There's a recent article in the local StarPhoenix newspaper that makes me angry. Here is is:http://www.thestarphoenix.com/life/Gormley+column+Halloween+good+time+offended/9081587/story.html
The author lists examples of people getting offended over various things, such as professional nurses being angry over sexualized depictions of their uniform, or people being offended over "Aboriginal, Asian, Mexican, Middle Eastern and gay depictions" in Halloween costumes. The author is saying that there is too much political correctness in the world and it's ruining all the fun.
I'm angry at the author's viewpoint. I'm wondering why this viewpoint is being so aggressive about wanting to protect their "right" to do or say anything they want. They seem to wish that those who are being hurt would just be quiet.
Here's a false assumption in his article: Society was doing just fine, but then all of the sudden, people started getting offended. We are all becoming "super-sensitive crybabies".
Well, I have news for anyone holding this viewpoint. Maybe everything was "just fine" to you, but you're not the one facing racism or sexism every day. There are people who face racism and sexism every day. Please think about that for a moment. There are people who face racism and sexism every day. (or homophobia, or abelism, or other -isms).
When others point out that they are offended, they are
communicating that their world is different than your world. They are pointing out an example of something that is racist or sexist so that you can see it too, because if you are not a woman or if you are a white person, you might not experience these things regularly and you might not know what it feels like. But when someone points out that something you think is fine is actually hurtful to them, then your comfortable day is "interrupted", and maybe this makes you angry.
You could choose to listen, and use your creativity to come up with an unoffensive Halloween costume. You could make a choice to try and make the world less racist, less sexist, less homophobic, (and many other things!). But instead, the author seems to think that his right to do or say anything he wants is more important than letting others have what he has: a world where everything is already "just fine" and the worst thing that could happen is that someone else disrupts his comfortable state of affairs and says that they're offended.
