Is society becoming too politically correct?

No

the more PC the better

BB

Yes.

Yes, people are way too sensitive over everything.

Censorship suppresses thought. It has no place in free and democratic society.

Yes. Being politically correct is incredibly irritating

Welcome to the 90's, Frozen.

PC 1990's is not half as bad as what it is now, Bear.

strike that, reverse it. watch PCU. and don't be that guy Frozen.

Political correctness is what gave women the vote and got rid of coloured drinking fountains. The more the better.

Criticism of speech is not suppression of speech.

No.

No it isn't. Recognition that women and black people were human beings, and therefore entitled to human rights (among them freedoms of thought, belief, and expression) is what brought those things about, not censoring potentially offensive material. PC is at odds with human rights, for it holds that the potential to offend outweighs the ability to speak freely.

Because the majority of the west is more civilized and care and think about how others perceive us and go out of our way to make others happy

Funny, feelings were never mentioned to be protected anywhere in the Constitution.

Political Correctness is very much irritating. It's particularly bad in the military, which is surprising considering we are supposed to be tough enough to handle things a lot worse than some hurt feelings.

Yes. Everyone is offended by everything these days. Then they go and whine about it on Tumblr.

@darthmummy: "Political correctness" in and of itself is only a weaponized colloquial manifestation of the reluctance of the right-wing media circa 1940 to give up the right to discriminate without criticism in light of women's suffrage and the civil rights movement.

Pretty much.

Political correctness didn't give women the vote. Greed did. If you expand women's economic and political powers, you can greatly increase the workforce and increase leverage over workers. Not that it's a bad result for other reasons, but that kind of shrewdness is the same reason the vote was given to men in general after first being the sole domain of rich men--- it was a concession tossed to the masses to make up for conscription.

Could you expand upon that? I'd like to know more about that, sounds interesting.

Tumblr warriors are Social Justice Warriors; they are the worst of the bunch.

Yes it's a tool to suppress and control people. It's also harmful because it makes people overly sensitive and less able to handle hearing the things they don't like. That's why I feel it's a good idea to fight PC. Go so far as too do things un-PC on purpose.

Interesting.

@frozen: We are consistently briefed on how we aren't suppsed to make comments and can be reported for them if we 'upset' other service members. Now the reality is it is intended to prevent racist, sexist, homophobic, and religious discriminatory comments but it gets abused and basically turned into a "you hurt my feelings so I report you" culture.

There's actually an official DoD form we all call the "Hurt Feelings Report" you can fill out if someone does something that upsets you.

We are supposed to be able to handle gunfire, blood, and psychos pointing loaded weapons in our faces...but a joke sends you into tears and you need to go crying to OSI? Yeah, PC has even infected the military.

Nobody has a right to discriminate without criticism. Everybody has a right to discriminate, as long as their actions aren't harming anyone.

@darthmummy: I agree. Just don't play the "political correctness" card when someone calls you out for being a racist/sexist/homophobe etc.

Generally I think people are too concerned by being politically correct, I experienced this when in religion class there was a discussion on abortion and people were saying that abortion was good and justified and I said we should have a discussion, debates and reasoning to come to this conclusion, mainly because I was dissatisfied by the debaters on both sides of the argument. Anyway, they came down on me like a ton of bricks, blindly asserting stock phrases like 'It's a woman's right to choose' and 'You have no right to say what people can do with their bodies' and the like without actually explaining how they came to these assertions. This happened again when discussing if a woman in a coma should have an abortion if the family wish so and I suggested a reasoned conversation to decide, again that idea was squashed by assertions that were not given a base or clear line of reasoning.

I agree with holding people morally responsible with what they say, like the recent issue of drawing Mohammad or racial slurs, because they are harmful. But saying something like the death penalty or that drawing Mohammad should be allowed is not wrong, even if it is considered non-PC by some.

@sheenlantern said:@darthmummy: I agree. Just don't play the "political correctness" card when someone calls you out for being a racist/sexist/homophobe etc.

I never do, nor am I any of those things. I just think it's wrong when the government, or the rules of whatever organization you're a part of, prevent you from speaking your mind. I don't know why people assume I want to say offensive things just because I want the ability to speak freely.

Nazi Germany part 2. Brb breaking copies of GTA V and the publicly mass shunning of anyone who doesn't agree with your opinions. Brb 1984.

Indeed, very interesting idea.

I knew this was a Frozen thread just from the title.....

My thread's not frozen, it's hot.

Abusing it is interesting. The implications for ''you hurt my feelings, so I report you'' culture are...interesting to say the least. My uncle was in the military and he spoke about sthick he got, yet to be honest he laughed it off given as you said, compared to gunfire and what-not, it was small in contrast.

What do you think the ''hurt feelings report'' could lead to in the near-future?

@granitesoldier: Isn't the military starting to use unisex uniforms and a while back they stopped the Marines from rolling up their sleeves. Lol at the hurt feelings report and all that crap. The military should not be used as a political tool like that. It defends the country and should be held to the highest standards. Highest standards meaning best man for the job, toughness, and that f u attitude.

Heh.

People are beggining to abuse it to their advantage,so it would seem so.

To an extent, yes, yes it is.

Yes. I mean, what happened to free speech? Now it's like, you can have free speech, as long as you don't say anything that has even anywhere near to a possibility to offend someone.

Lunno

I think everyone has the right to a safe and impartial workplace. A woman shouldn't be sexually harassed because it's the military and predominantly male. A black serviceman shouldn't feel second class compared to white counterparts. However feelings are subjective, and hurt feelings shouldn't be protected because guess what? There will always be something to hurt your feelings.

Thankfully, we don't tend to deal with the "hurt feelings" stuff as much as the conventional guys. If you get butt hurt over a joke or have thin skin, you will pretty much get weeded out in selection or in training. It may sound egotistical, but we are a bit of a tougher breed than the conventional guys who can walk in off the street and get a job in finance or engineering.

Well, female Airmen wear the same ABUs I do, when I wear ABUs that is. So the uniforms are pretty unisex as is, just a button side difference and then there are the pregnancy uniforms so you can fit a pregnant body into a uniform, which makes sense. Marines still roll their sleeves in their summer-weight uniforms, which actually come pre-rolled I think (I'm not a Marine, so I can't speak with authority there).

However the DoD as a whole is moving toward one standard uniform for all branches of the military to save money and for uniformity in Joint Operations Environments, which is pretty much what we operate in 100% of the time in modern days. I'm all for one standard uniform, because your ranks, service tags, and patches still denominate you as different branches but the standard uniform unifies us as one military and fighting force.

I don't know if that's what you meant? Haha, sorry if I answered a question you didn't ask.

Say you have a man a woman a at workplace. The woman jokes that the man is going to jack off when he goes to the toilet, they both have a laugh. Woman is putting on lipstick at the end of the day, guy jokes about her going street walking, they both have a laugh. The reason they do so is because they are both comfortable around each other.

Both of those situations as observed from an outsider could easily be spun as sexual harassment.

Political correctness almost never takes into account individuality.

Political correctness assumes that people are inherently too hypersensitive to handle any situation that might hurt thier feelings. Saying that I am hypersensitive hurts my feelings!

I'm of two minds about this. I live in an area of the country where most white folks still refer to black folks as colored, and thats when they're being polite. So no, I don't think society (at least out my way) is becoming too politically correct. But I have often been chastised for my sense of humor concerning taboo subjects. It's annoying and I do sometimes feel the person is being too PC. Some people would rather overlook your intent and instead twist your words and meaning into the worst case scenario just so they can feel superior.

Great thread, great topic, necessary discourse.

irony lesson for the pol-correct wimp-burgers:

the same complaints that shut down Chris Rock (and Eddie Griffin) would shut down MARGARET CHO. But hey, NOBODY in the PC camp would dare shut doen Mz Cho.

except TV sitcom execs terrified of showing overweight people.

Unless they are male (King of Queens, Newman from Seinfeld, etc.)