What is political correctness?
Political correctness is inefficiency, uselessness and cowardice under the excuse of “trying to be nice”.
If someone looks like a man, talks like a man, walks like a man, (and God forbids, smells like a man), it is only natural for me to assume that “he” is a man. Indeed, “he” might have been transgender and awaiting surgery, or gender fluid and just feeling like a woman that day. He might even be an extraterritorial visitor in disguise, and therefore not belong to any earthly categories of sex. Nonetheless, my assumption should almost always be correct. Even if it’ not, it’s obvious that my intention was not to be offensive, to either a transgendered or an E.T., but simply to save time by going with the highest probability.
If someone is poor, he should have the nerve to be called as such, instead of insisting on the watered-down, clunky substitution of “low socioeconomic status”.
If someone is black, he should not be offended to be called as such, instead of demanding the unnecessary replacement of “African American”.
If someone is white, he should not upset to be called as such, instead of urging for the anthropological title of “Caucasian”.
If someone is a woman, she should not expect every time someone writes “he” for a general third-person singular pronoun to add “/she” afterwards.
If they do, they shouldn’t have.
One can always choose to be politically correct oneself, but one cannot force others to do the same. Demanding political correctness of others only shows lack of confidence in oneself and a lack of trust in others. If someone talks to, refers to, or writes about you in a politically incorrect manner, why do you immediately assume that they are doing so in order to attack and discriminate your gender / race / sexual orientation… If you do, it is because you are overly sensitive about one of these aspects of yourself. You are sensitive because you are unconfident. You should not be. And even if you are, you should not blame others for your own weaknesses.
If people in this society think that they’d get in trouble if they did not put “/she” every time they wrote a “he”, or used African American instead of black, or used “low socioeconomic status” instead of poor, or asked others’s pronouns before starting every conversation, it is then not an open, forgiving, or inclusive society. It is a demanding, picky, and whiny society.
Sadly, that is the current society we live in.
We cannot improve it through political correctness.
Women need true equality — equal pay at work place, equal acknowledgment for their capacity, etc. “/she” cannot help them achieve that.
Black people need true equality — better education, lower crime rate, etc. “African American” cannot help them achieve that.
Transgender people need true equality — inclusiveness in the society, better access to restrooms etc. Asking everyone (transgendered or not) what’s their preferred pronoun before addressing them cannot help them achieve that.
So stop pretending they can.
Stop pretending to care, start to care for real; stop pretending to help, start to help for real; stop pouring out glamorous slogans whiling doing nothing useful, start to take solid actions in the face of problems, for real.
Stop political correctness, start to mean what you say or write, for real. Stop trying to be nice.
Be nice, for real.