powers? I tried the eye-ray thing, but it didn’t work.

    No powers for you until you submit. I have blue-green eyes… so I am a Demon Devil… I’m a Double D! Whoo hoo!

  23. I can only assume they’re just dying to call people “nigger” and “cripple” (”But THEY get to call EACH OTHER that!”) and are only kept in line by the… fear of… being lectured… by hippies?

    Or they fear losing their jobs for expressing an opinion. I have lost a job for expressing an opinion about the government of a foreign country (not its populace), and PC concerns were the reason why. (“What if one our Chinese customers heard that you had said that!”)

    Note, the employer had every right to fire me; no argument or complaint on my end.

    But concerns about “PC” aren’t generally about being lectured by hippies. They’re generally about losing jobs, or events of a similar magnitude.

  24. Or maybe it was jazz.

    Interestingly, the conservative writer Richard M. Weaver, in his book Ideas Have Consequences points to jazz as a manifestation of the cultural and moral decline of American society. He criticizes its disregard of consisent form (since jazz often incorporates improvisation) and its appeal to sensuality and finds both to be corrosive.

  25. Personally, I think it’s worth challenging the notion that “political correctness” and “identity politics” originated somewhere among the left in the 1970s and reached its culmination in the 1990s. In my humble opinion, there have been multiple eruptions of both prior to the last 35 years or so. If you think about it, it’s not unreasonable to conclude that Jim Crow and segregation, being predicated on race constituted a form of institutionalized identity politics. Likewise, I think there’s a fair case to be made that the red scares of the early 1920s and the 1950s were a form of political correctness.

  26. Where I work, “gay” is the p.c. title used at all times .

    Use of the word “homosexual” just makes progressives uneasy.

    It’s as if “gay” is a happy, good-times, good-times word and “homosexual” is a “oh, what, are you a homophobe?” word.

    At least in the arts community that is. You should see the stares you get when you say homosexual.

  27. Decided upon not by the culture itself, but by the most easily offended amongst certain identity ownership groups.

    yeah, I really am sick of what is “polite” being dictated by the most easily offended groups. and by that I mean: fuck parent groups. I want sex, violence, and swearing at 2 in the afternoon.

    Far and away, the worst perps in the evilness of PC are Parents groups and Conservative Christians.

    For gays/racial minorities/women, PC is “Don’t try and fire or abuse us for being X, and don’t call us fags/spics/bitches”

    for Parents Groups it’s “don’t ever allow anyone else to see or hear anything that my child might pick up. so FCC, fine the Simpsons for saying ‘ass.’ oh, and the OC for mentioning lesbian relationships exist.”
    for conservative christians, it’s “You have to respect my religious traditions, which means you have to shut up when we make everyone say a prayer before a football game.”

  28. Or they fear losing their jobs for expressing an opinion. I have lost a job for expressing an opinion about the government of a foreign country (not its populace), and PC concerns were the reason why. (”What if one our Chinese customers heard that you had said that!”)

    And this is liberals’ fault how?

  29. I don’t like pc, personally. Respect works for me- let’s call it like it is. People who use unpleasant words with hate-filled meanings are disrespectful. While words do have power, intent has more power, IMO.

  30. Well, the point is that these rules ‘applicable to everyone’ aren’t really fair. You see, some cultures have a concept that I’ll call ‘reality’. The ‘PCers’ have noticed that somehow hundreds of years of racially charged insults, murders, and other more institutional problems- such as school segregation,etc, haven’t gone away just because of good intentions and fairy dust. So until blacks don’t have third world rates of infant mortality, whites stop whining about having to go to college or have a job that has black people in it, etc, no, you can’t call me the n word. Thank you.

    If you were joking, please ignore this. I have literally, no sense of humor. It comes from living in the South.

  31. APF, I see what you mean; I too dislike the “everyone’s a winner!” self-esteem-building attempts because I think they’re very damaging to children. I was just being flip about the way wingnut bloggers seem to view “PC.”

  32. Interestingly, the conservative writer Richard M. Weaver, in his book Ideas Have Consequences points to jazz as a manifestation of the cultural and moral decline of American society. He criticizes its disregard of consisent form (since jazz often incorporates improvisation) and its appeal to sensuality and finds both to be corrosive.

    And now we have Jazz at Lincoln Center.

  33. zuzu:

    I know. Shocking.

    Though I should point out that Weaver wrote what he did around 1945 or so. It doesn’t make me disagree with him any less, and jazz wasn’t exactly a new thing by 1945 anyway, but he would have been received somewhat differently back then compared to how he would be now if he wrote that.

  34. Where did I say it was liberals’ fault?

    Sorry. You’ve never maintained that Robert. It was more rhetorical than anything. But seriously, does blame for PC ever get put on anyone but “liberals”? It’s a divergent phenomenon, but somehow its always “radical leftists” or some other semi-imaginary group pushing “identity politics” that receives blame. It certainly doesn’t seem so in your case.

    Unless, of course, you were working for American Maoists.

  35. I guess I’d have to ask what specifically you called them. If you expressed to oppinion that China should give up Taiwan: probably not work realated but not worth firing for. If you called them slanty-eyed gooks, yeah, I’d probably have fired you too.

  36. I actually remember old war-protesting 60s radicals who hung out in Paris cafes who used “that is not politically correct” as an ironic in-joke in the 70s, even after they had become wierd counterculture reactionaries of a difficult-to-classify beatnik academic conservativism.

    No one outside of our immediate Archie & Mehitabeland Pogo-reading circle, however, – until it was revived in the late 80s as an Orwellian meaning-reversal by the Limbutt and his ilk…

  37. Antigone, in an employee discussion forum online (where politics and other things were discussed), I expressed dissatisfaction with a campaign finance law that restricted free speech. My exact words were something along the lines of “when did we turn into China?”

  38. IME most people who use the term are not lamenting the alleged inability to call folks “niggers,” or “cunts,” etc. Rather, they tend to be curmudgeonly rallying against a bland, “you’re all winners!!!”-type thought-policing/attitude/strain in culture which proceeds from an empty and hypocritical philosophical base purporting to embrace inoffensiveness above all (begging the question as to whether that is itself actually a worthy goal), but often reflecting underlying cultural biases and thereby effectively belittling those it’s supposed to protect–while simultaneously being used as a bludgeon to separate and maintain group identities over individuals, and to support the uneven consideration of “oppressor” and “oppressed” classes as opposed to maintaining consistent and general principles equally applicable to everyone.

    I would agree. The thought-police mentality makes me severely uneasy. That said, most of the time when someone complains about it, it’s because they can’t tell the difference between being “P.C.” and not being a goddamned bigot. I’ve lived with people who can’t make this distinction, and it ain’t fun.

  39. If anyone here hasn’t seen it, you must catch an episode of “The Boondocks.” Hy-larious.

    One black character asks another:

    “Why do you like white people so much?”

    He answers:

    “Just look at ’em. They smell like lemons and pledge furniture polish.”

    At this point I nearly sprayed my coffee across the room.

  40. Kevin, every time I think of that line, I just start laughing again. But all the chracters are black almost, so it’s hard to distingush based on that.

Comments are currently closed.