I was small in elementary school. I was short and lanky and younger than most of the kids in my class, and they called me Mouse. At the time, it was one of the harshest insults they could have inflicted. My classmates would sit on top of the monkey bars that I was too short to reach, and they would point out my smallness and laugh. I remember running up to the yard duty crying, and in a sing-song voice she told me, “Sticks and stones can break your bones, but words can never hurt you.”
It’s a mantra that most of us have heard at some point in our lives. At some point in our lives, most of us also realize that it is utter bull. Words hurt, and they often leave marks that last far longer than scraped knees and skin-deep scars. And as we grow, the words only get worse.
It hurt when my peers called me Mouse on the playground.
It hurt when my father hung up a phone and had to tell me that my grandmother was dead.
It hurt when a stranger in high school called my body disgusting to soothe his girlfriend’s wounded ego.
It hurt being told to kill myself. Every time.
I frequently see posts on social media about how people these days are too sensitive, how everyone is just too politically correct. I’ve even seen people say that they like a particular presidential candidate because he “speaks his mind” and “tells it like it is.”
Sticks and stones, right?
Except for the fact that the words you choose to say don’t exist in a vacuum. Words have weight, and when you put something out into the world those words can impact others on an incredibly intimate level. The words you choose to say also say a lot about you. It can be hard to break habits that you’ve had for years—I know. I myself have been guilty of using harmful language out of ignorance, but let me assure you that the effort it takes you to purge a word or a phrase from your vocabulary is far less of a burden than that of having to hear such language directed toward you every day. Does it harm you to stop using the word “gay” to mean “stupid?” Does it inhibit your ability to communicate with others? Does it hurt you to be asked not to drop racial slurs in casual conversation? Does it hurt you to respect someone’s preferred gender pronouns? Because failing to do so hurts others. It can hurt a lot.
Then there are those who argue that the focus on political correctness in conversational rhetoric distracts from “serious” issues that are going on in the world today. Issues like what? Issues like the marginalization of racial and ethnic minorities, to which people contribute through the usage of slurs and cultural appropriation? Or maybe you mean the violence that continues to disproportionately affect trans* individuals, who are frequently disrespected in the mainstream media through dead-naming and misgendering. Or maybe you mean issues such as foreign affairs, which largely rely on open and respectful international communications that are sensitive to cultural differences.
So when you ask me why I’m so PC, what I understand you to be asking is why I’m so concerned with respecting the basic right of others to exist happily in their own skin, in their own country, in their own culture. When you ask me why I’m so PC, my question is: Why aren’t you?
