Manufacturing fake social reform

June 17, 1996

The Garden Weasel

by David C. Ptak

Daily Columnist

Words are more than randomly arranged letters.

The meaning society imparts to its chosen vocabulary says more about us than we’re usually willing to admit.

Society, its language, and its experience are involved in a not-so arbitrary menage-a-trois.

Disagree? Let’s play Scrabble – loser sells their soul.

For whatever reason, there are those who woefully find the allure of political correctness (PC) mesmerizing. And no matter how hard I try, I still can’t figure out why.

A friend (let’s call her S.) recently sent a copy of a letter to the editor she once wrote.

In it, S. openly acknowledged that she thought it was acceptable to use PC terminology (PC) based on the grounds that it respects, rather than disunifies both those who utter it and those whom it directly addresses.

S. goes on to explain that PC fosters a respect that’s historical in nature.

That is, PC attempts to rectify the wrongs done to a particular group of people by redefining the associations traditionally drawn between certain groups of ideologies.

For example, S. suggests that use of the word ‘woman,’ originally meaning “wife of man,” is more disrespectful than the PC alternative ‘womyn.’

The alternative, it’s hypothesized, establishes the fact that womyn are more independent and less oppressed by men than they once were.

Womyn are now separate from men, and should be recognized as such by replacing an ‘a’ with a ‘y.’

“Yes Pat, I’d like to buy a vowel and solve the puzzle . . .”

S. further suggests that PC can be extended to discussions of ethnicity. Rather than ‘black,’ we should use ‘African-American,’ in an effort to sanctify ancestral history.

This supposedly is meant to help remove (or heal) some of the scars left upon cultural prides by virtue of historical abuse, neglect, or inequity.

It’s assumed that any ethnic group, ad absurdum, has the will, right, and need to claim “hyphenated-American” status for the sake of solidifying its identity.

I believe that S. and her peers go wrong in misunderstanding their own cause. PC isn’t a “kinder, gentler” brand of language.

As a matter of fact, it’s a fundamentally, and ridiculously, ignorant one.

While I won’t go so far as saying that PC is a tool of hate (as many opponents do), I assert that if in fact it’s a tool at all, it’s truly the silliest thing this side of the Garden Weasel.

Rather than extend history as it purports to, it erases history.

If the PC cause is meant to fix the “wrongs” of a given set of historical facts, then isn’t that very cause at the least skirting, if not avoiding the insensitivity that it’s intending to rectify?

Think about this. In a lot of ways, being a ‘womyn’ or an ‘African-American’ doesn’t make you any less oppressed than being a ‘woman’ or a ‘black.’

Society’s faults don’t lie in the words it uses to describe concepts, but in the concepts it describes by those words.

The offense is in the underlying foundations which make words hostile to begin with (i.e. brutally sexist, racist, and ethnocentrific precepts), and not the jumble in which given letters are arranged.

I guess I don’t see the intelligence in creating fictitious buzzwords for the sake of “cleaning up” history.

History doesn’t need to be anything except recorded.

If societies have traditionally oppressed women and minorities, then those injustices are things which need to be addressed with social, not linguistic reform.

Otherwise, it’s a matter of not preaching equality, but artificially installing it, loose screw and all.

But really, there’s no need for brainwashing. Why not confront issues for what they are? To appease the threatened who don’t want to accept that social custom is cruel?

Is this how to ensure a judicious atmosphere, by creating mythical panaceas whenever we fear that the truth is too injurious to confront?

It would be better to take it upon ourselves to understand inequity for what it is, and not by what we happen to momentarily refer to it as.

How can we take ourselves seriously if we act like all discomforts in history are written in pencil, ready to be changed at every ironic twinge of feeling ill at ease?

As S. admitted in her letter, “the foundation for peaceful coexistence lies in having respect for one’s fellow[s] . . .”

That being the case, I see little reason (and even less sense) why linguistic chicanery is necessary to establish what’s already understood.

Some things are self-evident; if they’re not, more effort is needed. Revisionist principles aren’t things to throw about freely, and need only be applied carefully.

That’s why if I had my way, the whole PC movement would be shoved way in the back of the bad fashion closet, next to the studded wristbands and fat shoelaces. Maybe next to the Members Only jacket.

Respect for each other isn’t about trendy language. It’s about genuine emotions, things which you just can’t manufacture.

Don’t let sweet nothings eat your conscience.

No more pretending with misdirected literary devices.

Face reality (and guilt) without the help of neo-revisionist fairy tales.

David Ptak has a B.A. in philosophy from Iowa State University.

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This article was published on June 18, 1996.