Political Correctness Exposed

People use political correctness as an excuse to make status displays and to create some importance for themselves. It is almost always the self-important people who hit you with the PC stick, which means you can have some fun with it. It's a status game, so play the game.

When somebody says, “that was offensive”, they almost always mean that whilst they weren’t personally bothered by it, they recognise the possibility that somebody, somewhere, might see reason to take offence. And that’s enough for them to start blowing the political-correctness whistle. It’s an effortless and freely-available source of status, requiring no personal qualities or achievements.

This is why the PC whistle is almost always blown by people who have no other way of asserting their authority, because they have nothing to offer that would earn them respect or recognition for any other reason.

So what's the solution? Don't argue, because that will give them more to push against. And don't apologise, either, because that will inflate their moral authority and encourage them to continue.

The way to respond without apologising or arguing is to ask concerned questions. Two in particular.

If a status bandit starts hitting you with the PC stick, simply ask them if they felt personally threatened or assaulted. Don’t ask if they felt “offended” or “insulted”, since these things are, rather conveniently, defined by the victim. They are very broad terms. Stick to did you feel threatened? And did you feel assaulted?

It’s harder to substantiate a claim that they felt “threatened” if they really didn’t, and harder still to substantiate a claim that they felt “assaulted”.

And if they didn’t feel threatened or assaulted, then they simply felt annoyed, which is their problem, and they need to deal with it through the medium of normal social behaviour. Otherwise it's like complaining to the teacher when another kid smashes your conker in a fair fight.

You can ban racial and sexual harassment, but you can't ban status displays, which is why people seek elaborate excuses for lodging complaints when all they really mean is, "That guy's better at playing dominance games than I am, and I want to shaft him for it."

If they come back with “I felt harassed”, you can simply ask them to clarify: In what way did you feel harassed? In the sense that you felt threatened? No? In the sense that you felt assaulted?

If they can’t answer either of these things convincingly, then the chances are that their “harassment” claim of being “offended” was simply a cheap status shot.