1. Intro

Political Correctness is supposedly about being as inoffensive as possible, right? Well, years ago when I was in college studying for an I.T. degree, we had a mandatory class about political correctness. This manure was shovelled down our throats, in other words – we weren’t allowed to call a manhole cover anything other than a “personhole” cover, a blackboard was a chalkboard, a whiteboard was an inkboard.

2.

Now, when I was told this, my first reaction was to turn to a good friend of mine (who was in the same class, and happened to be black) and ask if he thought it was racist to call a blackboard black. He said no. Asking everyone else in the class if they minded referring to something that was black as being black, there was unanimous agreement that it just didn’t bloody matter.

3

There was a feminist teaching the class, and a feminist in the class agreeing with every daft thing she said. Apparently using words that have any sort of gender to them is oppressing womankind. Now, anyone who’s read my story will know that I’ve seen true oppression of a woman I love, so I let them know how offensive I thought the whole idea was. The motivation behind your use of a word is important, not the actual word.

4

The fact is that the whole PC thing is actually counterproductive. It’s a minority of people having a knee-jerk reaction to problems that don’t really exist for the vast majority of us, and trying to force the population into complying with a set of rules that will “Make things better”. I think that was the motivation behind the Spanish Inquisition, too…

5

I’m not PC. I like to say very un-PC things to annoy people who are, purely because they tend to be the kind of people who like to shove their philosophy down other people’s throats, and try to force them into conformity. On the flipside, I consider myself a Gentleman, and as such do as much as I possibly can to make those around me feel at ease as much of the time as humanly possible. That means accepting another persons lifestyle – even if it’s not one I myself agree with. In fact, if someone lived a very PC lifestyle, but didn’t try shoving it down my throat, then I would be respectful of that and I wouldn’t try to wind them up about it.

6

And I think that’s basically my point – tolerance and understanding should be key, not conformity to some freakish model of behaviour that is nothing short of facist. If someone doesn’t understand your lifestyle, explain it to them. If they understand it but still can’t accept it, then that’s their loss. If you live your life according to some strangers rulebook, then how will you ever be happy? Life’s not about conformity, it’s about being happy. If something you do in the privacy of your own home offends someone, then tough. If that thing makes you happy, and breaks no laws/hurts no one who is unconsenting, then carry on regardless. You’re not living your life to make your neighbours happy, after all.

7. Who cares what people think?

I've never cared much what people think and less so about how I run my private life. It's really not anyone's business. The rest of the world is much more interested in their own lives than yours anyway.