
Americans Strongly Dislike PC Culture - staticautomatic
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/large-majorities-dislike-political-correctness/572581/
======
CM30
Honestly, I suspect there isn't a single place on the planet where the
majority of the population likes PC culture, or thinks like many of the more
vocal types on Twitter do. The stats would probably be pretty similar in the
UK, much of Europe, Australia, etc.

Either way, the stats provided also likely hint that the best way to deal with
online controversies over political correctness and offensiveness now is
simply to ignore them altogether. I mean, at the end of the day, how much of a
sales drop does an angry mob on Twitter account for? For many businesses,
probably about 0.01% at most. Ignore it, and any issues will just go away on
their own eventually.

~~~
quotemstr
Right. It's appalling how often I see Twitter metrics drive product decisions
--- as if Twitter were the real world. It's a cheap and easy substitute for
real market research. When you let Twitter lead you around by the nose, you're
going to see an awfully distorted view of the world.

------
sverona
There's a semantics issue at play here. Buried about halfway down the article
is this:

"One obvious question is what people mean by “political correctness.” In the
extended interviews and focus groups, participants made clear that they were
concerned about their day-to-day ability to express themselves: They worry
that a lack of familiarity with a topic, or an unthinking word choice, could
lead to serious social sanctions for them. But since the survey question did
not define political correctness for respondents, we cannot be sure what,
exactly, the 80 percent of Americans who regard it as a problem have in mind."

In other words, the anxiety is not "oh god I'll have to treat people with
basic respect." The anxiety is "oh god they'll cancel me if I make an honest
mistake," and possibly "the ensuing social dynamics will mean I'll be out of a
job."

I'm a trans woman. I get misgendered a lot. Trust me when I say that we can
tell, by and large, when it's an honest mistake. The people who are doing it
just to be malicious are easy to spot.

I'm about as far left as they come and I think "cancel culture," by which I
mean the practice of cutting off everyday, actual social interactions with
people who say something wrong, is the real problem here. You see it a lot on
Twitter, especially leftist Twitter, because there are a lot of people who use
social media explicitly to harass others, and so people who don't want to be
harassed adjust their priors accordingly and quickly. And, yes, some people do
it for the social clout of showing off how woke they are.

I think the fact that people are expressing this specific anxiety, rather than
spewing obvious racism, says they want to do better but fear they aren't being
given the chance. This is irrational.

If people correct you, they are giving you a chance. They're not going to turn
around and tell their friends that you messed up, except maybe to vent. It
won't spread like a rumor. That's all in your head. If people cut off contact
with you because of one thing you said, continuing to worry about it or spend
time with them probably isn't beneficial to you anyway.

On the other hand, if you want to be in someone's good graces, maybe you
should listen to them when they tell you how to address them.

We call it "political correctness" because of politicians. We hold politicians
(and writers) to one standard _precisely because they have the time to compose
what they want to say._ We do not hold our friends to the same standard.

~~~
beatgammit
I think people get uppity when "common courtesy" becomes a policy proposal.

I personally have no problem referring to someone by a preferred pronoun or
whatever (though I'll ask that you choose one of the two traditional options),
but I don't want it to become a policy that I _have_ to comply with. If I'm
forced to do something I would otherwise do if asked nicely, I _will_ resist.

And that's where the culture part of it comes in. When I see stuff on the
media, I think ahead to elections. I have no problem with PC culture on a
personal level, but I absolutely don't want that to extend to the governmental
or workplace levels. I applaud people for courageously being who they are
instead of trying to present a false, but more socially familiar persona.
However, that doesn't mean it should be illegal or against office policy to
not follow personal requests, even if it takes a lot of courage to make them.

That is why _I_ push back on PC culture. I think it all stems from holding
freedom of speech to be inalienable. I want to interact with you in a
respectful manner, but I don't want to be forced to.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
This approach seems absurd when applied to many equality laws that were
controversial at the time but are no longer.

For example, what if someone forced you legally to allow women to attend your
school, or African-Americans to use your water fountain (which they generally
do in various ways)?

It appears you'd intentionally bar them because before you'd have had basic
human decency if they asked you nicely, but now the law got involved you're
going to become institutionally racist and sexist just to make a point about
freedom?

But presumably you didn't and don't do that kind of thing, so why threaten to
do it in this case?

------
notenoughbeans
One of my first gigs out of college was to build a thesaurus for a government
agency that would go through their documents and update outdated and
politically incorrect terms with a newer and less offensive alternative. It
was interesting to see how language evolved over time.

~~~
goodfight
Sounds like you worked in a literal 1984 scenario

------
mikelward
Quote from Neil Gaiman:

[http://urbanbohemian.com/2015/08/07/neil-gaiman-on-
political...](http://urbanbohemian.com/2015/08/07/neil-gaiman-on-political-
correctness/)

I was reading a book (about interjections, oddly enough) yesterday which
included the phrase “In these days of political correctness…” talking about no
longer making jokes that denigrated people for their culture or for the colour
of their skin. And I thought, “That’s not actually anything to do with
‘political correctness’. That’s just treating other people with respect.”

Which made me oddly happy. I started imagining a world in which we replaced
the phrase “politically correct” wherever we could with “treating other people
with respect”, and it made me smile.

You should try it. It’s peculiarly enlightening.

I know what you’re thinking now. You’re thinking “Oh my god, that’s treating
other people with respect gone mad!”

~~~
anaisbetts
Great comment. This is easy stuff:

* If someone from a marginalized (or tbh, any other) group says, "Please call me XYZ", do it

* If you use the wrong term, briefly apologize and use the right one instead.

That's all you gotta do.

~~~
SamReidHughes
Wrong, you should do the opposite, because they want to control how you think,
and you have a duty to keep your thought independent.

~~~
krapp
>Wrong, you should do the opposite, because they want to control how you
think, and you have a duty to keep your thought independent.

But... "doing the opposite" as some kind of "duty" because you believe
marginalized groups want to control your thoughts is the _antithesis_ of
having "independent" thought.

Please tell me this place has just broken my ability to detect irony.

------
tasty_freeze
It seems that "political correctness" is only applied to liberal causes.
Conservatives have their own politically sacred issues, yet there is no
pejorative use of "PC" about these issues. Why is that?

For example, I find flag fetishism and reciting the pledge of allegiance to be
creepy. Wearing flag lapel pins is an effortless show of patriotism. Ascribing
heroism to every member of the US armed forces is ridiculous. It would be
political suicide for liberal politicians to express such opinions, but the
reverse is certainly not true -- conservatives get bonus points from their
base for dismissing liberal causes as being PC posturing.

------
draw_down
Americans strongly dislike what they perceive as PC culture, but most of us
participate in it in some form. In other words, we don't like that others have
a list of things we can't say, but we all have a list of things others can't
say.

The fight is purported to be PC vs politically incorrect, but the truth is
everyone has their own little version of political correctness. People rant
about free speech but they would never allow someone to burn a flag. They rail
against political correctness but they lose their minds when a football player
says something they don't like. Et cetera.

Or to put it yet another way, the fight is over which ways of curtailing
speech are acceptable to classify as "political correctness" and which are
not.

~~~
toasterlovin
I think what you're describing is not that every person has their own little
version of political correctness, but that every group has their own subgroup
of people who have an instinct to police speech. I'm personally fine with
whatever speech you want to use (with the exceptions that are enshrined in
U.S. law; no inciting violence, etc.), but I may choose not to interact with
you. And I suspect that a sizable chunk of the population actually feels this
way.

