|
|
|
|
|
by imgabe
2796 days ago
|
|
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. |
|
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.