Posted on November
15, 2021
So You Say You Oppose
Speech Codes
by
Daniel
Clark
Politically correct collegiate speech codes are often
ridiculed, and rightly so. One of the most
recent ones, from the University of Pittsburgh, purports to prohibit the use of
the word "freshman," because it has the word "man" in it. Of course, so does "woman," but the point of
a speech code is not consistency; it's control.
Well, it's one thing for megalomaniacal liberal blowhards to assume
control over the speech of impressionable college students, but the rest of us
would never stand for it, would we?
It turns out that when there's no arrogant authority
ham-handedly challenging our autonomy, we are far more likely to abide by
speech codes, perhaps without even realizing it. If you think about it, there are probably
certain words and phrases that you find yourself saying, even though they are
in diametric opposition to what you know to be true. These are not merely innocent idiocies such
as "I could care less." Instead, they
are euphemistic expressions that have been deliberately invented by liberals to
change the ways in which you speak and think, with the ultimate aim of
converting you to their unreality-based belief system. Rather than being directly ordered to use
them, you may have passively accepted their introduction to you through
television, or through the language of friends, family and neighbors. To find out if this is true, please see the
following examples, and ask yourself if you ever use this terminology, and if
so, why:
"women's
groups" -- This designation treats a tiny, shrill, hateful
smattering of impossible-to-please people as if they represented 51 percent of
the population. A handful of screeching
feminists who obsess over female genitalia and compare the family unit to
slavery is not a women's group. When
Ashley Judd stands at a podium and graphically discusses menstruation, railing
against it as if it were the result of a policy imposed on her by some
dastardly Republican, she speaks for practically nobody. Yet far too many otherwise sensible people,
both men and women, have passively agreed to refer to the purveyors of such
lunacy as women's groups.
"misgendered"
-- In order to enforce the bogus concept of gender as a social construct,
liberals have deliberately concocted a misnomer, designed to pressure people
into saying what they plainly know to be false.
In this new, narcissistic era of ours, in which people "have preferred pronouns,"
referring to a person with actual, applicable pronouns (e.g., referring to a
man as "he"), instead of that person's preferred pronouns, is called
"misgendering," and treated as an offense akin to racism. Of course, it is the man who prefers feminine
pronouns who is misgendering. The
alleged offender is merely making proper use of the English language.
"biological sex" or "biological gender"
-- Is a person's sex determined in any way other than biologically? Of course not, so why qualify it? One of the ways in which liberal linguists
create chaos is to turn actuality into a mere subcategory of itself. To refer to one's sex as one's "biological
sex" is a tacit endorsement of the presumption that there must be some other
kind. One must wonder, based on the
success of this tactic, and the growing movement to normalize pedophilia, whether
the introduction of the phrase "biological age" can be far off.
"traditional
marriage" -- Just as in the previous example, the truth has
become but one among multiple options.
The institution of marriage was founded on the understanding that a man
and a woman have different, complementary characteristics, such that each needs
the other in order to be made whole.
However else one might characterize a relationship that does not fit
this definition, it cannot be a marriage.
Nevertheless, our society has started calling it
one, thanks in no small
part to lots of people who surely know better saying, "I'm for traditional
marriage." Since the use of this phrase
already concedes that other forms of marriage exist, who cares whether the
speaker is in favor of them? The truth
is thus mischaracterized as one person's intolerant opinion.
"migrants"
-- perhaps because it's less obnoxious than "undocumented immigrants," this term
seems to have been settled on as if it were some kind of compromise. It's not.
The word "migrant" does not typically refer to illegals, which is why it
is used to obscure the illegality of their presence in our country. Most commonly, the word "migrant" doesn't
even mean someone seeking residence in another country, but instead refers to
someone who moves on a seasonal basis to find work, such as picking apples or
working on a fishing boat. The use of
such a benign word to describe people who have broken the law by sneaking into
our country or overstaying their visas rather misses the point. Still, the accurate and legally correct term
"illegal aliens" seems so provocative.
"assault weapons"
-- Liberals use this term not so much to describe certain types of guns as to
slander the people who own them. As
Shane said, a gun is a tool, as good or as bad as the man using it. Labeling them "assault weapons" instead
assumes a sinister motive on the part of the user that is absent in the vast
majority of cases. In spite of the
intentional inaccuracy of the phrase, it is now commonly used by well-meaning
people as if it and the word "rifles" were interchangeable.
"abortion rights"
-- Advocates of abortion tend to deal with the indefensibility of the act by burying
it under a steaming heap of euphemism.
When use of the a-word becomes unavoidable, though, they divert
attention from its meaning by turning it into an adjective. Not only does this change the subject of the
conversation from abortion to "rights" (and who could oppose those?), but it
short-circuits the whole debate about whether such rights exist, and instead
just assumes that they do. The entire
point of this nomenclature is to spare the pro-abortion side from having to
deal with the reality of the issue, but for some reason, conservatives can't
seem to resist saying things like, "The Supreme Court has decided to take up
the issue of abortion rights." For the
literal sake of humanity, why would anybody who opposes abortion rhetorically
presume the existence of a right to it?
"homophobic"
-- This incorrectly constructed word is sometimes applied to people who are
irrationally hostile toward gays and lesbians, but is more often used to smear
anybody who disapproves of the gay lifestyle and/or political agenda. A phobia is an irrational fear, but "homo"
means "man," so if such thing as homophobia exists, it must be an irrational
fear of man. This may apply to
environmentalists who view nature and humanity as being irreconcilably at odds
with each other, but it does not describe somebody who thinks the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 has nothing to do with sexual orientation.
"global climate" or simply "The Climate" --
How
would you characterize the climate of the earth? You probably wouldn't bother trying, because
there is no such thing. By definition, "climate"
is a regional set of characteristics.
The idea of a singular climate that encompasses everything renders the
word meaningless. The Sahara Desert, the
Himalayas and the Amazon basin do not share a climate. The idea of a global climate makes about as
much sense as a global ZIP code, but the concept had to be invented in order to
make everything everybody does the business of the "international community." Or, as Barack Obama put it, "We can't drive
our SUVs and eat as much as we want, and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times
... and then just expect that every other country is going to say OK." Bet you didn't think your personal living habits
were the business of every other country, but they will be, once the
self-appointed saviors of the nonexistent global climate have gotten their
way. So what's the big deal? All they want is to impose a global system of
wealth redistribution, abolish the whole concept of property rights, diminish
the production of energy and food so that the citizens of prosperous Western
nations are forced into lives of deprivation, and generally continue to wage
all-out war on the human individual.
What could be the harm in playing along?
One thing that's for sure, however, is that we can be
counted on to stand up to those daffy collegiate liberals and their speech
codes. When watching college football
games, we even use the word "freshman" without giving it a second thought.
Guess we showed them.
The Shinbone: The
Frontier of the Free Press