It originally-referred to disagreement with the ruling Communist Party in countries such as Red China, and was adopted in the 1970's by the Counterculture to refer to disagreement with themselves. As the leaders of the Counterculture became the leaders of Academia, they kept the practice.
When it became a semi-ironic reference to overly-stringent (sometimes to the point of absurdity) restrictions on language use, however, a backlash developed, so now when someone objects to offensive language, they're frequently accused of being "politically correct." As in, it's "PC" to object to racial and sexist epithets.
Which is kind of what I was alluding to with my tongue-in-cheek LJ cut which you seem to be taking so very seriously.
I've known of too many cases in which the careers of good people were ruined by spurious, or quite deliberately bigoted, accusations of "hate speech" for failing to toe the PC line to consider Political Correctness merely one big merry joke, thank you.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2012-02-12 07:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-12 07:40 pm (UTC)When it became a semi-ironic reference to overly-stringent (sometimes to the point of absurdity) restrictions on language use, however, a backlash developed, so now when someone objects to offensive language, they're frequently accused of being "politically correct." As in, it's "PC" to object to racial and sexist epithets.
Which is kind of what I was alluding to with my tongue-in-cheek LJ cut which you seem to be taking so very seriously.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-12 08:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-12 08:32 pm (UTC)If you aren't one of the folks screaming about "political correctness" when told that using derogatory names isn't cool, then you have no beef here.