Collectively, we’re bored, which is why everyone and his brother is weighing in on Jonathan Chait’s new piece on political correctness. Here, for example, is Jia Tolentino writing at Jezebel:
It is surely not lost on Jonathan Chait that the loudest critics of political correctness have as a matter of tradition been the people who are most accustomed to speaking in whatever manner pleases them without facing social correction—which is to say white men, a group that also often reads being named as such as a hysterical insult proper, despite there being no historical disenfranchisement attached to this identity category, and quite the opposite, of course. But it’s tiresome when people get so damn mouthy, you know what I mean?
I’m a white man, but I still think I know what she means.
On the other hand, Andrew Sullivan loved Chait’s piece, so there is probably something wrong with it beyond embarrassing projection.
I’m not going to try to outwit all the wags who have taken down Chait’s piece. I’ll just point out that I am better person because I no longer use words like “retard, “fag” and “bitch.” Sometimes I want to use those words, not because I am angry but because they have their uses. Often it seems like there are no perfect and innocuous synonyms for them, and a writer (or a comic, I imagine) never likes the feeling that they can’t use the best word because they’ll get shamed and scolded.
A funny thing happens, though, after you spend years not using a word that is needlessly hurtful and provocative. It changes the way you think. Those words lose their allure. They no longer feel like the best available word for what you want to describe. And then you realize that you don’t feel the same way about the groups you used to mock and use as all-weather insults. You’ve become more generous in your thinking. Less judgmental. More self-critical in a good way.
Not only does it feel inappropriate to compare an insufficiently aggressive man to a woman or a homosexual, it feels like it’s less important to be an aggressive man. And, you know, maybe it’s worth it to spend a little more time figuring out a way to call someone stupid than just calling him a retard and thinking that’s so clever.
My point here is that concerted efforts to get people to stop using certain epithets the way they have traditionally been used isn’t just a one-way street of oppression and thought policing. When people stop using those words in the traditional way, they do eventually start to stop thinking in the traditional way.
Now, for an object lesson: think about the word “torture.”
That used to be a bad thing. Everyone agreed.
Then our government tortured people and tried to defend itself, and look what happened.
Now we can’t agree on what the word means or even if it is a naughty thing.
Policing what words mean and how they are used is ultimately a political act, and if the political aim is good, then the effort is justified and likely to yield good results.
My rule: don’t pay torturers and don’t let them try to define away their crimes at commencement speeches or anywhere else.
