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[Montague]

So, I want to probe the seriousness of political correctness here.

Where I'm from, people call ravens 'dumpster chickens' as they are large, scavenging birds and whatnot. The traditional religion with some of the Alaskan Natives teaches that ravens are reincarnated ancestors and should be treated with respect as such.

So, is 'dumpster chicken' calling an animal by an unflattering slang term an unacceptible offensive racist pejorative term because some people might potentially find it offensive?

Should we include laws and restrictions governing what animals, geographical features and whatever else and insist any labelling of them be politically correct as well?

[GlyphGryph]

No, but if someone explains they have a problem with our use of the word, we should make an effort not to use it around them - nothing more, nothing less.

(And that obviously shouldn't be required legally, something NO ONE here has supported - it's just the non-dick move. We all have the freedom to make dick moves, but that doesn't mean they aren't dick moves. And in this, it''s not really terrible as far as dick moves go even)

[kaijyuu]

I doubt anyone would advocate laws for anything falling under "political correctness," barring what can be shown on TV/etc (which, by the way, I'm against the censorship of).


For your particular example, of course it's not racist, but certainly could be offensive. You're not insulting them through ethnicity, but religion. It'd be like going to India and eating a hamburger.

I am assuming they care about ravens that much; beats me if they actually do.



In terms of "seriousness," the majority of political correctness (for word choice, anyway) is aimed at stopping people from being insensitive jerks. You don't make laws stopping people from being douchebags (well not often anyway), so it's not that level of "serious." Not like anti-discrimination laws, which aim to stop people from doing more heinous stuff than say mean things.

[G-Flex]

So, I want to probe the seriousness of political correctness here.

Where I'm from, people call ravens 'dumpster chickens' as they are large, scavenging birds and whatnot. The traditional religion with some of the Alaskan Natives teaches that ravens are reincarnated ancestors and should be treated with respect as such.

So, is 'dumpster chicken' calling an animal by an unflattering slang term an unacceptible offensive racist pejorative term because some people might potentially find it offensive?

Should we include laws and restrictions governing what animals, geographical features and whatever else and insist any labelling of them be politically correct as well?

Thank you for at least phrasing your ridiculous, condescending straw-man argument in the form of a question.

However: I would say that it's probably insensitive to call an animal by a pejorative name around people who strongly believe that those animals are reincarnated ancestors or what-have-you. That doesn't mean that, in a general sense, calling ravens "dumpster chickens" is at all racially or religiously offensive. It depends on context.

And no, nobody is going to try arguing for legislation to prevent ever saying anything that someone, somewhere, might hypothetically find offensive. That is absurd, and if you think anyone here was ever arguing anything even remotely similar to that, then a severe amount of misinterpretation has been going on.

[GlyphGryph]

http://edge.org/conversation/adventures_behavioral_neurology

Basic gist: Some people want to have their limbs removed. This is often because the limb they want removed is, quite literally, missing from some part of their brain map. Somehow, really early on, something went wrong.

This idea - that your brainmap vision doesn't match your physical body - should probably be familiar the trans people reading this thread. It is further evidence that the literal physical and functional structure of the brain can create a strong brain/body mismatch - that it is physiological, not psychological, and that any one of us, if that part of our brain was tweaked, would feel the same way.

What should we do about it, though? Should we amputate the arm, as the patient desires? Attempt, somehow, to fix the brain instead?

[Criptfeind]

Certainly at our current technology level we should amputate.

[GlyphGryph]

Mind you, plenty of other interesting stuff in that article too. It's really great.

[G-Flex]

This idea - that your brainmap vision doesn't match your physical body - should probably be familiar the trans people reading this thread. It is further evidence that the literal physical and functional structure of the brain can create a strong brain/body mismatch - that it is physiological, not psychological, and that any one of us, if that part of our brain was tweaked, would feel the same way.

It's even more plausible when it comes to sexual organs, too, as those are actually differentiated between us. It's easier to see how a differentiation process can go wrong than to see an entire limb (which we all share) missing from the neural map (or whatever you want to call it), yet obviously the latter happens, so people should at least find the former plausible as well.

What should we do about it, though? Should we amputate the arm, as the patient desires? Attempt, somehow, to fix the brain instead?

If amputation will significantly improve the quality of their life, I think that's what should be done. Certainly, fixing the brain would be nice, but it's not as if we can at this point.

[Levi]

If amputation will significantly improve the quality of their life, I think that's what should be done. Certainly, fixing the brain would be nice, but it's not as if we can at this point.

They might not even want their brain to be "fixed" if it could be.  It makes things kind of interesting when someone WANTS something that most other people feel is a disability.

[Vector]

The GOP is not crazy.

This should be like required reading or something.  Seriously.


Gamers, harassment, female Bioware writer, entitlement, etc.

[Montague]

There are people that intentionally want to be infected with AIDS. "bug chasers" I'm not sure how ethical this behavior is, when so many people are working to stop the spread of the disease.

In this amputation case, I'm not sure how ethical it is to accommodate somebody who wants a nominally functional limb amputated. Would they be happier with a prosthetic when they feel their natural arm is basically a foreign object to them anyways?

[Vector]

"Bug chasing" is because you're so tired of the weight of AIDS hanging over your head that you just want the constant fear of catching it to be over with.  It's entirely unrelated to the amputee problem, and will probably disappear as the disease itself begins to vanish.

AIDS is a pretty recent thing, you know.  I don't expect this to last a super-long time.

[MadocComadrin]

That sounds like an anxiety disorder, and thus it would be unethical to allow them to "bug chase."

@The GOP is not crazy: riiiiiiiight, because every anti-abortion believer out there is a sexist pig who believes women should only be making babies and acting as eye candy. Pfff.

[kaenneth]

http://www.cracked.com/blog/4-reasons-humans-will-never-understand-each-other/

/love

From an article linked to by that one...

 Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/article_18821_5-examples-americans-thinking-foreign-people-are-magic.html#ixzz1n8ssNdFW

"But bring the superstition from a foreign culture, and suddenly you are in business. You can apparently still convince a shockingly large portion of the population that you can see the future if you're doing it with Tarot cards. They come from the gypsies after all. Of course, these same people would slap you if you offered to tell their fortune from a standard card deck."

 

[Montague]

"Bug chasing" is because you're so tired of the weight of AIDS hanging over your head that you just want the constant fear of catching it to be over with.  It's entirely unrelated to the amputee problem, and will probably disappear as the disease itself begins to vanish.

AIDS is a pretty recent thing, you know.  I don't expect this to last a super-long time.

The motives are different, but the consequences are similar. Catching a fatal (or at least expensive) disease or having an arm amputated are things most would strive to avoid. Yet some people are desperately trying to do just that.

It's a medical ethnics problem, at least. Is it ethical to allow or abide a patient that wants to do harm to themselves, regardless of the patient's reasoning for it?