Political Correctness

[Emsworth]

Sex-related political correctness is also rather silly. Somebody decided that Matthew 4:4 was sexist, and published a Bible in which:

"Man does not live by bread alone"

became:

"People do not live on bread alone."

[Virginian87]

Sex-related political correctness is also rather silly. Somebody decided that Matthew 4:4 was sexist, and published a Bible in which:

"Man does not live by bread alone"

became:

"People do not live on bread alone."

That's right, and when you refer to a generic person for example:

A person has his rights and his liberties granted to him.

You can't use the word "him" anymore.  It's "too sexist."  It's gotta be "him or her."  Stupid feminist bitches.

[Max Power]

Sex-related political correctness is also rather silly. Somebody decided that Matthew 4:4 was sexist, and published a Bible in which:

"Man does not live by bread alone"

became:

"People do not live on bread alone."

That's just dumb. The Bible is referring to mankind. Man can be used for a male or for all mankind.

[dazzleman]

Speaking of political correctness, what do you think of this?
_______________________________________________

Thong With Dessert Upsets Restaurant Patrons

By Jessica Wakeman jwakeman@bcnnew.com

She had presents, cake and vanilla ice cream, but other than that, it wasn't the 37th birthday that Daisy Martinez-DiCarlo expected. On July 22, Martinez-DiCarlo, a counselor in the Bridgeport Public Schools and mother of a 7-year-old, met with her two sisters to celebrate her birthday. The three chose Barcelona, a posh tapas restaurant and wine bar located at 4180 Black Rock Turnpike underneath the Hi-Ho Motel, frequented by clientele that dines on lobster risotto and ostrich filet tapas. The sisters were also checking out the venue as a potential spot for one sister's wedding reception, said Diana Martinez, 33.
"We were under the impression this was a really nice place," said Diana Martinez. Martinez-DiCarlo's birthday was the first time she, Diana or Elizabeth Martinez, 28, had visited the restaurant, all three confirmed. The sisters all said none of them previously knew any of the employees. After their meal, Martinez-DiCarlo said her sisters gave her presents to open: a Puerto Rican cookbook, a dreamcatcher and a set of pajamas - a blouse and fluorescent blue pajama bottoms from Victoria's Secret. After Martinez-DiCarlo opened the gifts, she said, their waiter asked if it was her birthday and subsequently brought over chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream.

Then Barcelona's manager, Tim Armstrong, 33, of Hartford, surprised the sisters by bringing a closed brown paper bag over to their table. Martinez-DiCarlo said Armstrong told her to come back wearing what was in the bag to get a free cocktail. Diana Martinez said she opened the bag for her sister and was surprised by what it contained: black thong underwear. Armstrong then suggested, "'If you hike it up, it looks really hot,'" according to Martinez-DiCarlo, who said she felt humiliated. When interviewed about the incident, Armstrong said, "I don't think I want to talk about that," and hung up.

The sisters asked Armstrong for his name, Martinez-DiCarlo said, but he refused to give it to them. Diana Martinez said she asked to speak to the owner and that Armstrong offered them the owner's business card. Martinez-DiCarlo said she remembered being given a business card but did not have it anymore and speculated that she may have forgotten it at the restaurant. On the advice of her husband, Greg DiCarlo, a lawyer, whom Martinez-DiCarlo contacted on her cell phone, she called police at 8:52 p.m. in order to get Armstrong's name from the police report.

The husband and wife wondered whether the incident could be classified as some kind of sexual assault or sexual harassment, Martinez-DiCarlo said. The Martinez sisters were under the impression that Barcelona's owner, Andy Forsimon, had not been on the premises. However, Forsimon said he was at the restaurant during the incident, but remained behind the scenes, including when a police officer showed up. He said he spoke to neither the Martinez sisters nor the police officer at any time; the Martinez sisters confirmed that they did not speak with the owner that evening and have not spoken with him since.

Martinez-DiCarlo said the assistant manager asked that they be forgiving and not file a police report. However, she said she felt it is a stereotype to the detriment of women that they do not stand up for themselves and forgive too easily. "Until women stop laughing it off and calling police and making a scene we're going to continue to be seen as sex objects," she said. Police arrived minutes later. According to the police report, Armstrong told police he had indeed given Martinez-DiCarlo a pair of thong underwear with the dessert.

"I spoke with the manager, Tim Armstrong, who informed me that he did present Daisy with the thong underwear as a gift when bringing out the dessert," the police report states. "He explained it is common procedure for the staff to present both males and females with thong underwear if they are celebrating their birthday at the restaurant. He continued to explain that the customer is entitled to a free cocktail if they return to the restaurant in the thong underwear." The manager and the waiter repeatedly offered that their meal be on the house, Martinez-DiCarlo said, but the sisters paid because they did not want to look like they were angling for a free meal.

In the end, the Martinez sisters paid the bill, "did not leave a tip," said Martinez-DiCarlo, and then left. "The food was awesome," she said. "It was the sexual harassment that ruined the evening for us." Forsimon, who owns the four Barcelona restaurants in Fairfield, South Norwalk, Greenwich and West Hartford, said it is indeed a practice for the restaurant to give thongs on birthdays. Customers are "always pretty thrilled" to receive the black thong with the Barcelona logo on their birthdays, he said, and Martinez-DiCarlo is the "one exception." There have been "many, many giving of thongs," he said. "No one has been upset." Forsimon said Martinez-DiCarlo was "unwrapping lingerie and holding it up at the restaurant," so the manager thought that it would be all right to present her with a thong.

Forsimon acknowledged that he was present at the restaurant, but remained behind the scenes, during the incident. He denied that Armstrong suggested that Martinez-DiCarlo "hike up" the thong because it would look "hot" and defended Armstrong as "a polite, diplomatic guy and in a million years I don't think he would have said anything" inappropriate. Armstrong will not be reprimanded for the incident because he didn't do anything wrong, said Forsimon, who added, "I think the manager handled it reasonably well."

Forsimon said, "I believe the manager apologized to Ms. Martinez several dozen times and I believe that was all that was required." He continued, "I think she was more interested in being upset than being apologized to." The giftee of thongs is decided "on a judgment basis," said Forsimon. Martinez-DiCarlo said the manager's use of judgment "depends on the assumptions they make about the person" and for that reason alone the restaurant must re-evaluate its policy. The Martinez sisters said they think it's probably unlikely that an older woman, or a man, would have had the same experience that evening.

"We're not idiots," said Martinez-DiCarlo. "They saw three young, attractive women having dinner and they thought it was OK to cross our boundaries." The Martinez sisters said they hope Barcelona will reconsider the birthday thong policy but Forsimon said he "wouldn't give it a second thought." He continued, "It was presented to her wrapped with the caveat that you might not want to open this till you get home," and he maintains Barcelona "absolutely is a family restaurant." That is not a sentiment shared by Martinez-DiCarlo's husband of 13 years.

"It's violative," said DiCarlo, who questioned if it was "the corporate policy to degrade women." "Just because a woman is young and attractive doesn't give a man a right to give her a G-string and expect her to laugh about it," said Elizabeth Martinez. Additionally, the sisters said they each think that she was given the thong because the three Latina sisters are attractive and look younger than their ages. In addition to the degradation that she said she felt by being given an intimate article of clothing from a stranger, Martinez-DiCarlo felt the situation had palpable racial overtones.

"It was largely a group of white men," she said of the staff. She said she felt offended by the "underlying assumption" that she and her Latina sisters "are going to show them body parts for free drinks." Diana Martinez continued that she and her sisters are "educated, professional women" who struggled against stereotypes of Latina women while growing up and that they felt a sense of pride at being able to celebrate in a somewhat pricey Fairfield restaurant. "Latina women are reduced to being sex objects," said Diana Martinez.

The incident "invalidated us in the most stereotypical way the only value that [women] have is in their sexuality. They must have thought we were in some beer commercial where the three sisters come out in bathing suits." A member of the wait staff who she believed to also be a minority tried to empathize with her, but also persuade her not to file a police report, Martinez-DiCarlo said. "I just felt very violated," said Martinez-DiCarlo. "How dare them assume they can request sexual conduct on my behalf in exchange for a free drink?"

Martinez-DiCarlo said she does not intend to press charges because, technically, no crime had been committed and she has no damages other than her feeling of humiliation and degradation. Regarding sexual harassment, she said, "It has to be repeated behavior for it to be an arrestable offense." "Typically in a single instance, there wouldn't be harassment," said Simon Flynn, president of the Connecticut Restaurant Association, of which Barcelona is not a member. "Restaurants have to act with appropriate decorum that is a reflection of their customers. It was apparently not appropriate for this woman."

[Joe Kakistocracy]

Why was an upmarket tapas restaurant giving out free thongs anyway?  Not very classy.

[Gabu]

Sex-related political correctness is also rather silly. Somebody decided that Matthew 4:4 was sexist, and published a Bible in which:

"Man does not live by bread alone"

became:

"People do not live on bread alone."

That's just dumb. The Bible is referring to mankind. Man can be used for a male or for all mankind.

The origins of masculine words being used to refer to generic humans actually has a basis in Old English.  Initially, "man" was the word for a generic human of undefined gender, and prefixes were attached to it to specify gender.  A wifman was a female person and a wæpman* was a male person.  Over time, likely due to the very patriarchal nature of society in the Middle Ages (though I don't have proof regarding the exact origin), the prefix wæp- was dropped, and "man" alone became the word for a male person.  The word wifman eventually evolved into "woman", and the prefix wif- evolved into "wife".

The unfortunate part is that no new word arose for a generic person without a specified gender.  The effect of this is that the word for "male human" became the same word as the word for "generic human", and this remains unchanged to this day, resulting in a lot of seemingly male-centric writing.

Personally, the urge for more gender-neutral language is one bit of so-called political correctness that I actually support.  One bit of writing that I recall reading was one in which pronouns did not indicate the gender of the person in question, but the race: we had either "wher" or "bler", indicating a white person or a black person.  Then they had the white pronouns as being the "default" pronoun to be used to refer to a generic person.  The writing, which was blatant satire, was arguing that these crazy black people are so silly in their asking for race-neutral language, and that they should be perfectly happy talking about white people as the generic person because, well, that's the way it's always been.

My grade 12 English teacher had a tactic that, any time you wrote something that used non-gender-neutral language, you had to write the same thing again using female pronouns everywhere.  You quickly begin to see the female point of view, in that you don't identify in any way with the female pronouns, and quite frankly, you feel completely excluded from the writing when pronouns that don't talk about your gender are used.  Given that males relate to male pronouns, we obviously don't see anything wrong when we use male pronouns.

It's true that it can make writing more clunky sometimes, but frankly, I've used gender-neutral language for a long time now, and I don't even think about it anymore.  This is not to say that it should be made compulsory by law and that all non-gender-neutral language should be forcibly stamped out, but I really think that it's beneficial to attempt to use it where practical.

*As an aside, the term wæpman has a funny literal translation.  Literally, it means "person with a weapon" - but "weapon" in those days was a euphamism for "penis", so it really means "person with a penis".  Alternatively, the term werman was also used, which means "male person".  The prefix wer- has all but dropped out of the English language, however, save for one single instance: the term "werewolf", which literally means "man wolf".

[dazzleman]

Why was an upmarket tapas restaurant giving out free thongs anyway?  Not very classy.

I've eaten at that restaurant a few times.  It's a pretty young crew who owns it and works there, and they look as if they like to have a good time.

Most people wouldn't be offended by this.  I certainly wouldn't be, though I'd never wear the thong.  It's people like this who want to spoil any fun for the rest of us.  And did you notice, she even managed to work an ethnic/racial angle into it, when I'm sure that has nothing to do with anything.  It doesn't surprise me that she works in the Bridgeport Public Schools.

It's funny how the feminists have come full circle.  At the beginning, they said that women should enjoy the same sexual freedom as men (despite the obvious disadvantage that women have over men in that arena).  Now, they have come to the point where anything that involves even the hint of contact with a penis is positively repugnant.  I don't think the most conservative, fire and brimstone southern preacher, could outdo these witches in puritanism.

I don't know why the feminists are in such a snit over the religious right -- they are similar in their own way to the most extremist fundamentalists.

[Max Power]

That's really interesting, Gabu.

[falling apart like the ashes of American flags]

Native American is a fine term, as people from India are supposed to be called Indian.

I'd sorely get confused if two different ethnic groups had the same term.

that's my view on it. It's because I knew a kid in high school who was Indian. And there was nothing he hated more than people assuming he was Native American when they heard it.

I will always use the term Native American, not for any PC reason, but because Indian is such a fcking stupid term to use. They are not in any way related to people on the Indian subcontinent, so I will not call them Indians. Period, end of story.

[Emsworth]

My grade 12 English teacher had a tactic that, any time you wrote something that used non-gender-neutral language, you had to write the same thing again using female pronouns everywhere.  You quickly begin to see the female point of view, in that you don't identify in any way with the female pronouns, and quite frankly, you feel completely excluded from the writing when pronouns that don't talk about your gender are used.  Given that males relate to male pronouns, we obviously don't see anything wrong when we use male pronouns.

The question is not one of relating to the pronoun. Using just "he" is perfectly correct grammatically. "He or she" is also fine, but there is nothing wrong with using "he" alone.

On the other hand, the usage of "she" or the singular "they" (ugh) is not.

[Gabu]

My grade 12 English teacher had a tactic that, any time you wrote something that used non-gender-neutral language, you had to write the same thing again using female pronouns everywhere.  You quickly begin to see the female point of view, in that you don't identify in any way with the female pronouns, and quite frankly, you feel completely excluded from the writing when pronouns that don't talk about your gender are used.  Given that males relate to male pronouns, we obviously don't see anything wrong when we use male pronouns.

The question is not one of relating to the pronoun. Using just "he" is perfectly correct grammatically. "He or she" is also fine, but there is nothing wrong with using "he" alone.

I don't think anyone is arguing that it's incorrect to use "he" alone - it is, as I said - only that, given that it's absolutely indistinguishable from the pronoun that denotes male gender (like "man" and "man"), its use creates text that sounds very male-centric and which sounds like it completely ignores the fact that a female gender exists.

This is not the case, of course, because, as I said, the word for males evolved to be the exact same word as the word for a person with no specified gender, but that fact is not exactly immediately apparent unless you know the full etymology behind this odd case.  Even then, it's still hard not to see "male" when you read the word.  I personally think it's best just to avoid it and to use gender-neutral language unless you have an extremely compelling reason not to.

[David S]

My favorite football team is the Washington Redskins.  For the last ten years or so, people have been trying to change the name because they believe it portrays a bad racial stereotype of Native Americans.  I'm not racist, and I'm sure nobody else on this forum (with the possible exception of NixonNow after the Duck Sauce fiasco) is either, yet I think that for the purposes of tradition and the fact that the team has no offensive symbol or attitude towards Native Americcans, the team name should be left unchanged.  I think political correctness in general, though, has gone too far.  What are some of everybody else's thoughts on this subject?  Cite examples to support your statements.

You said it very well.

[falling apart like the ashes of American flags]

Why was an upmarket tapas restaurant giving out free thongs anyway?  Not very classy.

I've eaten at that restaurant a few times.  It's a pretty young crew who owns it and works there, and they look as if they like to have a good time.

Most people wouldn't be offended by this.  I certainly wouldn't be, though I'd never wear the thong.  It's people like this who want to spoil any fun for the rest of us.  And did you notice, she even managed to work an ethnic/racial angle into it, when I'm sure that has nothing to do with anything.  It doesn't surprise me that she works in the Bridgeport Public Schools.

It's funny how the feminists have come full circle.  At the beginning, they said that women should enjoy the same sexual freedom as men (despite the obvious disadvantage that women have over men in that arena).  Now, they have come to the point where anything that involves even the hint of contact with a penis is positively repugnant.  I don't think the most conservative, fire and brimstone southern preacher, could outdo these witches in puritanism.

I don't know why the feminists are in such a snit over the religious right -- they are similar in their own way to the most extremist fundamentalists.

Ever heard of sex-positive feminism?

Most third wavers are very accepting of sex too. Radical feminists and the religious right are all intolerant prudes who should shut up forever and never have any sort of power in any way.