Or maybe not. But it seems like this isn’t the only corner of the blogosphere lately in which the whole “PC” thing has been brought up in one way or another.
Belledame has a mini-roundup of posts by R. Mildred and Black Amazon, who are sick of people who are “sick of political correctness” and use that as an excuse to let loose their prejudices. Mildred tries to explain comedy to a wingnut (and has a lot more besides about “political correctness”):
This may also explains why Chris Rock was gibbering crap with his “and then there are niggers” skit, because nothing quite says responsible, politically aware black dude quite like using nigger with the exact same meaning as it has when Klansmen use the word.
Now don’t get me wrong, he’s got other material, and some of it is even funny, but the bit with the niggers seems to be the only bit that white people ever see for some reason, and way too many see that, go “woohoo!” and run off with some presumption of having license to divide “good” black people from those slave/scum/untermenschen/niggers and get attention from mommy by saying that oh so shocking word.
No you don’t. Also, grow the fuck up already.
Responding to the same post, Black Amazon has the following to say:
Yes some of us are fucking children.
Some of us still believe that whatever we want to say should have no consequences what so ever.
That you should be able to say whatever you want and do whatever you want no consequences while claiming your rampant entitlement is ” Good”for race/gender relations.
I’m bored with people who see people who are different from them and demand an education by them claiming it’s improving race relations. Or that the fact that they can’t hurts it.
You think we don’t know. You think we don’t know you say that shit in private.
Oh wait that’s right, people haven’t stopped saying that shit in public.
N****** is not a slip of the tongue.
And that’s in response to conservative bloggers who think it’s so shocking and transgressive to be “anti-PC.” What about liberals?
What, indeed. Twisty has this:
Is anyone else weirded out by the homo/transphobic tenor expressed in the reaction to smirkbot Ann Coulter’s having called John Edwards a “faggot”?
I don’t mean the wingnut reaction, I mean the supposedly liberal reaction. And I don’t mean the “official” liberal reaction, but the populist Internetian (rhymes with Venetian) reaction [1] . OK, I mean the comments at the above-linked blurb at ThinkProgress (see also Wonkette). . . .
Of course Coulter — a maggot chewing on the rotting corpse of human enlightenment — pretty much cries out for lefty derision. Sadly, because such a large percentage of the dudes who vituperate on political blogs are 22, in a case like this one rather expects juvenile ad hominem attacks, more or less out the wazoo. But what really puts my entrails in a knot is that the most offensive invective these bright young minds can contrive springs universally, not just from misogyny, but from what can only be construed as a depraved delight in misogyny. . . .
What does all this reveal? That these arrogant, stupid pricks have been flawlessly assimilated by the patriarchal Borg, which views anything that isn’t a replication of its ideal self, i.e. straight and male, as deviant. Women — along with their poor relations, the transsexuals and the homos — are the lowest form of life imaginable. Liberal dudes might pretend that being gay is OK for somebody else, but don’t be mistaking them personally for somebody who takes it like a bitch. Liberals hate women — and queers — as much as the next oppressive class of assholes. And Ann Coulter’s just an excuse to let’er rip with impunity.
Predictably, this got up the nose of some liberal dudes who felt personally slighted and came into Twisty’s comments to tell her how personally offended they were, and to mutter darkly about how feminists better shape up, ’cause liberal men might just withdraw their support from feminist causes, and then where would feminists be? To wit:
And [if] it is also true that so-called conservatives, let’s just call ‘em wingnuts to generalize, also are homophobic and hate women, which seems somewhat more self-evident, then it seems that the ONLY people who do not hate women and gays are, well, women and gays. This is silly and bigoted, not to mention insulting to a fairly powerful support group. I don’t feel like I have anything to prove to you, so I’m not going to give you my bona fides, you can find ‘em if you look, but if you are truly willing to stand there and say “Poor me, I have no allies, no allies at all” you do yourself and your cause a serious dis-service. Think about this again. You have describe a serious problem in America today, and if you think you can do any good without people who are different than you, you not only will fail, you sadly missed the point of the entire civil rights movement. Lemme help you with your history. African Americans didn’t need the support of other African Americans in order to gain some of their constitutional rights, they needed the help and support, belief and understanding of the white community. All I’m asking here is you re-think your ‘everybody is my enemy position’. Or maybe I just read it wrong, but I gotta tell you, that’s what it said to me…
For which comment he was both criticized (by the Twisty regulars) and defended (by some folks from the blog where he’d seen the link in the first place). The criticism was put most succintly by amanda w, who said:
Saying “You had better not forget your place, or I may have to withdraw my support, and you can’t get anywhere without my support” is just another way of saying “I never cared about helping you in the first place.”
Ilyka wrote a couple of posts about the dustup in Twisty’s comments, including this one about a conversation she had with her boyfriend, which shows how some men take feminist discourse a little too personally:
So later I had him read the thread at Twisty’s, and he said, “I have a question.”
“Shoot.”
“Okay . . . I get that there’s a culture on feminist blogs, and you read them all the time, you understand that culture, most of the time I’m even okay with it, but then sometimes . . . do you guys not realize how you sound?”
“Huh?”
“I mean, if someone who’d never really read Feministe just went over and all they read was that post of piny’s–well, no, not so much that post, or even Feministe necessarily, but like, I can see how some of these guys get the idea that you all hate men. Because you’re talking to the regulars, and the regulars know you don’t hate men, but some new guy reading some of this stuff, he’s going to be all, wait, what did I do? I didn’t rape anybody, I never beat up a transsexual–”
“No, I get that,” I interrupted him. “That’s a lot like–like, I used to have the same reaction reading blogs by people of color. I’d see something like ‘white people sure suck sometimes,’ and I’d be all, ‘Hey! Wait! Not all of us! Not me!’ Even though I probably do suck as a white person sometimes–but I mean, I’d take it too personally.”
“It’s hard not to take it personally.”
“It’s not as hard if you move yourself out of the center of everything, though. That’s what I finally got through my thick skull. It’s not ABOUT me, always. And even if it is about me, so what? I’m not perfect. Why shouldn’t I have to take some shit once in awhile? Heaven knows I dish enough out in a day. Would it kill me to get an attitude adjustment? Would it kill me to listen to someone unlike me for five minutes?”
“But if you aren’t the problem,” he argued, “It sucks to be treated like you’re the problem. It’s like being accused of something you didn’t do.”
“If I’m not the problem,” I explained, “then why should I get invested in identifying with the problem? If the problem is some particular batch of white people, doing or saying shit I’d never in a million years do myself, why should I feel the need to put myself in their shoes? Just because they’re white and I’m white? That’s stupid. Like all the idiot white dudes who identify with the Duke lacrosse players–they don’t even comprehend that unless they’re just as wealthy and elite, which you know 95% of them aren’t, the fucking lacrosse players would SPIT on them. They’re ID-ing with the players, but I guarantee you the players aren’t ID-ing with them.”
“A lot of the guys written about on feminist blogs do things I would never do.”
“Then don’t identify with them. It’s not about you! You stand to pee, they stand to pee, beyond that, what’s the commonality?”
“That’s why the argument you guys make that I like the best is that patriarchy screws men too.”
“Well, it does,” I agreed with him, “but I think why you like that argument so much is because then it’s about you again. All’s right with the universe. Man the sun, woman the earth.”
“No, I’ve figured out that you guys don’t like that, and I’m trying not to do that, I swear, but the way you express things sometimes, isn’t it just making it easier for men to get defensive?”
“No,” I said firmly, “What we aren’t doing is taking care of them. Nurturing them. Putting their feelings first. Looking out for them, making things safe for them. We aren’t making them the center. We’re talking just the way we’d talk, the way we do talk, when y’all aren’t around.”
“And you know sometimes that gets ugly,” I continued, “but the thing to do then is to remember: Everything else IS centered around y’all. Everything else–you guys got the talk radio to take care of you, the ESPN, the CNN, the New York Times, the advertising industry–you can’t bask in all that adoration day in and day out and then pitch a fit because a handful of blogs on the internet don’t recognize your awesomeness. Or I mean, you can pitch a fit, go right ahead, but it’s not going to end with me bringing you your binky and kissing your forehead. It’s going to end with my foot in your ass.”
She’s also got a guide to what not to do at a feminist blog.
Tekanji’s got an excellent post outlining how some people, when their biases are pointed out, respond by accusing the person of pointing it out being irrational, rather than giving any credence to the critcism:
To me, this is not the rant of an angry, and especially not irrational, woman. This is the observation of a GM saddened by feeling excluded, but optimistically brainstorming ways to engage with the dynamic in a positive fashion. She is not calling for action against this book, or those who use it, nor is she saying anything even remotely extreme. All she’s doing is expressing sadness over feeling excluded and then musing about how she could play with the situation.
Matt of lategaming responds by calling her suggestion irrational . . .
And, anyway, let’s be honest here: matt would look like a callous asshole if people thought he was telling a rational person that her want to be included in a game that she plays is stupid. So by inventing some statistics, making the argument that catering towards the majority by deliberately excluding the minority is a good business proposal, and painting mer as some stupid over-emotional chick makes him look like the authority to listen to, rather than a jerk telling a woman to basically shut up and realize that gaming is for the boys.
An example of this, from the moderation queue here (bonus points for the use of “ladies,” letting us know he knows more about feminism and women than we do, and for the combo of “lighten up,” “you just need a hot beef injection to set you straight” AND “your concerns are not Important Shit”):
Look.
I went to Vassar.
That means I know allllllllllllllllllll about the issues you ladies face. And I knew transgender people, so I’m also an expert on that.
And you ladies and sorta ladies are in need of a night in the Mug then my friend’s big ass double in Joss.
Then it won’t seem so bad.
Yeah, I know I’m an asshole, but come on, jeebus.
Since we’re lefties and not total dicks it’s better to try and make us feel guilty for shit we mostly didn’t do than to have no impact caring about the behavior of those who are actually hateful.
‘Cause, you know, none of that is actually hateful.