[gizmo686]

Neither of those examples are instances of "polical correctness" in the classical sense. Originally, political correctness was is contrast with actual or scientific correctness. As in "it is factually correct that unemployment is at record levels, but that is politically incorrect."

To your pronoun example, using the wrong pronoun would not be politically incorrect, just potentially rude and offensive.

I suppose some of white supremecy could fall into the overlap that is both factually and politically correct. But most of what they say falls outside of the factual domain entirely (even if it is motivated by wrong facts) so the label of pollitically (in)correct is not relevent.

[imgabe]

The classical sense is not what most people mean when they use the term "political correctness"

I feel you. I still cringe inwardly when someone says "begs the question" and they're not talking about a circular argument, but at some point you have to move on and accept that words can stray from their original definitions.

[gizmo686]

But classical political correctness is such a useful concept, that is a problem in our current politics (and not just government politics; its insidious in a lot of more private organizations of people as well).

It doesn't help that I still have no idea what this new "political correctness" actually refers to; and I get a feeling people using the term are still trying to associate what they are referring to with the old sense of "political correctness". Eg, if you listen to people arguing against what they refer to as political correctness, they still almost always frame the argument as being for the ability to speak truth in some form.

[imgabe]

Well, the more I think about it, the more I think that political correctness is used in the classical sense you're talking about.

Let's say Bob believes that sex is determined by your genitals at birth and nothing else. If someone wished to be called by a pronoun that doesn't match that, Bob would view this as being "wrong" compared to objective reality as he understands it. So he might go along with something to be "politically correct" although he considers it factually wrong. So Bob is being prevented from espousing the view that he believes to be the truth.

[gizmo686]

Your probably right. I think I was subconsiously biased by my linguistics background, as sementic gender and syntactic gender need not agree, so I don't consider the choice of pronoun to nessasarily imply a choice of meaning.

I can see how someone with a naive view of gramatical gender would disagree. (Actually, the fact that transgender people so consistantly change pronouns is somewhat problamatic to the prevailing linguistic thinking. I have never seen a fully satisfying account of why this happens. The best I have seen is that it is a sort of meta-linguistic social signal that the speaker accepts the transition, which does seem to fit nicely with calling it a form of political correctness).

I still see a difference in usage where the modern usage implies offensiveness; whereas the older usage implied a disagreement in policy. Eg, saying gender is determinex at birth could be PC in the classical sense because of, say, a policy allowing people to change the indication on their license, or psrticipate in other-gender's activities. Unless you want to claim that the taboo of mispronouning people is to support this type of policy (which it does do), then it wouldn't really fit. Although it is a very reasonable bit of sementic drift to include this in the classical meaning.