Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - This Week in Stupid (25⧸10⧸2015) - Part 2

All Episodes

Previous Next

Oct. 25, 2015 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

14:14

This Week in Stupid (25⧸10⧸2015) - Part 2

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	So now that we've paid off the happy censorship merchant of MTV, let's talk about the fear that lies at the heart of opposition to political correctness.
	People are afraid of the power that true equality can give the historically disenfranchised and are afraid of having been wrong.
	Well, I can't speak for people, but I can speak for myself, and personally, I am afraid of being censored because I have an opinion you don't agree with.
	There is a theory about political correctness, one hewed to by Donald Trump and his legions of fans, that is based on the assumption that everyone is actually racist and sexist.
	I don't think Donald Trump invented this.
	I think feminists invented this, and they have decided that everyone is racist and sexist.
	I have heard them say it.
	But they think we're too cowed by women and people of colour to say what they really think.
	Well, I know a lot of people are actually too cowed by feminists.
	I mean, I don't know whether they are necessarily women and people of colour, but I do know that they are rabid ideological zealots.
	The conceit is that no one really believes the politically correct things we all say, but we've somehow arrived at a tacit agreement to say them, not to say them, you idiot.
	The reality though is that the term political correctness has been co-opted and redefined, eroded in meaning to the point that the kindest interpretation merely implies being oversensitive, which is still dangerous and stunted.
	That's really not what political correctness means in any way, shape or form.
	What it really means is that it has become socially acceptable to expect people to censor their own opinions because someone else might not like them.
	This author doesn't seem to understand that political correctness is in itself a political stance to take.
	It is not politically correct to recognise and honour the lives of undocumented immigrants and their children in this day and age.
	Republican candidates have been forced out of the presidential race for far less.
	They are not trying to be politically correct.
	It would be politically correct to do that.
	It is not politically correct to object to the gender pay gap.
	There's a whole conservative cottage industry dedicated to proving there is no pay gap.
	Okay.
	You don't seem to understand that whether there is a gender pay gap or not and whether there should be a gender pay gap or not based on the life choices of the people who are being taken into account is irrelevant to the concept of political correctness.
	But our author does actually have an example of political correctness having consequences for her.
	Last year I had a friendship collapse over the use of the word hobo.
	I felt my friend was being too facile in her definition.
	A bum with a handkerchief tied to a stick.
	She felt I was being too politically correct by suggesting that the term was offensive to actual homeless people.
	Isn't that just the most ridiculous thing you've ever heard?
	No one is actually offended here.
	Just, you know, I mean there's no one involved in this that's actually offended.
	But the word hobo, the author felt, might have offended actual homeless people, and therefore we can't be friends anymore.
	I mean, fucking, that is mental.
	But I'd like to say to the author, well done, you've lost a friend because of some potential offence homeless people might have taken.
	There are members of my white family who refuse to talk to me about race because they do not think of it as part of the national conversation and it is and needs to be, but believe that I'm demanding that they feel badly about being white.
	Well, you're just demanding your friend feel bad about using the word hobo.
	So, I mean, I can understand where they're coming from.
	The people who cling to the idea that political correctness is a bad thing are afraid.
	Afraid of how they'll be perceived by those less reverent to outdated hierarchies.
	Afraid of the power that true equality can give the historically disenfranchised.
	Afraid of being wrong.
	Well, I can't, again, speak for everyone else, but I can speak for my own distaste for political correctness.
	And it comes with censorship.
	Specifically, societally mandated self-censorship.
	As if there are some things that should not be said.
	And then the author literally goes on to prove my point.
	The will of opportunity will not run dry if we learn what PGP means, preferred gender pronoun.
	The economy won't collapse if we get rid of racist NFL team names and logos.
	Take down the Confederate flag.
	People will still fall in love and get married if we have kids and we stop using the word tomboy or refer to sexually adult, active adult women as sluts.
	Reductio ad absurdum.
	Of course, no one is saying any of these things.
	But if we have to do everything you are saying for the holy grail of political correctness, these people will have been censored.
	They will not be able to express themselves in the way that they want.
	Just because it's not the way that you like doesn't mean you have any right to take it away.
	She ends the article with, right now that feels a little politically incorrect to say.
	Well, using the phrase politically correct is now politically incorrect.
	That is, according to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, who have declared that it is now a microaggression to use the phrase politically correct.
	Why the fuck not?
	It probably marginalizes people who can't vote.
	The university's Just Words campaign is the work of UWM's Inclusive Excellence Center and aims to raise awareness of microaggressions and their impact.
	Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm going to assume that the impact of microaggressions is quite small.
	The university also claims the word lame is a microaggression that somehow both ridicules and ignores the lives of amputees.
	How can you both ridicule something and ignore it at the same time?
	To ridicule something means you have to acknowledge it, surely!
	UWM also claims that using the phrase third world to describe third world countries is a microaggression.
	Of course it is.
	Because it reinforces hierarchical attitudes towards nations around the world and establishes westernized, industrialized countries and cultures as the standard upon which to measure national well-being or economic status.
	Well that makes perfect sense.
	I mean rather than establishing the best countries on earth to live in and trying to encourage people to raise themselves to that standard, using them as a model of how to do it, what we should do is find a complete shithole, preferably one that's riddled with ethnic and religious tensions, civil wars, possibly genocides, massive, massively low life expectancy for women, children and the elderly,
	and we should model every country on that.
	And we should tear down any countries that happen to not be in such a shitty state.
	That would make more sense.
	Apparently the man running the campaign, Warren Scherer, has a problem with Republicans and Jews.
	And I'm going to guess that he doesn't agree with Netanyahu on who caused the Holocaust.
	Schreier's department claims that the word thug is a microaggression because it assumes that violence is the sole motivating factor in an action.
	It ignores issues of poverty, education, and other institutional barriers.
	Used as a synonym for nigga/slash nigger.
	Well, that's a very American-centric point of view.
	It's not the sort of thing people think or say in, I don't know, a third world country.
	But hey, I mean, you know, I wouldn't expect you to be living up to your own standards or anything, Warren.
	Of course, they're just trying to create a safe space.
	Just like Wesleyan students who cut funding for their school paper because it hurt their feelings.
	But the best bit is the excuse they gave.
	On Sunday, the student government at Wesleyan University voted unanimously to recommend a cut in funding for the school's primary newspaper, after it published a column that was mildly critical of the Black Lives Matter movement.
	The student government is explaining away the resolution with a straight face, and get this, as an effort to reduce paper waste and dropkick the newspaper into the digital publishing age, not as retribution for publishing bad thoughts.
	In the aftermath of publishing the column in September, Black Lives Matter and left-wing activists with nothing better to do demanded the Argus be defunded and the paper staff be re-educated as a once-per-semester social justice/slash diversity training.
	They even demanded a permanent and prominent space in the paper to publish whatever they wanted.
	Fucking why?
	Why would anyone give them anything that they're asking for?
	How are these people controlling the fucking purse strings?
	The activists said at the time of issuing their demands that if they did not let get their way, they would destroy all physical copies of the paper on the Liberal campus.
	Right?
	I can't really believe this is true.
	I mean, it probably is, but I can't bring myself to believe it.
	But I'm running out of time again and I haven't even got to the last story I want to cover.
	So, Jermaine Greer, the sector duenarian feminist who has been campaigning for women's rights for the best part of 50 years, is now in a lot of trouble.
	She made the mistake of voicing an opinion that goes against mainstream intersectional feminism, and that opinion was that in her mind, transgender women are not women.
	She also claims that a great many women who are not transgender, think transgender women, who she refers to as male-to-female transgender people, do not look like, sound like, or behave like women.
	Greer did say she would be prepared to use female pronouns when referring to someone if that was their preference as a courtesy.
	Yeah, but what about gender neutral pronouns, Jermaine?
	I'm sure that you can already see where this is going.
	Oh yes, Jermaine Greer has now been branded As dangerous, and students want to prevent her from speaking at Cardiff University.
	Where is that change.org petition?
	A petition on change.org started by the university student women's officer Rachel Meluish says Greer has demonstrated time and time again her misogynistic views towards trans women, including continually misgendering trans women and denying the existence of transphobia altogether.
	Fucking hell, Greer.
	The social justice Gestapo were after you.
	Trans exclusionary views should have no place in feminism or society.
	It looks like you're about to be kicked out of feminism, Jermaine.
	Not to mention society at large.
	While debate in a university should be encouraged, we're going to give you a reason why it should be prevented instead.
	Hosting a speaker with such problematic and hateful views towards marginalised and vulnerable groups is dangerous.
	Allowing Greer a platform endorses her views and by extension the trans misogyny which she continues to perpetuate.
	Well, the answer's pretty simple.
	No platform that bitch and then knock off for an early lunch.
	Earlier this year, Greer spoke at the Cambridge University Union and said she did not know there was such a thing as transphobia.
	And in a 2009 column, she said that the idea of being trans was a delusion and trans women seem to us ghastly parodies.
	Oh dear Jermaine is not looking good.
	And this is so heated and so commonplace that the Independent published an article saying that she may be barred from the women's rights lecture at Cardiff University after a petition merely accuses her of misogyny.
	And so of course, you know what happens next.
	Except you don't.
	Cardiff University rejected the bid to bar Jermaine Greer.
	Cardiff University said, in words I can hardly believe I am reading, that it had no plans to cancel Miss Greer's lecture.
	In a statement, the university's vice-chancellor Colin Riordan said, Our events include speakers with a range of views, all of which are rigorously challenged and debated.
	Brah fucking vo, mate, honestly, I'm not even doing this sarcastically.
	I'm honestly impressed that someone has the balls to stand and say, no, why should we?
	But the thing is, Jermaine Greer will not give her Cardiff University lecture because of abuse over her views on transgender people.
	Whether or not the university pulled it is irrelevant because they managed to bully her into silence.
	She said, I'm getting a bit old for all this.
	I'm 76.
	I don't want to go down there and be screamed at and have things thrown at me.
	Bugger it.
	When asked about Caitlin Jenner, she said he she wanted the limelight that the other female members of the Kardashian family were enjoying and has conquered it just like that.
	Well that went down like a fucking lead balloon.
	But interestingly what also happened this week was that Caitlyn Jenner was named Woman of the Year, despite never having any genital surgery and then no talk of having any in the near future.

▲