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I think "political correctness" as a term is generally interpreted by people to be "a level of sensitivity beyond what I think is reasonable", so it stands to reason that most people are going to be against it.

In order for this to make any sense, you'd have to break it down specific things. Most people are going to agree with something like "racial slurs are not ok". They're not going to consider it "politically correct" to not use racial slurs, they'd just consider it common decency.

Maybe the same person who doesn't think racial slurs are ok, thinks it's unreasonable for someone to get bent out of shape about being called the wrong gender pronoun. But someone who takes the pronoun issue seriously is going to consider that just common decency and is going to draw the line for "politically correct" somewhere else.

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Exactly. I think people have been conditioned to see "political correctness" as something bad, and have different views of what it means. You can oppose "political correctness" and have literal nazis and KKK members nodding along because they think it means "anything other than white supremacy", while at the same time you can have centrists nodding along because they think it means "using the correct gender pronoun in all settings."

I think this is a result of an intense propaganda campaign on the right that has distorted the meaning of political correctness so that it can mean anything the reader dislikes.

> I think people have been conditioned to see "political correctness" as something bad, and have different views of what it means.

> I think this is a result of an intense propaganda campaign on the right that has distorted the meaning of political correctness.

I haven't looked up the etymology, but I've always assumed the term has been pejorative/satirical/tongue-in-cheek since its inception. Think about it -- it implies there's a different form of "correctness" that isn't actually "correct", but merely "politically correct" -- i.e. correct only in the context of overly carefully worded political pandering. I can't imagine somebody unironically choosing to describe their own speech as "politically correct".

What I mean is that the definition of what counts as "politically correct" has expanded to include lots of stuff. It's such a nebulous term that it can be applied to anything the reader dislikes.

But hasn’t that come to be because activists want to broaden and redefine what is not politically correct? Most people do not want to broaden the term, on the other hand there are people who want to make specific topics and utterances unacceptable things as mundane as stereotypes. Of course _some_ stereotypes are malicious, but many are simply lazyness. Some people would rather suppress data if it counters an agenda, etc.

Oh sure -- the right has weaponized the term pretty effectively, no arguments there.

Neither of those examples are instances of "polical correctness" in the classical sense. Originally, political correctness was is contrast with actual or scientific correctness. As in "it is factually correct that unemployment is at record levels, but that is politically incorrect."

To your pronoun example, using the wrong pronoun would not be politically incorrect, just potentially rude and offensive.

I suppose some of white supremecy could fall into the overlap that is both factually and politically correct. But most of what they say falls outside of the factual domain entirely (even if it is motivated by wrong facts) so the label of pollitically (in)correct is not relevent.

The classical sense is not what most people mean when they use the term "political correctness"

I feel you. I still cringe inwardly when someone says "begs the question" and they're not talking about a circular argument, but at some point you have to move on and accept that words can stray from their original definitions.

But classical political correctness is such a useful concept, that is a problem in our current politics (and not just government politics; its insidious in a lot of more private organizations of people as well).

It doesn't help that I still have no idea what this new "political correctness" actually refers to; and I get a feeling people using the term are still trying to associate what they are referring to with the old sense of "political correctness". Eg, if you listen to people arguing against what they refer to as political correctness, they still almost always frame the argument as being for the ability to speak truth in some form.

Well, the more I think about it, the more I think that political correctness is used in the classical sense you're talking about.

Let's say Bob believes that sex is determined by your genitals at birth and nothing else. If someone wished to be called by a pronoun that doesn't match that, Bob would view this as being "wrong" compared to objective reality as he understands it. So he might go along with something to be "politically correct" although he considers it factually wrong. So Bob is being prevented from espousing the view that he believes to be the truth.

Your probably right. I think I was subconsiously biased by my linguistics background, as sementic gender and syntactic gender need not agree, so I don't consider the choice of pronoun to nessasarily imply a choice of meaning.

I can see how someone with a naive view of gramatical gender would disagree. (Actually, the fact that transgender people so consistantly change pronouns is somewhat problamatic to the prevailing linguistic thinking. I have never seen a fully satisfying account of why this happens. The best I have seen is that it is a sort of meta-linguistic social signal that the speaker accepts the transition, which does seem to fit nicely with calling it a form of political correctness).

I still see a difference in usage where the modern usage implies offensiveness; whereas the older usage implied a disagreement in policy. Eg, saying gender is determinex at birth could be PC in the classical sense because of, say, a policy allowing people to change the indication on their license, or psrticipate in other-gender's activities. Unless you want to claim that the taboo of mispronouning people is to support this type of policy (which it does do), then it wouldn't really fit. Although it is a very reasonable bit of sementic drift to include this in the classical meaning.

> centrists

> correct gender pronoun

I don't think your average centrist knows what that it

> I don't think your average centrist knows what that it

I think you're illustrating exactly the point that was aimed for – everyone defines these vague concepts relative to their own perception. Even what is "center" is probably bound to vary wildly depending on ones own perspective.

On any given line segment, the center is fixed. It's only perceptions of it that vary wildly.

What's also does vary is people's definition of the line segment, both directionally (what do liberal and conservative actually mean?), and where it starts and ends.

When I define the start and end, I'm typically not talking about centrism in SF, or globally. I'm talking about centrism in the USA. I realize not everyone here is American, but that may provide context for my statement.

They didn’t ask if they thought political correctness is a good thing, they asked if it was a problem.

This means that they are asking if it’s an issue that is negatively affecting the world.

If you think pronouns are an issue then you will not think political correctness is a problem even if your definition of it was more extreme than others because as far as you are concerned, few people are being politically correct.

Totally. If I ask the "correct" way to refer to a minority, I'll get a casual answer. If I ask for the "politically correct" term, everyone will know that I mean something annoying, self-censoring, fake and constructed for ideological reasons. Politically correct is almost an antonym of correct, similar to the term malicious compliance.

If this study had asked, "Is calling people Native American a problem in our society", somehow I doubt anyone would have said yes.

Agreed. In my opinion, labeling someone as too politically correct will only garner a response of "that's not true". So basically anytime anyone says it, it's just name calling, nobody learned anything more about the other person's position or reasoning. Useless.

There's also the time component to consider, PC language evolves faster than natural language and a lot of people struggle to keep up. It wasn't too long ago (well within living memory) that negro was the PC term and since then we've been through colored, African American, People of Color and possibly some more I'm missing. It's easy to assume malice where it was never intended and the person was actually trying to use the correct term.

An example I'm more familiar with personally is spastic, my disabled sister went to a school literally called "The Spastic School" until the term was deemed un-PC in the 90's, then it became "The special School" and something else now. I'm aware of the change but a couple of decades on it's not uncommon to run into someone that doesn't realize spastic became a derogatory term, simply because it's not a situation the encounter very often.

The change seems to be even harder for words used everyday. In Australia (and probably the UK) Sheila is often considered a derogatory term for a woman, but many older men will use it the way we use chick/girl/women. It seems like the frequency of use creates a self-reinforcing pattern, you won't find many people under 50 using the word and the over 50's that do will keep using it until the die.

So aside from sensitivity, for many it's just resistance to change for various reasons.

Exactly. The real issue at hand is that people get upset too easily, on both sides.

How about we all just go with the assumption that others aren't jerks?

We can have rational discussions about what we like and don't like. If I use a pronoun that you feel doesn't fit you, it's most likely an honest mistake, even if it happens a few times. Likewise if I disagree with you on a social policy, it's very likely that I'm not bigoted toward whichever group you want to protect, I may think it's not something that government should be involved in or perhaps I haven't read the evidence you have and thus I don't think it's a problem that needs policy to fix.

If we all assume the best intentions in others, I think we'll all get along just fine.

The phrase "everything is political" or "x is inherently political" some people use came to mind when reading your last paragraph. For them, I imagine political correctness isn't an offset, it just doesn't exist, or anyone far enough to the right is the sensitive one.

Not to mention other instances of political correctness that aren't usually called that even though it fits the original definition far better.

Saying ACAB or kneeling before the American flag will cause offense in many let alone something more inflammatory like "screw the troops". One could regard all of the above as wrong but that is the whole point - so do the current for the mainstream political correctness. Despite it literally being related to the state and thus far more politically correct and power linked than even the most tedious pedant about terms for minorities.

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