100 year ago it would have been PC gone mad to complain about the use of the word nigger, much more recently it was PC gone mad to complian about the use of poof, faggot or negro. Society and attitudes change and language needs to change with it. Often to drive the needed change.
Has political correctness actually gone mad?
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) is joined by CEO Duncan Drasdo and Financial Director Andy Green from the Manchester United Supporters Trust for a special episode on all things behind the scenes at Old Trafford including a brief history of MUST and their aims today, views on INEOS and Sir Jim Ratcliffe so far, and the Old Trafford regeneration.
Just the kind of retort I would expect from you once your completely entrenched views are challenged even a little.
Explain to me how empathy levels wouldn't affect attraction to such jobs at least?
My views are the opposite of entrenched. They are informed by the data.
Women might be more empathetic than men as adults, although the measurement of such things is more likely simply representative of the societal biases that pushed women into roles that require more empathy. A self fulfilling prophecy in effect.
The idea that women are born "naturally" more empathetic isn't supported at all by the data. Men might well be less empathetic as adults but this is due to training and not nature - we start on a level playing field.
FFS Wibble, how upset would you be if we weren't on your side?
I'm not in the least upset - very mildly irritated at most. I find stupidity irritating and the level of feckwittery in this thread and the one about race over the last few days has been stunning.
Why. Was it nitpicking for the gay community to not like the use of poof and faggot? Language is far more important than we often give it credit for as it plays a major part in setting societal norms. Generally speaking I find that if a group object to the use of terms that don't apply to me, accepting that they are telling the truth and changing something that makes no difference to me is the rational and ethical thing to do.
Does this not suggest the opposite possibility?
Second, that the digit ratio (2D:4D), a marker of fetal testosterone, predicts the extent to which later testosterone has this effect. This suggests testosterone levels in the womb have an 'organizing' or long-range effect on later brain function. Finally, given that people with autism have difficulties in mind reading, and that autism affects males more often than females, the study provides further support for the androgen theory of autism.
They're objecting to terms which do apply to me. That's the whole point. We're not talking about asking people to stop describing women as bitches and ho's here. We're talking about re-writing the lexicon to pretend gender doesn't exist. That's a very different scenario.
But poof and faggot are pejorative, here we are not talking about pejorative terms and do the female community have a problem with the generic use of fireman? I personally prefer firefighter but is there a genuine demand for the use of the word firefighter?
One of the problems with the way you present things is that since words are important we can't go around and transform them into something they aren't, marksman isn't an insult toward woman, it's not an attempt at diminishing them.
The one word that really bothers me is midwife, that's something that should be changed because there is in my opinion a mysogynistic background to it.
Not sure what you mean by this, but there are differences in male and female behaviour across the animal kingdom, and man is just another animal. It would be astonishing if there weren't inherent differences to be found with people too, and there is nothing wrong with that.
The fair thing to do is ensure equal opportunity for both sexes by treating people as individuals and not categories.
Seriously, if people want to change terms to be more gender neural why would we care? It's one of those things I will never understand. People hanging onto old terms and sometimes citing 'PC gone mad' as if the changing of those terms are going to affect them in any way whatsoever.... Pfft.
Or were you?
It's a nomenclature, changing the Trump isn't going to change the tradition is it? While they were calling you fresher you weren't sitting there thinking 'it's fresh MAN dammit!'
Or were you?
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I dunno, man. I just think they should pick their battles. We’re risking a generation of kids growing up thinking that woman’s rights is about petty shit like this. No wonder we’re seeing a big move to the right from an age group that would usually be more left-leaning.
you might have a point
People fed up with the pointless BS and rebel against prior beliefs
Kids couldn't give a feck, just like we shouldn't. We're seeing a movement from people (on the right) who are ironically arguing over petty shite, and should pick their battles.
Arguably the push back on these issues feeds into the hostility between the two sides. If it was treated as the non-issue that it is it wouldnt be another point of contention to add to the other points of contention, it would be a forgotten-in-a-week footnote.
See this is what I mean, fed up over people fighting for change so arguing for the sake of it on issues that don't affect them and (if they thought about it) probably issues that they neither agree or disagree with.
So how is that helping anyone apart from those people that benefit from all this divisive in fighting?
Pretty much this...But who are you as a male to judge that?I personally don't think it's that important, but it's not costing us much to change it either so if somebody feels the urge to do it I couldn't care less. To be offended by something like this is more concerncing imo.
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And people could say the same thing about blackface or any other stereotype. The question is whether there is a stereotype and a problem for the targeted the demographic.
midwife comes from Middle English 'mid' = with and 'wif' = 'woman' i.e. the person who is with the woman when she gives birth, it isn't a gendered reference to the job being performed, but reflective of the underlying fact that its the woman that gives birth.
These arguments are always incredibly facile though, if we turned it around and assumed we'd been living in a matriarchy for hundreds of years and referred to all men performing these sorts of roles as 'male policewomen', 'male firewomen', and 'male postwoman' and so on it becomes fairly easy to see how the language reflects assumptions about who traditionally performed these roles and how said language could lock men out from said roles; the implicit problem with all of these terms is that it reflects a societal belief that 'wrong' gender performing a role is worthy of note.
Half the issue with 'man' as a term is its etymological root. It meant both 'a male' and, by extension, 'a person' e.g in 'mankind', but it reflects ingrained beliefs in the society where that language developed that a person was a man unless otherwise specified. When used in the modern world its pretty obviously exclusionary.
The thing is you might call it 'petty shit', but it causes observable and noticeable effects. Besides, I'm surprised to see this being cited as an example of 'pick your battles', this battle is decades old and is more or less already over.
Actually kids do give a shit, because kids are far more perceptive than we give them credit for. Studies have shown in psychology that from an incredibly young age kids are confused by gendered job titles and assume that this means that they are performed by that gender.
This is not new either, we've know that gendered titles cause issues for at least 40 years and there's a whole body of evidence to support it.
@NinjaFletch Thanks for the correction.
Really? I'll take your word for it. Just asked my daughter and she said she just figured there were opposite terms like policewoman etc that a few people used...
But I'm all for the change tbh. It's nice and tidy to have gender neutral terms replace these old ones and I like nice and tidy
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In what way would it matter to you?
And it isn't pretending that gender doesn't exist. It is about not using language that presumes one gender is more important than another.
It might not be the most important issue but it is an issue with an easy cost free solution.
This is exactly the sort of thing people think of when they hear the phrase 'PC gone mad'.
Like, literally exactly that.
Like, literally exactly that.
Huh? The young are moving to the left in most countries.
Really? I'll take your word for it. Just asked my daughter and she said she just figured there were opposite terms like policewoman etc...
But I'm all for the change tbh. It's nice and tidy to have gender neutral terms replace these old ones and I like nice and tidy
Yeah what is interesting is studies have shown that they'll also gender non-gendered job titles to conform to their expectations. e.g. if you give them a picture of a man who is a nurse and ask them to modify the name 'nurse' they're far more likely to change it to 'male nurse' than they are to change the picture of a woman who is a nurse to 'female nurse'.
But yeah, that's what I mean really. Kids strongly associate 'policeman' with an actual man and will change the word to 'policewoman' if they think its a woman doing the job. That doesn't mean that they don't think women can be police officers, but it does mean that kids are growing up with a strong association between the 'man' suffix and actual men. Which does put a bit of a nonsense to the argument that 'man' could be considered a gender neutral term.
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People who read an believe the Mail and Sun you mean?
They're still people, regardless of what they read. Just because you don't agree with them doesn't make their opinions any less valid.
You sure about that?
That link is a study about millenials, so obviously not really that "young" any more. It does demonstrate a fairly obvious trend, though. And you'd have to be living under a rock not to be aware of the whole alt-right thing and the insidious appeal it has to kids these days. Use to be that conservatives were the fusty, constantly complaining stick in the muds; writing letters to the BBC telling other people what they should and shouldn't do or say. Now the roles have reversed and it must be tempting to rebel against this new orthodoxy of the left.
FWIW, I think the reality is that young people are being more polarised - to the right and to the left. A natural response when the status quo sees them jobless and struggling to pay the rent. Whatever, stuff like insisting that universities stop using the word "freshman" (and the dozens of other examples of unnecessary over-sensitivity in this thread) certainly doesn't make the left seem like a very rational and appealing bunch for any youngster making their first steps into finding their own political identity.
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Another lovely bit of condescension.
It would be easier if you just said you don't know why men are more drawn to those professions. Could be a million different things, as an example men commit huge numbers of suicides so even that could correlate with them choosing those jobs. Either way it is a valid concern and not sexist to draw attention to.
This study doesn't support your hypothesis? What they are arguing is that right wing views had become the orthodoxy under Thatcher and Blair, and that the generations that grew up with them lean further towards the right precisely because those views represented the political orthodoxy and societal norm. If anything that would suggest that had there been a 'left wing orthodoxy' then people would trend more heavily towards left wing views because of the cohort effect.
At any rate I think the findings of the study are thrown into serious question by the results of the most recent election and the data would have to be reconsidered as age was one of the strongest predictors for your likelihood to vote for labour.
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The “new orthodoxy of the left” is a comment about campus culture and all the many ways in which the right can whinge about free speech. I’ve no sympathy with them, obviously, but there’s a counter-cultural appeal to the right that didn’t exist for previous generations.
Ok, but the study that you've presented to support your hypothesis suggests the exact opposite. Namely that the appeal of right wing views to millennials is a actually a result of the fact that right wing views have been a part of the political mainstream since Thatcher and were entrenched by Blair. Certainly they're not arguing for a 'counter-cultural appeal to the right' because their argument is that the right is the cultural norm. Or to quote from the conclusion:
'Most importantly, this article shows that particularly significant events such as the protracted rule of one party followed by a centrist shift towards that party’s position from the opposition are important ‘formative experiences’ for new generations. Moreover, we have also shown that such changes can have spillover effects by reproducing certain values when subsequent governments or parties in power do not challenge the values that formed that generation. This trickle-down theory of social change can explain why Thatcherite attitudes are still more prevalent in ‘Blair’s Babies’ or ‘Thatcher’s Grandchildren’. This is a clear sign that Thatcher changed the course of British politics and social attitudes. Her values - or the values that have come to be associated with her name - permeate British society today as subsequent governments have not challenged her ideology. For better or worse, it seems that we still live in ‘Thatcher’s Britain’.'
If anything, it was the failure of the left to challenge the orthodoxy enough that they blame for a lurch to the right.
Wibble having a real wobble here.
The study gets this completely wrong anyway, the study was published in January 2017 yet 5 months later young people overwhelming voted for the complete opposite of this. It's just a shite study.
Yes, I addressed that in the second part of my post. I think that the point is potentially broader than that though, you'd have to compare left wing views in the 70s to the manifesto that Corbyn ran on in 2017 and look at the 'absolute' leftness of the ideas. Was Corbyn left by the standards of a pre-Thatcher Britain or the political spectrum of post-Thatcher Britain?
It's also worth remembering that their dataset was from 1985-2012, and they do caveat their study with:
'How these trends in social values unfold will also be enlightening, and only time will tell whether the fragmentation of the British party system, fallout from the economic crisis, the era of austerity and the outcome of the referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union will influence these trajectories'.
I think its fine for what it is, a study of political views over thirty years, but it's not a predictor and it shouldn't be used as one.
Sort of. The manifesto itself wasn't at all on the radical left and yes it seems that the only people offering standard social democratic reforms are the radical left, but even with that, had Labour won and Corbyn now being prime minster, he would have been most left wing prime minster in British history(And I think you can say the same with the positions John Mcdonnell and Diane Abbott would have held). The fact it nearly happened is a pretty big political moment(And that's was building up years since I would argue 2010).
Barring Le Penn in France which seem to have somewhat of portion of young people(So did the radical left in France as well)I don't see this right wing youth movement at all. Something like the american alt right is very very small and as we see with what Trump is passing through, it's pretty much a standard modern right wing policies although it's heightened because of just how right wing the Republican Party is.
I get you now, that's what she did.
As for a
I don't quite see it, but then it doesn't surprise me that I don't so I'll just take your word for it.
I don't think he is tbh. If you want to see a 'wobble' go check out the blackface thread. A few in there...
Certainly true that the young are more left wing here even in the demographics that wouldn't traditionally give a shit abut those less privileged than themselves.
You will always get young yapping dog liberals, most of whom have been brainwashed by their top end of town parents, but the majority are embracing their empathy.
Not at all. I just find sexist and racist views objectionable. I'm a white middle aged male and I could quite comfortably go with the status quo. But I couldn't live with being such a cnut.
I know, I just wanted to say it.
The blackface thread certainly is a roller coaster, verging on the precipice of a true masterpiece.
In that case, 8/10. It was good. Would have been a 10 if you left out 'real'
Yep, I guess I do
For all its faults you have limited chance of burning to death teaching.
I could have said insurance salesman or lawyer but everyone hates them and would just agree by default.
Different countries have different standards of education and different issues but I wouldn't say wages are that big of an issue, if an issue at all in many places.
It's like the nurse argument, no one would really object to paying them more but their working conditions would still be utterly crap.
I don't agree that different sexes attraction to different occupations is exclusively taught or an issue in itself incidentally
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Whether firefighters should get paid more than teachers has nothing to do with all-male boards of companies that have men and women in them. The "firefighter > teacher" argument has nothing to do with gender as far as I can see.
Don't be silly. Most civilized people on this planet can recognize the fact that men & women are equal, whilst most intelligent people can see that men & women are different. Not just biologically, but in the way our respective wires are fixed. My wife & I have been happily married for 37 years & the foundation for that has been based on the acceptance that as a man & a woman both of us have relative strengths & weaknesses. My initial post was somewhat tongue-in-cheek. However, there was a message in there which is to say that ever since we lived in caves the men have been responsible for feeding & protecting the women & children, & the biological fact that women have a womb & breasts means their role is to give birth & nurture the children. The male role still exists, hence the reason why it's predominantly men who do the dangerous jobs which quite often require a certain amount of strength & muscle. Consequently, women still have wombs & breasts which are still being used for giving birth & helping bring up & feed the baby. That is just the primeval fundamentals of the differences between the 2 sexes. Of course the human race has moved on quite a bit since we were cave-dwellers, but we shouldn't try brush under the carpet the real reasons why we are what we are. The rise of feminism at the outset was a good thing I reckon. But I can't help but feel the movement has been hi-jacked by bigoted lesbians with an agenda, men-haters, & women who've had a bad experience with men. One of the smartest people on this planet just happens to be a woman. She is also one of the first feminists to strive for equality for women way back in the late 60's. Her name is Camille Paglia, & needless to say she ain't very popular with a lot of today's feminists because of the criticism she fires at them. I've put below an extract of an interview she did she did for the Playboy magazine back in the mid 90's.
- I'm absolutely a feminist. The reason other feminists don't like me is that I criticize the movement, explaining that it needs a correction. Feminism has betrayed women, alienated men and women, replaced dialogue with political correctness. PC feminism has boxed women in. The idea that feminism — that liberation from domestic prison — is going to bring happiness is just wrong. Women have advanced a great deal, but they are no happier. The happiest women I know are not those who are balancing their careers and families, like a lot of my friends are. The happiest people I know are the women — like my cousins — who have a high school education, got married immediately graduating and never went to college. They are very religious and they never question their Catholicism. They do not regard the house as a prison. … I look at my friends who are on the fast track. They are desperate, frenzied and frazzled, the most unhappy women who have ever existed. They work nights and weekends and have no lives. Some of them have children who are raised by nannies. … The entire feminist culture says that the most important woman is the woman with an attache case. I want to empower the woman who wants to say, "I'm tired of this and I want to go home." The far right is correct when it says the price of women's liberation is being paid by the children.
- We have allowed the sexual debate to be defined by women, and that's not right. Men must speak, and speak in their own voices, not voices coerced by feminist moralists.
- The women's movement is rooted in the belief that we don't even need men. All it will take is one natural disaster to prove how wrong that is. Then, the only thing holding this culture together will be masculine men of the working class. The cultural elite — women and men — will be pleading for the plumbers and the construction workers. We are such a parasitic class.
- At Bennington, I would go to a faculty meeting and be aware that everyone hated me. The men were appalled by a strong, loud woman. But I went to this auto shop and the men there thought I was cute. "Oh, there's that Professor Paglia from the college." The real men, men who work on cars, find me cute. They are not frightened by me, no matter how loud I am. But the men at the college were terrified because they are eunuchs, and I threatened every goddamned one of them.
- The problem with America is that there's too little sex, not too much. The more our instincts are repressed, the more we need sex, pornography and all that. The problem is that feminists have taken over with their attempts to inhibit sex. We have a serious testosterone problem in this country. … It's a mess out there. Men are suspicious of women's intentions. Feminism has crippled them. They don't know when to make a pass. If they do make a pass, they don't know if they're going to end up in court.
- I believe in moderate sexual harassment guidelines. But you can't the Stalinist situation we have in America right now, where any neurotic woman can make any stupid charge and destroy a man's reputation. If there is evidence of false accusation, the accuser should be expelled. Similarly, a woman who falsely accuses a man of rape should be sent to jail. My definition of sexual harassment is specific. It is only sexual harassment — by a man or a woman — if it is quid pro quo. That is, if someone says, "You must do this or I'm going to do that" — for instance, fire you. And whereas touching is sexual harassment, speech is not. I am militant on this. Words must remain free. The solution to speech is that women must signal the level of their tolerance — women are all different. Some are very bawdy. … You must develop the verbal tools to counter offensive language. That s life. Feminism has created a privileged, white middle class of girls who claim they're victims because they want to preserve their bourgeois decorum and passivity.
- We must examine the degree to which we coddle middle-class girls. There is something sick about it. The girls I see on campuses are often innocuous, with completely homogenized personalities, miserable, anorexic and bulimic. The feminist movement teaches them that it's men's fault, but it isn't. These girls go out into the world as heiresses of all the affluence in the universe. They are the most pampered and most affluent girls on the globe. So stop complaining about men. You're getting all the rewards that come with the nice-girl persona you've chosen. When you get into trouble and you're batting your eyes and someone is offending you and you are too nice to deal with it, that's a choice. Assess your persona. Realize the degree to which your niceness may invoke people to say lewd and pornographic things to you — sometimes to violate your niceness. The more you blush, the more people want to do it. Understand your part of it and learn to parry. Sex talk is a game. The girls in the Sixties loved it. If you don't want some professor to call you honey, tell him.
As someone who's lived through the decades of the feminist movement I'd agree fully with what Paglia says above. Anyone would think that prior to females burning their bra's that women were meek, oppressed, & marginalized individuals. There were obviously many aspects of life that needed addressing on the part of women, but I'd say that the women of then were far stronger than those of today. All I see now is anger, contempt, & screams of self-entitlement, & yet again the finger pointing at males for all their woes.