"We did not invent PC but we can fight it"

I think sometimes a word takes on any negative images associated with the people it refers to. So, for example, the word "dwarf" becomes associated with any bad stereotypes of "little people" and 'Nego" gets confused with the other N word, etc. IMO, the tendency of some groups to periodically change what they call themselves is an attempt to escape those negative images. And the inclination of others, in turn, to change what they call those groups is just an effort to respect their feelings and so forth.

That kind of PC is an expression of sensitivity, I believe, and I'm totally cool at going along with it. But I don't think changing the name ever really changes the situation. In most cases, IMO, it's a cosmetic gesture and doesn't really have any deep effect.

Also, I agree that some PC goes too far. And sometimes, it's not even PC cuz the offense is only in the ear of the individual beholder!

I was a sw during the period night owl and Luckygirl are talking about. Maybe I'm lucky to have worked in a less 'right on' area than you both did

I do remember those awful training courses where we were challenged about our prejudices, well, we white British workers were. The few workers who were black/dual heritage and in our area especially, Pakistani or Indian Muslim were never challenged about anything in my experience.
I was involved in delivering a lot of training, some of which went on over 10 days and involved training sw and police in interviewing young children. Honestly, the 'diversity training' was always difficult to plan and deliver. We had speakers in to deliver the training, we did it ourselves, it was always our least favourite part of the week.
However, I genuinely was never put under pressure not to call a black board a black board, and the notion of not singing Ba Ba Black sheep to babies never arose.
I do remember being pressurised to place a child who was to be adopted in a family that "reflected her ethnicity". She was white British and possibly had a North African grandfather, no one in the family really knew. Her mum was clear when we discussed this, she wanted her little girl to grow up with a family like hers, which she identified as white Christian. I was delighted to go back to the adoption team with mums written instructions!

I have to support what you say Luckygirl about certain words being forbidden in social work offices in the 1980's, and about being sent on training courses to make sure we all understood the importance of language and toeing the party line. I was put on the spot in one such training course and asked to speak about why I was glad to be white (I hadn't said I was glad to be white, it was assumed). We were berated for saying black coffee and 'baa baa black sheep' was indeed changed into 'baa baa woolly sheep' in local authority day nurseries. It was completely bonkers and a horrible time. There was no way of challenging it without that being taken as evidence that you were racist

Here is another good article on free speech and PC-ness. It is from the BBC Magazine.

I have to confirm that it really was taboo in SW in 70s, 80s and 90s to use words like blackboard. I was always in trouble for some verbal misdemeanour that arose from simply speaking English. It was pathetic. We had whole days of training in these matters, when we could have been getting on with SW tasks. Having referred to those we were trying to help as clients or patients (in the hospital setting), we were suddenly told that this was banned and they all had to be "customers."

I was in trouble for referring to a client as a dwarf on an assessment of needs form. I went and asked him how he would like to be referred to on the form and he said: "I was born a dwarf, I have been a dwarf for 75 years and I will die a dwarf. Put dwarf on the form. I am proud of what I am." What should I have put - vertically challenged?

It is really about who decides these things - where do they arise from?

Things are very clear cut when a word is used in a derogatory manner; but when it is not, then who says it is wrong? If I refer to someone as a negro in a sneering manner and in a derogatory context, then this is clearly wrong; but if I use the word respectfully and in its proper context is that too wrong?

In a perverse way, some of these PC terms actually draw attention to someone as being potentially subject to abuse or insult by implying that we need to pussyfoot around to keep them happy. I spent 25 years working with people who had disabilities and other disadvantages and in the main they found the whole PC thing a pain - they just wanted me to treat them as fellow and equal human beings, which was what I did.

The original article was concerned about how PC can stifle research and stop people asking questions, which are the impetus for progress. I share that concern.

"The futures all yours" and yer bleddy welcome to it,

What interested me about the article and some of the comments was the suggestion that the young people enforcing PC and intolerance in the universities today were the victims of the helicopter parenting style of their baby boomer parents, which apparently left them unable to rebel and incapable of original thought.
Really?

Thanks (again) to Eloethan for a measured, well informed response to this op.
Jingle's example of horrific medical intervention illustrates we've made progress since the sixties in understanding human biology and sexuality.

As for Marmalk's worries about nativity displays, they will be popping up in our town centre. I have three at my house but non Christian friends probably won't have any. It's choice not a thing to do with pc.

This. From a link from that article. How could this ever have happened?!

"To PC feminists, only one "choice" is possible to women. It is to end the oppression of women by ending the narrative and texts of patriarchy. Society must be deconstructed and its texts swept away. Sexuality must be deconstructed and gender reconstructed in its place.

Thus, social construction serves an explicit political end. In her book, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us, Kate Bornstein explained, "[M]en couldn't have privilege if there were no males. Women couldn't be oppressed if there was no such thing as 'women'.... The struggle for women's rights...is a vital stopgap measure until we do away with the system.... Gender fluidity is the ability to freely and knowingly become one or many of a limitless number of genders, for any length of time."

The prospect of endless gender was buttressed by the findings of Dr. John Money at John Hopkins. His work on the psychosexual flexibility of human beings at birth (and for some years afterward) was tremendously influential. It was also a tremendous fraud. Money illustrates the great harm inflicted by the rejection of biology in favor of ideology.

Money's fame rests primarily on one medical case. In 1965, identical twin boys were born to the Reimer family. One of them had his penis virtually destroyed in a botched circumcision. Without informing the Reimers that his procedures were experimental, Money used the injured infant as a gender experiment. The boy was fully castrated at 22 months old. Female genitalia were surgically constructed instead. The boy's name was changed to Brenda and he was raised as a girl with no knowledge of his former sex. When Brenda approached puberty, hormone therapy followed.

Although Brenda was constantly encouraged to act in a girlish manner, (s)he strongly resisted, tearing up her dresses and living in a state of constant turmoil. (S)he moved from school to school, psychiatrist to social worker with her frantic parents returning faithfully to Money for help. The experiment was a massive failure. Nevertheless, in December 1972, Dr. Money unveiled it as a triumph at an annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington D.C. Over a thousand scientists, feminists and reporters were fascinated by his proof that biology could be erased and gender created in its place.

Years later, Brenda was finally told the truth about her birth. (S)he responded, "Suddenly it all made sense why I felt the way I did. I wasn't some sort of weirdo. I wasn't crazy." The young man who had been Money's experiment had phalloplasty to restore his penis and later married a woman with children. He assumed the name David in order to symbolize his struggle with the medical Goliath who had almost destroyed him in order to prove a point.

Babette Francis of the Population Research Institute analyzed the experiment and its political impact. "Money's views on the malleability of gender identity was the established wisdom of the scientific community and particularly of the feminist movement.... Until David Reimer spoke publicly about his ordeal the medical establishment was reluctant to admit the dangers of current practice in treating intersex babies, their reluctance no doubt underpinned by their deference to the feminist movement, which, still stuck in a time warp, believes that one can produce an androgynous society by adopting 'counter-sexist' educational practices."

It is difficult to overstate how powerfully the idea of the social construction of gender drives PC feminism. It is difficult to overstate the lengths to which social constructionists will go to promote and impose that belief.

But understanding the power behind social construction theory is necessary to understand today's society. The obsession with which word is spoken, the battle over the "narrative" of education, the funding and celebration of "gender" choice, the dismissal of men as virtually another species and "the enemy," the contempt for conservative sexual choices such as the traditional family ... The key to grasping these dynamics within society is to comprehend the importance of the shift from "sex" to "gender," from biology to social construction.

Perhaps part of the solution is to resume using the word "sex."

That is awful! In 1965. In "civilised America" too!

The writer of the article castigates "political correctness" and refers to the furore concerning Dr Matt Taylor's shirt. It is automatically assumed that everyone concerned about issues of sexism, racism, etc. felt the same about the matter. That is probably not the case - some may have been outraged, some may have thought it distasteful and some may have thought it fairly irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. That is why I find the term "political correctness" one that is not particularly useful because it is often used to either sneer at what some might feel are perfectly reasonable objections or to highlight stupid decision- making, which is then described as "political correctness gone mad".

She goes on to talk about "those who enforce P.C. standards", and then refers to "twitter mobbing". People who comment on twitter don't enforce the standards - they are merely expressing their - sometimes deranged - opinions. They can enforce nothing. She omits to mention the women who, on expressing fairly innocuous views, such as a woman should be represented on postage stamps, are deluged with vile insults and threats of murder and rape. Threats are, of course, illegal but is it not right that vicious personal comments should be seen as unacceptable or should anything go in the name of free speech? As they say, "just because you can say something doesn't mean that you should".

In another article about video gaming she says " ....... at the crux of cultural war mongers today is an undying convention that women, as a class, are oppressed. And men, as a class, are "privileged". It follows a long tradition of left-progressive thought where one group is held up as morally pure, while another group is painted as morally corrupt."

My feeling is that there is quite a lot of evidence to suggest that women, whatever their social, professional or economic position, are oppressed in the sense of being treated in a different - and often unequal way - by what is still a fairly male-dominated world. We have all seen newspaper articles about successful women, which seem unduly concerned about their marital status and how on earth they cope with holding down a high-powered job if they happen to have children. That is, of course, trivial in the context of women being denied basic human rights, such as the right to an education or medical treatment, but it is symptomatic of a particular attitude.

Most of the comments that follow her article are so wreathed in academic-speak that, to me at least, they are barely understandable - aside from the fact that they absolutely agree with her. One exception was this one from "Jean":

"I doubt the baby boomers are to blame for P.C. Many of us were babies or very young children when Third World countries were trying to throw off the shackles of their colonizing countries, women entering into the professions and more into universities worldwide (aka feminism), civil rights movement in the US which was very inspiring to other movements worldwide, etc.

For every “fear” if we can call that against “political correctness” , is change in business /workplace language for the better: chairperson instead of chairman, Ms instead of Miss or Mrs. (Your marital status as a woman should never define your workplace competence. I found in the German language “Ms.” doesn’t exist –yet), etc. Is this the P.C.that everyone fears, gets angry about?

Claire Lehman has written a very academic, theoretical and wordy analysis with few examples outside the scientific or academic world of what she finds so objectionable about the examination and possible modification of language and behaviour that demeans and creates division.

Actually it was Lucky who said the interesting thing. You didn't say anything much at all Hilda.

Oh no! Nothing wrong with what you posted Hilda. It was interesting.

I wasn't advocating using the n word, only pointing out it's proper meaning. Obviously people took my explanation the wrong way.

I wasn't meaning to imply that 'Happy Holidays' was in any way offensive. And plenty of Americans say 'Happy Christmas' either as well as or as an alternative.

The 'negro' issue is different and it does seem that many black people do find the word offensive, in whatever context it's used. I dislike people claiming to be 'offended' on behalf of others, but it does seem rather insensitive to insist that it's perfectly OK to use a word that so many have a problem with.

Nothing will make me believe that anyone would have been not allowed to say blackboard. Or black coffee.

I'm not bright. To be truly honest. And I do blank out easily.

I understood it, jings, and I think lucky did. It's not awfully clear that anyone else has read it.

Coca Cola is an American company and Americans say Happy Holidays where we would say Happy Christmas.

There was a winter festival before Christianity, and early Christianity appropriated it. That's just history. I think people who prefer not to use the word Christmas (a small minority) are just making the point that the winter fest we have isn't only a Christians festival.

There's nothing offensive about any of this. People can use whatever word they like in this context without anyone being offended. Live and let live.

It is really impossible to know who might be offended by what - we all try not to offend, but it is the person hearing it who chooses to take offence where none is intended. We cannot get inside their heads, and hopefully most people have the wisdom to hear the spirit of what they are hearing.

I wouldn't want to see the word 'negro' coming back. Just not necessary.

Does anyone, really and truly understand that article? I haven't got a clue!

Like that annoying Christmas ad for coca cola we get every year which insists that 'Holidays are coming, Holidays are coming...'

Winterval is apparently an urban myth according to Google. However I do.seem to remember it was a notion in Birmingham in the 1990s.

It covered all the winter festivals from Oct onwards. There was still the German Christmas market in Victoria Square which spreads every year. Brum did not forget Christmas just added every thing else in to keep the decorations up longer.

It has stuck in minds as typical PC which it well may have been.

I agree LullyDully, children need to understand it is now a mixed world and I think they do unless taught differently by adults who want to continue using words which offend under the pretence of free speech . Who but a homophobic would call a homosexual a poof now, negro is linked to slavery so it offends , why would anyone choose to use such words knowing they offend and hurt people.

We shouldn't be afraid of positive language. Just look at how the language for homosexuality has changed since the 1960 and how attitudes have changed with the language.