As of late, it’s become strangely hip to hate on political correctness.
Last generation comedians like John Cleese and Jerry Seinfeld have attempted to re-emphasise their edginess by decrying 2016’s so-called ‘outrage culture’, and the rise of Donald Trump and his garbage mouth can be partially attributed to the staggering 79 per cent of Americans who think that political correctness has gone too far.
Closer to home, the issue came to the fore this week after a number of music festivals faced outrage following their release of predominantly male lineups. A split second after that – the internet moves fast –critics of the gender imbalance were criticised themselves, as a not-insignificant influx of armchair experts decried those wanting equal representation on festival lineups as cowardly whingers sucking the fun out of a harmless event.
Grotesque language was used to attack those arguing for gender equality, as it always is in these cases, because some see misogyny and racism and unveiled bigotry as bravery. They rail against their self-proclaimed enemies: against ‘alpha males’ and ‘white knights’ and ‘social justice warriors’. They paint the opposing side as nitpickers – plaintive, feeble-minded dullards who won’t let anybody enjoy anything.
These PC-haters seem convinced that political correctness is petty. As far as they are concerned, criticisms of male-dominated lineups are only the tip of a very large iceberg. They want to know,why does it matter that X-Men Apocalypse used depictions of gendered violence in its advertising materials? It’s only a movie. Who cares that the Oscars were #SoWhite? Or that black lives matter? All lives matter! Nobody’s getting hurt when someone uses the word ‘bitch’, or when someone deliberately misgenders Caitlyn Jenner. And who is that Jenner anyway? She’s not a real hero. Real heroes do things in the real world. They fight wars. They get hurt. Harmed.
“What’s the big deal? It’s only a massive corporation using an incredible provocative image depicting a very real, very overlooked facet of contemporary society in order to make a few bucks on a trashy Z-Grade superhero movie.”
Of course, members of the LGBTQI community get hurt all the time. But not in accepted ways. Not in ways that are pretty, or patriotic, or that sell newspapers. Their hurt, for whatever reason, is deemed as different: separate to the hurt of those who have been killed in a war zone.
There is a line to be drawn, apparently, and there are those willing to draw it. There are those willing to say, “These murdered soldiers were murdered better than these unarmed souls shot to death in the Pulse nightclub. These murdered civilians were braver than these wives battered to death in their own home by their own partner. These injustices matter more than these. These words are brave, and these words are feeble. These pains are wider felt than those.”
This flaw is central to the argument of all those who despise political correctness. They assume a hierarchy that doesn’t exist. They categorise pain, like accountants of grief, dismissing some concerns as petty and others as all-important.
But in doing so, they miss an essential link. Why do we need gender-balanced lineups at music festivals? Because so-called ‘small’ injustices such as these lead to much bigger ones. Because, essentially, violence and oppression is the logical end result of a system designed to put an entire gender in the minority. Those using misogynistic slurs to put down any who aim for political correctness aren’t only defenders of inequality –they are inequality’s very by-product.
The normalisation of oppression starts slowly. It starts in a million miniscule ways. It starts when we use phrases like ‘songstress’ to describe female musicians, but not ‘songster’ for men. It starts when a supposedly respected publication like the LA Weeklypublishes a whole piece about Sky Ferreira’s ‘knockers’.It starts when we suggest Miley Cyrus is promiscuous (or even unhinged) for taking off her clothes while we slather our walls with photos of the Red Hot Chili Peppers with their cocks in socks and Iggy Pop stripping bare.
“Thank god the ‘Peppers are male, otherwise we’d need to morally police them, right?”
It starts in a thousand significantly insignificant ways. And that’s what makes it so prevalent. That’s what makes it so scary.
Is political correctness overly focused with the minutiae with life? With the tiny, and the everyday, and the mundane? Yes. Of course it is. And that is exactly what makes it worth preserving.
regular grumpy femmo reminder that if you put on a music festival and have practically no women on it you look like a shithead dinosaur
— Allison Gallagher (@bornhowling) June 22, 2016
Header image credit:Eva Rinaldi/Flickr
