Why Is The Farang Expat Community So Politically Correct?

[bonobo]

That brief response contains two separate elements which puzzle me:

1. Is the expression "Yank" considered offensive and, if so, why?

2. If the expression "Nigger" is offensive (which, usually, it obviously is), then why should the expression "Ni**er" be deemed inoffensive?

 Question 1:  "Yank" while it can be used as a pejorative, is not considered offensive by most Americans as we invented the term and consider it with pride (well, at least people from the northern states.)

Question 2:  I agree wholeheartedly with your point here.

[bonobo]

there are far worse things to get uptight about than jokingly being referred to as a "septic

Then you should not mind being "shitish" since they are pretty close to the same thing.

That merely demonstrates that you have no grasp of the esprit of rhyming slang. If you do not understand it, be careful when discussing it, lest your ignorance leaves you looking like a bit of a berk.

It is the perception of the recipient which matters, not the "esprit" of the person using the terms. I have had TV members call me a "septic" in good fun at a few of our get-togethers, and from them, I took no offense and had no compunction against responding in kind.  However, from someone I don't know, well, I probably would take offense.

[PeaceBlondie]

The term Nigger is offensive to blacks when hurled as an epithet, even as a French espirit. Likewise, I consider it an insult when it's hurled by the Shitish.

Shall we return to the topic, which may have been a troll to get us insulting each other?

[Gerontion]

Gawd...PC means nothing. It's a spectre conjured up by the right wing press to capture opinions which they don't like but which against which they can't formulate an argument. It's nothing other than a sign of disapproval so when someone says "Why are people PC?" they're saying nothing more interesting than "Why doesn't everyone agree with me?" That said, given the set of beliefs which usually fall foul of the Daily Mail PC Inquisitor General, anyone who thinks Thai expat boards are PC must find Nick Griffin's personal opinions stomach-churningly liberal. What would make you happy? Advocating the public burning of poofs, niggers, pakis and any bitches caught reading Germaine Greer, perhaps?

Edited December 14, 2009 by Gerontion

[Ulysses G.]

Gawd...PC means nothing. It's a spectre conjured up by the right wing press to capture opinions which they don't like but which against which they can't formulate an argument.

Sorry, but I disagree. I lived in San Francisco when the term "politically correct" came into usage and at that time it was a term only used by the left. It was not long until people started laughing at it, but in the beginning it was supposed to be an insult directed at anything or anyone with the "wrong" politics and it was completely serious. 

Edited December 14, 2009 by bonobo
Removed flame.

[Gerontion]

No one who subscribes to the kinds of ideas the right-wing likes to dismiss as 'politically correct' calls themselves 'politically correct' and nor do they dismiss ideas with which they disagree as being 'not politically correct'. The whole thing is a construct of the right. And they've done this because if I say, for example, 'racism is wrong', some right-wing <deleted> can attempt to dismiss that by saying 'you're just being PC' whereas it's much more difficult to dismiss it by saying 'racism isn't wrong', although the effect of throwing the PC epithet around is often precisely to re-legitimize views such as that. It's lazy stupid language, though as it's the favoured term of conservatives, that's hardly surprising.

---

And why would anyone say 'sorry' before insulting someone? If you're sorry, don't insult me; if you're not, do insult me.

Edited December 14, 2009 by Gerontion

[Ulysses G.]

I insulted you because you are insisting on something that is completely untrue. Either you don't know what you are talking about or you are making things up.

When the term first came into usage, "politically correct" types - gays, feminists, left-wing loonies - called themselves "politically correct" and they did dismiss ideas with which they disagreed as being "not politically correct". One of them told me that I was not politically correct the first time that I heard it, so I know.

My sister and all of her friends were hairy legged, radical feminists and I lived in the Bay area and mixed freely with left-wing radicals of all stripes. I do believe that I was one of the first people to turn the whole concept into a joke to get my sisters goat.

By the way, if I insult you I will have to go bye bye for a while and I don't want to, otherwise I would be happy to concede to your request.

[Pakboong]

The worn and overly used political opinion often becomes confused as the correct one. It is easier to remember and takes less effort in general than does the research and individual thought required of the alternative view.

[Gerontion]

^^ I suspect - but obviously can''t prove - that you're a liar. I don't think you've ever heard anyone describe themselves as "politically correct" or an opinion as "not politically correct". Unlike you, I am left-wing and have mixed with a lot of other left-wing people for decades and I've never heard anyone other than rightwing cocktrumpets - a group which I'm pretty confident would include you - use the term, and then only to smuggle in their noxious political opinions - something which you clearly have by the truck-load. But, thanks anyway, for illustrating my other point that the OP needn't worry too much about an absence of bigotry and stupidity amongst expats in Thailand.

Edited December 14, 2009 by Gerontion

[Ulysses G.]

But, thanks anyway, for illustrating my other point that the OP needn't worry too much about an absence of bigotry and stupidity amongst expats in Thailand.

No Sweat. I was simply honest and gave you enough rope to hang yourself.

In left-wing rhetoric

By 1970, New Left proponents had adopted the term political correctness.^[1] In the essay The Black Woman, Toni Cade Bambara says: ". . . a man cannot be politically correct and a [male] chauvinist too"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_correctness

Edited December 14, 2009 by Ulysses G.

[Gerontion]

And as wikipedia continues:

"Widespread use of the term "politically correct" and its derivatives began when it was adopted as a pejorative term by the political right in the 1990s...Within a few years, this previously obscure term featured regularly in the lexicon of the conservative social and political challenges against curriculum expansion and progressive teaching methods in US high schools and universities...

Hutton reports:

"Political correctness is one of the brilliant tools that the American Right developed in the mid-1980s, as part of its demolition of American liberalism. . . . What the sharpest thinkers on the American Right saw quickly was that by declaring war on the cultural manifestations of liberalism — by levelling the charge of “political correctness” against its exponents — they could discredit the whole political project."

Moreover, commentators claimed there never was a “Political Correctness movement” in the US, and that many who use the term do so to distract attention from substantive debate about racial, class and gender discrimination and unequal legal treatment. Similarly, Polly Toynbee argued that “the phrase is an empty right-wing smear designed only to elevate its user.”

Commenting on the UK's 2009 Equality Bill, Toynbee wrote that:

"The phrase "political correctness" was born as a coded cover for all who still want to say Paki, spastic or queer, all those who still want to pick on anyone not like them, playground bullies who never grew up."

Which repeats rather nicely what I said. Thank you for bringing that up.

[Jingthing]

I consider myself politically correct. In a politically incorrect way.

[Ulysses G.]

Gawd...PC means nothing. It's a spectre conjured up by the right wing press to capture opinions which they don't like but which against which they can't formulate an argument.

Sorry, but I disagree. I lived in San Francisco when the term "politically correct" came into usage and at that time it was a term only used by the left. It was not long until people started laughing at it, but in the beginning it was supposed to be an insult directed at anything or anyone with the "wrong" politics and it was completely serious.

You don't realize that the 1990’s are THIRTY YEARS after the 1970's?

Just as I said, it started out as a serious left-wing term - that is what “adopted” means - and as time went by everyone (including the right and the left–wing itself) realized how silly it was and it turned into a big joke.

I’m right and you are wrong - full stop .

[sbk]

pedantry is so unattractive. as is baiting.

[Ulysses G.]

^^ I suspect - but obviously can''t prove - that you're a liar.

How about calling people a liar when you are completely in the wrong? Is that a more attractive

attribute?

[Gerontion]

pedantry is so unattractive. as is baiting.

True, so this'll be the last of it.

PC means nothing. It's a spectre conjured up by the right wing press to capture opinions which they don't like but which against which they can't formulate an argument.

You took exception to this. Finding a usage of the term in an obscure essay from the 1970s has no bearing on my statement. If the right hadn't decided that it was a useful way to attack progressive ideas, the term would have disappeared from use, possibly only to surface years later in an unread PhD on the rise and fall of fringe political language. As the wikipedia entry says - and as you quoted from it you presumably think it's correct - the term gained currency because the right use it as a catch-all in exactly the way which I described; it's the grunt of an ape when it doesn't get what it wants, nothing more and this is clearly how it's been used on this thread. You'd have to have an IQ in single figures not to see that.

You don't realize that the 1990’s are THIRTY YEARS after the 1970's?

Already weak on English and Politics and now showing a woeful grasp of basic Maths. Oh dear. Mother won't be pleased.

[PeaceBlondie]

I could ask another mod to close this slug fest carefully begun as an OP by a banned ex-member. No need to keep this open.