Sometime's PC goes overboard. It is not a bad thing necessarily, unless abused.
One example of PC going wrong is the word "retarded" - the PC crowd thought "mentally challenged" would be a better term, even though retarded just means you are a bit slow, mentally-challenged makes it seem like thinking is an arduous task.
Suppose anytime someone was a jerk in public, took up an extreme and unsubstantiated view, and held closely to it despite multiple appeals to show him the obvious errors in his reasoning -- suppose we call that "Doing a Gavan" or "Woolerying" (although the latter would be unfair to your parents and family.)
Now, if this became really popular, then people who you would never in your life meet would start using it. You'd turn on the TV and people would be like "Oy! Check this Gavan out," and "Looks like he's pulling a Gavan wink". That would be quite annoying, to say the least. And this is in a case where you arguably did something to deserve it!
Now consider that you were born a certain way, and people use that word which describes you and your condition, as a pejorative. How would you feel living in a world where, by the mere fact of your birth, you and people like you are the object of jokes and insults.
I would not consider it going overboard to say that we as a society should make an effort to prevent this from happening.
(Also, it's strange that you don't oppose PC language on the basis that it attempts to alter a natural behavior. Natural behaviors are natural and nothing can be done about them, right?)
I would be honored if "doing a gavan" or "woolerying" became terms. ;) But seriously, the only way to right a word of its negative context is to start using it in a positive fashion, that way no one can use it abusively. Retarded was actually not first used as an insult, but just a term meaning slow...people decided to make it an insult. Two of my friends who are gay call each other "faggots" - which is probably the best thing you can do to remove the negative connotation of the word. Black people have successfully done this, with the N word, which they have made exclusive to their community. Really, words are just words. If someone calls another "retarded" it depends more on their tone of conversation than the word itself.
Those are all three bad examples though. Call any black person "nigger", any gay man "faggot", or speak to a special ed teacher about his "retarded" students and on the whole all will be offended.
The fact that retarded was a clinical term is irrelevant, similarly I think "nigger" derived from some matter-of-fact observation. This is really just another manifestation of your idea that root causes matter. They don't -- not as much as impacts do, both legally and for many people morally as well. Also, again, reciprocity is not a requisite here -- there is no fair use policy for offensive words or behavior.
Whenever someone says "if they can use it so can I", I have to wonder "why would you want to?" Why would you ever want to refer to gay people as "fags" or black people as "niggers", even if they do call each other in such a way.
No. You are not supposed to use retarded because that word has consistently been used to insult and denigrate disabled people. It's the same with gay. You are not supposed to use it as an insult. It doesn't matter whether the person you are insulting is gay or not.
My gay friends prefer "gay" or "queer" over homosexual. My black friends prefer "black" over African American. I could very well be wrong about the word retarded though. :)
You did not understand me. Using “gay” as a positive term isn’t a problem. “He came out first as a gay footballer” is a perfectly alright sentence. Using ”gay” (or “retarded”) as an insult is where the problem lies (with “retarded” the additional problem is that no one uses it as a positive term – and since it’s so overwhelmingly used negatively, using it neutrally isn’t really possible).
When someone tells you he likes My Little Pony and you respond with “Man, you are so gay!” then that’s a problem. You are using “gay” as in insult, as if being gay were a bad thing. That’s the reasoning behind why many people think using “gay” in that manner is a bad idea. That works analogously for “retarded”.
That’s not to say you can’t express, say, disgust at someone liking My Little Pony. “Man, your taste fucking sucks!” is a perfectly alright response no one will have a problem with (beyond disagreeing whether My Little Pony is good or bad).
Again, I don’t want to ban people from using “gay” or “retarded” as insults. But when they do I will call them out and explain my reasoning.
> with “retarded” the additional problem is that no one uses it as a positive term
Not true. In the automotive world "retarded" is used quite often in regards to your distributor, vacuum and timing. By adjusting things, your timing can be advanced or retarded. It is not a negative thing. It is simply how engines are tuned.
It truly is a shame that a very legitimate word (retard) with a very legitimate meaning (to delay or slow progress) that had been used in legitimate ways for years was co-opted to insult people with diminished metal capacity. (While technically true, it is mean. Much like calling me whitey is technically true as I am white... it is generally an insult.) If not for that, the use of phrases like "well that was retarded" would still be legit uses since it is in spirit of the original meaning and not too far from saying "well, that was stupid". One could even argue that in a slightly less PC world we could still be using it to describe things and actions... just not people. But that is wishful thinking. The damage has been done.
Side note: It is some what also the case with the word "gay" which used to just mean "happy". Although, when people say "well, that was gay" they are generally not meaning "happy" so we've pretty much departed from that. I don't know the whole history of the N-word, but I don't believe there was ever a non-hateful use of the word (even taking into consideration its origin).
> When someone tells you he likes My Little Pony and you respond with “Man, you are so gay!” then that’s a problem. You are using “gay” as in insult, as if being gay were a bad thing.
Maybe some people do think it's a bad thing. Who are you to be the arbiter of objective truth, ethics and correctness on that point, to which all other person's thoughts must conform? And note that "bad" does not have to mean evil, it can just mean undesirable, disgusting, weak, defective, or non-ideal. For example, there's a good argument to be made that homosexuality is a flaw from a biological and evolutionary standpoint. It's certainly not a condition which leads to reproductive accomplishment given that M+M and F+F cannot literally produce a baby. And note that nothing about that argument says that homosexuality is morally wrong. A lot of people think shit smells bad, for example, though they don't find it evil or a "lifestyle choice", since it's a biological process.
> It's the same with gay. You are not supposed to use it as an insult.
When you say "not supposed to" I'm curious by whose authority are you claiming that? For sake of argument, let's say there are some people out there who view homosexuality as an undesirable or defective or merely an "icky" thing. For example, they may not feel a gay man is evil or making a lifestyle choice, necessarily, but they may find it disasteful or uncomfortable, and they may not think it's psychologically healthy for two gay men to raise a child. Yet the "gay is 100% OK" crowd tends to demonize a person if they don't think exactly the same as they do. But if they do feel it's a negative thing, or something they feel is gross, why can't they use it as an insult? Just as they would use the insult of fat, stupid, ignorant, etc. By whose authority are certain insults not "allowed"? Is there some holy document which declares precisely and completely objectively which words you can and cannot say, or which thoughts you can and cannot express? And not I'm not talking about legal documents, those are clearly made up by humans, and vary by culture, time, fashion, etc.
It's this kind of nuance which is at the heart of why so many people don't agree with so-called Political Correctness. It's seen as an almost facist or Big Brother kind of thing where one group of people make these pronouncements about what some other group of people are and are not allowed to say, or think. There are shades of grey involved, clearly, where some cases are "black", and some "white-ish" but a whole lot of gray. But people on the P.C. bandwagon -- which also seem to correlate highly to US college students, professors and academics, especially non-STEM -- get on this moral high horse about what sounds like a very narrow and very strict definition about what's Right and what's Wrong to say or think. Which itself, to me, seems ludicrous at best, and unethical and oppressive at worse. A kind of close-minded authoritarianism about supposedly being open-minded and free. (BOGGLE)
This gets hurled as an insult often enough that using it is a bad idea. If you use it, you class yourself alongside the hateful morons who use it as an insult.
> retarded just means you are a bit slow
Ideally, perhaps; that is not the case in reality.
One example of PC going wrong is the word "retarded" - the PC crowd thought "mentally challenged" would be a better term, even though retarded just means you are a bit slow, mentally-challenged makes it seem like thinking is an arduous task.