When it was published in 1994, Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, James Finn Garner's hilarious, politically correct send-up of popular fairy tales, remained on the New York Times bestseller list for more than 60 weeks. The tales as we know them were "sexist, discriminatory, unfair, culturally biased," the book's blurb deadpanned. So Garner calls women "womyn", the dwarves in Snow White "vertically-challenged", and retells each of these beloved stories poking devastating fun at the culture of political correctness that had gripped the West. The result is a laugh riot, and you could come away feeling smugly contemptuous of the rash of isms - sexism, ageism, racism - that you must constantly tiptoe around in your speech, writing and response to others.
More than two decades later, the conversation around political correctness and its impact on language and culture has become much more of a minefield. You may laugh at the lengths to which the politically correct (PC) police will go so as not to give offence to anyone, but the fine line between ridiculing the tyranny of political correctness and indulging in traditional prejudices is getting finer by the day.
In July this year, Britain's Boarding Schools' Association directed teachers of member schools to address transgender students as "zie". Apparently, pupils who say they have a fluid gender identity find it offensive to be referred to as a masculine "he" or a feminine "she". In fact, teachers now have to master an alternative pronoun system for alternative sexuality students. For example, him/her would become zir/zem; his/hers would be zir/zes; and himself/herself zirself/zemself.
Needless to say, not all of Britain's boarding school teachers are clapping their hands in glee at the directive, especially since the neologisms sound more Germanic than English. But given the primacy of gender sensitivity and inclusiveness in today's cultural climate, none but the seriously intrepid would dare to grumble that a "zie" or a "zem" does violence to the English language. Who wants to be branded a sad status quo-ist or, worse still, a closet hater of transgenders?
The move to make English non-sexist has been going on for years. The suffix "man" has been shown the door, and we now routinely use gender-neutral words like chairperson, firefighter or lay person. The use of "he" as a generic pronoun is deemed offensive, and the PC rulebook will be thrown at you if don't follow it up with a polite "or she". Some gender neutrality warriors advocate the use of the pronoun "they" even when the noun is singular - grammar be damned. A word such as "actress" (sexist!) is anathema now, while "actor" is the unisex word of choice.
Since English is widely used in India, its evolving dynamics get mirrored here as well. In June 2015, in a first incident of its kind, NALSAR University of Law in Hyderabad awarded a degree to a student with the gender agnostic honorific, "Mx" (pronounced "mux"). The word, admitted into the Oxford English Dictionary last year, is gaining currency among those who reject a binary gender system pinioned between the masculine and the feminine. And before you start sniggering at "Mx", remember that "Ms" - the commonly used marital status-neutral honorific for women - entered the lexicon only in the 1970s to reflect the cultural concerns of the time.
Indeed, languages induct new words all the time. And a usage that may have been inoffensive once may become offensive years later in keeping with changing sociocultural mores. Hence the pressure to call a woman "dusky" rather than "dark", hence "household help" rather than "servant", "sex worker" rather than "prostitute". In each case, the new usage may feel hypocritical at one level. (Not to mention that the dictates of political correctness often produce horridly inelegant words like "differently-abled".) But what's undeniable is that most of them represent a linguistic effort to address centuries-old biases against this or that group. If you want to be fair to those who have been historically shortchanged, perhaps you do need a new vocabulary to engage with them.
In June this year, Bollywood superstar Salman Khan commented that he felt "like a raped woman" after a hard day's work filming for Sultan. It was an off-the-cuff remark, in all likelihood made without the slightest intent to trivialise the ordeal of a woman who has been raped. Yet, it sparked a storm of outrage, with even the National Commission for Women demanding an apology from Khan. This is a good example of the dilemma around political correctness in language: On the one hand, it straitjackets you into severe dos and don'ts, one where every perceived infringement will be met with a furious backlash. On the other hand, given that rape is so alarmingly common in India, one cannot but be uncomfortable about language that seems to suggest that it's a casual, everyday thing.
Politically correct pronouns such as "zie" or "zem" may sound absurd today. But they do fill a linguistic void, for language must accommodate changing cultural paradigms. Who knows, 10 years from now, it may be totally fine to use a sentence like: "Zie and me were meant to be."
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