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Indeed earlier, Haus, I myself used the phrase "PC Hell" and you yourself later accused me of seeing PC as a "monad"; both of which suggest that PC can be seen as an independent force of some kind -- which is one of the reasons why I said I personally didn't want to be side-tracked by such considerations and suggested they would be more relevant to the Temple. But again, I've typed enough and I REALLY don't want to get side-tracked.
Fair enough. Hooever, I think you might want to look at possible definitions both of "entity" and "monad". Compare, for example, the World Trade Organisation with feminism. The World Trade Organisation can, I think, be described as an entity without that having any implications in a Temple-esque fashion. More on this later
However, I distinctly remember her often coming home upset and annoyed that some of her smaller-minded colleagues had virtually and wrongly accused her of implementing a "PC Hell", when she clearly wasn't. Indeed, in fact she was (thankfully) implementing new policy dictated by both the changing times AND the Law which would make working life better for ALL concerned-- for the record, the only difference (as far as I can see) between her colleagues comments with my post in the Greenpeace Viral Ad thread are the intent and (therefore) the context with which we used the phrase, "PC Hell".
OK. Let's take a look at this. Your mother's colleagues accused her of creating a "PC Hell". You, in the examples you gave of "PC Hell", also accused somebody of creating a "PC Hell". However, the actions of those who accused your mother were wrong - both incorrect and undesirable - whereas your actions and the actions of your friends were right - correct and desirable - and advanced the cause of free speech.
Now, what was the distinguishing characteristic here? In one case, your mother's, the changes in behaviour she was demanding were apparently mandated by law to some extent, and thus one could say that this was a necessary application of legal compliance in the workplace rather than personal choice. However, we have already established that you believe all censorship, by which term you have previously identified any action that contradicts or seeks to prevent somebody else's freedom of expression, is wrong, and therefore presumably that the law is wrong in any case where it does this. Also, the issue was not purely one of legal compliance, since the policy was also dictated by "the changing times" - that is, there was a social component that was applied essentially due to the personnel department's feelings (based on a number of inputs) on what was acceptable behaviour.
Now, to return to your example: let us assume for a moment that the person who did not laugh at your friend's joke was not doing so because she wanted him to feel bad, or because she simply enjoyed "censoring/silencing/slating" somebody, or because she had simply (best case scenario) misunderstood what was and was not acceptable. This third option seems to be supported by your subsequent revelation that she apologised for her hasty words, but it seems odd in that case that she was creating a PC Hell rather than simply making a factual error . In any case, this led to your (correct) judgement that she had created a PC Hell, thus:
It is the use of something which was supposed to force us to address the language we have inherited through years of bigotry, fear, and ignorance, in such a way that it accuses innocent people of moral and often linguistic crimes they haven't committed, and / or forcibly silences people (which is never a good thing).
Likewise, if we go back to Greenpeace, your contention was that questioning whether the advert harmed its cause by appearing to present a picture of the relationship between Blair and Bush as homosexual and by extension play on negative associations people may have regarding homosexual sex was creating another PCH:
I think my gut feeling is that while the ad may contribute in a minor way to such negative stereotypes, we may be dangerously close to PC Hell on this one..
That is, it seems, that the analysis was, again:
the use of something which was supposed to force us to address the language we have inherited through years of bigotry, fear, and ignorance, in such a way that it accuses innocent people of moral and often linguistic crimes they haven't committed, and / or forcibly silences people (which is never a good thing).
We have yet to understand exactly how raising the question of whether the advert is less effective or less successful because of its confused representation of the sexualities of Blair and Bush is "silencing", which is a problem that we keep coming up against in your conception of PC Hell, and which I don't think you have been able satisfactorily to clarify yet. vide:
I'm still struggling to understand why the suggestion that something may have homophobic undertones is silencing debate, rather than extending it. If somebody feels at that point that they are unable to discuss this analysis, is that, to return to m's point, the fault of the analyst? I think this may be the result of a misunderstanding - you are responding to the question:
why is it "politically correct" (Hell - ed) to silence Hitler jokes, but not "politically correct" (Hell - ed) to silence reactions to Hitler jokes?
As if it were asking "why do you (Paranoidwriter) try to silence us (people on Barbelith)"? It is not this question - AFAICT, the only person who has suggested that Barbelith User A is attempting to silence Barbelith User B is yourself, when you described what was happening in the Greenpeace thread as "a form of censorship". In fact, the question is asking, specifically, why freedom of speech extends to your friend's right to make the funny, but does not extend to the third party's right to query its use, in the same way, in fact, that the Greenpeace ad is free speech, but questioning its message is slating/deafening/silencing/censorship.
So, let's recap briefly. You believe that a series of actions and behaviours can be identified as Politically Correct in a good way - these being the sort of actions and behaviours underpinning your mother's actions in creating a more socially just workplace. Fair enough. However, you also believe that such a thing as a "PC Hell" exists, which is created where the socially just aims of Political Correctness are perverted in a malicious attempt to silence people who are already behaving in a perfectly acceptable way - for example, by invoking homophobia in a critique of a non-homophobic advertisement, or who criticise somebody who has made a perfectly inoffensive remark about Hitler as if they had made an offensive remark about Hitler.
Unfortunately - and I'll come back to this in a moment with the "PC-as-entity" question which I touched on at the start of this post - there is no actual gold standard on what in this model separates Political Correctness (good force for social justice) and the creation of PC Hell (bad force for suppression and censorship), and thus we rely on intent and, specifically, on one's perception of intent.
Quick diversion: I think there's a logical fallacy in your statement:
for the record, the only difference (as far as I can see) between her colleagues comments with my post in the Greenpeace Viral Ad thread are the intent and (therefore) the context with which we used the phrase, "PC Hell".
Intent does not change context, so the "therefore" relationship is off. Context changes and one of the elements within that change of context may be intent (or perception of intent).
Anyway, back to our examples. In the absence of a gold standard to distinguish Political Correctness (it is not purely legal compliance, for example, although there is a suggestion that it has to be of benefit to everybody - minority or no - before it is PC) and creation of PCH, we break down more like this:
When someone accuses my mother of creating a PCH (bad), they are wrong. What she is doing is political correctness (good).
When someone criticises my friend for not showing sufficient Political Correctness (good), they are wrong, and are in fact creating a PCH (bad).
When a portrayal of the relationship between Bush and Blair which I found amusing is accused of treating issues of sexuality without the required levels of Political Correctness (good), they are in fact in danger of creating a PCH (bad).
Now, one noteworthy thing about these three examples is that in each one it breaks exactly as you would expect it to you - that binary exonerates your mother, your friend and yourself. I'd like to keep this in the back of our minds when we consider how useful a distinction based purely on analysis of intent is. For my money, a far more complex and interesting approach comes in Devanfeld's response to your approach to a homophobic cab driver:
Because, you know, when a taxi driver says something homophobic to me, I have to decide whether to sit quiet and go through twenty-four hours of self-hatred (oh you are so cowardly and you have betrayed your brothers and sisters and non-gender-specific siblings), or to come out to him and risk being subjected to more abuse. To you, it seems, homophobia and bigotry are a teaching tool - either for you to learn about bigotry through discussion with bigots, or for you to teach anti-homophobic attitudes to homophobes. To some of us, though, they are a direct threat against our physical and mental integrity - in more or less direct or indirect ways, against our survival. And I'm sorry, but I don't really mind "silencing" the (fifty-year-old Guardian-reading) woman who hit me on a train for hugging my girlfriend in front of a child. I don't mind if she doesn't feel able to express the fact that I - whom she knows nothing about - should not be allowed to be around children, because my sexuality will harm them. I also don't mind if the person driving me from Point A to Point B doesn't feel able to express the opinion that I shouldn't be allowed to exist.
That is, the conditions that to you are a PCH (bad) are to other people, applying your standards, an instantiation of a successful protection put in place by PC (good) - they are benefited, even if the taxi driver feels that they have been censored. This may be about comparative benefits, or it may be about how a choice made due to a perception of Political Correctness is still a choice.
On t'other hand, none of the people we have seen so far here have been talking particularly in terms of political correctness as a force which lays down behaviours which are and are not acceptable - I don't know whether your mother came home of an evening complaining that her workplace was resisting becoming more politically correct (rather than, say, legally compliant or even socially equal), That, I think, is also worth noting. Of course, as Nina says, just because the term Political Correctness is used almost exclusively as a pejorative term, it neither means necessarily that it was conceived as a pejorative term or that its use as a pejorative term should go unchallenged (although whether it can be either claimed or reclaimed by those seeking social equality and justice as we perceive it is another question), but I would say that your suggestion that:
The phrase "PC" refers to a very practical and continuing social exercise
is at odds with the way the term is actually and generally used. I think you will struggle to find a single usage of the term "political correctness" in the mass media to support this - back to the question of how often you get a newspaper praising an act or law as being a great example of political correctness gone stone-bonking sane. As it happens, I was incorrect in my early assumption that "PC Hell", as you employ it, was a form of rather than an antithesis against "Political Correctness" (the latter being good and the former bad) - but I think this dichotomy has significant problems, as I hope to explain below.
Righty. That brings us neatly back to:
To believe and / or state, therefore (if indeed anybody actually does) that PC is merely some kind of fictional "monad", is (IHMO) patently untrue, misguided and distracting.
"Monad", here, means a single and unitary entity, and "entity" means "thing having real or distinct existence" - which is why, incidentally, the Temple should not need to be brought in. The table I am writing on is an entity, as is the computer I am typing this message into. To see what this may mean for us, I would pop back to your earlier statement:
Therefore (although as I've firmly stated before this phrase is a very emotive one), surely PC is understood and used by many parties to express pretty much the same set of ideas, the only difference being how each party frames it?
I'd say that the answer to that is pretty clearly "no", but to provide a bit more on that, we can look at:
I feel I should also type that, much the same as The Media, "The powers that be", and other phrases, the label and meaning of PC can be seen (rightly or wrongly) to be a kind of ephemeral force.
I'm not sure what "ephemeral" is intended to mean here, so I'll leave it aside, if you don't mind. Let's take a look at the Media or the "Powers that Be", and see how those terms may differ from "Political Correctness". Most obviously, they can both be seen pretty clearly to signify collections of individuals and organisations. If I ask you to tell me what makes up "the Media", for example, you could say newspapers, television, radio, Internet news agencies. At the next level of detail down, you could identify the BBC, ITV, CNN, Fox News. Next level down, Alan Yentob, Rupert Murdoch, and so on. In the same way, although one might disagree on what specifically constitutes the Powers that Be, one can with some confidence assume that such a list might include the Government and the Police, and further down Tony and Sir Ian Blair, for example. I don't think you can do the same with "Political Correctness". No organisation, to my knowledge, identifies itself as being a part of Political Correctness, nor is there any sense of who might be described as having their first loyalty to Political Correctness, as you understand it (cf feminism or civil liberties). The best we have is "the PC Brigades/PC Police", who, and this is quite important are not actual _organisations_ in the way the the Army brigades or the Metropolitan Police are.
So, I don't think that Political Correctness can be identified as a numinous but immanent group like the Media or the Powers that Be. What you are using the term to signify - which is as far as I can tell something along the lines of "a motive force in the individual and society as a whole which is supplemented by but not composed of legislation and the activities of civil rights groups and other organisations which seeks to apply in practise fair language and legislation in order to benefit both minorities and the disadvantaged within society and those within society who are neither minorities nor disadvantaged" - is more in the nature of a social construct like "social justice" or "equal opportunities". However, whereas there are various organisations and individuals who express a commitment to achieving both of those, I am again drawing a blank on any significant movement, grass-roots or institutional, which identifies itself as dedicated to the successful advancement of Political Correctness.
So, to give my personal response to your closing question - yes, context plays a very large part in how one uses the terms "PC" and "Political Correctness/Politically Correct". However, the contexts in which it is generally used do not, for my money, support the idea that there is a common distinction between Political Correctness (concerned with justice and fairness - good) and perversions of the idea or process of Political Correctness such as "PC Hell" (concerned with censorship and repression - bad). Rather, actions, statements and behaviours can be identified as within or without the understanding of individuals of what constitutes an acceptable action, statement or behaviour, and the concept of Political Correctness and Political Incorrectness can be used as part of the vocabulary by which the process of acceptance and rejection can be understood and explained.
So, to go back to your friend and Hitler: the reading of a passing Daily Mail reader be that your friend was being politically incorrect (i.e. defending his right to freedom of speech by refusing vocally to bow to the censorship of the PC brigades), and that the person who challenged him was being Politically Correct (i.e, applying an unreasonable standard of political sensitivity in order to stifle freedom of expression, either because of the sincere application of a lunatic ideology or for dishonest purposes in order to feel self-righteous or generate conflict). Your reading, as I understand it, was that your friend's joke was not politically incorrect, but rather within the standards demanded by political correctness (a practical and continuing social etc), and the reaction was applying an unreasonable standard of political sensitivity in order to stifle freedom of expression, either because of the sincere application of a lunatic ideology or for dishonest purposes in order to feel self-righteous or generate conflict - that is, that it was "creating a PC Hell", terminologically. This phrase, then, means much the same to you as "politically correct" does to our hypothetical Daily Mail reader.
I think this may have a bearing on your belief that context is key. I'd suggest that you are conflating context, reception and description - the same context there is being interpreted in two different ways. Both ways, as it happens, are actually describing the reaction to your friend's Hitler gag in the same way, but are applying different terminologies to that reading.
So, to the question:
to call the practical application of fair language and legislature "Politically Correct" is not necessarily a bad thing per se, is it? Indeed, as I keep typing, surely it's about context,.... isn't it?
I think it's become pretty clear (and I recommend Deva's excellent post above on how and why this may be becoming the case) that "it's about context" is an accountant's answer - correct but not in itself useful. There's a contradiction in the phrasing of these questions, however - the qualification per se excludes context, and I'd suggest that "necessarily" does something similar. Stripped down to:
to call the practical application of fair language and legislature "Politically Correct" is not a bad thing, is it?
The answer becomes something like it is an attempt to carve out a specific meaning for a phrase that is a location of conflict and indeterminacy, and IMHO it is also problematic, as it simply creates a parallel terminology (PC/PC Hell) that maps to (sensible/PC), and thus allows the continuation of terminological confusion that tends to benefit the opponents of what you might see as the practical application of fair language and legislature (depending, of course, on what you see as fair), rather than challenging the use of their usage of the terminology. Therefore, I personally would suggest that it may well be a bad idea, in particular while using the terminology "PC Hell" as you do to describe a state of affairs that overlaps considerably with the use elsewhere of "PC" and its cousin "PC gone mad".
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