Provocation? Damn straight.

[Matt Ion <mion -at- DIRECT -dot- CA>]

This is prompted by the number of responses I've received to my little comment
to "Skhan -at- wb -dot- com", to wit, "You're so cute when you're in a snit."

Okay, it was deliberate provocation.  No, wait.  Provocation?  Nah.  A
"tweak".

Nobody - NOBODY - that I know in real life, either on a personal or a
professional level, is this uptight about PC crap.  Most of them are irritated
by it as much as I am.

So I wonder, why is it I can't act and talk the same way in here, with other
professionals, as I can in "real life"?  Or are ALL my real-life friends and
business associates just unenlightened boors?  Maybe I'm not meeting the right
kind of people?

I try to participate in subject and threads that are on-topic for this list.
I try to be helpful when I can.  Unfortunately, it seems I can't do so without
someone biting my ankle for being "politically incorrect" - be it
inadvertantly insensitive, to blatant and intentional anything-ism.  Now I
know how a mailman feels going into a yard full of schnauzers.

Okay, so my comment was deliberately intended to smack someone back.  So sue
me.  Considering the constant abuse I keep getting in my inbasket while just
trying to be myself, I think I've been remarkably restrained.

Okay, okay, so I should just wipe ALL adjectives and adverbs from my
vocabulary.  I should write all my postings as completely bland, devoid of any
personality.  That would solve the problem, right?

Sorry.  That's fine when actually writing a technical document, but I really
don't see it being necessary for interacting with collegues on a daily basis.
As has been pointed out so many times before, it becomes impossible for one to
concentrate on the POINT of the whole job when one must spend all one's time
concerned with who's going to be annoyed next.

Other people have their "pretty little heads" and "bright lassies" - these are
phrases that are as often as not regional ("bright lassies" sound SOOOOO
Scottish) and while they may offend your PC 'sensibilities', they may be compl
etely innocuous in the writer's native location.

So it starts to become, not just a matter of one person forcing on another
their ideas of what "politically correct" should be, but their concepts of
what it is coloured by their particular environment or location.  Let's try to
remember, this is a GLOBAL network, and "offensive" in one language may be
common, completely acceptable, or even considered a compliment in another.

So it all becomes pretty pointless anyway.

Personally, I would dearly LOVE to get back to the gist of what this list is
for and not be bothered with this anymore.  Unfortunately, it seems that the
only way I can do that is, as I said, become just another bland,
character-less automaton at the keyboard.  No opinions, no humour, no nothing
for fear someone might not like it.  "Just the facts, ma'am" (no, wait,
"ma'am" is sexist).

So, if anyone has any questions I have a response for, expect direct mail
only.  No more will anyone have to worry about my knowledge or experience
gracing the public airwaves.  No more will I add to discussions of dtp
software, sentence structure, or just WHY it's "i befere e except after c".

Thank you all very much for such a lovely start to my day.  I must now go to
work.

Matt




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