what's wrong with being pc?

[davemarc]

At 06:06 PM 10/30/96 -0800, Jules wrote:
>Paul Murphy wrote:
>> 
>> Matt writes:
>> 
>> >If you want, I'd be more than happy to debate whether this position
>> >constitutes "moral relativism", but I think it would probably be much
>> >more beneficial to discuss Pynchon while attempting to avoid such
>> >blithely ignorant comments such as Jules' re: African women.
>> 
>> I cleaned out my mailbox so I don't have Jules Siegel's original remarks in
>> front of me, but at the time they struck me simply as awkwardly stated and
>> requiring further clarification. The point I remember him trying to make,
>> getting back to Pynchon, is that V. is an 'erotic' novel, but that the
>> erotic dimension is curiously absent in the Mondaugen chapter, perhaps due
>> to TRP's acculturated inability to describe the Hereros, erotically,
>> physically, or otherwise. Instead of taking up this point (which I think is
>> a valid one for further discussion and debate), we get a lot of ad hominem
>> posturing.
>> 
[snip]
>
>Posturing is exactly the right word. Thanks for this. I knew there'd be
>trouble. What I was trying to say is that different cultures have
>different standards of physical beauty. The Herero standard, quite
>obviously, was very different from the Anglo-European standard of the
>time (and of ours) which worships a historical spectrum defined by Venus
>de Milo at one end and the Playboy ideal on the other. I am not saying
>this is good or bad. I am saying that it does exist.
>
>Human beings do come in different colors and body shapes. Tribal and
>racial groups do exist. The members of a given tribal or racial grouping
>do share certain physical characteristics. I do not deprecate a given
>body style or color by pointing out that it exists. I am not being
>racist by saying that many black women living in Anglo-European
>societies have suffered greatly because their body types -- not merely
>their skin, but their physical proportions -- do not match the
>prevailing calendar-girl iconography of industrial propaganda media such
>as Playboy.
>
>[Parenthetically: Before anyone starts screaming about the fact that I
>wrote for Playboy, let me point out that the personal cost to me of not
>writing for Playboy any more is the disgusting mail I just received
>because I can't afford to books and was foolish enough to expose my need
>to people I thought were book-lovers and would therefore understand and
>empathize with my intellectual hunger. I'm not on any grants. I don't
>have a job with a university. I am a blacklisted formerly almost-famous
>writer who took very advanced political positions for my time. When the
>times changed and Ronald Reagan was elected, I didn't. I urge anyone who
>claims to feel as strongly as I did about his or her political positions
>to stand as tall as I did and then see what it feels like to be cut down
>hard.
>
>I realize that I should edit out that statement. I can imagine the
>stupid mail it will arouse, the misinterpretations, the nasty cracks,
>the weird attacks. Let it stand. When you lose your status, your
>prerogatives, your home, your livelihood, I hope you remember how you
>felt when you were spitting on me. Or will you just find someone lower
>than you on the street to spit on.]
>
>There are white Americans who share the same body characteristics as the
>Hereros, but they are not usually members of a geographically
>concentrated population. They too suffer from the same problems of
>exclusion, however, that I mentioned briefly. If Pynchon had written
>about a white male having a romance with such a white female, I think
>you can be sure he would have mentioned it, maybe even ridiculed it. My
>point was that it is revealing that he does not do so in the Herero
>sequence. Instead of arguing about my supposed lack of discretion in
>alluding to the difference in body types, why not look at the point I'm
>making?
>
>I think because it's a lot easier to start duck-squawking, than it is to
>carry on a reasoned examination. Political correctness should deal with
>the courtesies that we owe each other as human beings, not be used to
>stifle free discussion of the cultural issues that result from our
>physical differences as human beings. Is Pynchon being politically
>correct by avoiding the cultural confrontation implicit in the romance
>of a Herero woman and a 19th Century white male? Or is he just writing a
>kind of pornography masquerading as a criticism of the German racial
>cleansing practises that eventually lead to the murder of so many
>people?
>
>Why do are so many of you supposedly politically correct bullies so
>often cruel, unfair and generally lacking in the normal courtesies of
>civilized people when expressing your opinions? Do you really wonder why
>Thomas Pynchon doesn't expose himself to this? You are the reason he
>keeps to himself and write his books and ignores all the malicious
>hypocrites who think that they have a God-given right to vent their
>wretched hostility on anyone brave enough to present himself or herself
>as a target. 

For the record, I want to point out that Jules probably would not have
clarified his remarks as cogently as he does above (avoiding the dreaded
first person plural!!) had his wording not been challenged. 

We're always challenging each other's wording on this list.  That's a major
aspect of what it's all about.  So I continue to be amazed that polite
challenges such as the one I originally posted in response to Jules can
incite language about political correctness gone berserk and lecturing about
how it's obvious that people who post are speaking for themselves--when I
actually wrote my original post in the first person singular and explicitly
stated that it reflected my personal opinion. 

Now the list is full of rhetoric about "politically incorrect bullies" who
are "cruel, unfair, and general lacking in the normal courtesies of
civilized people."  I'm quoting Jules, but I could easily quote other
participants.  I suggest (non-threateningly, as always) that the foax who've
been slinging the "pc" label take another look at their posts and the ones
they think they're responding to.  I don't think the content of my posts
warrant the angry responses they received, and I fail to see many specific
connections made between recent posts and the "anti-pc" criticisms applied
to them. 

As far as this "pc" stuff is concerned, I'm with Niall Martin.  It's a
divisive, chimerical notion that is too often used to deride feminism and
other attempts to foster civil rights.  The anecdotal examples used to
illustrate "pc" are of the "projection of the specific unto the general"
kind I usually don't expect to see from the company I keep here.  

davemarc