I had never heard of the word microagression until very recently. Nothing I have heard about it thus far motivates me to appreciate its use.
The TV show ‘Black-ish’ last night included a related thought; at a company meeting a woman declared that she was a proud “Jew” (as opposed to a proud Presbyterian or some such). The boss, presumably a goy, cut her off and declared that the word Jew was offensive, despite the woman’s pleas that “I can say it because that’s what we call ourselves!”
@Consolation - The term Third World came into being during the Cold War. The First World was America, the west and its allies. The Second World was the Soviet Union and its satellites. The Third World consisted of the non-aligned states that were not part of the two blocs.
Hmmm…I don’t think I would enjoy being around Mr. Warren Scherer.
What I consider an aggression, not just a microaggression, is the labeling of whatever I do as white or male privilege. It’s not ok to insult me just because I’m a white male. Just as it’s not ok to insult a black female just because … and yet I can read lots of stuff talking about clueless white people or stupid white men. Some of it is a joke, which I appreciate because I like jokes, but much isn’t and my answer to that is “bleep you”.
But oh wait, I’m told that being white and male means I’m privileged by both race and sex and therefore whatever I do can be treated as oppressive acts. This is how the language of Marxism infiltrated academia and now society: the twisting of social classes to create labels of “bad” and “oppressor” to fit a narrative in which fault always lies with those so labeled.
It is apparently not a micro aggression to make fun of skinny person yet describing one as fat will get you kicked out off the playground.
This whole micro aggression stuff has gone too far. We need to go back to using common sense. I worked with a women who was wheelchair bound as a result of spinal bifida. She detested parking places being labeled as handicapped or being refer to as handicapped. She explained to me that a handicap is put upon a person by society. She also dislikes being called a disabled person and prefers the term “a person with a disability.” I can do that!
Hey! You’re micro-aggressing halal & kosher people!
I was actually worried about Porky Pig :@) :@)
@Lergnom, you had me until… you threw in “Marxism…”
What I read after that, "Marxism blahblahblah… "
Yes, we are all overly PC now because of all the Marxism going on in this country…
Re: the general discussion here… I see the point on both sides, although I do believe that the younger generation has taken PC language and “politeness” to new breathtaking heights.
I think that, at the point when “microagression” or any speech is going to be censored in order to protect the feelings of anyone else, we need to consider that the “victim” simply acquire the skills to grow a thicker skin.
In other words, your feelings don’'t trump free speech. Sorry, this is the real, big, bad, grown-up world. Learn to debate your position in it.
I’m hoping that the project was funded with micro grants, and the producers receved micro paychecks.
But I doubt it.
The point about Marxism is that while the idea/system lost in the actual world, the tactics developed in Marxist thinking were adopted by a number of groups - mostly leftist but some rightist. I could have said “Orwellian” but people associate that word with a specific story and the society described in it. If you read publications by the MLA, for example, you see lots of analysis that directly derives from the Marxist-Leninist methodology - I refuse to use “dialectic” - in which certain actions, approaches and perspectives are framed as oppressive on another and which treat speech, actions, institutions of the “oppressor” as both inherently wrong (or needing reformation/uprooting) and not deserving of equal treatment (because they’re privileged/oppressor). We see this all the time on college campuses where people say in one voice that free speech is a right while they protest and deny free speech to those they deem “oppressors”. I’m not blaming Marx - Karl or Groucho - but rather I’m aware that Marxist-Leninist methodology has grown in importance as it has become detached from the reality of the USSR and Mao’s China.
To apply this to political correctness, my point in post #23 was that people use their claimed status as victims, as an underclass, as oppressed to be nasty to others. In some contexts, they use this claimed status to stifle speech and to coerce. This is the essence of academic Marxist-Leninist methodology: the casting of victims and oppressors and the use of that to reverse roles to disempower the oppressors.
Is all political correctness rooted in this? No, of course. That would be stupid. Is much of it? Yes, particularly on college campuses. And particularly on the left.
@lergnom:
Your analysis is not wrong, but I am tired of hearing about the “Marxism” in universities, which usually goes along with the commentator blatting on how universities have undermined traditional values, traditional US culture, you name it.
What you are talking about is divide and conquer tactics, and it is used by everyone from all political persuasions, religious beliefs, all kinds of things. The religious right who go around blatting about the war on Christmas or the war on Christians are doing that, those who find offense in terms that basically have no intent of such, those who want to blame their problems on others, all do it. Those who claim that criticism of the increasing percent of wealth and income controlled by a small minority of people as ‘class warfare’ are doing that, because they are claiming that any discussion of it is based in jealousy (ironically, a lot of those same people turn around and denigrate those who are on the other end of the spectrum, but that isn’t class warfare). When the whole abuse scandal in the church broke out, church leaders and Catholic conservatives called it a pogrom against the church, church haters out to kill off the faith, those seeking to make money off the church,to try and deflect that it was a very real problem. It is an old tactic, turning legitimate criticism into a pogrom or attack, it is much like in global politics that any criticism of Israel is automatically anti semitic.
And yes, much of it is idiotic IMO, whether it is people getting their nose bent out of joint about “happy holidays”, or someone trying to find intent in some of the most idiotic stuff out there, trying to find racism or sexism or whatnot in everything. There are real battles to be fought, fighting over language the way these people are is among other things just gives weight to those who are trying to keep the old order in place, who think that things like class privilege or other unearned privileges should go unchallenged, that they are ‘the way things should be’ or worse are myths (they aren’t, not by a long stretch of the facts). I think it is a lot more important to find ways to fight what allows unearned privilege to rule, if well off kids have a huge advantage with education, then the answer is finding out how to balance that out, if people are hiring based on who they feel comfortable with, or if other things are going on, the real battle is making people aware of it, rather than turning it into fighting words, or arguing, which I find specious, that when you see things like disparity of wealth or things like unequal outcomes in schools, that it is some evil force when in reality some of it is seeing a problem and solving them.
One of the problems with the ‘white privilege’ arguments that I agree with those who are critical of it, is the idea that somehow that all the issues you see, all the disparity you see, is caused by unearned privilege, or worse, that someone who is a white male didn’t have to work for what they had, while I would be the last person to argue that being a white male didn’t give certain benefits (for complex reasons) in certain ways, as class gives benefits, minimizing the success of someone simply to unearned privilege is insulting and wrong, any more than claiming that race or class makes someone less (the way, for example, that the Ayn Rand view of things is that the poor are poor because of their own fault, or that certain racial group’s problems are 'their own fault). Among other things, it stops serious discussion of real issues that need to be solved IMO.
Well, see, I’m a big fan of Orwell, so if you’d said “Orwellian”, I would have followed along to the end, :D.
But, thanks for explaining your point more, I see what you mean now.
Still not sure I agree it’s “Marxist”, so much as just plain old intolerance of ideas and words that make us uncomfortable, and a fear of confrontation.
I think there is a middle ground on this. On the one hand, I think there are plenty of perfectly innocent statements that aren’t really microaggressions at all. On the other hand, insulting people doesn’t make anybody a noble truth-teller.
So I finally opened up this thread, I confess for the sole purpose of seeing if somebody had already posted,
“Politically incorrect is now politically incorrect” (not sure if it has been said yet)
But this opener just cracked me up!!! “The university also claims the word “lame” is a microaggression that somehow both “ridicules and ignores the lives of amputees” and therefore shouldn’t be used.” <= That is seriously funny!! Who comes up with this stuff?? Is it too obvious to point out that amputees are not necessarily “lame”, and many people (or horses) that are lame, or walk with a limp, are not amputees. What an absurd way to categorize a word.
To me the term “microaggression” conjurs up an image of a spear carrying pygmy (or dwarf, not sure which), so the term “microaggression” is clearly inappropriate.
When I’ve heard people use the term “politically correct” it usually seems to be a kind of opening salvo, a hit that is aimed at preventing their argument from being retaliated against. I guess that makes it aggressive, in the strictest form of the word, but to me it just makes it annoying, the kind of annoying that makes you roll your eyes, not feel offended.
The silliest use of the term I found was in a cookbook! The author kept saying “although it’s not politically correct” to want to cook with saturated fats or something like that… Oh dear, someone needs to find better words.
I am so glad arbiters of proper language are there to tell me when I am insensitive (NOT). (Especially where there was no intent to harm). What would be nice is if some of the language and thought police actually tried to be nicer to other human beings rather than dictate how others must think and speak. If I insult you, please let me know what I did and how it hurt, and I will listen. Perhaps I will be able to improve or perhaps those telling us how to think and act are just fascist pigs themselves!
Oh, this is definitely Orwellian.
Isn’t that pretty much what the OP link is? A collection of words that people are saying hurt them? Is the problem that it’s coming via a third party and not directly from the person hurt by it?
“Isn’t that pretty much what the OP link is? A collection of words that people are saying hurt them? Is the problem that it’s coming via a third party and not directly from the person hurt by it?”
The problem with lists like this, when we get a list of words “that hurt people”, it seems to come out of one person or a committee of people, and it is very hard to determine whether in fact these words even hurt someone, or the people on the committee projected that they must be hurtful, and therein lies the problem. For example, the term lame, are we sure that people with disabilities are hurt by this or care (and I ask that rhetorically, not saying they do or don’t). I think what others are questioning are people who seem to get insulted on behalf of others without really asking them if they care,I have seen more than a bit of that over the years. I also have seen where it isn’t that a group of people find a term insulting, but a handful of people, where some self appointed arbiters, or bitter people, decide that their view of things holds for the group and declare something out of bounds, when most other people in the affected group shake their heads…
While in a different vein than this discussion, Jane Goodall told a story about that. Gary Larsen, he of Far Side fame, did a cartoon where a chimpanzee comes home to his wife, and she is yelling at him, telling him something like “I found a white hair on you, so tell me you haven’t been off with that Jane Goodall tramp again!” or some such. Some self important twit, supposedly the director of the Jane Goodall society or such, complained loudly, made a big stink,said that Larsen was implying improper relationships between Ms. Goodall and the chimpanzees she was studying…Jane herself happened to be incommunicado, but when she got back in touch and heard what happened, her response was to laugh quite loudly at the cartoon, and also fire the person who made such a stink (apparently she realized the intended satire in the piece)…she herself recounted the story in preface to one of the editions of Larsen’s cartoons, along with her 'revenge, that Larsen and his wife visited her at her refuge in Gambia, they decided to sleep outside in a tent, and apparently were startled in the middle of the night by an adolescent baboon that decided their tent was a perfect play area and collapsed it lol).
There are power in words, there are things that are so negative that IMO shouldn’t be recycled or used, even if the intent isn’t there, but we also have to be very careful about the process of claiming negative power with words or assuming that someone, no matter how well intentioned, who claims the power to take them out of usage is in fact representative of a large group of people. If one person is offended by something, or a handful, do we let them decide what is right or not? Rather than have a list of words kids shouldn’t use on campus, I would much rather have stories by those who are handicapped talk about the word lame, if it bothers them, write or talk about it, or have someone who is gay talk about the usage that says something is gay when it means stupid or silly or whatnot, and how it makes them feel. Some committee, or some individual person, putting together a list sounds like censorship, people talking about their experiences is a lot more powerful.
I suppose it’s worth asking where the list in the OP came from, then.
Well I was responding to a post saying if someone was hurt to say so and she would listen. So in this case, yes, one person. The OP link specifically says the list is NOT a list of words to ban or not use, just words to think about.
Like this? http://itooamharvard.■■■■■■■■■■/