Tuesday, February 27, 2007

POLITICALLY CORRECT STATUS REPORT


JOEL BLEIFUSS in In These Times has an interesting discussion of
political correct terms based on discussions with several people who
deal with the matter regularly: "Rinku Sen is a 40-year-old South Asian
woman. She is the publisher of Colorlines, a national magazine of race
and politics, for which she has developed a PC style manual. Tracy Baim
is a 44-year-old white lesbian. She grapples with the ever -evolving
nomenclature of sexual identity and politics as the executive editor of
Windy City Times, a Chicago-based gay weekly. Lott Hill is a 36-year-old
white gay male who works at Center for Teaching Excellence at Columbia
College in Chicago."

For example, African-American isn't as important a term as many think.
As Chris Raab, founder of Afro-Netizen, says, "People who are
politically correct chose to use African American, but I don't recall
any mass of black folks demanding the use of African American.". . .

"Bitch: A word, says Baim, which is 'absolutely being reclaimed by a
younger generation of women who are asserting their sexuality and
control of their sexuality.' . . .

"Feminist: 'A word that the younger generation doesn't always embrace,'
is how Baim, 44, describes it. A lot of young women, she says, are
"feminists but they don't want to be pigeonholed." . . .

"Gay: The word used to refer to males and, inclusively, to the whole
gender-bent community. 'College-age people are more likely to refer to
themselves as queer,' say Hill. 'People out of college are more likely
to refer to themselves as gay.'. . .

"GLBTQ2IA: The acronym for Gay, Lesbian, Bi, Transgendered, Queer,
Questioning, Intersex, Allies. 'This is coming from the youth movement,
the college campuses, it has not seeped into the whole community at this
point,' says Baim. . .

"Hir (hirs): Gender neutral for him and her. At Wesleyan University,
incoming freshmen are instructed to use gender-neutral pronouns in
campus correspondence. As one person wrote on the university's online
Anonymous Confession Board, 'I am usually attracted only to people of
hir original gender, rather than hir intended gender. As such, I'm
afraid that I'm, like, viewing hir wrong, or not respecting hir wishes
or something.'

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3027/a_politically_correct_lexicon
 

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