Weblog notes exclusionary language in blogs

Christian Crumlish

A weblog called des femmes is taking writers (usually men) to task for using language, particularly vulgar language related to female body parts, in their blog entries, a practice that she notes tends to discourage some readers (particularly women) from participating in the conversation.

In Pleasantly ignorant, she objects to Joshua Micah Marshall's use of "bitch-slap" in a recent blog entry and to his characterization of any complaint about his word choice as political correctness.

The author of des femmes also wonders rhetorically where the idea of PC came from. It actually emerged as a humorous idea among leftists, as a form of self-mockery describing the type of extreme language policing that sometimes went to absurb degrees in the 1970s and '80s, especially in left-wing academic environments.

The term was later adopted by the right and liberatrians and used as a bludgeon against any calls for sensitivity and the use of inclusive language.

(To be fair, some of the language codes adopted by universities in the '80s and '90s seemed to me to err too far on the side of restricting speech, but that's just my own biases speaking, I suppose.)

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