POLITICALLY CORRECT

POLITICALLY CORRECT, short forms PC, P.C. ‘Marked by or adhering to a typically progressive orthodoxy on issues involving esp. race, gender, sexual affinity or ecology’ (Random House Webster's College Dictionary, 1991). The phrase is applied, especially pejoratively by conservative academics and journalists in the US, to the views and attitudes of those who publicly object to: (1) The use of terms that they consider overtly or covertly sexist (especially as used by men against women), racist (especially as used by whites against black), ableist (used against the physically or mentally impaired), ageist (used against any specific age group), heightist (especially as used against short people), etc. (2) Stereotyping, such as the assumption that women are generally less intelligent than men and blacks less intelligent than whites. (3) ‘Inappropriately directed laughter’, such as jokes at the expense of women, the disabled, homosexuals, and ethnic minorities. The abbreviation PC is also used as a term for people perceived as ‘politically correct’: ‘ “Community” is a rallying cry among PCs. They tend to use it.… as an all-purpose buzz word’ ( Mike Bygrave, ‘Mind your Language’, Guardian Weekly, 26 May 1991). Both the full and abbreviated terms often imply an aggressive intolerance of views and facts that conflict with their ‘progressive orthodoxy’. The Random House dictionary quoted above was accused by the reviewer Anne Hopkins (‘Defining Womyn (and Others)’, Time, 24 June 1991) of failing to ‘protect English from the mindless assaults of the trendy’ because its editors listed such usages as chairpersonship, herstory, humankind, and womyn alongside chairmanship, history, mankind, and women, thereby giving them, in the opinion of the reviewer, a respectability that they did not merit. Compare MULTICULTURALISM. See GENDER BIAS, SEXISM, STEREOTYPE.