Do we really need to be politically correct when we can be polite instead?

i think the whole PC thing is ridiculous.

an example:

during a staff meeting at work, my manager referenced some joke from the movie “The 40 Year Old Virgin”. However, he would not say the full name of the movie, leaving out “virgin”. why? lest someone be offended.

let’s review:

1) you’re referencing an R-rated movie, which is known for it’s gross-out humor.
2) you’re not going to say “virgin”, which is NOT a dirty word, so as not offend someone.

what. the. hell?

it’s ridiculous.

Being impolite was never the preferred alternative where one didn’t care.

Treating others decently doesn’t demand a great amount of effort and in the long run, it earns you the respect of those around you. That can’t hurt you either.

It is necessary to be politically correct at least to outward appearances if you do not wish to be ostracized. That’s why I keep my less mainstream thoughts to myself.

@Dr_Lawrence
Isn’t treating people decently politeness?

You don’t have to walk on eggshells to treat the people around you decently. If you can’t tell what topics are crude and inappropriate in a business setting you are a thoughtless boor.
Avoiding pointless crudeness is not political correctness, its merely appropriate adult behavior!

@Dr_Lawrence
I honestly can’t tell if you’re agreeing with me or not. I blame the lateness of the hour.

When looking at the Power of Language, you come to realize that words used incorrectly can actually harm people. Use Mailman instead of Mail Carrier and you cut out half the population from even thinking about getting a job with the Postal Service.

However, it becomes ridiculous when you say Domestic Engineer because Homemaker doesn’t sound important enough.

@YARNLADY
Never, in all my many years of life, have I had a female mail carrier.
But do you honestly think that a person saying “mailman” is going to deter a girl from working for the USPS? I think that you give words too much credit.

@Nullo My mail carrier is a woman. And yes, lables have a great deal to do with how people think about jobs, pay rates, and various other things. Most people are completely unaware of how much power words do have. For many years no one would ever think of electing a woman to be the head of a board, because only a chair man could run a meeting. It could be that you don’t remember the days when the title of a job kept women in their place, and out of the boardroom, but I do.

I’m of the opinion that “PC complaints” are nothing more than code for people who believe they should be able to do or say any damn thing they want to do and say without considering how anyone feels about it.

Cue the world’s tiniest violin player.

It is a shame a necessity exists to try to force people to be courteous and respectful…

…especially when we know it ain’t gonna it’s not going to work!

Ignorant people will be ignorant regardless of how anyone feels.

There’s nothin’ anyone can do about it.

Political Correctness in some instances is a little silly, but in others, people hold stereotypes and derogatory terms to be absolute truths when they’re not. In @NULLO’s example of mail carrier, it fosters sterotypes and discrimination. For example, one of my daughters, when she was young, loved to play post office, and would use junk mail, and make up letters and packages, and would sort them and deliver them to us. We had people come over with their children, and my daughter suggested playing post office. After everyone spent their time making up mail to be delivered, my daughter said that she would take the “route” of the porch, another girl could have the living room, and that the boy could deliver to the back yard. The boy then said that he would deliver all of the mail, because only he could be the “mail man” because he was the only boy, and only boys could be men. That brought the girls running to the moms, and ruined the game for everyone.

Likewise, is it correct to call a male flight attendant a “stewardess”? Should only women hold that role of working on airplanes?

There is a huge gap of perceptions, attitudes, and stereotypical assumptions that are not covered by good manners.

To me, this is one of those issues in which common sense and civility have been hijacked by cement-hard posturing born more out of personal perspective and gender bias than reality. The conversation between Nullo (who originally asked the question) and Yarnlady encapsulates the polarization that just makes me shake my head. I lean toward Nullo’s very rational point of view, by the way, and can’t help but wonder whether Yarnlady (Yarnperson?) has talked about this with her mail carrier, or is she only making an assumption about what she thinks?

Being politically correct is the same as being polite. The rules shift more now, and can be harder to figure out, which leads to some people going overboard, but it doesn’t become political correctness when you go overboard, it was political correctness from the beginning, it’s just a new name applied to polite so we can make fun of it.

Look, I know some people who are polite to me in my face have choice words to use about me and people like me when they’re with “their own”. I realize being PC isn’t going to make people change their minds if they don’t want to with regard to stereotypes they hold about other people. And frankly, to those people, I say, “Go ahead, think whatever you want; changing your mind isn’t my job.”

But the minute a person makes a lousy attempt to act like they’re “better” than me, or pull some “privilege” shit or otherwise get over on me because I am not the same as them or their group, you’re going down. No one is allowed to treat me like crap because of whatever stereotype they believe about me or people like me. I’ve been called plenty of names based on what I looked like, and they didn’t get a pass. That’s all I have to say.

I’m just polite and try not to offend people. Mostly I try to avoid labels and gender-specfics. I have no bad intentions but I also have no intention of keeping up with the latest “Newspeak” (remember George Orwell?). If I suspect that I may be using an outmoded term, I apologize in advance and ask to be corrected if inappropriate. That is as far as I will go.

Sometimes PC can be carried to absurd lengths. There are restaurants where the men’s room is labeled “MEN” and the women’s, “LADIES”.

Being politically correct can go too far, but I think it is important to consider in order to avoid being rude, even if you’re polite otherwise. One example is that the 2010 US census is using the word “negro” as a racial category. I don’t think it’s impolite of them to use the word “negro,” per se, but very few would consider it PC! Their reasoning is that some older people still identify as negro, so including it would be better than not including it… Still, though. I think they’re at risk for alienating younger people of all races unless they explain themselves before the census forms show up on everyone’s doorstep!

@Austinlad ha, ha, YARNPERSON is funny. You made me think, I’ve never heard of a Yarnman, except in voodoo. Oh wait, I remember the Yarn Man used to be the guy who brought the yarn from the supplier. All the women in the shop wanted to be first to see what the Yarn Man brought this time.

I think political correctness has led to us being unable to talk about difficult subjects in a meaningful way. People worried about saying the wrong thing, people being offended to easily, it’s ridiculous. If people are having a conversation and they know everyone has good intent, no one should have to be on eggshells. If something is said without mal intent, that does offend, than the person offended should inform the other person why it is offensive, to educate them.

@YARNLADY
I am indeed something of a novice at this thing called “Life,” but I always thought that “chairman” derived from the chair being a man, and not the other way around. That would indicate that other forces than word choice were at work.

@PandoraBoxx
I wouldn’t put much weight behind that boy’s words; I find it more likely that he was striking a blow against the forces of cooties more than anything so malicious.
A male flight attendant is called a steward, the age-old masculine counterpart for stewardess. Means “Keeper of pigs” unless I’m mistaken.

@Nullo Yes, the chair of a meeting was always a man, because women simply did not do that sort of thing, and when they wanted to they couldn’t because the name made it perfectly clear that they weren’t welcome. Nobody wanted to have a “woman” chairman. It was only as women became acceptable that the name was changed to show they were entirled to the job on their own merits, and not taking on a “man’s” job. If people are “forced” to use the PC name chairperson, how will they ever keep women in their “place”? To change would be admitting women earned the title.

Women have had to fight against the wording of titles for many generations, one example; women were allowed to teach, they could never be the ‘headmaster’,

@YARNLADY
But you admit that it wasn’t word choice -it was’t non-PC language policies – that prevented women from chairing.
Chairmen have been around a lot longer than women that work in commercial environments, you know.

@Nullo You’re using the old “which came first, the chicken or the egg” argument. Men were in charge and the language showed that, and in fact perpetrated it. The excuse “because we’ve always done (said) it that way” is just another ploy to subjugate women.

Ask yourself, why have chairmen been around longer? Could it be because no one wanted a woman chairman? Maybe if the name was chairperson, she could have moved up quicker. Words are used to keep people in their place, and to claim changing is simply PC is to deny the power of words.

wasn’t the first word to have “man” in it woman?

@eponymoushipster some information about word origins and original spellings

@YARNLADY and some for you, too.

@eponymoushipster Thank you for the information, it’s such a Fluther staple, I’ve often wondered what people meant when they said that, but I never took the time to check.

@YARNLADY
No, that’s what you’re inferring. I’m saying that the word used had no bearing on the ideology that you rail against so vehemently. Subjugate women indeed!

You wanna know something interesting, really interesting about word origins? “Man” used to be a suffix, meaning “human” or “person.” The Old English terms for “man” and “woman” were “werman” and “wifman”, respectively.

@Nullo apparently you didn’t look at the link I provided on that subject for @eponymoushipster above I only used that one word as an example of the power of words. I am not trying to nit-pick a specific word here, but the general subject is the importance of the power of words, as opposed to the pejorative use of PC.

@YARNLADY
No, I didn’t follow the link. Long ago I shared a site with a horrible troll. This troll would drop links here and there. Mostly worthwhile, but every once in a while would leave a zinger. I learned then to see where the link went before following it.
How does it illustrate the power of words? It just conjures images of crabby feminazis.

@Nullo gross, I seldom follow links for the same reason The link I gave showed the origins and comments on the word “womyn” which said pretty much the same thing you said. The link @eponymoushipster gave is the definition of sarcasm, which shows he got my drift, and answered one of my previous comments saying I don’t really know what sarcasm is.