ANdersON Anonymous

Eng.50

Xyr.Anonymous

3 Dec. 2015

Political Correctness

In the past there was a saying; “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.” Today this saying seems to almost have no meaning as we are now constantly watching what we say for fear of offending someone. We purposely control our speech because we know that there are those who would take what we do and say as a transgression against them, there are those who would willingly shame others and label them offensive bigots to punish free speech and sharing of ideas. In the past we fought dearly for the freedom to express our thoughts openly and equally without the looming fear that punishment would come just for speaking our mind; now, unfortunately, we face the return of this near-barbaric past. Our obsession with political correctness has led to a new era of mass censorship.

In our current civilization it is a wonder that political correctness would ever take such a frightening hold; why would we create a world in which telling a joke could get you fired from your job? It is sad to say, but there are those who benefit from political correctness, there are those that stand to gain an advantage by limiting and twisting the words of the opposition; it’s easy to get ahead when the competition are all racist sexist bigots who still live like it’s the 1800’s. In The New Thought Police, Tammy Bruce speaks of Nina Burleigh’s time as President of Los Angeles NOW; Burleigh explains, “My office would send to reporters ‘information Packets’ designed to influence the labels attached to us and to our opponents–in essence, to win the spin. For example. When abortion wars were hot and heavy in the early 1990s, I wanted to make sure reporters got used to calling us ‘pro-choice’ instead pf ‘pro-abortion,’ and calling anti-abortion activists ‘anti-choice’ instead of ‘pro-life”(qtd. in Bruce 174). To play the political correctness game is to claim that you must be called this positively charged phase because that is what is correct, but this other thing must be referred to with a negatively charged phase because that is what is correct. To put it simply, political correctness pressure groups are those whose views are on the right side of any given issue, and it is their job or desire to insure that their views are always on the right side and their opposition’s views are always on the wrong side.

Political correctness is at its core censorship, whether it is censorship in the change of meaning and intent for a phrase or saying, or censorship in the removal of content entirely. However, one recent form of censorship is self-censorship. Self-censorship is quite problematic because not everyone sees it as true censorship, they just see it as someone simply editing or changing their opinions on a topic that they wrote in their blog, book, or film. It’s not censorship, the argument goes, if no one is forcing them to make the change and they are doing it of their own accord, but is this true? To answer this question, we must review the details that made a person change their views in the first place.

On November 12th, 2014, the Rosetta space probe finally completed its mission and landed on Comet 67P. James Meikle of The Guardian reports that Matt Taylor, a British astrophysicist, was involved in the landing of Comet 67P. Later, Matt Taylor participated in an interview in which he was wearing a shirt designed and made by his friend Elly Prizeman. The shirt in question depicted scantily clad cartoon women wielding futuristic firearms. After the interview, Matt Taylor was not celebrated for his success in landing a space probe on a comet but was instead shunned and ridiculed by pressure groups for his decision to wear casual clothing to a televised interview. He later, in tears, apologized, saying that wearing that shirt was a big mistake (Meikle). Do you think Taylor would have ever apologized had he not been constantly hounded, insulted, and called a sexist all for wearing a shirt that was made for him by one of his female friends? No, if what happened to Taylor was civil and there were no pressure groups assaulting him verbally, it is doubtful that he would have apologized, or at least he would have done so without tears streaming from his eyes.

Although it may be difficult to see the results of political correctness in everyday life one only has to take a brief glance at higher education before the effects of political correctness become obtrusively obvious. In Mary Wakefield’s article “The contagious madness of the new PC,” Wakefield describes an event in which students call for Trigger Warnings (content warnings) to be placed into great books such as Gatsby for being misogynistic, and Huckleberry Finn for being racist. Wakefield further goes on to tell the plight of Jeannie Suk, a law professor who had difficulties teaching rape law in class because her students saw rape law as too triggering to be taught at all. One girl even thought that the word violate was immensely traumatic and felt violated when that word was used in class. Political correctness was originally supposed to be the act of using different words or phrases so that the content being discussed would be less offensive to curtain groups, but in the college environment it has morphed into a total lack of anything that could ever possible be offensive to anyone.

So where is all the political correctness taking the new generation? What is self-censorship and verbal control doing to young college students? Sadly, it seems that political correctness is actually driving students mad with anxiety. Wakefield states that as of 2014, the American College Health Association found that 54 percent of college students have felt overwhelming anxiety. Western academia has created an echo chamber in which the more offensive material is banned, the more students become aware of other possibly offensive material. This echo chamber has unfortunately manifested itself physically into colleges in the form of ‘safe spaces’. Recently pressure groups have demanded that colleges must provide a ‘safe space’ for students to go to after they have been “triggered” by a lesson in class. There they can forget all about the triggering content while enjoying the amenities of the safe space such as cookies, Play-Doh, and relaxing, non triggering videos. I remember a time when safe spaces used to be places where you could go to be free in the expression and discussion of your ideas no matter how radical they might be without the fear of others potentially physically harming you because of your ideas, not this padded cell where you can forget that real life exists.

College campuses have become so politically correct that many comedians have stopped performing there all together because the students there are simply too easily offended as described by Robby Soave in his article “Offence Taken: Campus Funnies.” Soave states that many popular comedians such as Chris Rock, Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Maher refuse to perform at campuses because the students are too politically correct and “can’t take a joke.” Soave says that the problem stems from campus culture which encourages students to see themselves as victims or potential victims of provocative behavior. Even the federal government encourages students to see themselves as victims by encouraging them to file complaints against their school when they feel they have been marginalized.

I fear that our society is fast approaching a breaking point. In our attempts to be all-accommodating, we are turning on our own selves now more than ever. It is difficult to even help one another when we fear that saying or doing something wrong can lead to big trouble for us. It’s times like these that I look back and remind myself of an old saying: Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.

Work Sited

Bruce, Tammy. The New Thought Police. NewYork: Three Rivers Press, 2003. Print.

Meikle, James. “Rosetta Scientist Dr Matt Taylor Apologises for ‘Offensive’ Shirt” The Guardian. 14 November 2014. Web. 3 Dec. 2015.

Soave, Robby. "Offense taken: campus funnies." Reason Oct. 2015: 8+. Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 27 Oct. 2015.