Several fellow students (all of them women) in my writing class have left perfectly polite comments on my last two homework assignments. I have decided that I am going to go get the town crier all over them.

The comments:

At the beginning of chapter 3, Jack gives Regina the order to depart Arcas spaceport with the command "Miss Burke, take us up." Three women in the class seemed to take exception to this. One circled "Miss" and wrote "Pilot"; one wrote "Ms."; and a third circled "Miss" and left the note "Wouldn't she have a title with more dignity?"

In the next week's homework assignment, Regina referred to herself as "the new gal" aboard the ship. One of the women circled it and wrote "Women don't like this word" and gave several alternatives, such as "girl", "pilot", "crew member", "mate".

Really? Women don't like that word? You are speaking for all women? Then why do I hear my grandmother use it so often? Are you contending that she is not a woman?

Concerning the implication that "miss" is a title without dignity, this one single sentence demonstrates and proves with one single breath the heinous thing, and my biggest gripe, with political correctness: political correctness seeks not to avoid offending, but rather to find offense where none is intended or, even more likely, even present.

Does anyone argue that when Jack refers to Regina as "miss", he is doing it specifically to degrade her, or demean her? (He is quite capable of  doing this in other ways.) Would you argue that if I held a door for a young lady and said "let me get that for you, miss," that I am purposely and actively, with malice aforethought, trying to show my superiority over her, lower her dignity, take away her right to vote, and chain her to the kitchen?

Please. Be surd. (absurd : surd :: incest : cest)

The "best" argument I have heard against the titles of miss and mrs. is that these titles "chain a woman's identity to her marital status, and thus make her a slave of her husband" which is logic on par with "if a woman weighs the same as a duck, she's made of wood and thus a witch." This betrays what John Wright so expertly points out about those who follow the Religion of PC: "They think (or rather, they feel) that when they are calling one thing by another name, that the actual nature of reality changes. They put themselves in a position where they can no longer talk about real things. Words are severed from referents."

He is, of course and as always, right. Those who worship at the altar of PC, and also those in the left wing (usually the same crowd) believe in the magic of language relativity: that is, by changing the way we refer to something we can change the nature of the thing itself. This seems to me to be closely associated with moral relativism: the belief that we can change morality by wishing it away. What is wrong for you or for another is not wrong for me because I don't want it to be. We see this in other aspects of life, too: if we call a "baby" a "fetus", it is no longer human, and can be killed; if we refer to people as having "gender" instead of "sex", then by changing their gender, they can change the fundamental nature of themselves. News flash: if I name my cat "rover", refer to her as "the dog", and feed her dog biscuits, she still won't bark. Sex is a biological and supernatural reality. Changing how we refer to it won't change its nature.

The reality of miss and mrs. seems to me to be far more innocuous. In a society where men purse and women allure, one would expect simple and obvious social cues that would indicate to the pursuer if the allurer is available to be pursued. Titles are one aspect of this, as are rings (hence, a woman wearing an engagement ring; I think of a man's wedding ring more as a reminder to himself than as a signal to other women). Were we to live in a society that operated in the opposite fashion, where women sought out a mate, bought him dinner, escorted him to the opera, and took him home and kissed him goodnight on his porch, I would expect the titles to be reversed.

But the PCists, of course, are chained to their idea of language driving nature; thus if we call an unmarried woman "miss" and a married woman "mrs.", we are saying that her nature changes when she gets married. Since they feel this is offensive (and I have never heard a good explanation for how it is offensive, probably in no small part because they feel rather than think it is offensive) they think (or rather, feel) that by changing a woman's title to the generic "ms.", we have somehow altered her nature and the nature of marriage.

As mentioned before, one of the primary aspects of political correctness is how it assumes offense where none exists. To refer to a married woman by a different title as an unmarried woman seems reasonable to the normal, rational person. In fact, these are the terms that were used for decades, if not centuries, and no offense was meant or taken. But then one day (and that is probably quite literal) some follower of the dogma of PC decided that words that had no offense attached to them before suddenly were offensive and that they had to be changed. Granted, language changes, but suddenly deciding that words have new meaning never before intended is not the sort of gradual change as "chuse" changing to "choose". Other examples of this include suddenly deciding that using the pronoun "he" to refer to groups of mixed sex is offensive, where it never was before, and that the term "secretary" to refer to those with a secretarial job, is offensive. (I once asked a PCist why it was that "secretary" was demeaning to women. She explained that it was because it harkened to a time when women were only allowed three careers: secretary, teacher, and nurse. She did not explain why "teacher" and "nurse" were still allowable. (This is one reason I'm Catholic and not PC; the rules are far more intuitive and easier to understand.))

Another aspect of Political Correctness is that it only seeks to find offense directed a certain groups that are mascots of the left. Surely, the PCists object to "offenses" against blacks, American Indians, women, homosexuals, and other "protected" groups. I have never heard one so much as flinch at offenses directed at Irishmen, men, Catholics, or evangelical Christians. Somehow, Muslims have weasled themselves onto the "protected" list, which means those outside the Church of PC get to watch, with wonderful bemusement, how those in the PC Church "protect" from offense those who are probably the least PC, and indeed viciously hate some of the other protected groups. (For instance, my writing instructor mentioned, perhaps in a doubt of the faith, that she was having a hard time accepting the PC dogma that fundamentalist Islamic societies had a "right" to horribly abuse their women. I remain blissfully outside of PCism, so I can answer as any sane man should: no such right exists and we can kill the bastards for doing such.)

If you want evidence of how imbalanced the double-standard for offensive speech is, look no further than the NCAA. Remember a few years ago when, out of sensitivity to "Native Americans" they tried to outlaw all schools with American Indian mascots? (They apparantly had a very selective use of "Native American"; I am a native to America too, but they didn't outlaw any team called "the Josephs". However, since no team with that name exists, perhaps they thought it a non-issue. I will give them the benifit of the doubt, and assume that they would have.) This, of course, was a monumental search for offense, such that they must have been using NASA's Spitzer space telescope to find it, as they clearly ignored the fact that many colleges with American Indian mascots do so with the approval and blessing of the tribe! One thing I found particularly interesting was that the University of Illinois Fighting Illini were to be banned, because "Fighting Illini" is offensive. However, there never was any mention of banning the University of Notre Dame Fighting Irish. How, exactly, is "Fighting Illini" racially insensitive and "Fighting Irish" is not? Are you going to argue that the Irish have not been oppressed? Are you going to argue that it is politically correct to portray Irishmen as drunken, brawling, leprechauns, but incorrect to portray American Indians as tomahawk-wielding warriors with feathered headdresses? Now we must play a game of measuring relativism, and explain why one offense is more offensive than the other.

So it is because of political correctness that society jumps at imagined shadows of offense, but only those shadows cast from a certain angle and from certain objects, that you have to turn your head sideways and squint to see, but then it just looks like a bunny. It is because of political correctness that I can't say "miss", but no politically correct person would bat an eyelash over the term "hocus pocus", with all its associated anti-Catholic bigotry. (For those not in the know, "hocus pocus", originally, was a mockery of the Latin words of consecration: "Hoc est enim corpus meum" or "This is my body", the climax of the Mass, and that sacred moment when a host of unleavened bread is turned into the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ. I, personally, do not take offense to "hocus pocus", because I know that no one today uses it to offend Catholics, and probably no one who is not Catholic even knows where the term comes from. I would not stoop to correct someone who uses such a term in ignorance.)  It is because of political correctness that I can't refer to a secretary as a secretary, but the followers of PC can—and do—take Our Lord's name in vain, without so much as a worry or care to whether or not they offend me (and I do take great offense to that). I am not in a protected group; I am not worthy of avoiding offense towards. (In fact, someone once argued on this very blog that it is allowable to insult and offend white Christians because they have it coming.) But if those followers of PC don't care if they offend me, on what grounds do they argue that I should not offend them?

Since I can't think of a witty or snappy end to this article, I will let the inestimable John Wright do it for me, even though I think I am over my allocated "John Wright quote or link" quota by quite a lot this month:

Quoted for Truth:

The rudest society imaginable is one where everyone is hyper-sensitive, thin-skinned, and willing to see insults where none are intended, and, most of all, a society were everyone demands, as a matter of right, as a matter of entitlement, that no one cross or offend his ultra-fine nerves, which have been sandpapered to the most exquisite pitch of sensitivity. The professional crybabies have been given a trump card that wins every hand and always collects the kitty. So, we get more crybabies. Dignity, adieu: rudeness, hail! Hail, horrors!