Freedom of Speech(not) and Politically Correct - Part Duex.

Setanta wrote:

For terms of this discussion, i consider political rectitude to be an adherence to dogma partaking of the fervor of religious devotion, and admitting of no mitigation or exception to the belief held.

By this definition the above comments still stand. It's a ploy used by all sides very frequently to try to paint censure as dogma with the less-than-subtle implication that it is not reasonable.

And that is precisely what you are doing here. Bludgeoning people who disagree with you with the "political rectitude" line so as not to have to defend your position. Rolling Eyes

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My objection about political rectitude is in applying a sloganeering technique, such as simply repeating endlessly "no means no," without regard to circumstances. I have no brief to defend the actions of men who have been accused of rape. I am disturbed by how quickly this discussion was raised almost to the level of hysteria as soon as i had apparently stepped on someone's philosophical toes, and to have had Soz react to a partial and anectdotal description of someone else's method for raising a debate on personal responsibility by chiming in with the question of whether or not "no means no" is valid or not, seems to me to be the quintessence of applying political rectitude. My purpose in referring to the incident was not to discuss rape. That it has become in part a discussion of what constitutes rape seems to me to be a product of the desire to cast any such discussion in stark terms, in a philosophical black and white, which looks to me very much like dogma.

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That's horsesh*t, CdK, i've said over and over again the i have no objection to the principle of "no means no." I'm not in a position of being obliged to defend such a position, because i haven't taken it. I object that making such a slogan an absolute truth in any an all cases--for example, in stating that it is the law--as opposed to a dogmatic position, is a case of pedalling dogma. Your response seems to me to be a clear cut case of riding your high horse.

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And it was very perceptive of you to have done so, Soz, because that was the point of departure of the professor in question in initiating a debate among his students on the topic of personal responsibility for the situations in which one finds oneself. As a point of information, the third of his lectures in that series begins with him explaining why, ethically, it would be deplorable not to accept a contention that "no means no," and then proceeding to point out that one ought to arrive at such a conclusion by examining the rights and responsibilities of an individual in society, rather than simply adopting a slogan without further thought on the subject. His purpose was not to get the students to shout down those who continued to maintain that any scenario he described could likely be described as rape, but rather for them to develop the mental tools to arrive at such a conclusion based upon observation and thought, as opposed to an unthinking adherence to a set of belief conveniently created for and foisted upon the individual. I mentioned the entire episode, because it seems to me that this is what characterizes the inherenet flaw in political rectitude--it does not call for one to give careful thought and arrive at a conclusion, it states that this or that is wrong, this or that is right, and one must adhere to such a position without regard to circumstances or mitigation.

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Personal responsibility is interesting to discuss, but I'm afraid your professor friend chose a really bad example, or at least phrased it badly. If he had said, in reference to each scenario, "Was the man a bad guy?" or "Does the woman carry some responsibility?", that would be different than, "Was it rape?" Rape, itself, is a legal term. As such, it is a red line -- it IS black and white. It is legal, or illegal. The scenarios show more and less bad guys and more and less bad behavior, but none of the mitigation makes sexual intercourse over the stated objections of the woman NOT rape.

I don't doubt that you accept "no means no", I am doubting that your story is a good example of how "The dogmatic adherence to political rectitude which grew out of the militancy of the late 1960's has been as rigid, or the attempt to impose it as rigidly applied, as the most fanatical religious observances."

Looking up legal definitions of rape, all of them so far have implied that if the man in the scenario admitted that he engaged in sexual intercourse over her objections, it's rape.

Some examples:

Quote:

Resistance and Consent

- At common law, there was a requirement that to establish rape, the prosecution had to show that the victim resisted. California has abolished the resistance requirement as it placed victims in danger.

- While the law does not require proof of resistance, the lack of resistance is a fact that a jury can take into account in deciding whether the accused reasonably believed the intercourse was consensual.

- In most cases, where the accused uses force, violence, etc., or threat of immediate bodily injury, lack of resistance will not matter. Where there is no force, etc., or threat of injury, it may matter.

http://www.healthyplace.com/Communities/Abuse/lisk/legal_rape_definition.htm

Still looking for something more specific.

Joe? Jes?

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Setanta wrote:

That's horsesh*t, CdK, i've said over and over again the i have no objection to the principle of "no means no." I'm not in a position of being obliged to defend such a position, because i haven't taken it. I object that making such a slogan an absolute truth in any an all cases--for example, in stating that it is the law--as opposed to a dogmatic position, is a case of pedalling dogma. Your response seems to me to be a clear cut case of riding your high horse.

Yes, I am indeed riding a high horse. And from this horse I am saying to you that you employ "political rectitude" to bludgeon others and are hypocritical to accuse them of dogmatic "political rectitude" as you are a great purveyor of it here.

The position I claim you do not and can not support is the risible contention that others here (you named sozobe by name) are dogmatically engaging in political rectitude.

It's an absurd position coming from one who is spouting the rectitude himself and a cheap ploy in an argument.

Yes, I am on a high horse. And for good reason, because you are using some of most insipid ploys that exist in argument and your hypocracy on this is glaring.

You tried to say that I'd been one who did not respond with political rectitude. This was silly, the truth is that I'd simply ignored your brainfart because I thought it too ignorant to address.

Now that you make a point to contunue the flatulence I am happy to address it.

By what measure do you assert that others engage in "political rectitude"?

Are you engaging in "political rectitude" yourself?

The argument about "political rectitude" just a pathetic ploy to disparage the censure you meet with as dogmatic in nature. And you are just as dogmatic as the rest with this fallacious debate ploy.

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Quote:

These acts are crimes even when the attacker and victim know each other. Just because two people are on a date does not mean one of them has given consent to sex. A woman (or a man) has a right to refuse sex at any time, even during a sexual encounter. In most states, the same rules apply even if the couple are married to each other.

http://www.teenwire.com/index.asp?taStrona=http://www.teenwire.com/warehous/articles/wh_19981201p060.asp

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sozobe wrote:

I thought PC was in the service of the opposite -- giving gay people special treatment, special rights, giving in to their demands to flaunt their deviant sexuality in front of innocent children, that sort of thing.

Anyway, just one example that comes to mind, many many many available on A2K alone. Everyone uses "PC" as a pejorative. But what does it MEAN?

Here's what I propose -- an imperfect, but more precise terminology. Call it "Glorified Victimhood."

To me your concept of PC doesn't seem to match up with what 99% of the people out there would think of when they hear the term "PC". Being PC doesn't have anything to do with "special rights" at all and it doesn't really have anything to do with victimhood.

It has more to do with the fabrication of fancy terms to replace perfectly acceptable words that already exist - in many cases the demand for the use of the new term is pushed by people who think they are somehow protecting the sensibilities of some other group or person.

You yourself have mentioned on A2K that you are deaf. However if I wrote a policy letter for my office on how we would meet ADA requirements should we hire a deaf person I know full well that my own boss would change the wording to eliminate the word "deaf" from the document (he's already done it once). No.. "deaf" won't do and "hearing impaired" is equeally unacceptable.

In my company the proper term to use would be "significant internal auditory attenuation" because someone who is deaf might be offended if we actually used the term "deaf".

Being PC also isn't something that is locked into any one political ideaology (contrary to a few earlier comments in this thread).

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Setanta has given another perfect opportunity to illustrate the fallacy of this silly debate ploy.

"Political rectitude" and the other euphemisms are just a way of whining about censure.

Watch how it happens here.

Setanta posts something so ridiculous that I thought it must have been a typo. It was a brainfart I thought too ignorant to address.

So I did not.

Others did, and he accuses them of bludgeoning with "political rectitude", which is a code word for censure. In other words they have the gall to disagree with him and censure him.

Now he is delightfully unaware that his hypocricy is being worn on his sleeve. He's censuring others just as much as they censure him. He too engages in the dogmatic "rectitude" that he is disparaging others for.

So now I too am censuring the mental flatulence.

See, "political rectitude" is a way to disparage those with the gall to disagree with someone. It's a way of trying to paint the censure as dogmatic and unreasonable.

And as such this is a childish and insipid ploy.

I, for one, am damn proud to engage in political rectitude now. I have no qualm with being labeled as someone censuring Setanta because I think Setanta's post was a smelly brinfart that merits the challenge.

Setanta responds to this challenge by disparaging people with the temerity to disagree with him.

This is the insipid ploy that is playing the "political rectitude" card.

When one brainfarts and is challenged they avoid the challenge by disparaging the source with that appelation. It's a meaningless ploy in debate.

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That was a meaningless set of sneers on your part Craven, but i haven't the time to address them now. You might engage in more specificity while i'm gone, so i'll know what sort of tripe you're pedalling, although i'll be happy to respond without it. Later, fool . . .

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Fishin', you bring up "deaf", lemme ask you this:

Whenever I see "hearing impaired", I say something like, "just 'deaf' is actually preferred." "Hearing impaired," the term, is heartily disliked by the Deaf community. I had many, many conversations about this as part of my job as an advocate for the Deaf community. Is that PC? Or is it undoing PC? Is undoing PC itself PC? (Giving myself a headache...)

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Hello all, sorry for the bait and run....
I have been working killer hours, regardless....
I have found the discussion here to be compelling. And no one has ruined the thread! Please continue.
Soz, this is not an anti-PC thread or a pro-PC thread per se. Commonsensical thinking is what I like to think I do to. I has never made sense to me how some people can walk the line of bad taste and poor choices and get away with it, and others - well,,, look like fools or oafs. I'm not the judge and jury when it comes to PC, nor do I want to be. Having said that.......
The law is the law. Rape is rape. No means no.
I had never heard the term Political Rectitude before. I can see your point Set. There are exeptions to every rule and sometimes good ideas are taken to the extreme.

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Setanta wrote:

That was a meaningless set of sneers on your part Craven, but i haven't the time to address them now. You might engage in more specificity while i'm gone, so i'll know what sort of tripe you're pedalling, although i'll be happy to respond without it. Later, fool . . .

Yes, it did indeed include a copious sneer. Not the name-calling you decend to when you meet with censure but there was indeed a "sneer". I hopped on the "high-horse" you'd accused me of riding. This much is obvious. I went so far as to state it.

But the horse was not my only stock and store. There was also a sound carping of your ploy. You disparage others for doing what you do by half and use it to bolster a weak position.

And I suspect you will again opt to disparage and neglect to uphold an intellectual standard. You will continue to stoop to namecalling to detract from your brainfart. You will have as your only stock and store a sneer, allowing you to gloss over the fallacy that is your "political rectitude" ploy.

Such is your right, I don't care if you call me fool. I will continue to ask you to defend your argument. If you are unable to do anything but stoop to namecalling I will take that as a signal that you are unable to do so.

So within your customary sneer and namecalling, try to have the intellectual honesty of defending your brainfart or disavowing it.

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Setanta wrote:

I mentioned the entire episode, because it seems to me that this is what characterizes the inherenet flaw in political rectitude--it does not call for one to give careful thought and arrive at a conclusion, it states that this or that is wrong, this or that is right, and one must adhere to such a position without regard to circumstances or mitigation.

Well, I would say that much like the professor in your anecdote, you succeeded in having us discuss the specifics of individual example cases in researching whether the "no means no" tenet would still hold when, in fact, measured against the context of individually varying cases - rather than when simply adopted in "unthinking adherence to dogma".

Thing is, even such a situational reflection on the matter didnt actually suggest to any of us that the "red line" of no-means-no would be any less of a red line in differing individual circumstances.

That, of course, is no surprise. Because we are not the 18-year old students and you're not the professor talking to them. In fact, the discussion here suggests that when any of us hold to "no means no", it might very well not be out of some simple sloganeering or slavish adherence to dogma, but simply as a rational conclusion we have arrived at based on exactly such exercises of reflection. We've had these discussions before, you know.

Basically, from the start you've assumed that when any of us says, "no means no", it must be some unthinking parroting of sloganeering dogma. I think there's been precious little evidence here that that would be so.

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Soz,

I like your thinking and writing (as usual, actually, now I think about it!).

The "Glorified Victimhood" idea is a very good one. I strongly believe that certain disadvantages should be catered for/compensated for by the community/society at large...but many wish to assert that difference is, in itself, a reason for special treatment. This is what I find objectionable, plus the idea that the "disadvantaged" are in some way condemned to their fate and (as your lesbian neighbours did) associate only with those who are also in some way "disadvantaged".

So, I don't talk from personal experience of disadvantage - I am male, white, highly educated, well fed and comfortably housed with an interesting and varied job. I suppose the only victimisation I am likely to face is for being single in a world where couples seem to be the norm (over 30s in the UK at least!). I suppose I could be considered too "privileged" by some but that's just jealousy ... and NEVER try to tell me that I can't be good at something simply on the grounds that I am what I am!

I've done some training/coaching over the years, in various ways (work and sport) and the biggest factor in improvement tends to be self-belief and confidence. By setting up too many groups of "victims", the idea is perpetuated that personal input and a positive outlook are the biggest keys to success and that our societies (different countries, similar views, I think) are too widely looking for attribution of blame for ANYTHING which doesn't work out quite right.

The world doesn't deal us all the same hand but the point at which PC goes to GV is where reasonable compensations/provisions for those who do not fit the general patterns are already provided but further, specialist, treatment is demanded which goes to confer advantages not shared by the majority...positive discrimination, in fact.

Let's take a riduculous example with a grain of possible truth: Blonde Cheerleaders quota at colleges (yes, I've just made it up!).

Beautiful, blonde women often complain that they are considered stupid. If this is true, at college interviews they may be discriminated against, in favour of more mousy/plain alternatives. There should therefore be a quota for the Blonde Cheerleaders.

OK - that sounds so silly because it is...it is GV, not just PC. The best reaction would be to demonstrate that the prejudice is wrong by confronting it, not finding a bypass.

That seems incomplete but I've written enough for now, so I'll check in again, tomorrow!

KP

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Whoa! Almost a dozen posts after the last one I'd seen, before writing that post above! I guess mine is already out-of-date by now, then ...

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Hi Ceili!

OK, was curious.

My last post was a bit of a distraction, I don't want to make the case that all of what is generally called PC is valid. A whole lot of it isn't valid, IMO. (I mentioned "differently abled".) I just think that the term has become meaningless (if it ever had any meaning), and dislike how it is often used (as Craven goes into well.)

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sozobe wrote:

Fishin', you bring up "deaf", lemme ask you this:

Whenever I see "hearing impaired", I say something like, "just 'deaf' is actually preferred." "Hearing impaired," the term, is heartily disliked by the Deaf community. I had many, many conversations about this as part of my job as an advocate for the Deaf community. Is that PC? Or is it undoing PC? Is undoing PC itself PC? (Giving myself a headache...)

I'd guess it would depend on how it was put. If someone used the term "hearing impaired" and you publicly berated them for it or took some sort of legal action against them for it then yeah, it probably would be (that's the type of situation when you start seeing the term "PC' thrown around - when the backlash against a certain words use greatly exceeds the "offense"). If you got up at a podium and spoke following the person and just used the word deaf and left it at that I doubt anyone would even blink.

If someone asks what term you prefer they use and you give them an answer I wouldn't call that PC. Seems like it's just a discussion at that point. *shrugs*

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Sozobe: Your take on the law is correct: rape typically boils down to "penetration without consent" (that's a rough sketch: some states no longer have "rape" at all, replacing that term with "aggravated sexual assault" or something similar). Thus, penetration that occurs without consent, or after consent is withdrawn, is rape.

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I've got a truly sick piece of software to deal with, and so haven't much time. I am amused to see that you, Craven, consider that you are somehow morally superior when using terms like brain fart, but i am "stooping" when i use fool. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Earlier in this thread, we exchanged civil responses. You came in here and started sneering and using pejorative terms, such a brainfart--now you seem to want to make a distinction which places you in a position of moral superiority. That is nonsense--you get out of this what you put into. You decided to get nasty about, and i've responded in like kind.

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Freedom of Speech(not) and Politically Correct - Part Duex.

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