Gentlemen, your thoughts please.
A complex issue, and it is rather too easy to post those on either side of it as foaming extremists. On the one hand you have Littlejohn et al misconstruing and mis-attributing everything from quotes to legalese to suggest that political correctness has gone ‘too far’. On the other hand those in the PC camp seem to arbitrarily choose where and when to take exception, and you don’t have to be especially cynical to see it as a lazy approach to shutting down discussions without having to put too much work in. To ask ‘but why are you offended’ is apparently wrong, and you are just meant to know. It isn’t minority X’s job to educate straight white men on their (real or imagined) oppression, etc etc ad nauseum.
But where I personally take issue is the phenomenon seen on American university campuses with ‘safe spaces’ and ‘trigger warnings’. These are created in light of the fact that somebody, somewhere may be offended by a differing opinion. This is dangerous because, firstly, you are there to learn and not to dictate the content of your lessons and, secondly, because it creates a climate of fear for professors who would wish to voice opposing views and generally rock the boat but are scared that they will be downgraded as a result. Safe spaces are places for people to hide out in if somebody is visiting campus and might say things they don’t wish to hear. ‘Trigger warnings’ are a faddy way of dealing with, on paper at least, a real concept. It is thoughtful, for example, to warn your PTSD-afflicted neighbour that you intend to set of fireworks. However it is apparently trendy now to preface all emails with ‘trigger warning: email contains XYZ’ for your most sensitive readers. Some feminist bloggers have claimed in recent years to have contracted PTSD-like symptoms because they were verbally abused on Twitter, to give one risible example.
Where I don’t agree with most posters on here is the idea that political correctness is somehow offensive or something to take great pride in being opposed to. I don’t feel that I have to restrict anything I say online or in real life, and I see fairly extreme right wing views voiced on this forum fairly consistently. The only people with any power on here would be the moderators, and I don’t see them encouraging any posters to dial back their content.
My Grandmother (90 this year) complains about everything being ‘too P bloody C’, but who is actually asking her to moderate anything she says? Nobody I know of! She told me a couple of years back that they would be wanting ‘a Muslim national anthem and a gay national anthem soon’, apropos nothing in particular. She lives in a town with a Muslim population of ~5, and zero Africans or Eastern Europeans. Her neighbours are retired academics and people in oil (sardines?) and the like. She does have a gay couple living in the vicinity, but she loves them because they are so good with colour and always ask her how she is getting on. Nobody is telling her to tone it down, so I can only assume that it is her beloved Daily Mail and D. Tel that feed her this particular narrative. She feels threatened by a concept, or an idea, which seems a bit bizarre. This goes as far as her actually liking the homosexual couple she knows round the corner, but still holding on to a sense of unease at the concept of homosexuals. Where does this come from?
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