The right wing coalition, currently in power in Australia, occasionally rants about “political correctness”. Sometimes they even try to change the hate speech laws because they say it is a freedom of speech issue and everyone “should have the right to be offensive” if they choose. Other right wing politicians around the world also seem to find political correctness an unbearable burden. Donald Trump, for example, seems to see it as a communist plot to bring down America.

Recently, my daughter brought up the matter on her Facebook page and sparked a fierce argument among her friends and colleagues. Now, I don’t usually give much thought to ideas like political correctness. It seems like a generally good thing and the people who violently oppose it (like radio “shock jocks” and Murdoch press journalists) are generally odious people, so it probably is a good thing. However, I spent some time mulling it over today and came up with the following.

When we deliberately offend someone, it is an act of aggression. We do it to hurt them. When we accidentally offend someone, we still hurt them, but it is done out of ignorance, or stupidity, or indifference. The point of “politically correct” language is mostly to avoid accidental offence, particularly by people in official roles or with relative power of some other kind. I think most of us would agree that we don’t want to be accidentally offensive. Why would we want that?

Political correctness does not in any way prevent ordinary people from being deliberately offensive. In fact, the more widely adopted politically correct language is, the more offensive certain language becomes. It becomes easier to offend when people live in a society in which accidental offence has been minimised. However, the adoption of politically correct language by organisations and other social groups, does prevent (to some extent) the use of deliberate offensiveness by officials and even members of those groups. Do we think that’s a good thing? Generally, I think we do. Curbing aggression by people with relative power is something that improves all our lives.

Many people chafe under the yoke of such constraints. Some, I suppose, wish to abuse their power by deliberately offending people. That they are frustrated in this, annoys them. Some simply do not like the fact that it is pointed out that they are accidentally offending people. They do not see themselves as racist or sexist and resent having it asserted about them. Some may even be angry because they know full well – when it is pointed out – that they are (accidentally) hurting people and it does not square with their image of themselves as a nice person. Some are essentially indifferent to the feelings of other people and are angered by any attempt to restrain their behaviour in any way for such a “trivial” reason.

On the whole, I think politically correct language serves a useful role in creating a more civil society. The constraints it places on people are negligible compared to the considerable harm that can be done by careless – not to mention deliberate – offensiveness.

the people who violently oppose political correctness are generally odious people