JOHN C. WRIGHT on political correctness, with regard to responses to his series “Saving Science Fiction from Strong Female Characters”:
Much of the surprise was that no one saw fit to argue the point with an actual argument. We seem to have fallen into a stage of society where disagreement with Political Correctness is regarded as an unforgivable moral depravity rather than a error in reasoning open to correction by reason.
This is a symptom not of the strength but of the senility of Political Correctness: it has lost its confidence to win in the marketplace of ideas, so it rules the marketplace to be out of bounds. There seems, however, to be no provision to enforce the ruling, nor any reason to regard the ruling as legitimate.
He elaborates in the comments:
I recall a time in the late 80′s and early 90′s when partisans of Political Correctness would give their reasoning, such as it was, to support their claims, such as, for example, one would say that using ‘he’ rather than ‘he or she’ excluded women and hurt the delicate female feelings of the poor helpless dears.
This was because, or so it was explained to me, women are equal to men in every imaginable way, and needed no special favors from men to protect them: and ergo we needed to change our language as a special favor to them to protect them.
Now they merely assume that this is the standard, and call you a bigot if you question the alleged standard or refuse to obey it.
His mention of “he or she” reminds me of an earlier post of his, “On Political Correctness, or, How To Speak Nonspeak.”