Urban v's the Commentariat
- Thread starter Belushi
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co-op
But....but cLoWnFiSh....
Isn't the point of the term "politically correct" that it was a right wing sneer at obsessive right-on-ness about language? It was lampooning it as Soviet-style imposed public behaviour (with the corresponding suggestion that in private all these same PC-speakers actually didn't believe or practise any of it, so it was hypocritical).
Racism, homophobia, sexism are all much less publically acceptable than they were 20 years ago, I'm sure that's right, but I doubt whether it was the word-policing identity merchant equivalents of Sam Ambreen who achieved this. In fact by spawning counter-terms like "PC" they effectively gave loads of people a way out of having to deal with it.
SpackleFrog
Smash showy bell-bottom pants and sporty haircuts
Thing is, I think they have to be sex positive about black people doing it and call out the racism at the same time. So Black people can do it - but not with White people!
ska invita
back on the other side
thats interesting - i dont know the roots of the term PC, but I remember reading that much of the 'correct terminology' was born of US academia, and then migrated out from there as post-grads got into positions of power and influence. When I get a chance I'll see if i can find some links on that.
I'm not defending individuals such as Sam, I was just making a general point that if new socio-political-cultural-intersectionist-etc positions are gaining real traction on US campuses that doesn't necessarily mean they remain divorced eternally from the real world - academia does have an impact on the real world over time. Whether any of these ideas can have any kind of transformative effect (intended or otherwise) remains to be seen <it's certainly structurally possible that they might.
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
My walls are dripping wet and theres black mould on the ceiling. Can anyone give me an intersectional perspective about that?
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
Black mould, eh? Nice try....
the claim cannot be mentioned because it was in breach of Mosley's privacy, and because the part of it which might have ruled it was in the public interest to mention the claim was unsubstantiated. Mosley didnt have a leg to stand on with a libel case. neither would he have had a chance had the sun argued it was in the public interest because Mosley broke the laws relating to brothel keeping, the only reason I can think of that they didnt do that is because it would have implicated their source as well.
sorry, digression, but it always pissed me off that unrepentant fascist Mosley got away with this
co-op
But....but cLoWnFiSh....
But this kind of 'correct terminology' constantly mutates so there's never a Final Correct Version to migrate anywhere that actually lets everyone talk one language.
I'm old enough to remember the polite term for black people in the UK being 'coloured' - I assume that was because 'black' had negative connotations of evil or bad - so Black Wednesday, Black September etc. So this was a PC term if you like. Then the word was 'reclaimed' and you get Black (and because 'coloured' was inherently racist because if a white person said it, you effectively said 'we're not coloured, we're normal', right?) - and there was an attempted extension to include 'asian' under that umbrella 'black' as a unificatory thing (eg Southall Black Sisters). That never took flight though - presumably at least partly because the incredibly complex skin-grade/caste/status/class matrix which runs through UK-Asian societies has one base simplicity to it, i.e lighter = better and Black was a doomed label here (I guess that Sam Ambreen's identity and obsession with colour has its roots right here). Now we're back at 'colour' but it's PoC/WoC etc etc. I don't like the term(s) because of the basic logic that everyone is a person of colour and when you bend words out of shape you start making people awkward and we're back at having a priesthood to tell us why last years word is SO wrong and only a racist would be caught using it.
What are the 'correct terms' that US academia has generated that have endured?
weepiper
I fix the machines that fight climate change
Hold on... We can't treat black men who rape and white men who rape with the same contempt because we're white? Black men should get special consideration for having committed sexual abuse? That sounds dangerously close to saying 'well, you can't expect anything better from them after all. That's just how they are'. Which is pretty fucking racist.
co-op
But....but cLoWnFiSh....
I think if you're white you might be allowed to slightly slag off Stan Collymore because he's mixed race.
J Ed
Follow Back Pro Expropriation
If you go to a mostly white private school I imagine it's easy to transition into that mode of thinking
I still haven't got this intersectionalist thing. I know there's the wheel of oppression -- if I don't really understand it -- but is there a quick reference card, like 'x points for being black, y points for being female, z points for being disabled' or whatever? Then everyone would just have a score and it'd be be easier all round -- you could just trump people by calling out your score, rather than having to call people out about specific things.
Or have I completely misunderstood? Surely points *always* make prizes...?
Or have I completely misunderstood? Surely points *always* make prizes...?
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
was 15 when someone told me 'I'm not coloured I'm black' in response to what I thought was a sensitive description of the mans colour. Black is is a cultural identifyer these days. Christ sake I don't want to to remember this but not three weeks ago my brother was justifying a crass joke about slavery (i know) by saying 'there's only one black man here and he's my mate aint you kelvin'. At which point I'm looking aside at the lighter skinned black man jesse and thinking 'is he gonna say something?'. Course he didn't but he didn't look fucking happy either. Did pull bro on it but it's like water of a ducks back, I'm just sooo precious and lefty etc
fucking does my head in
fucking does my head in
ska invita
back on the other side
My point here is that US academia does have an influence on the real world. I don't live in the US so its hard for me to comment, but I'm just stating what i understand to be a fact that terms such as African-American, Native-American, Challenged instead of disabled, impaired, person instead of man (chairperson for example), staffed instead of manned, differently-so and so, and so on, originated from US universities. I'm sure there are many others. According to wikipedia one of the first recorded uses of the term CIS was by a student from the University of Minnesota.
Again, whether all the intersectional privilege theory and so on will have an impact beyond the ivory towers in the future I've no idea. Ive no idea how truly prevalent it is now, or what its like in a US university. I'm just making the point that it is possible for these kinds of things to have an impact in the real world, and that the fact this stuff is happening there doesn't mean it can be dismissed as irrelevant and ineffectual just because it happening there.
As a complete aside, the biggest contemporary example of a US university having an impact on global culture has to go to the Chicago school for its economics department. The fuckers
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Of course it can be dismissed as irrelevant and ineffectual just because it happening there.
SpackleFrog
Smash showy bell-bottom pants and sporty haircuts
Thing is, yes its true that these ideas will probably spread over time now that they've been imported from the US, but because of the specific nature of the ideas, there's only so far they're really like to spread, not least because as DotCommunist just illustrated, racism and sexism are everywhere. When you "call people out" constantly, you piss far more off than you convince, and eventually you only have each other to call out, which leads to any group or community that follows these ideas to fracture, isolate themselves and write some rather sad blogs. These ideas don't have the potential to develop past a certain level of support in society, anymore than say the Weekly Worker website has the potential to interest anyone who isnt a lefty trainspotter. Look at post-modernist political theorists; they've been largely ignored by society as a whole.
TruXta
tired
True so far as popular culture and awareness goes, but you have to look at the positions these people get into wrt shaping political decisions. Which isn't me saying these things like innersectionalism has had political weight (yet), but that things don't always have to be popular or well-known to carry power.
Crispy
The following psytrance is baṉned: All
Because language is always co-opted by power. Without change in power relations, change in language is just cosmetic at best.
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
from cisgender, which means the same as hetro/straight afaik.
co-op
But....but cLoWnFiSh....
But anyway these "terms from US academia" - what were they? As I remember it the "PC-isation" of langauage was primarily about getting rid of words like "nigger" or "poof" or whatever. But 90% of those words were already well understood to be offensive anyway, and were used with that intent (there were subtle ones too - eg "coloured" - that were less clearly defined in terms of intent but became seen as patronising). So it wasn't clever new words from US academia that changed anything it was the increasing unacceptability of expressing racist/sexist/homophobic etc views publically. And then the language that was used to express those views just fell away as a result.
Even in the US I wonder how much academia has really produced here; terms like "African American" do a job in the US since they provide an analogue for black people to the range of origin-identities that are routinely used for white people - "Italian-American", "Irish-American" etc etc, in a self-consciously immigrant culture like the US this is important, in a culture that conceals its immigration (like the UK) is isn't, in fact it would be exclusionary. 'African American' is also handy because it gets away from colour and thus away from the 'who is REALLY black?' question that inevitably follows, and all the (obviously damaging) potential for racial hierarchy there, - quadroons, octoroons, red, yellow etc etc. It is just - 'do you claim African heritage, yes/no?'
So the term is useful - but does it come from academia? Google says that it emerged from black american communities and was then used in a speech by Jesse Jackson in 1988 which was when it first broke into a wider public there. Don't know if that's true, but it sounds a lot more likely than that it was cooked up in a university and then caught on in black communities, that just sounds implausible to me. Black US communities have spent most of the 20thC very much involved in rejecting externally imposed terms for how they will be described for obvious reasons (eg the previously neutral 'negro') - often in conflicting ways ('coloured' vs 'black' etc etc) and it just sounds really unlikely that they'd suddenly let a load of white academics decide how they'll be named.
But I'd be interested if anyone has the full story on the term 'African-American'.
emanymton
A cat politely sat on the flaming gardener.
Yeah, I know what I means, but why cis I have never heard it in any other context. Homo and hetro have an established meaning. Going to check fishfinger's link now.
ETA - apparently it is a Latin prefix meaning 'on the side of'.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
cf cisalpine and transalpine gaul
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
all language is made up
emanymton
A cat politely sat on the flaming gardener.
Indeed it is. Hence I was asking if it is a newly made up term or an established one I was unaware of. Appears to be the second.
revol68
what, fucking what?
do you never get bored being a pedantic literalist fuckwit?
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
so it's a made up term with a history you were unaware of.
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