dolorosa_12 | Politically correct and proud

A friend of mine once summed up the complaints of those people who rant about 'political correctness gone mad' as basically translating to 'I resent the fact that you are calling me out when I say mean things', which seems a pretty good definition to me.

sarahtales seems to agree. Asked anonymously whether she only includes non-white characters out of a (mistaken) anxiety about 'political correctness', she responded:

I dislike the term ‘politically correct’ because I so often hear it used with a sneer, and because the word ‘politically’ is so unnecessary. What’s wrong with just ‘correct’? As in, it is correct not to be sexist, it is correct not to be racist, it is correct to treat everyone with common decency. See? Works perfectly well.

It’s not a case of ‘everyone is weirdly adding people of colour’ now… it’s a case of ‘everyone was weirdly excluding people of colour’ back then. People of colour EXIST: not having them in fiction IS WEIRD. Imagining stories entirely without them IS WEIRD—why would you want to do it?

You bring up Merlin having a black Guinevere. Well, black people existed in medieval times, so why shouldn’t they be in fictional representations of medieval times?

Leaving aside the fact that ‘medieval Camelot’ isn’t set in medieval times—it’s set in a fantasy world with elements of medieval times and other much more modern stuff, and also… what am I thinking of… oh yes… MAGIC AND DRAGONS.

But clearly… Guinevere is the last straw! Dragons, sure, but black people, you go too far!

I love her to bits.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I've always thought that PC = having good manners.

Yay Sarah!
And I love Sin so much :)

Yeah, I love SRB precisely because her books are so inclusive and representative, and because she is so conscious of issues of representation.

Which makes me even sadder that her books aren't widely known at all. :(

Well, I do my bit! I link to her blog/tumblr and post about her books all over the internet, and I'm also a YA book-reviewer for a newspaper, and always review her books and include them in my 'best of 2000-and-whatever' end-of-year reviews. And when I went to the launch of The Demon's Covenant I wrote about it (http://blogs.radionational.net.au/bookshow/?p=312) for a book blog I was working for at the time.

Or I wasn't trying to say that you weren't!
That's great.
I just give the book as a gift a lot. I'm one of those people who will almost always give people books as presents.

I don't think that's necessarily true, it may be in some cases but 'politically correct' embraces a wide range of meanings... Also it's talking about language, not at all about intent, and while I think language is important I think that in a sense different people speak different languages. I really think that gender studies, for instance, has a language all of its own, one that's not widely understood, and if that is the basis for 'politically correct' language then it's really not universal. There's another issue, one of honesty, where political correctness is equated more with bureaucratic language rather than offensiveness or otherwise. But I think the universality is important, there's a big gap between those that use the 'correct' language and those that don't.

I know I'm not explaining myself very well, and even rolling up a few issues, but I think they're related. What I mean is that in some cases I think you're right, that people pull out the 'political correctness' label to continue saying something offensive. But I think there's also a real sense in which political correctness is a language that some people find confusing. Not everyone knows when a word is suddenly no longer 'correct', and then they find that they are suddenly dismissed. I feel like I see on the internet all the time arguments between groups of people who are talking different languages, and I hate that a language (or 'language') can be used as a marker of the 'correct' ideas, the 'correct' people, and I think it can be very exclusionary. So I think that maybe there is a real problem with it. I definitely think that not everything is as self-evident to everyone as it is to anyone else. Maybe that language is offensive, but it's not necessarily understood as offensive by the person using it. And if thats the case, maybe it's not surprising if they get defensive when they are told they're being offensive? Not to say that language can't or shouldn't change, but I don't think people are ever going to use it universally, and I really don't think that a dislike of political correctness necessarily equates to being an awful person.

Sorry, bit of a rant, this is something that I've been trying to think through... So I'm kind of using your comments to do it. Feel free to tell me if you think I am horribly wrong. Or slightly wrong.

Sorry to take so long to reply. I have been thinking about what you're saying, and I'll have to admit I disagree for the most part. The quote from Sarah Rees Brennan (with which I agree wholeheartedly) is a response to a question from a reader who basically seemed to be saying, 'do you put black and gay characters in your books because you think you have to?', and doesn't seem to be in relation to use of language at all.

I get what you mean about people seeming to be speaking different languages. I see it all the time online, especially in relation to the word 'privilege', because people who don't 'speak the gender studies language' as you put it, get really offended and misinterpret what is meant when someone says they 'have privilege'. That being said, I think the onus should be on the person being offensive to learn why they're being offensive, rather than on the offended person not speaking up in order to spare someone's feelings.

I came across this quote (http://librariesandlemonade.tumblr.com/post/12608802862/if-youve-spent-fifteen-or-twenty-or-fifty-years-using) on Tumblr the other day, and it's highly relevant:

If you’ve spent fifteen or twenty or fifty years using words or ideas that you didn’t realize were harmful, but today, someone tells you that they are, you don’t have to feel bad about the last x years.

Start today. Learn to do it differently. Let this be the turning point. It might take some time to get it right, but there’s no reason to refuse to try not to harm people.

That's basically what I think.

You're right, my argument doesn't have a lot to do with that quote and I was talking more about political correctness more generally. Which was maybe not so relevant to the post. But I still stand by the idea that 'political correctness' can be problematic. I certainly don't think people should go around being offensive towards other people. But I also think that offense can be quite a personal thing, it's hard to see how a blanket response can cover everyone's feelings. And how do we even decide what 'correct' language is? There are so many strands of, say, feminism, that I think it is difficult to reach a consensus on the correct way to treat sexism. One big difference I see in discussions of race and feminism is between the camp who operate on the basis that saying people are intrinsically different is harmful, and the other who say that not recognising our differences (cultural, gender based) is dismissive. I think these views would lead to different 'correct' languages. One thing that I hear people who dislike political correctness saying is that we don't have the right not to be offended. And I think that's true, we can't expect that from life.

I think there's a sense in which I am quite privileged, so that the offenses I have to deal with are less and less pervasive in my life. I don't want to defend racism or anything, but the way that I understand political correctness I don't particularly want to defend it either as a general idea. I think that people's underlying worldviews can be so different that getting them to agree on what's important to get right, and I have pretty much spent the last few years trying to be less easily offended in discussions of religion, because I think that it's important that people can have those discussions and I know that they are often coming from passionately held viewpoints, even if I thought they were wrong.

But again that's probably off topic. I guess in response to the post I just think I agree that it's "'correct' not to be racist, 'correct' not to be sexist", and these are things I try to avoid, but I'm not so sure that's it's always easy to define racism and sexism. Look at the different reactions to 'The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo' for instance.

Politically correct and proud

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject