Political Correctness Joke
Q: How do you confuse a Daily Mail reader?

A: Tell him that Paedophiles are the natural prey of asylum seekers!
(Vic Flange, Sat 24 Nov 2007, 10:58, Reply)

Its incredible isnt it?
That as a staunch true-blue conservative voter, and member of the landed gentry (I am the squire of Cottleswold Hall in the village of Little Shunting in the cotswolds), I find myself the victim of so-called 'political correctness', and I can tell you, it's bloody mad.

I was recently lambasted for horsewhipping my butler and some other members of the working classes in my local hostelry. The butler because he was exactly 30 seconds late returning to work (for gods sake, man - I allow him a 15 minute lunchbreak, does he want to bleed me dry???), and the other 2 urchins because they looked at me in a funny way. I dont like the prolitariate looking at me, it gives them ideas above their station, before you know it they're buying luxury brand cars, wearing branded clothing and calling their children names like "Tyler" and "Brandon". Got to keep these people in their place.

I recently evicted a group of travellers from my estate with the use of a double barrelled shotgun and a brace of bull-mastiffs, and found myself in the dock facing the judge! I mean really, if these people want to defecate in holes in the ground, wear tie and dye smell offensively and call their children "Moonchild" and "Rainbow Whale" that's their business, but as non-working, non-taxpaying members of society, I should be allowed to shoot some of them if I wish, especially if they're upsetting the deer on my country park.

If we dont stop this insanity and return to the good old fashioned values that made the British Empire great, the land will be overrun with every sort of tree-hugging dervish claiming his stake of this green and pleasant land.

Yours Sincerely
Lt Col. Rupert Ffoulkes-Ballard (retd)
(Vic Flange, Sat 24 Nov 2007, 10:23, 1 reply)

PC isn't all bad, you know.
I work in a small office with two other people. Both are ill-informed racists, sexists and general Sun readers with only enough firing in their frontal lobes to grasp that every Muslim across the globe was, at any given time, waiting feverishly to pounce on them personally, explode themselves, rape their women and steal their job. Then explode again and give the money to the Jews.

This is supplemented by a third moron who likes to wander in from his own office to tell us about either a) a news story in which somebody white has been the victim of crime at the hands of somebody who isn't, or b) about how sensible and reasonable he finds the manifesto of the BNP.

One of these men (not the third) is my immediate boss. All three are fans of the band Screwdriver (Wikipedia it). One is obsessed - and I use that word in a very real, literal sense - with launching a nuclear attack on China, earnestly believing this will create more jobs in the UK and bring down the price of petrol.

I've complained about this to the General Manager and was told to stop whinging, as this was a factory environment and was to be expected. Of course, they pretend this isn't the case to the public. There's an earlier post on here from me about our Christmas cards which shows the two-facedness of it all.

I wouldn't mind PC to go mad in my area for a day or two.

Sorry for length/rant/rambling/pumps.
(Sir Harrington Titsmith disgraced himself on, Sat 24 Nov 2007, 10:18, Reply)

Off Topic
Dont know if this is On or off topic - shoot me.

Kite Jr goes to a C of E school, fair enough, the religion isnt too overt etc etc. But they dont do anythng about Halloween ! FFS, I remember doing ghosts and shit as a kid - great creative fun.
One of the women I work with (Born and bred Indian) has a young lad who attends a school in Worcester. She was asking us what "Rainbow Festival" was - the rest of us (Brits) had never heard of it. Turns out its an "Anti-Halloween" FFS !
I HATE how "The Church" is hijacking our holidays and "christianising" them. We had a flyer inviting us to attend the CHRISTIAN celebration of "Candlemass" (Google it). Mind, if you Google it you you'll find lots of churchy sites "rebranding""Satanic" holidays.

/rant over
(kitescreech still here, Sat 24 Nov 2007, 9:58, 6 replies)

I'm a Christian.
Apparently this offends people. Without even knowing me, people can hear that phrase about me and immediately decide I'm objectionable, yet for some reason this doesn't count in their heads as prejudice or discrimination.

Just mentioning that I'm one of yer actual born-again happy-clappy God-botherers, who goes to church on (some) Sundays and does that praying thing sometimes, is enough to set most people off.


Yes, some of my lot believe in 7-day creation a few thousand years ago*.

Yes, some of my lot don't believe in sex before marriage**.

Yes, some of my lot don't believe in sex with people the same sex***.

Yes, there are a lunatic few who get the placards out at Jerry Springer The Opera, abortion clinics, section 28, Harry Potter book launches (wtf?) and God knows where else you find a few militant fools.


But the point is, none of that matters. The clue's in the name. It's not about any of that lot. The thing that makes me (or any of my lot) a Christian is that Christ business. Believing that that Jesus bloke, that a bunch of historians wrote of about 200 years ago, was more than a "nice man" or a "good teacher" or a "troublemaker" or "political activist" or whatever who upset a few people and got nailed to a cross, how sad; believing that he actually meant what he said. The rest is all cultural.

It's not about trying to be nice or that ridiculously patronising phrase "christian values" - don't get me started on all that - if you're not going to acknowledge there was a bloke who professed to be the Christ behind it all, don't think that just trying to be nice to people is "christian" any more than it's "ghandian", "guevarian" or "Jimmy Saville-ian".

It's not about Christmas or Easter (particularly). Jesus wasn't born in the middle of winter, nor is it possible he got nailed to a cross on the first full moon after the vernal equinox. Most of my lot wouldn't care if you swapped them round, changed the dates or just combined the two and called them Santa's Winterval Excess of Rampant Consumerism.

But don't patronise me. If you haven't studied it, if you haven't thought a bit about it, don't assume you know more about it than me. Any more than I'd presume to say to a Muslim, "oh yeah, but that Muhammad bloke, right, he wasn't really all that, he lived in a cave and slept with his aunt, didn't he? I read that in the Ramadan Special in the Mail..."

I don't care what you say about my beliefs. Because they're my beliefs. I don't think you should care and I don't think I've got any right to be offended by what you think.

I don't think you should be forced to believe the same thing any more than I should be forced not to believe them. I've had a bit of a think about it, I still question everything, I like to debate it and I know what I believe. Don't lump me in with a whole load of people with no muscles in their arms who wear sandals, grow beards and ring bells. It's not about them and it's not about me. As I said, the clue's in the name.



Length? Might have ranted there a bit...



...and if you don't click on "I like this" it means you're a politically correct bigot. ;)


EDIT: forgot to add the stars, sorry -

* I'm not convinced either way. Both poles of the argument seem to rely on a bit of a leap of faith of some sort, and I don't think in the end it matters too much.

** Like I said, the rest is cultural. Look at a bunch of repressed twenty-somethings trying not to acknowledge that they have genitals or feelings about them and compare them with a bunch of twenty somethings sticking their genitals in or around anything that moves, and I reckon you'll find something silly about both of them. Said Jesus bloke didn't say "wait until you get married to have sex," so I didn't.

*** I don't think the accumulated cultural prejudices of generations of church-goers should have any influence here. For the record, I don't much fancy the cock. Some of my male friends do. Said Jesus bloke said nothing on the matter, and it certainly doesn't bother me. Or them.
( sanityclause is waiting until, Sat 24 Nov 2007, 9:24, 26 replies)

Racial Classification
When I was a civil servant a form was issued to all staff, asking that we declare our ethnic origins, for the purpose of ensuring that the department had the correct diversity balance. I ticked the 'white' box, as I presume that's what I am. Some time later, for the purposes of paper generation, we were given a sheet that stated our ethnicity, just in case we forgot, I guess.
I amended mine. Instead of 'White' it now said 'Honky'. I did a fairly good job, right font and everything, then stuck it to my desk area, mainly 'cos I think the whole thing is silly & a waste of time.
Within days I was asked to see a manager, who thought that my self-categorisation could cause offence and so should be removed. I did ask how others could be offended as I was obviously referring to myself (my name was on the form) and it was me who had amended the document. No answer was forthcoming and I never did take it down. Never, ever got promoted either, obviously due to my reverse racism, or just plain awkwardness, more likely.
(thebadangel, Sat 24 Nov 2007, 8:59, 1 reply)

Uncle Chopper wants a word with you.
Australasians'll know what I mean.
(Harleif Skankhammer II was killing time at, Sat 24 Nov 2007, 8:58, 3 replies)

Political correctness not gone mad
So I was delivering a presentation to a client - I won't say who they are but they share a name with a high-street bank, a pharmacy and a chip-shop in Pwllheli.

There were about eight of them in the room - two of whom were black. I was offered a cup of tea and when asked how I take it I said "black no sugar thanks".

At this point the two black people in the room turned and looked at me and one of them, a very pleasant lady said in shcoked tones "what?!?!".

In this moment my life passed before my eyes - I thought, I'm going to be marched out of a very important meeting for being a racist - my boss is never going to let me go and meet a high profile client on my own again, and I'll never be able to ride up and down their cool outsidey lifts again.

All this thought happened in the tenth of a second between this lady saying "what?!?!" and then saying "you don't have milk in tea - everyone has milk in tea".

Not a particularly good story but I do always feel comfortable asking for black tea when I go to a client's.
(lozatron, Sat 24 Nov 2007, 7:58, 2 replies)

International Students
I am blessed enough to work at a crappy blockbuster store so I can have enough money to NOT die during uni.

Being right next to uni I get all of the international students coming in and whenever I complain about one of them my manager gives me a yelling for being racist or something. A few of the troubles include

1. Srilankan guy, absolute tosser who is rude as hell "Dont be so racist jost because he is black"

2. British guy and his girlfriend, whine just like the stereotyped brit, but I hated him because he whined, not because of a stereotype... still got me yelled at

3. Norwegian girls.... no complains... i like it when they come in, same with american girls

Also working for a company that is supposedly meant to be equal to everyone regardless of race, the owner happily uses the words "fucking coons" "stupid queens" whenever he wants... what a twat
( faultykyle, Sat 24 Nov 2007, 7:22, Reply)

This is anti PC, but here goes anyway
My 16 year old daughter is attending a New Zealand high school for a year. She lives in a really rural part of Taranaki. Some of the kids expressed the desire to visit our family. she said, "That would be great, but you absolutely, positively have to stop saying the word that starts with n and rhymes with bigger. Dude, I'm serious."

They all laughed and took the piss. Pip, the coolest kid there singsongs, "What's the matter, is someone going to get his ickle feewings hurt if we don't, ow?"

"No, dude, you'll die. Say that word in Detroit, some gangbanger'll knife your motherfcking ass."

All laughter and mickey taking stops immediately.
(TDub Nunc id vides, nunc ne vides on, Sat 24 Nov 2007, 6:57, Reply)

Knee-Jerk
Not exactly about PC, more about prejudices.

I was heading up the stairs in Kings Cross to catch my train. Just ahead of me were 4 black guys, in hoodies, chattering away to themselves. At the top of the stairs was a woman from East Europe who had a baby in her arms, wrapped in swaddling clothes, and she was shoving this in the faces commuters obviously begging for money. It used to be a fairly common sight in London.

As the black guys cleared the top of the stairs, the woman shoved the baby into their faces and..... A black guy snatched it from her, threw it into the air and then wellied it so it spun across the floor.

I was shocked - for a split second I couldn't breath and then the red mist descended and I charged up the stairs ready to do battle. Those bastards! And they were fucking laughing! (the central scrutiniser part of my brain was going "oh shit - we're gonna die"). Then, just as I was about to launch my suicidal attack I noticed something odd. The baby's head had come off when the guy kicked it.

And then the penny dropped. It was a fucking doll. It was a bloody scam. And the black guys had spotted this and I hadn't.

It's odd how the prejudices that I claim not have can take over the higher brain functions. A part of me didn't even question what I thought I saw. A bunch of black thugs attacking a defenceless woman with a baby.

So I went to the bar and drank whiskey until I stopped shaking. Adrenaline does that to me.

Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Sat 24 Nov 2007, 3:46, 7 replies)

Berkeley 4th of July
Apologies: this is an all-American story. Here in the states, the city of Berkeley, California is known for its liberal population - it's a nuclear free zone, it's a whale safe community, anybody can marry anything, you get the idea. Perhaps none of this would raise an eyebrow in Europe, but over here it's definitely at the far end of the bell shaped curve. Anyhow, the city happens to own a vacation camp in the mountains for its citizens' enjoyment (it is a beautiful place), but anyone who can pay the freight is allowed to attend as to restrict it to actual Berkeley residents would be to discriminatory. And it's also heavily subsidized, so its' a dirt cheap but lovely vacation in Yosemite. No, really, this is true. So my sister, who used to live there, is wise to this and signs me and my kids up. Our session happened to span the 4th of July, which is our holiday to celebrate our special American blessedness. Now even though our President and electorate are both embarrassing, I am proud of my country and glad to be a citizen. So I was mildly looking forward to the announced 4th of July festivities. Which consisted of:

- a parade of camp counselors dressed in green and yellow, carrying a homemade "Whole earth flag"

- a singing of a "World Anthem", whose words I thankfully don't recall, to the tune of our national anthem.

- speeches whose theme was largely apology for our national existence.

Now there are plenty of bad things to say about America, and please feel free to list them in the "replies, " but come on! At least a single American flag? A little acknowledgment that there might be something worthwhile to celebrate?

OK - now have at me. I don't care.

Mort
(mortdubois lacks imagination, doesn't play well with others, Sat 24 Nov 2007, 2:12, 9 replies)

Not sure if this quite fits..
but I've never understood why more lesbians haven't caught onto the bit in the bible banning manlove
(forgive me if my wording isn't exact)
It is forbidden to lie with a man as you do with women, for it is abomination.

that's basically the bible telling girls to eat pussy, no?
(loki lie smith kiss me til I'm in a coma, Sat 24 Nov 2007, 2:09, 7 replies)

Pride And Prejudice.
'I really am very very very good.'
'Yes, well at least you aren't as bad as those blacks.'

Apologies for teh shite.
(I R Tomsk pyromaniacs will only inflame the situation, Sat 24 Nov 2007, 2:07, Reply)

Pelican Crossing
When I was a kid I remember being really excited about the Harry Enfield show.

One day we were walking home from school and imitating the sketches... As we were crossing a pelican crossing (this is the UK) I was doing some impression of "Loooadsamoney!!" or something like... after we crossed this "afro-englishman" kid (Im a pasty white computer geek) then acosted me and straight up wanted a fight.

To this day I do not know why as I'd never seen him before in my life and I never saw him again AFAIK. I wasnt taking the piss, just messing around with my mates.

I must have only been 13 at the time and it scared the life out of me. I think the confused look on my face defused the situation. The only explanation is he thought I was taking the piss out of him straight to his face as he was crossing in the other direction and had run back across the road to confront me.

I can only presume that he must have had a pretty hard time in his life to kick off like that.

Not sure how this lies with the question subject, I just had to get that off my chest.
(SillyMoo, Sat 24 Nov 2007, 1:10, Reply)

my personal view on words for the disabled:
'Disabled' shouldn't be used because most 'disabled' people aren't in fact completely unable to function, they're really 'handicapped' ie able to function but have something that makes it harder for them to do so.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Sat 24 Nov 2007, 1:07, 2 replies)

And another thing.....
Have an OFSTED inspection coming up soon. We are now asked to consider how through our teaching we benefit the moral, ethical and "spiritual" development of our learners. What ever happened to teaching them the subject that they signed up to study?
(Nitrous Nitrous, Sat 24 Nov 2007, 1:02, 2 replies)

My maternal grandmother was Catholic
and my maternal grandfather was nominally Anglican. When they got married, his brother said he was sick and couldn't make it. It turned out later that he wasn't going to set foot in a Catholic Church. Conclusion: there are worse things than pretending Kwanzaa is a real holiday...
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Sat 24 Nov 2007, 1:01, 2 replies)

I swear I'm not making this up
I used to teach on a teacher training course. One lesson, for a laugh, I produced the official government guidance document on non-discriminatory terminology.


The two that stuck in my mind were:

"Brainstorming" apparently this is offensive to people with Epilepsy. The alternative they suggest is "mind showering". Which to me sounds like some sort of dodgy fetish activity.

The other was to do with the phrase "disabled toilet" apparently you should use the phrase "toilet with equal access" instead. It's not the toilet that is disabled you know!

Also those disabled symbols on the tube map piss me off. For whose benefit are they precisely? How many people in wheelchairs have you seen traveling on the underground?
(Nitrous Nitrous, Sat 24 Nov 2007, 0:47, 4 replies)

Token Guardian readers
I worked until recently for a very large firm, so large that you will spend on average 17% of your pay with them. I drove HGVs. Like most HGV fleets, we were white middle aged men. Some of us were black middle aged men, but not many. Very few of us were women, and only one out of 200+ was a) black and b) a woman. When she resigned because of the steady rain of bullshit ( Google Verylittlehelps), they offered her the choice of shifts, runs and vehicles to keep up the diversity profile. Having self respect, she told them they were wankers.
(all my scars face forward possesses 2.5% of a hyperalloy combat chassis, Sat 24 Nov 2007, 0:12, Reply)

Drunk
I was on the bus a few weeks ago and a guy got on staggering as if he'd had a few too many beers.
He bounced his way down the bus and took his seat near the back.

I said to my mate that he had obviously been on the sauce for a while, when a girl behind who had obviously been listening in, said that he was in fact mentally handicapped in an accusatory fashion - I was obviosuly being very 'un-pc'.

I wasn't too know he was a joey, and maybe he had been on the sauce anyway for all she knew.
Feckin nosey cow.
(the noggin causes laxative effects, Sat 24 Nov 2007, 0:00, Reply)

Harmless Gloucester racism
This story took place during the floods, when we were without a water supply. A friend of mine was working at some kind of warehouse, lugging boxes - anyway, talk got onto the issue of the bowsers which supplied us with water, and how some of them had been stolen. One worker says "Well, you know who's stealin' 'em, don't you? It's them pakis". There's a brief moment as everyone tries to fill in the logical steps in their mind. "Obvious, ennit? They wash their feet like five times a day. I bet if you go down to one of them mosques it'll be full of bowsers".

The worst thing, my friend says, was the fact that everyone there seemed to think this made perfect sense and had to be right.

Ah, the West Country...
( Pretender, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 23:34, Reply)

I work in the public eye
offering a service, and if one of our machines break down, we have to call out an engineer, We are 'graded' into three groups. Gold, Silver and Bronze. 'Gold' systems have to be attended to within a certain time frame, 'Silver' are allowed to be down a little longer, and 'Bronze' will be seen to as soon as an engineer is free.
Until someone thought that the 'Bronze' section would find deep offence at being 'third'
What did they do...rename us to 'Platinum' 'Gold' and 'Silver'
(lordy lordy, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 23:13, 1 reply)

I fear for my future...
...for i have just been promoted. I'm now in charge of an entirely white, entirely male, engineering department for a big multinational corporation. I can just see the emails arriving in my inbox from some sod in Sweden about ethnic minorities and how my department doesn't have enough of these minorities. That said, i've been a factory spark for 13 years now, and EVERY engineer i've had the pleasure (or mis-fortune (i'm looking at you Pat Brown)) to work with has been very white, and very male.
(Chewy , masticating since 1978., Fri 23 Nov 2007, 23:08, Reply)

Cultural Identity Worker
I had to fill in a form every year to let some funding body for work know my current status vis a vis address and the like. And there was a new question a few years ago saying, "Please indicate what you believe to be your cultural heritage." No one knew what this meant, so I asked about. My department was a very mixed bag of cultural heritages - some Iraqis, some Persians, lot of different Europeans. Everyone got on with each other famously, we just didn't get what this question was about. Some of the Persian lads (big drinkers) said, "You go out on the piss on St Patrick's - why don't you put down that you're a Celt?" So I did. I wrote "Celt".

Didn't think any more about it.

Until a couple of weeks later, when I got a letter form HR saying I'd been assigned a cultural identity worker as I was within a group that was radically under-represented within the workplace. I had an appointment the following week.

I spent half an hour sitting uncomfortably in the company of a delightful young lady as we talked about my needs as minority group.

"We have a special religious day," I perked up suddenly, "Every year, on the 17th of March, we have to wear a special outfit and commune together in a worshipful act."

St Pat's came. The Persian lads bought me an Ireland shirt and a huge Guinness hat. I had to put them on, and they shoved me out the door. The cultural identity lady stared at me big time. So did my boss.

"Don't you oppress me," I said holding my head up high as I shuffled off to O'Neills to meet some other Celts.

The question wasn't on the form the following year, and the nice lady now works for the Council.
( groovegenerator The man who mistook his wife for his wife, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 22:10, 4 replies)

I came home the other day and the computer was declaring itself to be Napoleon Bonaparte.
PC GONE MAD I TELL YOU.
( Amorous Badger NAKED BEA ARTHUR PHOTOS 4U, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 21:42, 2 replies)

i'm a massive liberal pansy....
...and i'll tolerate most degrees of stupidity if it'll help make some over-sensitive fools feel slightly less offended... but i still like arguing with radical feminists because they're all as mad as a bag of lorries. the best lark was staying up way into the night having a heated internet debate about whether the word 'history' was perpetuating the evils of patriarchal society, and whether 'herstory' should be popularised to counter this.
( deshnoodle agonising over sig files since 1995, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 21:05, 5 replies)

PC Gone mad?
I like to have sex. Thus far I have had sex with

a) white english middle class male - UH Huuu(family fortune noise) - nil points

b) Man with hair-lip

c) Mixed race guy

d) Japanese fella - he was lovely, but ended up putting his little feet in the unexpected cat excrement at the end of a friends bed - therefore null and void (his reaction was something to behold) - possible need to expand on this story

e) Guy in wheelchair - The only unrequited love of my life. He was funny, so funny and charming and amazing that I wanted him. The only problem was that I was his boss. What did I do? I waited until I was bladdered, came on strong, and ended up in an alley in the City of London with my jumper around my neck as I sat on his lap. Class. My abiding memory of this encounter is his words: "who knew you had these puppies under that top". At this I became thoroughly over-excited and tipped the wheelchair over. The next day at work I was embarrassed at my behaviour, but he smoothed everything over and made me laugh. As always. My feelings for him were immense and yet I let him go. The idiocy of management displayed right there.

f) Woman - shall I go there while still holding my L plates? I think not.


I like to think of myself as an equal opportunity slut.

Apologies for any PC incorrectness. YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH EDIT: Please don't discriminate against my L plates - that makes you UN PC.
( my_cat_has_no_shoes meh meh meh MEH MEH, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 21:02, 6 replies)

Right. This could take a while.
Political correctness gone mad, eh? Here’s my attempt at making sense of it.

First up, we need to get clear about what PCGM actually means. If it’s just a longwinded way of saying that political correctness is a bad thing, then the “gone mad” suffix is superfluous. As to the claim that PC is a bad thing in itself – well, we’ll come back to that. Meanwhile, if we parse the phrase slightly differently, it amounts to the claim that political correctness taken too far is a bad thing. But, as claims go, that’s trivial. After all, noone could gainsay the claim that taking PC too far is a bad thing, because if we thought that this particular instance of PC was not a bad thing, we would not think that it had been taken too far or had gone mad; similarly, if we deny that this particular instance of PC had not been taken too far or gone mad, it would need some other reason to think that it was a bad thing – which takes us back to the claim that all PC is bad, and whether or not that is true. In other words, there are two questions we might want to ask: first, whether political correctness is a bad thing in itself; and second, if it is not, whether, and under what conditions, it becomes a bad thing.

So: at what is political correctness aimed? It strikes me that many people do mishandle the concept. Importantly, it’s hard to see how it can have anything directly to do with offensiveness – or, at least, there’s more to it than the claim that one oughtn’t to do that which someone might find offensive. There’s a few reasons for this. The first and most important of these is summed up in the commonplace that there’s no disputing about tastes. The correlate of that is that it’s possible for a person to find just about anything offensive, and there’s no way that you can legislate for that. Thus the mere fact that you find something I do offensive is not sufficient to demonstrate that I have done anything blameable – I might not have. Nor is it necessary to demonstrate it – I might have done something wrong that you do not find offensive, such as chanting a racist slogan if you happen to be a racist yourself.

The second consideration is that there is no right not to be offended. This follows from the first. It is possible for a person to be offended by pretty much anything; if there were a right not to be offended, though, this would have to serve as some kind of injunction on others doing pretty much anything. After all, if there’s a risk that action A might cause offence, I know that action A might cause offence, and I willingly do it anyway – my lack of intention to cause offence would be immaterial here – then that would seem to be blameable on my part. Put another way, if there is a right not to be offended, we ought to take pains not to do anything that is potentially offensive; but anything is potentially offensive; therefore we would have to have a very good reason indeed to do anything at all. But such a line of thinking is clearly absurd. Thus there’s no reason to adopt it. I’m not convinced that anyone has any extra-juridical rights to anything at all, as it happens – I have metaethical reasons for being suspicious of all rights-talk – but, even if there is such a thing as a “human” or “inherent” right, I’m pretty certain that not being offended ain’t one of them. Equally, noone has a right to their beliefs. Intellectual honesty requires that we admit that we are finite, fallible, and probably wrong in many or most things. Free debate, reasonably conducted, ought to leave true beliefs unscathed and rid you of false ones – which is something for which gratitude is in order.

It’s a bit of a jump from there to my third point, which is the claim that each of us has a duty to harden ourselves against being easily offended. This is a duty that we owe to ourselves, and a duty that we owe to others. I can’t help but to think that it’s a precept of minimal decency that, unless we have a reason to think to the contrary, we ought to assume the best of people – or, at the very least, assume that they are non-maleficent. With evidence, we might be able to move away from that supposition -–I don’t think that there’s any doubt that Himmler was a moral monster, for example: but the point is that we have evidence and an argument for that. We don’t just help ourselves to it. The same applies in all contexts. If someone has offended you, then you have a duty to yourself and to them to assume that they have made a mistake, are amenable to reason, are not being deliberately offensive, and so on. Your being offended is not enough to show that anyone was offending you, any more than you being deceived into thinking that the moon is larger when near the horizon counts as evidence that the moon is a confidence trickster.

Note that this is not all one way traffic. The quid pro quo of what has gone before is that each of us has a duty to take care. People do get upset; we ought to take account of that, even if the upset is, as far as we can see, non-rational. It will be impossible to avoid causing upset, but there are certain things – words or actions – that no reasonable person could deny are likely to cause offence. Reasonable people, for that reason, oughtn’t to do them.

The key here is taking care and being thoughtful about what we’re up to. There are certain phrases and certain modes of action that are freighted with a moral significance that, while wholly culturally contextual, is no less real for that. As far as I can see, political correctness – correctly understood – represents no more than the claim that we ought to take account of the fact that human interaction is a risky business, and that there are some modes of behaviour that we take for granted that we could, and ought, to change either for the sake of the general welfare or because the reasons for doing them do not hold or were never, on reflection, coherent. If that is what political correctness is, I have difficulty seeing the objection. PC, on this count, amounts to a demand for intellectual rigor. Do people really want to circumscribe that?

(Correlatively, the vocal PC brigade actually turns out not to be PC at all, because it’s often guilty of very sloppy thinking indeed.)

What about freedom of expression, though? What right has another person to tell me what I can and can’t say – even if that’s racist, sexist, or whatever? The key here is, again, reason. There are certain things that one might have a reason to say that are capable of causing offence. But, based on the claims I made earlier, this is simply tough titties. Still, there is a limit. Take, for example, the stereotypically racist slogan “Pakis go home”. Now, this could represent a boiled-down version of the wider claim “I believe that there is a compelling socio-economic case for encouraging those from the Subcontinent and their families to return there, and I am prepared to make my case.” This, I think, is something we ought to allow. I expect the argument to fail, and to fail quickly. But it might not. He believes me to be wrong; I him. That’s fair enough. Allowing debate would demonstrate to at least one participant that his starting-point was untenable. That, as I mentioned above, is something for which the corrected person ought to be grateful: he has been cleansed of an error. Moreover, the offence was incidental to the point being made: the intention was not to offend.

But the limit is that, in its own right, “Pakis go home” is fairly obviously meant to offend. More to the point, it offensiveness for offensiveness’ sake, therefore gratuitous. There is no reason to be offensive in this manner except that it causes offence – but, as justifications go, this looks circular, and therefore no justification at all. In effect – I’m curtailing the argument here – the speaker has no reason for what he says beyond the nature of what he says; and this amounts to no reason at all. But forbidding people from acting for no reason is hardly a curtailment of their freedom. So the problem is illusory. (I grant that this argument has holes – it’s a much condensed version of an idea I’ve been brewing for a while, but which is by no means wholly thought-through.)

Just thinking out loud – that’s all. Maybe I’ll write a paper on this – ’s got me thinking.


Length? You made it this far?
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 20:45, 11 replies)