Political correctness will be our bane

How many of you are not white males?
I don't know how old most of you are, but when I was in high school, in the 60's, even in sub zero weather, females were told that they had to wear skirts. Eventually (those were the days of protest) about 20-30 of them came in pants.

In some countries, females aren't allowed to drive, and in many cultures, are often considered partially to blame if raped. If I were a woman, (or Black, or Asian, or any of the many targets of racial/sexual humor), I'd probably be more conscious about political correctness myself. I'll agree it can be overdone and abused, and have seen that too---but the things that caused it in the first place are probably worse problems.
 
If I were a woman, (or Black, or Asian, or any of the many targets of racial/sexual humor), I'd probably be more conscious about political correctness myself.
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But there are many people in all of those categories who make politically incorrect jokes just as often. Actually, in my personal experience from people I know I'd say those groups are more likely to make politically incorrect jokes.

Besides, fear is not a universal reason that such jokes are bad. Some people, in fact, use humor specifically about issues they are uncomfortable with because it helps make those things less scary and more approachable. Cutting off humor to any topic can make that topic heavier, darker and less approachable. So, you may be hurting just as many people by refusing a joke as you are by making it.

Being politically correct in humor has nothing at all to do with what your stance is on the issue being joked about. It has to do with what true world effects you think a joke must imply.

And, no, being a white male does not mean there are less politically incorrect statements at your expense. For example, guys are thoroughly the target of jokes that make them out to be idiotically sex-crazed.
 
Wait... I could understand it as an offense, when you say "if I were a female/black/asian". What do you mean by that? Does it mean that you consider the groups you mention worth less than other groups? (Sorry... I just wanted to show you how to escalate things...)

(btw... I also consider it offensive to say to a white male that he discriminates against someone... this is quite rude in my opinion, if you don't know this person very well... and basically this offense would not happen if you really know someone)

The problem is that when you are intimate with someone you can say the worst things about his "race"/nationality etc, (s)he wouldn't get mad. My wife is asian and I joke about her eyes sometimes... but she knows that I truly love her (and her eyes).

I also understand that people have a hard life because of their appearance. You know that sight is our primary sense and you CANNOT DAMMIT DENY that you SEE someone else and look at his outer appearance... you are simply lying to yourself and are a hypocrite when you tell otherwise. You know what is best... to have a clean and innocent mind of a child. The child points at the subject and says (without prejudice) "Look, a black man!" or looks with big eyes at someone looking differently from others. Does the child discriminate? Of course... dammit YES it DOES! And WHO CARES? Such a child does not have any evil things in mind.

And by the way... you offend ME if you think I don't respect others. I also don't believe in this minority bs, because I approach people differently. Of course, I know who is an annoyance in my life and it (of course!) depends on the appearance (I try hard not to do it, but we still have eyes that judge, see above... and those eyes are trying to recognize patterns in your life to keep the world without stress and fully structured).

All in all... I consider people who are (generally, pro-actively or without a direct reason to do so) protecting "those poor groups who cannot care for themselves" and incredible annoyance... far more than people who really discriminate, because those people mostly stay out of your life (the majority avoids you) and the others just exist to tell you HOW to live.

Also... you cannot insist on someone being a sincere person towards you. Politeness is not sincerity. Don't mix this two up... it is really dangerous to think so! It saved my life not to be this naive.
 
nakal said:
when you say "if I were a female/black/asian". What do you mean by that? Does it mean that you consider the groups you mention worth less than other groups
[...]
consider it offensive to say to a white male that he discriminates against someone
[..]
And by the way... you offend ME if you think I don't respect others
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Scott never said any of these things, not even close. You're twisting his words into something else, this is dishonest and not required to disagree with someone. Its called a straw man.

All he did was gently point out that other people's viewpoint & feelings may be very different from your own, if you read his post carefully you will notice he didn't even take any definitive position.
 
Something to keep in mind, offence can never be given, it can only be taken.
 
I think the considerate thing to do would be to redefine fortune -a, but not fortune -o.

It's about being aware of your audience. If you were broadcasting your inappropriate humor to people in a way that they'd likely encounter it unintentionally, then your heavy role in the causation makes you bear responsibility (i.e. fortune -a). However, if you are putting that humor in a place that people knowingly choose to act as the audience (i.e. fortune -o) then they bear the responsibility because without their informed action, the offense could not have occurred.

If they still wanted it gone, they want to stop something that offends them even though they have to work (i.e. adding '-o') to expose themselves to it. This means that it's not enough that they just not be offended, but that even people who are not offended get treated as though they were. (Mark Twain's slightly offensively worded, "like telling a man he can't have steak because a baby can't chew it"). In this case, they are not offended by being the audience of the joke, but by knowing that other people are allowed to go on enjoying a joke they don't like. The fact that they'd be permitted to make such an imposition on others implies that their sense of appropriateness and correctness deserves to override that of the others, which is quite offensive to others. The existence of this thread shows that there are people who are offended by the corrective action, which was intended to respond to offense. The cure to offending one group is to offend another group.

Additionally, the fact that the whole conversation labels these things as "politically incorrect" or "inappropriate" is presupposing that the latter group is wrong. The way the argument is phrased in the first place wrongly forces the people who oppose the censorship to defend "inappropriate" things as appropriate when perhaps they don't think they are inappropriate in the first place.
 
The point stemmed from the idea that people who went through certain hardships may be justified in being sensitized to them. In that framing of things, the group is already predefined for you. Group 1 is people who had such hardships and group 2 is people who didn't. Those groups are 100% accurate by definition. But then, rather than being content with having two groups that by definition are 100% accurate for the sake of the argument, people always seem to immediately dispose of those definitions and talk about the argument in gross generalizations. It's not even as though those groups (people who had a certain extent or type of hardships) is some abstract non-existent group. It's a real group. The debating, logic-loving side of me dies inside when people throw that out and redefine the problem to use less accurate information than they started with.
 
Surely digital preservation is a much higher priority than political correctness. We are UNIX users... not Facebook cretins for God's / Allah's / Spaghetti Monster's sake!
 
kpedersen said:
Surely digital preservation is a much higher priority than political correctness. We are UNIX users... not Facebook cretins for God's / Allah's / Spaghetti Monster's sake!
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+1
 
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