language

what today is dismissed derisvely as “politically correct” used to be called “being considerate.”


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  1. David Kolodney Avatar
    David Kolodney

    When I was an FSM toddler in the Berkeley Left, “politically correct” had to do with things like: Should we give this movement “critical support” or “conditional support.”?
    Was the Soviet Union “state capitalism.” (the Independent So?????ts Club or still “a deformed worker’s state” (Trotskyists). (Trotsky himself said perceptively we will know by whether privilege is inherited in families.)
    [These ?’s are to avoid a product-name string, for the sake of the spam blocker, which worries that I am trying to sell that product]
    So being “politically correct” back then meant cautiously threading one’s way through such distinctions.
    Also, we talked like this: “This is my position on that. What is your position on it.” As if each of us were speaking for a one-person public institution, and which have to stand by what it said throughout the unfolding of history.
    I thought this was mostly characteristic of males, and it led to my later risqué speculation that “Men don’t say what they mean, and women don’t mean what they say.”