Are there any examples of discussions or arguments having to do with political correctness that are actually thought-provoking? Seems like it's always the same ideas that come up whether the people involved are for it or not.
Most arguments come strongly down one side or another to the exclusion of any sane discussion. Allow me to quote a quote. From pseudalopex on July 3, 2020.
> Stewart Lee: "What is political correctness? It's an often clumsy negotiation towards a kind of formally inclusive language. And there's all sorts of problems with it. But it's better than what we had before."[1]
I've read a ton about it over the years and my conclusion is that it's just not that deep of a concept.
One side says: "We need more inclusive language" where the other side says "we need free speech". Pretty much any and every conversation or article I read has boiled down to these two points.
The reason it gets discussed so much is that it's easy for both sides to point to "violations" on the other side. One side keeps ranting and raving that that the other side is being homophobic/transphobic/racist/classist/etc, the other side looks at that outrage, and responds in kind with it's own outrage going "look how wild this is". But every conversation just ends up with each side presenting examples of what they consider to be strange behavior by the other side.
The real interesting part is not what the talking points are, but who is pushing then and the distribution of those talking points. My theory is the number of people that actually care about political correctness is vanishingly small. But because their ideas are so over the top to the other side, their opponents amplify their talking point. This amplification on social media results in the issue being perceived as a much bigger issue than what it actually is.
And as a result of that amplification, people outside of that "culture war" start looking at the signals and assume the issue is much bigger than it really is and respond accordingly. Your HR manager might browse twitter every morning and gets the impression that racism in the workplace is a massive problem because "everyone on twitter is talking about it". So they institute a new diversity training policy to respond to that.
TL;DR: The political correctness crowd is very small, but through amplification on social media, their ideas are being falsely perceived as being a much bigger issue than they really are.
The first side is those who support political correctness. This side is singular. Simple.
The other two sides are those who don't. This is where it gets interesting. One side that doesn't support it actually has hatred for marginalized groups. They aren't politically correct because of actual raw hatred. These people include racists, nazis, the KKK, etc. This group is a huge minority of the population.
The third group are those that are not racist. They are normal people who respect other races, genders, sexual orientations but do not support political correctness. The argument here is more interesting.
Why should I have to refer to a male with a penis as a "she" when objective reality and scientific truth defines this person as a biological "he"? Why do I have to redefine and complexify well established and obvious vocabulary, to make it fit someone else's perception or reality as we know it? That is the core of the argument. Which is more important? Emotional well being and social harmony Or Objective Reality/Truth?
The answer is not clear. Scientific studies show that well-being is associated with lying to oneself. People who are happier are less aware of the objective truth and people who are brutally honest with themselves tend to meet the clinical definitions of depression. The majority of people you meet lie to themselves.
Do we construct a reality that allows us to be happy or do we face the horror of objective reality? It's too late for me already. I've chosen the later and I can't go back. But the question is still interesting to me; given some aspect of the knowledge I have now and the ability to go back to the cross roads before I made that choice.... Would I be better off going down the other path? What is more important? Happiness? Or Truth?
That to me is a profound question, and the core central question that's being asked by this culture war. We'd all be happier if everyone was politically correct. But of course we'd also be, in a way, lying to ourselves.
> We'd all be happier if everyone was politically correct
That's objectively false. I would not be happier if everyone were politically correct, because I'm a strong believer in free speech, even if it's offensive. You can say whatever heinous, horrendous things you want about me and my loved ones as long as I'm able to walk away and disengage (if you pursue and target me, it changes from free speech to harassment/assault IMO). I'm also a strong believer in the ideal of objectivity, so I hate the idea of white lies or convenient falsehoods.
No. If you bought into the new age pro noun thing the SAME way you already buy into the pointless formalities we use like "please" and "thank you" there would be no argument. Everyone would be happier. This is objectively true. You just misinterpreted what I mean here.
>I'm a strong believer in free speech, even if it's offensive.
This is off topic. Free speech is part of the battle but it's not what I'm referring to. I'm referring to something much deeper then that. Proponents of political correctness are attempting to redefine reality. They want to change the concept of gender as "fluid" and non-binary and they are trying to change this from a scientific aka "objective" standpoint. Compelled speech is just a tool to push this agenda, and while I don't support it, the arguments behind free speech aren't interesting to me.
It's this entire idea of attempting to categorize this new interpretation of gender as the objective truth that interests me.
> If you bought into the new age pro noun thing the SAME way you already buy into the pointless formalities we use like "please" and "thank you" there would be no argument.
"If you met the conditions that proved me right, then I'd be right". Well I don't, hence you're wrong, as I said
I said this: We'd all be happier if everyone was politically correct.
Which is saying if you "met the conditions" of being politically correct.
I did not say if you were forced to act politically correct. Two different things.
So literally I did say: "If you met the conditions that proved me right, then I'd be right" and you responded by completely ignoring that and introducing your own conditions.
> We'd all be happier if everyone was politically correct
Me 'being' politically correct doesn't mean me 'supporting' or 'enjoying' being politically correct. I don't, and 'being' politically correct makes me unhappy. I don't know how I can simplify further, but it does seem to be a semantic point.
I never said this. I don't know how you can keep misinterpreting it. You can't simplify further because your off on a tangent trying to simplify something that is not the point.
You are already being "politically correct" in your own way. You don't refer to me as an idiot, that's a rule you follow. Thus you are already obeying your own "political rules." If your rules were identical to everyone else's, they they wouldn't be be pissed off and neither would you.
That is what I mean when I'm saying "everyone is politically correct" that's it.
You can lie all you want as long as it doesn't impact others; that's why we have things like slander and libel. If you want to say your favorite color is blue when in fact it's red, I'd support you every day of the week. If you want to force me to say you're blond when in fact you're a redhead, then I would expect a civilized society to protect my freedom to not repeat your lie. Similarly I would expect a civilized society to protect you from me if I start saying something negative about you that actually impacts you negatively.
> We'd all be happier if everyone was politically correct.
That's not really clear. Language is for communication. Political correctness makes language a constantly shifting landscape, far more so than it is now, which I think is the primary reason why there's resistance to it.
If everyone bought into that project, then any marginalized group, no matter how small, would be able to dictate a global shift in language. This would dramatically impede effective communication.
I admire your attempt to be honest, but being honest in return, I think this "we just care about facts" thing is just one of many tactics to move people from the first group to the second group, while they themselves don't realise what's happened.
I'm sure there's something you believe, and that is the accepted 'politically correct' consensus, that someone else is arguing the 'but it's just facts' about.
Possibilities are, for example, the people who say they're not 'racists', they don't hate anyone, they call themselves 'race realists' because they just simply believe that a) multiple human races exist, b) some are inferior to others.
To them it's just objective facts. They're not happy about it, but can't stand by and pretend it's not true. They've done their own research and decided that the politically correct poindexters might want to pretend that there's no scientific basis for race, and it's a social construct, but they they can't fool them. So they'll happily talk at great length about this pseudoscientific belief they have, all the time railing against the consensus. And they'll sadly have to side with the racists, not because they're racist, but just because well, some races are inferior, so you have to treat them in a way that might appear 'racist' if you thought they were equally human.
Here's another example, guess what their big focus is:
> ...there will be an accounting for this fraud. People are very very angry, and while the skeptics whose darkest doubts have been vindicated don't pull the levers of organized science (the frauds do that), there are some financial and political resources available to the skeptics who have been demanding integrity in science, and they understand now that this is war.
> A cabal of leading scientists, politicians, and media concubines have conspired to lie about global warming. The reasons are obvious: power and money. The illusion of planetary crisis serves as vehicle for 'emergency measures to save the planet', which are merely measures to empower and enrich an elite few. Al Gore, carbon-credit entrepreneur who puts his 'mouth where his money is', had it figured out a decade ago. The fraudulent scientists who suckle off the 7 billion dollars spent this year alone on the global warming scam (more than the U.S. spends annually on cancer research and AIDS research) are merely using science, rather than hedge funds, to enrich themselves...
> I'm not sure that the scientific community can or will respond to this debacle in a courageous or ethical way. The [redacted] debate clearly demonstrates that venality and shameless self-interest, as well as a toxic leftist-atheist ideology, runs very deep in the scientific community.
> 'Consensus science' isn't science. 'Consensus' is an attribute of politics, not science. Science inherently involves utter transparency and rigorous and respectful open debate. Real scientists welcome scrutiny and critique; the hallmark of a good scientist is that a good scientist reserves his most rigorous scrutiny for his own work. Censorship, invocation of 'consensus science' to elide scrutiny, real or threatened use of judicial coercion, and professional destruction of skeptics- which are characteristic tactics of global warming alarmists and of Darwinists- are tactics used to circumvent the scientific process.
I redacted it above, at first mention but you probably gathered from the last line that this guy doesn't believe in evolution.
He's not anti-science though, not in his mind, he's only against those Darwinist frauds.
You do realize that you’re in the second group, yeah? That’s wildly hateful. It’s the exact same discrimination-based position but on gender identity instead of race.
I'm either 100% on your side or I'm in the same group as the KKK? Do you not see the parallel here of forcing people into binary categories of being male or female? If gender can be non-binary why can't political correctness be as well?
The biases of binary thinking pervades even those that believe themselves to be beyond it.
To me it seems clear that GP wrote without hate. A charitable reading is that they just don't have the experience to understand transgender experience.
In the context of a discussion about the motivations for and arguments against political correctness it seems to me that we should try to create a safe space for folks (like deltasevennine) to express their perspectives evidently offered in good faith. (Even, and especially, if they seem wrong. You can't have a constructive discussion slinging mud.)
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> That to me is a profound question, and the core central question that's being asked by this culture war. We'd all be happier if everyone was politically correct. But of course we'd also be, in a way, lying to ourselves.
To me too this is a profound and fascinating question. It cuts to the epistemological root of the matter. "How do you know?"
I think a lot of what we're seeing as culture war actually boils down to an axis of Cosmopolitan vs. Provincial. With the advent of globalism and the Internet everyone has to confront everyone else in a giant distributed city. Things that seemed like bedrock (i.e. "There are only two genders") crash up against reality where that "rule" is just not applicable (i.e. there are human cultures with more than two genders, and biologically there are e.g. hermaphrodites, etc.)
>Things that seemed like bedrock (i.e. "There are only two genders") crash up against reality where that "rule" is just not applicable (i.e. there are human cultures with more than two genders, and biologically there are e.g. hermaphrodites, etc.)
Have you heard of BIID?
The term body integrity identity disorder (BIID) describes the extremely rare phenomenon of persons who desire the amputation of one or more healthy limbs or who desire a paralysis. Some of these persons mutilate themselves; others ask surgeons for an amputation or for the transection of their spinal cord. Psychologists and physicians explain this phenomenon in quite different ways; but a successful psychotherapeutic or pharmaceutical therapy is not known. Lobbies of persons suffering from BIID explain the desire for amputation in analogy to the desire of transsexuals for surgical sex reassignment. Medical ethicists discuss the controversy about elective amputations of healthy limbs: on the one hand the principle of autonomy is used to deduce the right for body modifications; on the other hand the autonomy of BIID patients is doubted. Neurological results suggest that BIID is a brain disorder producing a disruption of the body image, for which parallels for stroke patients are known. If BIID were a neuropsychological disturbance, which includes missing insight into the illness and a specific lack of autonomy, then amputations would be contraindicated and must be evaluated as bodily injuries of mentally disordered patients. Instead of only curing the symptom, a causal therapy should be developed to integrate the alien limb into the body image.
Transexual sex reassignment involves the usage of chemicals and surgery that twists the flesh of their genitals to look like the opposite sex. The parallel with BIID is uncanny. Yet one is considered truth and normal, while the other is considered to be a disease.
How do I know? I don't. But I get your point. Things that seem like a Bedrock truth can change. But did it change for the better? Is the new truth... the actual truth... or not? The existence of BIID and it's almost identical parallel to transexualism confuses me.
BIID feels wrong. That's about as far as I can get. But if someone truly desires to amputate a limb... who are we to stop him? What right do we have to call what they feel a disease?
I bring up BIID because I have a strong feeling that it's wrong... That what they feel is universally agreed to NOT be the objective truth. But I cannot grasp the logic behind it. If I examine BIID long enough I feel eventually the logic behind this controversy can be crystallized.
I don't have the answers either, but I can throw out some ideas and maybe there'll be something constructive in it, eh?
I was brought up with the general idea that what consenting adults get up to is pretty much their own business. E.g. if a guy wants to wear a dress or two women want to get married or Tilda Swinton is just over the whole gender thing or whatever, it ain't no skin off my nose, eh?
But in practice "there are limits", for me I get uncomfortable with autophagy and cannibalism. There have been a few cases of voluntary cannibalism!? That's where I draw the line personally. To each his own, but you can't eat each other, or yourself. BIID too for that matter falls into the "beyond the pale" category for me. (But even then, if the otherwise healthy limb is causing serious distress somehow? And we can't operate on the brain to fix the cause? Maybe you do remove the limb? What if you take it off and the problem remains!? Phantom BIID?)
Really, though, this is between the person and their doctor. It's none of our business. That should be emphasized IMO: if this is a medical condition we're talking about then it's just deeply inappropriate for other people to meddle, IMO.
Next, the thought occurs that there's at least one very obvious difference between BIID and gender change: having a limb off is generally bad, whereas being a woman (or man) is generally A-Ok.
It's fine to be a man, it's fine to be a woman, but changing from one to the other is not fine? "Where's the fun in that?" as John Cleese often says.
Also, people don't typically beat up or murder folks for having BIID. When we're discussing things like societal acceptance of transgender folks, you have to keep in mind the historical (and in many places still current) violence that they have had to put up with. It's not an armchair discussion for these folks. They are fighting for their lives. (E.g. talking in code: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polari )
I grew up reading sci-fi stories where e.g. a man might take a pill before bed and wake up a woman. To me the future would obviously and naturally have gender change as a normal thing (though perhaps uncommon) along with things like new synthetic genders, or body changes like fur or tails, or even becoming "transhuman" entirely though mutation or "uploading". What gender is a disembodied consciousness in a cybernetic matrix anyway, eh?
Last but not least, speaking as someone who has dedicated much of his life to logic, the world is trans-logical. You're talking about "grasping the logic" or crystallizing the logic, which is a good thing to do: logic is better than illogic. I'm pointing out that the real world is not fully covered by logic, in fact only a tiny minuscule portion of the real world is susceptible to logical comprehension. This doesn't mean a descent into irrationality, rather it leads to a new higher-order rationality that can take into account contradictory models and yet still function.
>When we're discussing things like societal acceptance of transgender folks.
This is a separate discussion and it often conflates with the the discussion of truth and fiction. Yes we should accept both people with BIID and transgender people into our society with respect and empathy. But the main question is how should we interpret their place in society? Do we interpret BIID as normal or a disorder? Do we interpret transgenderism as a disorder or totally and completely normal?
>Next, the thought occurs that there's at least one very obvious difference between BIID and gender change: having a limb off is generally bad, whereas being a woman (or man) is generally A-Ok.
It's debatable whether it's ok. The line is blurry here. A genital sex change does involve mutilation of genitals and re-sculpting of flesh in the genitalia area and breast area. It also involves experimental treatment with certain hormones that were previously used to chemically castrate male sex offenders. Some of these treatments are being recommended to kids before puberty and before 18. It is borderline similar to BIID as it is involves desires to physically carve into flesh and make irreversible modifications.
It's even arguable that BIID involves similar brain chemistry mechanisms as transgenderism as it is arguably an abnormal/ interpretation of "self", meaning that if BIID is classified as a disease it's not to far off to call transgenderism a disease as well. The big question here is, if cures for BIID existed in pill form, is it moral to offer them to BIID patients? If so if the same pills existed for transgenderism... is it moral to offer them too? Maybe given no cures for either the best path is to acknowledge both people with BIID or transgenderism as completely normal.
>BIID too for that matter falls into the "beyond the pale" category for me.
Me too. And for many... transgenderism also falls beyond the pale. It's understandable why. Both BIID and transgender people exist in nature. But for both they are statistical anomalies. Fewer then 1% of the population across occupy a gender category other then the traditional binary roles they were born with.
So what is beyond the pale? If personally, for yo,u Gender isn't beyond the pale But BIID is... why is your opinion more valid then someone else who thinks that Gender is beyond the pale?
> I'm pointing out that the real world is not fully covered by logic, in fact only a tiny minuscule portion of the real world is susceptible to logical comprehension.
I don't. Logic is the domain of mathematics. Interpretation of the world is based off of opinion, not logic.
However, such interpretations of the world should remain logically consistent. Meaning if you should believe racism is wrong but black people are all criminals then something is wrong with your belief system. Everyone agrees that things should remain consistent.
That is the problem here with transgenderism. There is an inconsistency within it. It fits every criteria of what we would classify as a psychological disorder no different then BIID. But what is more important here? The correct categorization of BIID or transgenderism? Or respecting peoples rights to cut off their own limbs/genitalia? Our biased emotions pull us in 3 directions here. Transgender people deserve respect, limbs/genitalia should not be cut off, truth and correct categorization of things should be followed. You cannot follow all 3 tenets at the same time even if you feel they are all right because they are contradictory.
>I grew up reading sci-fi stories where e.g. a man might take a pill before bed and wake up a woman. To me the future would obviously and naturally have gender change as a normal thing (though perhaps uncommon) along with things like new synthetic genders, or body changes like fur or tails, or even becoming "transhuman" entirely though mutation or "uploading". What gender is a disembodied consciousness in a cybernetic matrix anyway, eh?
I mean sure. What if the sci if story talked about a future where people can painlessly cut off their limbs and feed them to other people? We also have technology where people can eat a pill and instantly regrow the lost limb. So people regularly cut off their limbs and feed each other for fun? This might seem cool to someone with BIID. And logically there's nothing wrong with this future as well. But as you said logic doesn't fully cover the real world.
Why is it that you and I feel that my sci fi universe is strange, while your sci-description of the future is more normal? And what right do we have to enforce our belief that your sci-fi world is more normal then the one I describe? It's totally understandable that many will find the first story just as weird, especially if that person lived in a culture that hasn't been bombarded with media imagery that normalizes transgenderism.
> The language itself isn’t the core issue, it’s the overt repudiation of someone’s identity.
If gender is a social construct then it doesn't really exist except as a cultural artifact. If your identity is based on any kind of social construct, I don't see how it follows that anyone has to agree with or affirm that such claims ought to be a cultural norm.
Furthermore, disagreeing with such claims are cultural disagreements rather than moral disagreements. Cultural disagreements are not innately hateful. Therefore it doesn't seem to follow that affirming gender identity has any moral force, or that not affirming it is innately hateful.
That said, this obviously doesn't justify harassing trans people in any way, shape or form because of such disagreements.
Not OP, but I think we are not obligated to be respectful and nice, but why deliberately be an asshole? It's like someone preferring a nickname. If I know my friend Michael prefers to go by "Mike" and will get upset if I use "Michael", I'm not obligated to call him Mike, but I would be an asshole to deliberately call him Michael. Why be an asshole when you can do something very simple to not be an asshole?
I think I agree with you, up to the line of participation in beliefs I do not share. It would be awful to go out of my way to harass someone with religious dietary requirements, but lacking belief I would refuse to refrain from beef, or go along with fasting during Ramadan.
Calling someone by their preferred nickname or pronouns does not require you to participate in anything. Nobody's asking you to change your own name or fast during Ramadan if you don't want to.
Using another analogy, I have vegetarian friends and acquaintances, and when they come visit, I serve us all veg-friendly food because... I'm not an asshole! Doing this small act does not require me to adopt their religion or become vegetarian myself.
I don't disagree with you on any of this, I think that's a fairly non-controversial opinion. What about things like letting males into female only spaces? Do we have a moral obligation to affirm their identity? Several religions present a duty for women not to expose themselves to men so we have a conflict.
Sure I agree with all of that. However the culture war you see nowadays is the result of etiquette becoming part of compelled behavior enforced by rules and law. Not just that it is redefining our interpretation of reality and science.
It's not just about respect anymore; it's about truth.
Because we didn't want to her feelings Mia, a biological male with a female gender was allowed to compete in women sports. She's dominating that sport now; and it's starting to display a comical mismatch between the old reality and a new reality.
The argument is more complex then simply truth and etiquette. Because proponents of etiquette are literally redefining objective truth. So when you talk to both sides, they literally think they're side is the objective truth. Truth is as fluid as gender and it's literally hard to know which one is real.
There is as much validity to say most humans are male or female as there is to say that gender is a gradient, a small minority of people are neither male or female. These are just arbitrary categorizations that are being redefined.
