I first encountered the phrase “politically correct” (and “politically incorrect”) when I began to socialize with lesbians. Back in the mid-80s I took classes at Santa Rosa Junior College, and I joined the Gay & Lesbian Student Union (GLSU). I was lonely and fragile, desperate for community, but fired with a sense of justice and eager to do something to help people escape from oppression, evangelical, you might say. I had an idea that I proposed to a meeting. Gay visibility was an important part of acceptance; that seemed logical. If you see gay people and topics just as a regular part of your environment, the foreignness goes away, and the fear. How about a poster series? I asked, offering a few design ideas. I got dressed down by a lesbian for my first design idea which read as sexist to her. I was being un-PC.
Although I was hurt by the criticism, I think the concept of political-correct-ness is useful. It gives one tools of analysis. What is or is not politically correct?
In a history of lesbian life in twentieth-century America, Lillian Faderman introduces the subject:
The women’s [music] festivals … always had political overtones. Workshops were held that attempted to raise and solve lesbian-feminist problems; movement literature and paraphernalia were widely available; and the organizers attempted to be sensitive to all the issues: they provided day care, easy access for the disabled, vegetarian meals, sign interpreters for the deaf, ‘chemical free’ areas for women who disapproved of substance use, sliding scale fees so that the poor would not be excluded. Nothing was allowed at the festivals that was not ‘politically correct,’ a label that was to become a benchmark of all judgments in the community, even judgments passed on lesbian-feminist entertainers.
Those musical artists who got on stage and acted coolly professional, “too much like stars,” were seen as on an “‘essentially male performing trip.’ To be in any way like a male professional was to be politically incorrect.”
The politically correct ideal was utopian. Sooner or later utopias fail their own principles, disillusionment sets in, people fight, things fall apart. Olivia Records tried to run their business in a politically correct fashion, but somebody was always ready to be offended. “When Olivia sponsored women-only events, they were attacked by some for excluding male children; when they opened their concerts to everyone, they were attacked for offending lesbian separatists. [Said one of the founders,] ‘We couldn’t win.’”
Lilian Faderman continues, “[Such] hard lessons … were repeated often in the lesbian-feminist community and caused a blurring of the community’s utopian vision.”
Faderman expands on the pernicious effects of policing of political-correct-ness:
[T]he desire for a Lesbian Nation was founded on so intense an idealism and required such heroic measures that fanaticism became all but inevitable. … [D]espite the movement rhetoric about love for all women, those who, by some infraction of the code, were judged ‘politically incorrect’ were given cold treatment by the community. Being politically correct (‘p. c.’) mean that one adhered to the various dogmas regarding dress; money; sexual behavior; language usage; class, race, food, and ecology consciousness; political activity; and so forth.
When idealism ossifies into dogma, justice goes out the window along with compassion and harmony. Idealism is good, but, unless your fantasy of how the world should be ordered is more important than the world, best to allow for adjustments and compromises, in action if not principle.
In my poster series example above, I should have been more accommodating. But I was pursuing a vision, man! Plus I knew I’d be doing all the work …
source:
Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: a history of lesbian life in twentieth-century America
by Lillian Faderman
1991. Penguin, New York
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