Urban v's the Commentariat

[ViolentPanda]

i disagree, i think theyre broadly accepted in many key areas (media for example), even if the term PC winds people up, people still act much more PC than they mightve 20 years ago anyway.

You've just shat on your own argument, though, by saying "they're broadly accepted in many key areas". By definition, if they've not fully penetrated the culture, they can't be "cultural norms".

 

[ViolentPanda]

Yeah I once had a girlfriend who identified herself as a pansexual polyamourist.

Me: 'Wtf's a pansexual?

Her: 'It means I don't recognise gender with regards to people I'm attracted to. So men, women, transgender, post op etc. I've even made out with a midget before'

Me: 'Since when was midget a sexuality?'

Her: 'It's not...I'm just saying'

Me: 'Oh'

As you can tell, her identifying as that and me being a serial monogamist heterosexual bloke meant our relationship was brilliant and worked out really well....

Not even my lecturer from uni, a pretty well respected and well known researcher of the sexuality of disabled people, knew what pansexual meant. I think Fozzie Bear has it right about these terms being more about 'we're so different and radical compared to the normals' than being of any major use.

Pansexual = term invented by Doctor Who scriptwriters to describe Captain Jack Harkness's penchant for having sex with anything vaguely animal, vegetable or mineral.

 

[frogwoman]

"polyamoury" i could think of a number of things to say on that, none of them would pass the intersectional test

 

[revol68]

Yeah, I'd feel a bit wary of slapping down someone experiencing gender dysphoria with a "reactionary" label.

not the individual, the argument.

 

[TruXta]

not the individual, the argument.

What argument? That it exists?

 

[frogwoman]

i would never have a serious relationship with someone who wanted to sleep with other people and for me to be all right with it, does that mean i need to check my privilege? I think it does doesn't it?

 

[Doctor Carrot]

"polyamoury" i could think of a number of things to say on that, none of them would pass the intersectional test

'polyamoury' - Justification for being a selfish arsehole and doing whatever the fuck you want regardless of who's feelings you trample on...

Not that I'm....errr....bitter or anything

 

[TruXta]

i would never have a serious relationship with someone who wanted to sleep with other people and for me to be all right with it, does that mean i need to check my privilege? I think it does doesn't it?

Open relationships are nothing new. I dunno if there are any stats out there on how well they work compared to monogamous relationships, but I know people for whom it's a stable working living arrangement.

 

[frogwoman]

Open relationships are nothing new. I dunno if there are any stats out there on how well they work compared to monogamous relationships, but I know people for whom it's a stable working living arrangement.

Yeah, fair play, they wouldn't work for me though. And why does another term need to be invented for it?

 

[cesare]

i would never have a serious relationship with someone who wanted to sleep with other people and for me to be all right with it, does that mean i need to check my privilege? I think it does doesn't it?

What you want to do is your preference. Other people will vary, and that's not necessarily a matter of privilege.

 

[TruXta]

Yeah, fair play, they wouldn't work for me though. And why does another term need to be invented for it?

Special snowflake syndrome.

 

[butchersapron]

I dont agree with your "just fell away" theory. There are always social factors behind such things, and US academia wasnt the only one, but this was a big deal in the States at the time, lots was written about it, and this influenced social policy, leading to things like compulsory disability training awareness lessons being integrated in workplaces by human resource teams. The language became integrated in work/public systems - it became integrated in structures.

heres a wiki history of the term for what its worth:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_correctness#History_of_the_term
The US academia era of PC was formulated on campuses in the 80s and broke out into wider debate in the early 90s. That matches my memory of what I read on this in the past.


"black american communities" exist very actively in US academia of course, and I would bet that it came from the afrocentrism that was resurgent in US universities in the 80s

The term and the concept came from white middle class lefties who began their long march through the institutions in the late 70s as then came to power in the early 80s. It didn't come from academia responding to social inequality, It came from a top-down product of social inequality and boring long winded sectarian instrumentality and rhetoric.

 

[Doctor Carrot]

i would never have a serious relationship with someone who wanted to sleep with other people and for me to be all right with it, does that mean i need to check my privilege? I think it does doesn't it?

No it means congratulations you have high self esteem. Thankfully my self esteem has since improved and I wouldn't go anywhere near annyone who identified themselves as such ever again. One lives and learns

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

i would never have a serious relationship with someone who wanted to sleep with other people and for me to be all right with it, does that mean i need to check my privilege? I think it does doesn't it?

Only in the sense that everything seems to. Other than that I don't see why tbh.

 

[ska invita]

You've just shat on your own argument, though, by saying "they're broadly accepted in many key areas". By definition, if they've not fully penetrated the culture, they can't be "cultural norms".

i havent had a tea yet so maybe thats why i dont follow what you're getting at. PC terminology has been integrated in key areas, those with influence and power: work, media, government, academia andspread on into general culture. Are there people who hate it? Yes: the big two (not exclusive) groups who hate it are the racists/sexists/phobics etc. who feel their freedom of expression is limited by it, and rightist who view PC as cultural marxism. Whats contradictory with that?

 

[ViolentPanda]

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

Just a point of fact - disability terminology in the UK changed because we (disabled people in the UK) agitated for it from the late '70s onward, not because some US academics supplied any impetus, and what was at issue was descriptiveness: "challenged" or "impaired" conveys that you have a difficulty, while "disabled" (until we re-defined it to mean that society disables us by not giving us a level playing field) simply conveys "broken", "sabotaged" or "switched off".

 

[revol68]

What argument? That it exists?

that you can be born into the wrong body, rather than the problem being gender typing forcing certain expectations on bodies based on sex.

the reification of gender dysphoria into a medical/biological condition rather than a social issue.

I essentially see it like breast enlargement or other cosmetic surgeries, in that it can be an means for individuals to navigate through or around such issues but there are obvious issues to be faced into how people come to feel so disjointed from their bodies.

Again this in no way justifies attacking trans people as people or the vicious comments of some of the madder end of the rad fem community.

 

[Doctor Carrot]

Open relationships are nothing new. I dunno if there are any stats out there on how well they work compared to monogamous relationships, but I know people for whom it's a stable working living arrangement.

Yeah it can work but I think it's quite rare where it works comfortably. It's more often than not one bloke with two women, although it also happens the other way around of course. I just think there's often someone putting up with it rather than actually liking it. These types of relationships are common in different cultures. Western culture on the other hand means we're socialised to be monogamous, breaking out of that's extremely difficult to do, being completely comfortable with breaking out of that is more so, IMO of course.

 

[Pickman's model]

"polyamoury" i could think of a number of things to say on that, none of them would pass the intersectional test

let's test them then

 

[Pickman's model]

Pansexual = term invented by Doctor Who scriptwriters to describe Captain Jack Harkness's penchant for having sex with anything vaguely animal, vegetable or mineral.

sadly a load of nonsense: from the oed

pansexual, adj.
Pronunciation: Brit. /panˈsɛkʃʊəl/ , /panˈsɛkʃ(ᵿ)l/ , /panˈsɛksjʊ(ə)l/ , U.S. /pænˈsɛkʃ(əw)əl/
Etymology: < pan- comb. form + sexual adj. and n. Compare French pansexuel (1914), and earlier pansexualism n. Compare also pansexualist adj.

1. Psychol. Of or relating to pansexualism (pansexualism n. 1).
1926 W. McDougall Outl. Abnormal Psychol. xviii. 314 The dogma that the Œdipus complex is present in all men is the principal instrument of the pan~sexual theory.
1939 Amer. Jrnl. Sociol. 45 397 You will find him indignantly denying that his psychology is a pansexual one at all.
1997 Hispanic Amer. Hist. Rev. 77 53 Psychoanalysis..was accused of being a pansexual, ‘metaphysical’ theory of dubious morality, lacking a scientific foundation.

2. That encompasses all kinds of sexuality; not limited or inhibited in sexual choice with regards to gender or practice.
1969 R. Morgan Let. 9 July in K. Payne Between Ourselves (1983) 274 K. and I are trying to be humanly unisexual, or pansexual.
1974 Observer 7 Apr. 36/6 Eventually, no doubt, some biographer will tell us how far he [sc. H. de Montherlant] was homosexual, heterosexual or—as seems to be suggested by some discreet passages about bestiality and incest—pansexual.
1977 Guardian Weekly 7 Aug. 18/2 An exquisitely Victorian taste for extravagant, pansexual erotic fantasy.
2001 Maclean's 13 Aug. 10/1 (heading) Whether you are omnisexual, pansexual, or just plain old bisexual..here are some of the workshops.

 

[ViolentPanda]

i havent had a tea yet so maybe thats why i dont follow what you're getting at. PC terminology has been integrated in key areas, those with influence and power: work, media, government, academia andspread on into general culture. Are there people who hate it? Yes: the big two (not exclusive) groups who hate it are the racists/sexists/phobics etc. who feel their freedom of expression is limited by it, and rightist who view PC as cultural marxism. Whats contradictory with that?

A "cultural norm" is a something accepted across a culture - that has been normalised in everyday use by everybody - like saying "pardon me" after belching, or holding a door open for someone. It's not merely something that's been accepted by part of the culture.

 

[TruXta]

that you can be born into the wrong body, rather than the problem being gender typing forcing certain expectations on bodies based on sex.

the reification of gender dysphoria into a medical/biological condition rather than a social issue.

I essentially see it like breast enlargement or other cosmetic surgeries, in that it can be an means for individuals to navigate through or around such issues but there are obvious issues to be faced into how people come to feel so disjointed from their bodies.

Again this in no way justifies attacking trans people as people or the vicious comments of some of the madder end of the rad fem community.

Why can't it be both a biological and a social issue? It's ironic you say this because gender dysphoria was earlier seen as a purely mental disorder, but now the medico-legals are moving towards a more biological stance, in part it seems to me because that makes it easier for people to accept. Not sure who drove that push tho, whether it came from the bottom or the top, so to speak.

 

[cesare]

that you can be born into the wrong body, rather than the problem being gender typing forcing certain expectations on bodies based on sex.

the reification of gender dysphoria into a medical/biological condition rather than a social issue.

I essentially see it like breast enlargement or other cosmetic surgeries, in that it can be an means for individuals to navigate through or around such issues but there are obvious issues to be faced into how people come to feel so disjointed from their bodies.

Again this in no way justifies attacking trans people as people or the vicious comments of some of the madder end of the rad fem community.

What's your pronouncement on intersex?

 

[ViolentPanda]

sadly a load of nonsense: from the oed

pansexual, adj.
Pronunciation: Brit. /panˈsɛkʃʊəl/ , /panˈsɛkʃ(ᵿ)l/ , /panˈsɛksjʊ(ə)l/ , U.S. /pænˈsɛkʃ(əw)əl/
Etymology: < pan- comb. form + sexual adj. and n. Compare French pansexuel (1914), and earlier pansexualism n. Compare also pansexualist adj.

1. Psychol. Of or relating to pansexualism (pansexualism n. 1).
1926 W. McDougall Outl. Abnormal Psychol. xviii. 314 The dogma that the Œdipus complex is present in all men is the principal instrument of the pan~sexual theory.
1939 Amer. Jrnl. Sociol. 45 397 You will find him indignantly denying that his psychology is a pansexual one at all.
1997 Hispanic Amer. Hist. Rev. 77 53 Psychoanalysis..was accused of being a pansexual, ‘metaphysical’ theory of dubious morality, lacking a scientific foundation.

2. That encompasses all kinds of sexuality; not limited or inhibited in sexual choice with regards to gender or practice.
1969 R. Morgan Let. 9 July in K. Payne Between Ourselves (1983) 274 K. and I are trying to be humanly unisexual, or pansexual.
1974 Observer 7 Apr. 36/6 Eventually, no doubt, some biographer will tell us how far he [sc. H. de Montherlant] was homosexual, heterosexual or—as seems to be suggested by some discreet passages about bestiality and incest—pansexual.
1977 Guardian Weekly 7 Aug. 18/2 An exquisitely Victorian taste for extravagant, pansexual erotic fantasy.
2001 Maclean's 13 Aug. 10/1 (heading) Whether you are omnisexual, pansexual, or just plain old bisexual..here are some of the workshops.

There was a smiley on the end of the post for a reason, fuckwit.

 

[Pickman's model]

A "cultural norm" is a something accepted across a culture - that has been normalised in everyday use by everybody - like saying "pardon me" after belching, or holding a door open for someone. It's not merely something that's been accepted by part of the culture.

isn't holding a door open for someone found across many cultures, so it isn't a cultural norm as such but something more universal?

 

[Pickman's model]

What's your pronouncement on intersex?

when he replies you'll need to go back and reread after five minutes as he's very keen on the editing this morning.

 

[Idris2002]

Pansexual = term invented by Doctor Who scriptwriters to describe Captain Jack Harkness's penchant for having sex with anything vaguely animal, vegetable or mineral.

I thought it was the ur-continent from which the landmasses we know today were formed.

 

[butchersapron]

A "cultural norm" is a something accepted across a culture - that has been normalised in everyday use by everybody - like saying "pardon me" after belching, or holding a door open for someone. It's not merely something that's been accepted by part of the culture.

If it were silent brooding racism would be a cultural norm.

 

[Pickman's model]

There was a smiley on the end of the post for a reason, fuckwit.

and there was me thinking it was because you were happy, cunt.

 

[ViolentPanda]

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.

Yeah, but by calling other people out, you get this thing known as a "boost to your ego", and some people trip on the power to do that.