How PC are you?

The problem is that words used to describe things or people who are deemed to be less than the norm our outside the norm very quickly accumulates many negative connotations. For instance, I teach teenagers who failed to get into secondary school. Currently this program is shortened as "IM", this is a fairly new name. When I began the abbreviation was "IV" if you read out the abbreviations they basically mean the same thing but it was changed. Now, it isn't stated officially but by the time I started working calling someone an "IV-child" was a serious insult among teenagers and all the kids who went there were viewed by outsiders as either retarded, dangerous or both. Now seeing as many of the kids who do attend there are either retarded, dangerous (not that we have have ever really had any serious incidents at school but the kids are stupid enough to tell me as a teacher about the people they have beaten up over the weekend and one major cause of missing school is police interrogations and jail time so outside of school some of them are dangerous) or both there is no point in trying to convince people otherwise and it is much easier to just change the name and hope it takes a bit longer for people to use the new name as an insult and that the kids attending become slightly less stigmatized.

The same goes for pretty much any word that is used to describe someone or something that is viewed as deficient or less worthy. The old term for mentally challenged was "retard" which is now a generic insult, before that it was "idiot" which is an even more generic insult. Now the term mentally challenged has started to slide from a condition to something you use to insult people with. The same is true of words used to describe people from ethnic groups that are looked down upon. There are very very few words meaning white people that are really degrading. The only one I can think of at the top of my head is "honkey" and I do not think it has ever been used as part of wide spread discrimination of white people. The simple word "Jew" is seeing some use as an insult even in our days, being a Jew is something negative in the eyes of many people so calling someone a Jew is an insult. If we want to be extreme the word used to describe 51% of the world's population sees a fair amount of use as an insult. Is it positive if your team mates call you a woman in the locker room after the game?

I think it is very hard for me as a reasonably successful white man to say which words are and aren't insulting. I have never been discriminated, I have never experienced how it is to be a part of a group that people look down upon (unless you count fat people which I reckon we can soon start doing) so if I have never heard anyone utter the word "oriental" with a voice full of scorn or contempt I don't think it is insulting but for someone who has or perceives it as such it may well be.

 

I think 'disabled' automatically has negative connotations. 'Differently abled' is a much more neutral term, and a nicer one. There's nothing wrong with calling them differently abled. I don't think l there's a problem at all. It's not hurting able bodied people by using the term. I certainly wouldn't like to be called 'disabled'. I think trying to soften it is a nice thing to do, but it really isn't a big deal....

 

Well of course people understand it. Unless you've lived like a hermit for the last 10 years. I just think the word 'disabled' is a very negative term for something that doesn't have to be negative. The word, 'disabled' never means anything good. However, I personally think the only people qualified to say what they should and shouldn't be called are those affected.

I don't think it's a bad thing to try and remove the negative aspect of their condition though, I think it's a good thing, and I fail to see how that bothers people.

 

In the same token I say you choose to think of it as neither good nor bad, then. How many times have you said to a friend 'aw mate, you've got to go and see this movie, it was absolutely disabled, I loved it!'. How many times have you used the word in a positive way? Trying to soften the wording of a condition is a nice thing to do I think, and it doesn't detract from anyones life that I know of, so why not do it?

 

I prefer the term "differently abled " as well. Abled refers to the ability to be mobile and people who use a wheelchair need to use a different method of mobility than the norm.

 

To be honest, I believe if a person is offended by people using the term 'differently abled' instead of 'disabled', I'd say those guys are the guys with the bigger problem than the 'PC brigade', and perhaps need to have some bigger problems to worry about. It's only trying to do a nice thing...

 

Much the same thing has already happened with the word "handicapped," the precursor to "disabled." Disabled was (as far as I know) substituted for handicapped some many years ago now as the nicer version of saying the same thing. The thing is, I don't even know why "handicapped" wasn't nice in the first place. It's not like we call things "f*cking crippled loser" parking spaces or "unable to climb a god-d*amned curb" access to buildings. Those would be insults. A neutral word in common usage is only offensive if is takes on some special meaning, the very act of which is an arbitrary association. Me not liking the word "tuna" does not mean that the word is objectively offensive.

Cracker and redneck are rather common in my part of the world. Hell, I've been called a "white ass motherf*cker* or its derivatives more times than I can remember, but even that doesn't particularly offend me. Who cares?

 

You try to be PC. We all have reflexes that are not PC and our mind corrects them.

 

I don't think people need to be offended by something before society goes 'I think we can phrase this in a nicer way'. That's all it is.

 

How do we know that something needs to be phrased in a nicer way without making a judgement about whether it's offensive in the first place, and who speaks for 'society?'

Is a "this end up" notice on a box offensive?

 

Of course the intention is what matter BTA but seeing as we are not a race of mind readers to use a word after it has gathered too many negative connotations among too many people is to risk offending someone even if there was no such intention.

 

I just call everyone 'pinhead.' It's not racist or sexists and has no religious connotations.

 

You mean they didn't call you an OOGHW?

 

No no, that implies dumb - an offensive categorization. Differently intelligenced.

Elderly: differently aged.
Overweight: differently weighted.
Blind: differently sighted.

And on and on ...

btw, who are all these people different from? All us normal people? That's offensive! Why should they be categorized as somehow outside normal society at all? We should probably switch them to "samely abled."

No, damn them.