Another Lecture From The PC Girlfriend
Hi, it’s the so-called PC girlfriend here, dubbed that by one of my boyfriend’s friends who is, you guessed it, a cishet white male. This nickname isn’t particularly harmful as it’s not attacking one of my personal identities, but there are reasons I have a problem with it. For starters, political correctness is not a character flaw, it’s about realizing your words have an impact. Second, “girlfriend” is not my all-encompassing identity; I am an autonomous feminist with an agenda and a name.
Despite what many may think the main goal of feminism is, I’m not writing this solely to complain about white men or some petty name-calling. I’m writing this as a journalism and writing major who can’t help but believe that words matter. So when it comes to the political correctness debate, I don’t think in terms of politics or politeness, I think about the power of words. I also don’t think political correctness is the pressing problem of our nation that the politician who claims to have “the best words” makes it out to be. Words are powerful and they are especially so when coming from people in positions of power.
This power, however, isn’t reserved for politicians, so political correctness shouldn’t be either. This power to turn words into an oppressive force comes from those with the privilege to have their voices heard. An insulted man calls a woman a bitch for rejecting him. A straight man calls another man a fag for threatening his fragile masculinity. A skinny girl calls her friend fat for losing count of her calories. A white woman calls a black boy a thug for wearing pants three sizes too big.
These words matter because they aren’t only made up of Webster’s dictionary definitions. Words are also images, emotions, and history.
If a picture can represent a thousand words then it would be great if a word could represent a thousand pictures, but often they only represent one. This can turn the power of words into something dangerous. So stick and stones break bones but words have the power to oppress with that one engrained image.
When you hear the word “thug” what do you see? More importantly, who do you see? It doesn’t make you immoral for picturing a black male, it just proves that you are not immune to the labels and stereotypes that structure society. Those stereotypes can turn into violence and oppression when continually perpetuated and it becomes much more than an innocent game of word association.
On one of my favorite episodes of This American Life, #557: Birds & Bees, a black activist, Kadijah Means, tackles this idea flawlessly.
“Your mind makes generalizations, that’s what it does. It’s not bad to do that; it’s bad to think that that one generalization is what everyone is. You also have to take a step outside of that and remember that people are individuals. People have different lives.”
This is what I think political correctness is all about: people, individuals. When you say you don’t have time for political correctness, it sounds like you don’t have time for people. But the extra time it takes to think before you speak is worth it. If your time is money, then spend a little bit of it validating individuals’ identities rather than using dehumanizing labels. You don’t get to decide what offends someone else because it’s always someone else who has to deal with the consequences of the words you didn’t have time to consider.
Another thing to reconsider is the argument of time-consumption because if you take a second to clap out some syllables with me, you’ll see that political correctness is not wasting anyone’s time.
Replacing “illegal alien” with “valid human” actually saves you two syllables. The pronouns “he” “she” and “they” are all one clap each, so ignoring the preferences of trans and gender non-conforming individuals isn’t saving time, it’s just being an asshole. Another thing, it takes less time to not tell a rape joke than it does to tell a rape joke. Being more thoughtful about what you say ends up working in everyone’s favor. The list is never ending and the point remains the same: words matter.
All the worries about time and politics aside, words matter because they make a difference. Actions may speak louder than words, but words have historically, systematically and lethally influenced actions.
So that bitch is killed for “rejecting” and that fag is killed for “infecting.” The fat girl is killed for consuming space and the thug is killed for being in the wrong place.
Words matter.
Sincerely,
The PC Girlfriend
