Has political correctness actually gone mad?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/20/california-state-university-free-speech-blackface
When a white student at California State University was caught this month wearing blackface, administrators had a clear message: it was racist, but “protected by free speech”.

Days later, when a professor tweeted that the late Barbara Bush was a “racist”, the university’s tone was different: the faculty member would be investigated for her remarks, which, a campus president said, went “beyond free speech”.
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These college students, they can't stand opposing viewpoints!
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Not really about political correctness but this is very on the money about the phenomenon of the left turning on itself. Specifically wrt gender politics.
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Helen Lewis


and there's slightly more to the story she is talking about
https://news.sky.com/story/feminist...ut-transgender-woman-who-punched-her-11327720

Also this idea of the left turning in on itself is really a load of old shite, the British left is now in the best position since the Attle government, the most popular politician in the United States is self described socialist and last I checked the french left is seen as the biggest resistance against Macron. The Left is finally starting to be relevant again, the problem Lewis has is that this Left doesn't include her shitty liberalism.
 
Slightly off topic I guess, but this seems totally ridiculous to me. The issue around children listening to music with swear words has always seemed absurd, but the best part is once they censor the songs it's still not enough.

Their kids are going to listen to the songs anyway, because they like them, so the parents need a clean version made available for every song ever made. If they like the originals so much that they'll find new avenues to get them...surely the "damage" is already done?!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-43866531
 
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Brwned said:
Slightly off topic I guess, but this seems totally ridiculous to me. The issue around children listening to music with swear words has always seemed absurd, but the best part is once they censor the songs it's still not enough.

Their kids are going to listen to the songs anyway, because they like them, so the parents need a clean version made available for every song ever made. If they like the originals so much that they'll find new avenues to get them...surely the "damage" is already done?!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-43866531
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Eboue said:
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I don't like either of those things but are they really "political correctness" ?

Shouldn't these things just be called authorities or would-be authorities going too far with controlling people? Maybe its just me I just feel sometimes framing everything in this "political correctness" manner ends up being too labelistic and reductionist no?
 
Of all the issues grouped under "PC", this is the one I understand least - "cultural appropriation." Using mocking stereotypes for other people, especially if that stereotype has a history associated with oppression, is clearly wrong. Commodifying and making a profit off of other peoples' heritage is wrong too. But eating food or wearing clothes that originated in another culture isn't wrong - in fact opposing this is IMO segregationist/essentialist.

Context?
This very popular tweet:


Calling out a literal teenager for her choice of dress as not woke enough. Is she disrespecting that dress? No. Is she using it to mock Chinese culture? No. She's wearing a dress she thinks is pretty, and using it as a dress (not as a tablecloth or something rude). Apart from segregationists, I really don't see why anyone would have an issue with that. Finally, even if she was doing those things, she's not even 18 and calling her out with a fairly rude tweet is about the worst thing you can do if you actually think this is an issue worth getting mad about.

To go a little deeper into his critique - he basically gives a few lines about the historical significance of that dress. Good. I have no idea how it relates to that girl wearing the dress for prom. In fact his own history shows how the dress' meaning changed throughout history, and how it spread outside China. My god other Asians appropriated it oh no what a tragedy.
Finally, as an Indian, on the rare occasions I do wear Indian clothes, my thoughts are not abut the unique history of kurtas. I doubt that every Chinese woman choosing to wear a dress like that takes 5 minutes to meditate on its significance before wearing it.

I think Shuja Haider has a couple of articles in Jacobin on cultural appropriation which tackle the issue quite well:
Weiss fittingly uses the MTV Video Music Awards to launch her diatribe, as music criticism has been the site of the most intense debates over cultural appropriation. The poet Amiri Baraka, a founder of the Black Arts Movement, addressed this subject in the context of his advocacy for black jazz musicians. Even through the mid-sixties, white musicians like Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond tended to overshadow artists like John Coltrane. In his 1963 essay “Jazz and the White Critic,” Baraka writes:

Failure to understand, for instance, that Paul Desmond and John Coltrane represent not only two very divergent ways of thinking about music, but more importantly two very different ways of viewing the world, is at the seat of most of the established misconceptions that are daily passed off as intelligent commentary on jazz or jazz criticism.
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The complexity of the question led Baraka through a range of perspectives, including black nationalism, which temporarily mired his thinking in biological essentialism. But over a lifetime of active intellectual engagement, political practice, and cultural production, he refined his perspective, as he explained in a 2007 interview:

In the United States, whatever you say becomes commodified immediately, in terms of the mainstream. I don’t have any problem with that per se; all cultures learn from each other. The problem is, if The Beatles are gonna tell me they learned everything they know from Blind Willie John, I wanna know why Blind Willie John is still running an elevator in Jackson, Mississippi. It’s that kind of inequality that is abusive, not the actual appropriation of culture, because that’s normal.
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In the final measure, Baraka wasn’t concerned with whether white musicians imitate black musicians. His quarrel was with a society that allows some to rake in profits at the expense of others, a process that has consistently and aggressively exploited racial divisions.

Perhaps the most archetypal example of cultural appropriation is Elvis Presley: a white performer who stole everything from black musicians, most notably Chuck Berry. This historical interpretation has made Presley the target of as much animosity as admiration. Chuck D famously rapped on Public Enemy’s 1989 song “Fight the Power,” “Elvis was a hero to most, but he never meant shit to me.” Many critics argue that Elvis’s success came at the expense of black artists like Big Mama Thornton, who sang “Hound Dog” years before Elvis did without ever reaching his level of wealth or fame. Elvis, the story goes, built his career on theft.

But this position is difficult to maintain. Chuck Berry’s first record, “Maybellene,” came out in July 1955, a full year after Elvis’s first recording session at Sun Studios. On that first record, Presley sang “That’s All Right Mama,” a blues song by Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, with a hillbilly inflection that reflected his country-music roots. Scotty Moore’s guitar accompaniment bore the influence of the Appalachian string band tradition. The b-side, bluegrass pioneer Bill Monroe’s “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” featured blues licks from Moore and a driving rhythm reminiscent of R&B progenitor Louis Jordan.

Which side counts as cultural appropriation? Was it playing a country song with the grit of the blues, or was it playing the blues with a country twang? Or was it both?

Chuck Berry — whom pianist Johnnie Johnson described as “a black man playing hillbilly music” — raises a similar question. “Maybellene” was a rewrite of the traditional “Ida Red,” which Berry had heard on country bandleader Bob Wills’s 1938 recording. As for “Hound Dog,” it was written not by Big Mama Thornton in Alabama, but by two young Jewish songwriters, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, in Los Angeles.

It seems beside the point to suggest that Elvis, Chuck Berry, Big Mama Thornton, or Lieber and Stoller were stealing from each other. A cultural practice as dynamic as American popular music is not so flimsy that a single artist can shift it off course, and there is a danger of allowing the logic of intellectual property to limit the cultural potential for community and solidarity. But the imbalance of these artists’ reception in the marketplace is a separate question, which Chuck D suggested in a 2002 Associated Press interview:

As a musicologist — and I consider myself one — there was always a great deal of respect for Elvis, especially during his Sun sessions. As a black people, we all knew that. My whole thing was the one-sidedness — like, Elvis’ icon status in America made it like nobody else counted. . . . My heroes came from someone else. My heroes came before him. My heroes were probably his heroes.
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Bonus, because our world is both depressing and stupid:
The extremely woke guy who posted this has tweets with the n-word, and this particular gem, which to my untrained eye looks very much like cultural appropriation he hates.
 
berbatrick said:
Of all the issues grouped under "PC", this is the one I understand least - "cultural appropriation." Using mocking stereotypes for other people, especially if that stereotype has a history associated with oppression, is clearly wrong. Commodifying and making a profit off of other peoples' heritage is wrong too. But eating food or wearing clothes that originated in another culture isn't wrong - in fact opposing this is IMO segregationist/essentialist.

Context?
This very popular tweet:


Calling out a literal teenager for her choice of dress as not woke enough. Is she disrespecting that dress? No. Is she using it to mock Chinese culture? No. She's wearing a dress she thinks is pretty, and using it as a dress (not as a tablecloth or something rude). Apart from segregationists, I really don't see why anyone would have an issue with that. Finally, even if she was doing those things, she's not even 18 and calling her out with a fairly rude tweet is about the worst thing you can do if you actually think this is an issue worth getting mad about.

To go a little deeper into his critique - he basically gives a few lines about the historical significance of that dress. Good. I have no idea how it relates to that girl wearing the dress for prom. In fact his own history shows how the dress' meaning changed throughout history, and how it spread outside China. My god other Asians appropriated it oh no what a tragedy.
Finally, as an Indian, on the rare occasions I do wear Indian clothes, my thoughts are not abut the unique history of kurtas. I doubt that every Chinese woman choosing to wear a dress like that takes 5 minutes to meditate on its significance before wearing it.

I think Shuja Haider has a couple of articles in Jacobin on cultural appropriation which tackle the issue quite well:
Weiss fittingly uses the MTV Video Music Awards to launch her diatribe, as music criticism has been the site of the most intense debates over cultural appropriation. The poet Amiri Baraka, a founder of the Black Arts Movement, addressed this subject in the context of his advocacy for black jazz musicians. Even through the mid-sixties, white musicians like Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond tended to overshadow artists like John Coltrane. In his 1963 essay “Jazz and the White Critic,” Baraka writes:



The complexity of the question led Baraka through a range of perspectives, including black nationalism, which temporarily mired his thinking in biological essentialism. But over a lifetime of active intellectual engagement, political practice, and cultural production, he refined his perspective, as he explained in a 2007 interview:



In the final measure, Baraka wasn’t concerned with whether white musicians imitate black musicians. His quarrel was with a society that allows some to rake in profits at the expense of others, a process that has consistently and aggressively exploited racial divisions.

Perhaps the most archetypal example of cultural appropriation is Elvis Presley: a white performer who stole everything from black musicians, most notably Chuck Berry. This historical interpretation has made Presley the target of as much animosity as admiration. Chuck D famously rapped on Public Enemy’s 1989 song “Fight the Power,” “Elvis was a hero to most, but he never meant shit to me.” Many critics argue that Elvis’s success came at the expense of black artists like Big Mama Thornton, who sang “Hound Dog” years before Elvis did without ever reaching his level of wealth or fame. Elvis, the story goes, built his career on theft.

But this position is difficult to maintain. Chuck Berry’s first record, “Maybellene,” came out in July 1955, a full year after Elvis’s first recording session at Sun Studios. On that first record, Presley sang “That’s All Right Mama,” a blues song by Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, with a hillbilly inflection that reflected his country-music roots. Scotty Moore’s guitar accompaniment bore the influence of the Appalachian string band tradition. The b-side, bluegrass pioneer Bill Monroe’s “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” featured blues licks from Moore and a driving rhythm reminiscent of R&B progenitor Louis Jordan.

Which side counts as cultural appropriation? Was it playing a country song with the grit of the blues, or was it playing the blues with a country twang? Or was it both?

Chuck Berry — whom pianist Johnnie Johnson described as “a black man playing hillbilly music” — raises a similar question. “Maybellene” was a rewrite of the traditional “Ida Red,” which Berry had heard on country bandleader Bob Wills’s 1938 recording. As for “Hound Dog,” it was written not by Big Mama Thornton in Alabama, but by two young Jewish songwriters, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, in Los Angeles.

It seems beside the point to suggest that Elvis, Chuck Berry, Big Mama Thornton, or Lieber and Stoller were stealing from each other. A cultural practice as dynamic as American popular music is not so flimsy that a single artist can shift it off course, and there is a danger of allowing the logic of intellectual property to limit the cultural potential for community and solidarity. But the imbalance of these artists’ reception in the marketplace is a separate question, which Chuck D suggested in a 2002 Associated Press interview:

Bonus, because our world is both depressing and stupid:
The extremely woke guy who posted this has tweets with the n-word, and this particular gem, which to my untrained eye looks very much like cultural appropriation he hates.
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Soon you would be railing against the anti free speech uni students too :)
 
crappycraperson said:
Soon you would be railing against the anti free speech uni students too :)
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I honestly think if the online right-wing wasn't building their case around angry college students, it would be a lot easier to criticise the students (and also keep in mind that they aren't a particularly influential group).

I think this video sums up both some actual research on free speech on campuses and also my feelings about one of the most vocal anti-SJW youtubers: Dave Rubin.
 
It doesnt matter what the reaction in China is. There is nothing wrong with it.
 
Silva said:
FWIW the reaction in China has been "she's pretty, the dress suits her"
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Well, I prefer the response from an extremely rational high-IQ corner of reddit:
1y2qxqo9lvv01.jpg
 
berbatrick said:
Of all the issues grouped under "PC", this is the one I understand least - "cultural appropriation." Using mocking stereotypes for other people, especially if that stereotype has a history associated with oppression, is clearly wrong. Commodifying and making a profit off of other peoples' heritage is wrong too. But eating food or wearing clothes that originated in another culture isn't wrong - in fact opposing this is IMO segregationist/essentialist.

Context?
This very popular tweet:


Calling out a literal teenager for her choice of dress as not woke enough. Is she disrespecting that dress? No. Is she using it to mock Chinese culture? No. She's wearing a dress she thinks is pretty, and using it as a dress (not as a tablecloth or something rude). Apart from segregationists, I really don't see why anyone would have an issue with that. Finally, even if she was doing those things, she's not even 18 and calling her out with a fairly rude tweet is about the worst thing you can do if you actually think this is an issue worth getting mad about.

To go a little deeper into his critique - he basically gives a few lines about the historical significance of that dress. Good. I have no idea how it relates to that girl wearing the dress for prom. In fact his own history shows how the dress' meaning changed throughout history, and how it spread outside China. My god other Asians appropriated it oh no what a tragedy.
Finally, as an Indian, on the rare occasions I do wear Indian clothes, my thoughts are not abut the unique history of kurtas. I doubt that every Chinese woman choosing to wear a dress like that takes 5 minutes to meditate on its significance before wearing it.

I think Shuja Haider has a couple of articles in Jacobin on cultural appropriation which tackle the issue quite well:
Weiss fittingly uses the MTV Video Music Awards to launch her diatribe, as music criticism has been the site of the most intense debates over cultural appropriation. The poet Amiri Baraka, a founder of the Black Arts Movement, addressed this subject in the context of his advocacy for black jazz musicians. Even through the mid-sixties, white musicians like Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond tended to overshadow artists like John Coltrane. In his 1963 essay “Jazz and the White Critic,” Baraka writes:



The complexity of the question led Baraka through a range of perspectives, including black nationalism, which temporarily mired his thinking in biological essentialism. But over a lifetime of active intellectual engagement, political practice, and cultural production, he refined his perspective, as he explained in a 2007 interview:



In the final measure, Baraka wasn’t concerned with whether white musicians imitate black musicians. His quarrel was with a society that allows some to rake in profits at the expense of others, a process that has consistently and aggressively exploited racial divisions.

Perhaps the most archetypal example of cultural appropriation is Elvis Presley: a white performer who stole everything from black musicians, most notably Chuck Berry. This historical interpretation has made Presley the target of as much animosity as admiration. Chuck D famously rapped on Public Enemy’s 1989 song “Fight the Power,” “Elvis was a hero to most, but he never meant shit to me.” Many critics argue that Elvis’s success came at the expense of black artists like Big Mama Thornton, who sang “Hound Dog” years before Elvis did without ever reaching his level of wealth or fame. Elvis, the story goes, built his career on theft.

But this position is difficult to maintain. Chuck Berry’s first record, “Maybellene,” came out in July 1955, a full year after Elvis’s first recording session at Sun Studios. On that first record, Presley sang “That’s All Right Mama,” a blues song by Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, with a hillbilly inflection that reflected his country-music roots. Scotty Moore’s guitar accompaniment bore the influence of the Appalachian string band tradition. The b-side, bluegrass pioneer Bill Monroe’s “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” featured blues licks from Moore and a driving rhythm reminiscent of R&B progenitor Louis Jordan.

Which side counts as cultural appropriation? Was it playing a country song with the grit of the blues, or was it playing the blues with a country twang? Or was it both?

Chuck Berry — whom pianist Johnnie Johnson described as “a black man playing hillbilly music” — raises a similar question. “Maybellene” was a rewrite of the traditional “Ida Red,” which Berry had heard on country bandleader Bob Wills’s 1938 recording. As for “Hound Dog,” it was written not by Big Mama Thornton in Alabama, but by two young Jewish songwriters, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, in Los Angeles.

It seems beside the point to suggest that Elvis, Chuck Berry, Big Mama Thornton, or Lieber and Stoller were stealing from each other. A cultural practice as dynamic as American popular music is not so flimsy that a single artist can shift it off course, and there is a danger of allowing the logic of intellectual property to limit the cultural potential for community and solidarity. But the imbalance of these artists’ reception in the marketplace is a separate question, which Chuck D suggested in a 2002 Associated Press interview:

Bonus, because our world is both depressing and stupid:
The extremely woke guy who posted this has tweets with the n-word, and this particular gem, which to my untrained eye looks very much like cultural appropriation he hates.
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doesn't dear jeremy lam wear shoes and pants appropriating western culture? What a moron.

Your point about music completely went over my head.
 
Wibble said:
Who would be stupid enough to use such a diminishing pet name for their partner?

I use the term Chattel occasionally to see if I can get a rise out of my wife but she just rolls her eyes at me dammit.
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I've seen many people use wifey to refer their partners. I think Wibble is a shit name but I don't think you are stupid because you are using it though.
 
fishfingers15 said:
I've seen many people use wifey to refer their partners. I think Wibble is a shit name but I don't think you are stupid because you are using it though.
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It isn't about it being a shit pet name. There are lots of those. It's dictionary definition is

a condescending way of referring to a man's wife.

So to call your own wife wifey is both sexist and insultingly dismissive.
 
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2 man midfield said:
:rolleyes: I wonder if 'hubby' is sexist as well?
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Given that hubby isn't a derogatory term, unlike wifey, and it isn't a name applied to a group who are subject to discrimination based on their sex I don't think it fits the definition of being sexist.
 
I call my girlfriend wifey as a joke.

That craic with the dress is a load of shite. It's a nice dress.
 
Wifey has been somewhat reappropriated by younger people and doesn’t mean the same to them as the dictionary definition.
 
Snowjoe said:
Wifey has been somewhat reappropriated by younger people and doesn’t mean the same to them as the dictionary definition.
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Hmmm. Makes me nearly as uncomfortable as white blokes calling each other Ma Homie (without obvious irony). And I doubt Amanda Carpenter's husband know this as I doubt that he is sufficiently down with the kids. Dawg.
 
Is wifey in the sense you're referring to it solely an Aussie thing Wibbs, like Sheila, bogan etc?

Can't say I've ever come across it as a derogatory term and it is one my wife and I have used in affectionate jokey conversation in the same way as she would use hubby.
 
Wibble said:
Given that hubby isn't a derogatory term, unlike wifey, and it isn't a name applied to a group who are subject to discrimination based on their sex I don't think it fits the definition of being sexist.
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Wifey isn't derogatory at all where I'm from.
It's the same as hubby, just a playful way of addressing or speaking about your significant other.

Edit: seems the part where younger folks see it as different has already been addressed. Ignore me then. :)
 
This thread was actually the first time I’ve ever heard of it being a derogatory term.
 
Bury Red said:
Is wifey in the sense you're referring to it solely an Aussie thing Wibbs, like Sheila, bogan etc?

Can't say I've ever come across it as a derogatory term and it is one my wife and I have used in affectionate jokey conversation in the same way as she would use hubby.
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No. Very much a UK term.

I asked my better half what she would do if I referred to her as my wifey in a non-joking way.

I won't quote her as most of it won't get past the Caf's swearing filter.

Then again in a joking sense I call her my chattel but as she knoes I'm joking and trying to wind her up and I just get an eye roll.
 
Wibble said:
No. Very much a UK term.

I asked my better half what she would do if I referred to her as my wifey in a non-joking way.

I won't quote her as most of it won't get past the Caf's swearing filter.

Then again in a joking sense I call her my chattel but as she knoes I'm joking and trying to wind her up and I just get an eye roll.
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I actually thought your initial response was a joke pointing out how silly it is to complain about 'wifey', hence my own (unfunny, sorry) attempt to join in.

All I can say is it's not derogatory where I come from, it's just affectionate. Each to their own, I suppose.
 
712 said:
All I can say is it's not derogatory where I come from, it's just affectionate. Each to their own, I suppose.
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Yeah, if the understanding is that it‘s not derogatory then there is nothing wrong with using it imo. Helps to know that it can be understood that way if you‘re talking with people that are not part of the understanding.
 
712 said:
I actually thought your initial response was a joke pointing out how silly it is to complain about 'wifey', hence my own (unfunny, sorry) attempt to join in.

All I can say is it's not derogatory where I come from, it's just affectionate. Each to their own, I suppose.
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Where are you from out of interest? I grew up in Manchester and it was always a very patronising way or refering to women. 1950's style little woman at home cooking for her man and watming his slippers when he got home from work doing real work type stuff.
 
Wibble said:
Where are you from out of interest? I grew up in Manchester and it was always a very patronising way or refering to women. 1950's style little woman at home cooking for her man and watming his slippers when he got home from work doing real work type stuff.
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Preston, 30 miles away. Mrs 711 is scouse, but I've civilised her, as much as one can.
 
Wibble said:
It isn't about it being a shit pet name. There are lots of those. It's dictionary definition is

a condescending way of referring to a man's wife.

So to call your own wife wifey is both sexist and insultingly dismissive.
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That's just odd. What partners refer to each other is a personal issue based solely on their relationship.
 
Wibble said:
No. Very much a UK term.

I asked my better half what she would do if I referred to her as my wifey in a non-joking way.

I won't quote her as most of it won't get past the Caf's swearing filter.

Then again in a joking sense I call her my chattel but as she knoes I'm joking and trying to wind her up and I just get an eye roll.
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I thought it was an American term. Never heard it in Manchester.
 
Wibble said:
Given that hubby isn't a derogatory term, unlike wifey, and it isn't a name applied to a group who are subject to discrimination based on their sex I don't think it fits the definition of being sexist.
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Just to point out that men are also subject to discrimination due to their sex. Even the most radical of feminists would accept that, though would view it through the lense of patriarchal oppression of women rather than hatred of men. Such as with criminal and family law.

I've never heard 'wifey' being used as anything other than the equivalent of 'hubby' to be honest. Do you have examples?
 
Wibble said:
It isn't about it being a shit pet name. There are lots of those. It's dictionary definition is

a condescending way of referring to a man's wife.

So to call your own wife wifey is both sexist and insultingly dismissive.
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Wifey is a bit cringe to me, mostly because I associate its usage with basic people, so I personally wouldn't ever use it. What I can't understand is the need for people like yourself to feel offence on behalf of women whose partners choose to use this word in spite of the negative connotations it might have once held, not because of it. Some Black people call each other nigger, some husbands call their wives wifey. Do you really think individuals such as yourself should be concerned with the semantics of pet names used between couples that are obviously not using it with the intent of being insulting?
 
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