But what's wrong with my video? It's a perfectly good rant on it's own! And it calls BS on people who think that PC is BS and don't understand terms.
Damn, Moxie, lately I have so little time and here I am writing a long post, dragged in a discussion by you.
On the PC BS thread I was not complaining about the video itself, I was complaining about the fact that we were highjacking the thread that should be about just PC BS. Obviously not a quite serious complaint, just an excuse to use bad language and unPC language on that thread. A bit of teatrics to spice things up and have fun.
Having said that, about the video:
I like the motivation: Are you talking about PC? What the hell is that then? Well, that's what this thread is all about.
Once you asked me "why do you care" (as the guy does here) on other situation, which was a perfectly placed question then. It does not changed my view on the particular subject we were discussing (equal pay on tennis tournaments), as this is a minor and very peculiar subject, but it was a very useful question to answer when thinking about the broader (and more important) question.
But I guess your use of the question was more pertinent than his. That's why:
He says a lot of things on the video. Being a professional he debates better than his caller. And, yes, there are a lot of brainless critics of PC things (but I guess on this board most posters have substance on their critics), and here we have a common cause, as I don't think that those brainless critics to PC help the ones who have real issues about it.
About the video:
First, he starts by asking a valid question "what do you mean by PC", but he in turn not offered and answer, and ended up working with the answer he criticised to begin with. In fact, his main objection against the listener definition of PC was "A lot of people are offended by that." It is a bit too rhetorical, but ok.
Then he asks:
"So it is bad to try not to be offensive?"
The answer is, obviously, no, it is not bad.
Then, when discussing how far one should go with that, the caller said something like "as far as it is reasonable".
Then the radio guy asks:
"who decides what is reasonable?"
Well, that's the point! The answer is obvious, isn't it? This small part maybe the core of my (and I would guess from some more posters here) issues with PC.
The radio guy was in fact unfair on the next exchange: The caller never told that you should try harder to be offensive - he said that one should try not to be offensive "as long as it is reasonable". To say that the logical conclusion of this statement is that "you should try harder to be offensive" is litteray to twist the callers words.
Then the radio guy says, putting himslef in the callers position, that "on the horizon it could become illegal to say that's for girls and that's for boys", puting this as something outrageous and ridiculous. COME ON!!!! Are this guy REALLY saying that it is IMPOSSIBLE that political ideas could be taken to extremes by some extremists? Sorry, but in what world does he live in? Should we take his word that things would never turn radical?
Then he touches a very subtle point, uniform for children. His own argument is perfect AGAINST PC. "This are blazers to people who got boobs", he mockingly says. People who got boobs(PWGB), formely known as girls. PWGB clothes have a distinct shape to PWDNGB, so here's the practical reason for the distinction.
So, yes, now we have boys clothes and girls clothes. So some people are offended by the very fact that someone made this distinction. Yes, there are children who will have a hard time fitting in one of the two categories -- and a lot who dont. So someone has the idea of gender neutral clothes. I have nothing against gender neutral clothes, if they are presented as one of the options, but I have something against it if someone tries to make it the only option. How could the bright minds that figured out that some might be offended for having to dress gender oriented clothing could not foresee the possibility that others might feel offended for having to wear gender neutral clothes?
But this is just the first step to bigger issues, that the radio guy puts as "why don't you call yourself a person rather than a boy or a girl"?
First things first: he, or anyone, PC or not, does not decides what I call myself. Or what my daughter calls herself. Or my friends if I can stand for them. They can call themselves boy, girl, person, alien or brick. Yes, I know we are all people first, but, tchan tchan tchan, biologically there are two kinds of people, psychologically (ask Freud) there are two kinds of people, so on and so forth. So it is possible to categorize people into genders. Some people will not fit? Sure. Is it a good enough reason to say that it is "wrong" to categorize people into genders? No, not by a long shot. Does it mean I do not respect people who does not feel perfectly described by the words man or woman? It does not mean that, obviously.
People might have some issues with those categories. People who don't fit, people who do not understand the ones who doesn't fit. Pretending the categories are not there does not address the issues.
So, finally, answering to key question the radio guy asks: why do you care?
Are he seriously asking for people not to care about the category they use to refer to themselves? "no, leave it to us, we will care about it for you". What I care about it is MY CHOICE. My conscience, my choice.
No one should be forced to identify him/herself to "men" or "women" categories (even if physiologically
they do, liking it or not). But some, in fact most, do identify themselves to those categories, in a broader sense. Should we simply pretend this is not the case?
The question "why do you care" in this case is valid, but you must be opened to all honest answers. And I suspect the guy on the video is not.
There was a valid comedic context to what he said. I do think it's a shame that a white man is not permitted to use the word, even if he's clearly not a racist.
