Pol-correct language

[Blox]

I'm sorry for making my own mind on how the world works instead of basing it off what someone else says!
Academia hasn't been very successful in lobotomizing me in that regard.

[Abba Zabba]

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But seriously, Blox, Trance and Carlin all hit it on the head.

[Arctangent]

"Shellshocked" tells me nothing.

Shell refers to a mortar shell.

Shellshocked refers to the condition of being completely flabbergasted after nearly dying to a mortar shell exploding near you.
A traumatic combat experience, hmm..

but i mean sure, "it tells me nothing!"

Putting that this way, it sounds like he's complaining about two terms that are completely different, albeit one condition would certainly cause another pretty easy.

So, uh, no duh the term would change? In the very least, battle fatigue and all the following terms sound like something that would stay after the war - which it does - while shellshock sounds like something that occurs during the moment. Basically, the difference between something that causes you to re-experience near-death moments and something that's actually a near-death moment.

Or a pre-death moment, if there's nothing to absorb the shockwaves but you and suddenly you don't have vessels to contain your blood, nor organs to use your blood.

... Which adds ambiguity to the term. Wouldn't getting killed from the shockwave of a nearby mortar shell be shellshock as well, despite being entirely different from that definition?

[Reactor]

I see many people has its own point of view about pol-correct speech. BTW, the video footages are hilarious

The term "shell-shock". Ironically, I met this expression in Cool Spot first, I think it was the first level, and apart from being an appealing alliterative title, I didn't make much out of it until I turned a lot older. I don't think "shell-shock" will offend anyone. Both terms "shell" and "shock" are completely neutral, and has no offensive meaning whatsoever. It's like someone find the term "yellow-jacket" incorrect. Well I highly doubt it is, maybe for the hornets, but I strongly believe that hornets don't give a damn

Besides, AFAIK, post-traumatic disorder is not really pol-correct, it's medical jargon. Much like "mentalis retardatio" in Latin, which in fact is considered offensive as "retard".

[Laggy]

I think using certain words shouldn't offend people unless they are directed at them in a certain context. For example, calling a grown man a "baby" or a "little girl" if they're cowards. Of course, it's not bad to be a baby or a little girl, but grown men are certainly not one of those (EDIT: perhaps I didn't explain this well. Oops. I meant, it's understandable if those men are offended by being called that because it was directed at them, but babies and little girls shouldn't get offended.). So yeah, I think people getting offended because someone called an entirely different person a thing is really silly.

[Big C]

itt: bullshit strawmen circlejerk, no citations

If you're not going to elaborate further than that I don't think you get to call people out on lacking citations. How do you expect anyone to learn from their mistakes if you won't even tell people what they are?

[Hellser]

We're living in a world where if you call someone other than their "preferred gender" of choice for that week would send them into a raging fit. Of course there's going to be sugar coated words. Carlin hit it on the head. We want to be comforted and loved rather than face the grim truth of reality.

There's my two bits. See ya'll later.

[Reactor]

Hellseer has as a point; especially since in this world, people often make a sport out of hurting each other. There's nothing wrong with pol-correct language if it stays where it belongs. But even when the news reporter starts to babble utter overcomplicated bullshit, I seriously started to wrinkle my forehead trying to understand it.

[Big C]

Furthermore: As someone who's done social justice work for the Unitarian-Universalist church, I'm now left deeply wondering what the Hell the reward for white/straight/male/whatever allies is supposed to be. Because with all the drama that prompted me to give up causes like that, I'm pretty sure it isn't a warm and fuzzy feeling.

Maybe it's its own reward for some people, but as someone who's worked in those circles before I'd like to say I got sick of being taken for granted and being expected to clean up after other people's messes whenever something went wrong, with no one helping me out with my own human problems in turn.

That isn't to say I won't help minorities, obviously. Just that I don't feel like going through a long and involved process involving titles and labels and other superfluous bullshit to get it done anymore. And also that I'm sick of being a cleanup crew because I'm supposedly "privileged" without anyone actually asking what kind of good or bad life I've led.

The problem I have with social justice these days is that it feels like it needs a reason to help people. And if you're only going to help people for specific reasons, is it really charity anymore?

[Caligari87]

Something I've come to understand is that white male privilege is actually a thing. Now, as a white male, this makes me bristle, but it's true. Especially in the U.S., systems are just geared for white males, language is in white male terms, etc. That might be hard for people like me to see because to us it's normal but to people outside that, it becomes obvious.

Tim Wise, author of White Like Me, has some great insights on this. There's also a film by the same name that sums things up nicely.


This is something that's been difficult to come to terms with for me. What's helped is realizing that (for the most part), increasing equality for women, blacks, etc, doesn't take away from my rights or life experience. In some situations maybe it seems to, but as a whole, movements like racial rights or feminism should not be anti-white-male, but pro-all-humans. It just seems otherwise because there's a sense of "what about me?"

The film Miss Representation is also a VERY eye-opening look at the subtleties of gender discrimination in America. It's a lot more insidious and widespread than we think.

[Big C]

The lion's share of homeless people in my city are Caucasian. The problem I have with white privilege is that the way it seems to be interpreted we're all some big happy family that helps out each other and nobody else just because of our skin tone.

Yeah, right. We've got our own problems.

Furthermore, at the last church I went to, the pastor was once preaching about white privilege. She was a white woman and she was probably making more money in a year than me, in said aforementioned city where a huge percentage of the local homeless population is white.

Fuck ideology. Either let's get to work and cut this bullshit or stay out of each other's way. Because I'm getting sick and tired of people wasting their time and mine trying to make sense of a senseless universe instead of GETTING SHIT DONE.

[Caligari87]

I know, I feel the same way. I mean, I'm poor, struggling through college in a studio apartment and can't even afford to pay my wife's medical bills (which incidentally just went to collections). How am I privileged?

It's a lot more subtle than that, though. Seriously, listen to the guy in the video, he has a lot of good points. The problem isn't people like you and me or Bob and Jameel down the street; it's institutionalized. For example, even black police officers are more likely to arrest/beat/shoot black men, which points to a problem with the way police work is enforced, not necessarily that police officers are racist.

[Reactor]

Here we don't really have black policemen, so I can't back this up, but I get the idea. We have gypsies here, and yes, as you could guess, we can't call them just like that, so some idiot decided we should use the word "roma" instead. Nowadays, even "roma" is considered offensive. Same goes for the word "jew". This is their name, for cryin' out loud, how should I call them instead? Pineapples? Well, they're not pineapples, so I won't.
It's like I would sue a toothpaste factory because it has "white" written on it. Gee I'm most offended! Maybe we should write just hexa-decimals instead.

[Caligari87]

Something that may help is considering the use of the terms as adjectives rather than things. For example, Mel Brooks isn't one of "the Jews", he's "a Jewish man" (although he probably wouldn't take offense at that because he's Mel Brooks). Saying "the blacks" could be considered offensive, but saying "black communities" or "black men" is less so because a black man isn't just "a black", he's a man that also happens to have black skin. Don't say "queers" as if "the queers" are something different than people; use "queer" as a descriptor for someone who isn't straight.

Maybe I'm not good at explaining it, but does that make sense?

[Reactor]

Yes, it's a bit more understandable when put in this way. In Hungarian, however, there is no term for "jewish", only "jew", that's the problem (though not for me).