What is your opinion on political correctness?

I think a lot of people thinks it's hip and edgy to claim they're not politically correct when they use that as an excuse to treat others like crap.

When I hear or read the phrase "political correctness" in discussion, I immediately start to wonder about the speaker or writer's agenda. Do they mean inclusive language and policies?, I wonder. The term has come to refer to avoiding language or behaviour that can be seen as excluding, marginalising, or insulting groups of people considered disadvantaged or discriminated against, especially groups defined by sex or race. In public discourse and the media, it is generally used as a pejorative, implying that these policies are excessive. The term has played a major role in the United States culture war between liberals and conservatives. Other dog-whistle expressions of this type include "social justice warriors" and "virtue signalling".

People use the phrase to browbeat political opponents. It carries very little weight unless one is weak minded.

Political correctness is a very broad term. I use the term sometimes. For me the issue is free speech (in the legal sense) and freedom of expression (in the social sense). Political correctness is harmful when a majority political opinion is used to demonize and stifle other points of view from being expressed.

The goal of political correctness is to prevent discussion and to stop undesirable views from being expressed.

I can give some examples...

1) Anyone who questions any aspect of the MeToo movment is attacked and labeled with the goal of discrediting and silencing them. The MeToo movement is a politically powerful movement that has gotten quite a bit of leverage in media and political circles.

There is nothing wrong with the MeToo movement expressing its point of view. I oppose the political correctness works to demonize and stifle the people who hold other viewpoints.

2) When controversial speakers are invited by a group of students, often students holding a more popular opinion will work, through disruption or politics to prevent the speech from taking place. This includes throwing things, disrupting events and pulling fire alarms.

There is nothing wrong with protesting speakers. But disruptions, political pressure to prevent them from speaking or violence is political correctness that I don't support.

3) Then of course there are the constant battles over popular culture, movies, songs, magazines. My opinion is that discussion of messages and cultural theme expressed in art is fine, and criticism is fine. Sometimes the attempt to demonize artists or art gets a little out of hand.

Of course, often pop culture can fight back.

The concept of political rectitude, referred to as what is or is not politically correct, arose in the late 1960s, or early 1970s. At that time, feminists, advocates of black power, anti-war activists, the American Indian Movement and other activists were attempting to form an alliance of activists to oppose Hitler's--excuse me--Nixon's so-called silent majority (not always called that, that term dates from the 1972 presidential campaign). So, for example, feminists were enjoined not to call the Black Panthers misogynists, and people were enjoined to swallow whole the phony image of aboriginal Americans as living in harmony with their environment and with one another. It was and remains bullsh*t. Many simply did not participate--such as the Black Panthers and AIM--it was largely current amon0g young, white, college educated Americans.

This type of behavior is as old as mankind. There truly is nothing new under the sun. Pythagoras and his followers, who have been extremely influential in western thought, believed in a soul (that was actually the neopythagoreans), insisting that one worship the gods and do good. The idea of a creation, in what later became known as the watchmaker analogy (and fallacy) was first expressed--as far as we know--by Cicero, more than 2000 years ago:

When you see a sundial or a water-clock, you see that it tells the time by design and not by chance. How then can you imagine that the universe as a whole is devoid of purpose and intelligence, when it embraces everything, including these artifacts themselves and their artificers?

To denigrate a Puritan whom one considered lax or heretical, one would call him an Arminian or an Antinomian. Arminianism derived from a Dutch theologian, who rejected the Calvinist doctrine of predestination--anathema to the Puritans, all staunch Calvinists, and eventually a central tenet of the Methodists. What one might term political rectitude was always an important aspect of religious fanaticism, when churches lacked real power and used denigration as a tool to attempt to control people.

It has been used politically, too. Republicans in the late 19th century who were not politically correct in the view of the Republican establishment, the political bosses, were call Mugwumps--they had their mugs on one side of the fence ant their "wumps" (rumps) on the other. Tory, which usually only means a conservative in most of the English-speaking world, came to be a pejorative in what became the United States at the time of the American revolution. Earlier, at the time of the civil wars in England in the 17th century, both Tory and Whig were used as pejoratives, and as is so often the case, became badges of honor to those to whom they were applied. This was also true of the terms Puritan and Methodist. For modern American conservatives, "freedom haters" is the acceptable term for those who support gun control. Conservatives are often branded Nazis or fascists, and, hilariously, after Mr. Obama was elected, people on the right attempted (a largely failed effort, which nonetheless continues) label people on the left Nazis (because NSDAP was the National Socialist German Workers' Party). We have members here who even call the members of Anti-Fascist Aktion fascists themselves, and "antifa" has become a convervative code word for violent (or allegedly violent) people on the left.

As I said, there is nothing new under the sun. As EB observed, it is a term with which people are browbeaten.

You float some strange boats under this rubric of a film project.

You should listen to George Carlin, one of the clearest voices against political correctness. Bill Maher is also good.

The polls are 51 to 49 against political incorrectness.

I think people should be able to say what they mean.
I hate political correctness for the sake of political correctness.

We can at least know one another on an authentic basis if we’re honest in our speech.

I utterly detest someone thinking they can redefine a word and enforce it out of use.