Political correctness now is everyone’s pariah

In two days’ time I’ll be flying back to th UK from Berlin, to spend a few days in Oxford where a student group I used to run is organising a series of events. ( if you’re interested.) I find that the more sharply my time is divided into weeks, the more inclined I am to find a theme in each, and these last few days have certainly catered to secular bloggers. We had, a week ago as I write, the rally to defend free expression in London; we had George Carey’s and Sayeeda Warsi’s predictable bullshit in response to the NSS council prayer case, in which Eric Pickles has now announced his retrograde intervention ; we had the RDFRS-commissioned Ipsos MORI poll on Tuesday, laying bare the gulf of opinion between Britain’s ‘census Christians’ and the theocrats who claim to represent them.

I forget if it was Pickles who first used it – that certainly wouldn’t be a surprise – but in all of this, the phrase ‘politically correct’ has reared its head repeatedly and tenaciously. It’s a term which almost invariably is pejorative: like moral relativism or political opportunism, it’s an trait frequently attributed but rarely professed. All sides, politically and otherwise, seem determined to smear their opponents with the concept, hence when last month’s ‘censorship row’ at UCL broke, a campaigning atheist friend described the student union’s actions as ‘PC bullying’. No doubt their own support for religiously neutral councils and secular government is disparaged by some people, Warsi and Pickles among them, as overly PC. Is there anyone who views political correctness positively?

As by this point is probably obvious, I can’t join in with PC-bashing – largely because, like most people with an opinion, I’ve been subject to it myself innumerable times.

Objecting to the branding of a ‘3 man’ tent last summer – since, you know, other genders go camping too – got me called PC, at least in as many words, by a relative. He and his wife had previously scoffed at my suggestion that pinkified mothering toys ought not to be the only ones available for infant girls. (When Teacher Barbie and Scientist Barbie have been announced, I’ll shut up about it.) I’ve been called PC for not laughing at rape jokes, or millionaires from private schools who dress up as poor people and talk fast. My grandmother, I’m sure, would think it terribly PC if I asked her what ‘peculiar’ really meant. Political correctness, it seems, is everyone’s pariah; as when politicians talk about unfairness, it’s a term everyone views negatively but understands in differents ways. I have my own opponents who conflate insulting Islam with racist slurs or lobby for gay marriage with talk of love and commitment , whom I could certainly demean as politically correct. If I did, though, I’d have to deny the same charge when it’s levelled at me.

It’s sometimes said the aim of liberation movements is to make themselves redundant, which presumably includes the language they produce. In 2012, it’s at minimum a faux pas to place a sign outside your guest house reading ‘No blacks, Jews or Irish’. We owe this to political correctness, though we don’t now call it that. We understand furthermore that asking women if they’re pregnant or will be is unacceptable in job interviews, and we owe this to political correctness, though we don’t now call it that. We shun our parents if they talk about half caste children, retards or handicaps . We recoil (or should ) when we hear the phrase ‘used to be a man’. We owe all this to political correctness, though we don’t now call it that. We call it decency.

I won’t put down my bêtes noires by calling them PC, because to me it’s a backhanded insult. The very experience of having my politically correct opinions knocked puts me in a common boat with activists I admire, from history as well as the present day, and any such accusation from the mouth of Eric Pickles or Sayeeda Warsi fills me with particular emotional warmth. If PC is what they call me, Keith Porteous Wood or Anne Marie Waters, we should realise we’re onto something.

Alex Gabriel