Imagine a world where you had to tiptoe around language in order to keep from being shamed by others. In this world, you had only good intentions, but those were never acknowledged and instead you’re followed by a crowd with pitchforks, rallied by a masked leader. You don’t realize what you did wrong, you didn’t know that word was a faux pas. You take it back and change the wording, but it’s too late, the damage has been done. You have broken the boundaries of what is “Politically Correct”, or “PC.”

This is the world I fear of living in, one that’s not too far off from the one we currently inhabit. How many times have you just spoken your opinion or told a story in your own words and gotten lash back for it? You begin to live in fear that you’re going to offend someone or say the wrong thing and then pay the price for it. In this day and age, we live in fear of our thumbs. What we type, what we post, who we connect with… because some things have been deemed wrong. We live under a microscope, carefully selecting each word in our sentences, in fear they’ll be dissected. As a youth in today’s society, it is those who have come before us that are trying so hard to suppress our truths. Why? Do the words “politically correct” or “re-branding” come to mind? How many words can you think of that have been changed recently or have been deemed offensive because they have a negative connotation attached to them? Only to be replaced by a similar word that “sounds nicer” and doesn’t already have a stigma attached to it. How long do you think it will take for that “stigma” to latch onto this new word? Will they then change it again? Why don’t we just face the root of the issue at hand?

How many times have you wanted to run a campaign or attend an event such as a “Slut Walk” or “Cupid’s Undie Run” but knew you would be scrutinized for it? A “Slut Walk” is an event rallying for the end of “rape culture.” It is a peaceful protest with picket signs and “shocking” attire and slogans. The whole point of the campaign is to rid the argument “she was asking for it,” or comments like “well look at how she was dressed.” No one deserves to be raped, no one is asking for it. A student in my class mentioned she was passionate about this and wanted to organize one on our campus. The professor promptly told her she would most likely be expelled for such actions. “For a peaceful protest?” she asked. The professor answered that the Dean of Students surely would not stand for it, and would most likely take those actions against whoever organized and participated in this event. She quietly resigned and didn’t bring it up again. I’d bet anything that she never goes through with it. This is the beauty of oppression.

The trend of being “politically correct” or “PC” has spiked rapidly within the past ten years. In fact, this past October the University of Wisconsin made the motion to deem the term “politically correct” as being IN-politically correct. That’s right! According to Merriam-Webster, PC is defined as “agreeing with the idea that people should be careful to not use language or behave in a way that could offend a particular group of people.” Apparently, the very term is offensive in itself. I mean.. come on. When does this come to an end? Are we really solving the issues at hand by banning words and restricting ideas and policies? I certainly don’t think so. Instead of dealing with the real issue at hand people are choosing to change the word associated with these things. It’s bizarre!

Now, don’t get me wrong, some terms are just genuinely offensive and those words or slurs are not okay to use. However, we can certainly do without the notion of PC that the generation before us seems to be so obsessed with. News flash, changing a word, doesn’t change the things that have happened or stop these things from being associated with that word. It will only follow it to the next word, and the next word, and so on! I believe it is a human right to be able to say how you feel, what you think, or describe what you have experienced truthfully, without censorship. We shouldn’t have to hide or reword things, so that we won’t offend someone else or even receive punishment! When does PC come to an end?

If you look for an insult, you can find it anywhere. Misunderstanding and misinterpreting one’s words or intentions to cater to a news headline is quite common these days. Unless we take a stand against PC, it’s going to take over our lives. Censorship has begun to run rampant will only continue to feed of this culture. PC and censorship seem pretty synonymous. Vocabulary.com defines censorship as “reviewing something and choosing to remove or hide parts of it that are considered unacceptable. Censorship is the name for the process or idea of keeping things like obscene words or graphic images from an audience. There is also such a thing as self-censorship, which is when you refrain from saying certain things — or possibly re-wording them — depending on who is listening.” When books are being banned from libraries, words and topics shamed and blacklisted, we are reversing the progressive nature we’ve already established in America. What happened to land of the free? Why don’t we get back to that — to our founding principle as a country. There is no reading between the lines, it is black and white. Freedom of speech is the most singular important right that we have. We need to protect it.