Re: Provocation? Damn straight.

["Cheverie, Paul [Cont]" <paul -dot- cheverie -at- CANADA -dot- CDEV -dot- COM>]

Matt,
     The responses you've received you should have expected and made
allowances for. Even if slightly off-color remarks are made inside any group
of people is bound to touch a few sensitive nerves, especially where issues
of race, gender, religious beliefs or political ideologies are concerned.
     Unfortunately, because of the fascination with political correctness,
this isn't the place to use jokes or off-color phrases - people here for the
most part, probably don't know you personally and someone will  take what
you say the wrong way.
     If, on the other hand, you made your statement precisely to be
publically provocative, well, you got what you asked for and sympathy lies
between @$#% and syphilis in the dictionary and that's the place to find it
if you're looking.

Paul
paul -dot- cheverie -at- canada -dot- com
 ----------
From: TECHWR-L
To: Multiple recipients of list TECHWR-L
Subject: Provocation?  Damn straight.
Date: Thursday, June 29, 1995 11:35AM

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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