From: tweaver@nyx.cs.du.edu (T.C.Weaver)
Subject: Re: PC (was Re: New Age Androgynous Bisexuals...)
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Date: Wed, 11 Nov 92 04:08:14 GMT

 mlloyd@westmark.Stanford.EDU (Mike Lloyd) writes:
>sconley@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Stephen M Conley) writes:
>: Liberation is not "Don't say bad things about me."  Liberation is "Fuck you, 
>: I don't care what you think."  That's why PC-speak is so stupid.

>Liberation is indeed to be found in having the sheer independence and
>power of self-determination to say "Fuck you, I don't care".  Unless you
>benefit from the open doors granted to the white, the rich and the male,
>you can't say it.  That is why PC-speak is a vital part of changing the
>world.

I agree with Stephen, and have never needed to be rich or male to say it,
which is quite lucky, really. As for white, well, my skin hasn't opened any
doors for me, far as I can see, except inasmuch as it covers my door-opening
limbs.

I don't agreee with positive discrimination. And I will use all my effort 
towards being as free as I wish to be. 

>You're an anarcho-capitalist, right?  (Or am I getting my labels in a
>twist?)  So you don't want the government to enforce fairness and free
>competition.  How else is it going to come about?  (I think I'll make
>that rhetorical, if I may - given that we don't live in an anarcho-
>capitalist world, I'm more interested in the need for PCness now than
>its place in a nonexistant world.)

Fairness and free competition may occur as readily as a result of market
forces as any other means. It would certainly make sense to employ people
on the basis of ability for a task rather than irrelevant social criteria,
but employing people because they happen to fulfil a stereotype seems to me
as foolish as rejecting them for it.

>PC: *politically* correct.  It's about power, the stuff of politics.

And there is no one political/powerful solution. There *is* no "correct"
political stance, and I see the term PC as being a derogatory coining for
those who insist that there is, and if we all followed it, we would be
happy.

>There are unempowered people all around us, and we (I use the term
>broadly) keep them down.  PC-speak is just basic civility: seeing what
>effect the society we are part of has on its minorities and oppresed
>groups, and acknowledging their justified complaints against us.

Hang on, I'm unemployed, though I can't see how you're keeping me down. Just
as I can't see that Roy's oppressing any potential female sexual partner who
might perform oral sex on him. PC can be insidiously oppressing, which is what
makes the concept so ludicrous to me.

>  If they are being interfering, say so.  But >political<
>correctness is not a vice, it's a moral imperative (and God knows I
>don't think there are many of those!).

Strangely, Pat Robertson and his moral imperatives leap to mind. I reject the
notion of one truth, especially when someone claims to have it.

Tanaqui

"Become so much a part of your ideals that no-one can take them away from you"
-- Albert Schweitzer
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