“Call you a waitperson?”  I asked.  What the hell was a waitperson?  But that was what a girl told me to refer to her as after I called her a waitress.  The year was 1991 and it was my first introduction to the totalitarian phenomenon known as “political correctness” or PC.  I had been previously shielded from it, although my friends who graduated from Michigan or Michigan State were already well familiar with its iron requirements.  I was lucky to have attended a Jesuit university which, back then, was devoid of a womyn’s studies program or a queer devotional center to instill the anti-virtues of PC.  My friends informed me that I had to watch what I said or I’d alienate everybody.  I thought their opinions absurd.  

A few weeks later another girl corrected me that she was not “Oriental” but “Asian.”  Nowadays the use of Oriental looks very odd indeed, but back then there was, at least that I had heard, nothing wrong with using term.  She told me that Oriental was what westerners called Asians but that Asian was what they called themselves.  Thus, it was the preferred term.  I asked her, rather innocently, “but if you willingly move to a western country, what right do you have to change the way the natives talk?”  I was right but she stopped talking to me nonetheless.  The words of Orwell are helpful in this context: “Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?”  

After these two events, I had a couple of choices.  Either I would attempt to learn what I was supposed to say regarding our world or I would revolt against my illogical masters.  In the ultra famous words of Robert Frost: “I took the road less traveled by and that has made all the difference.”  From then on, life has been one sandpaper coated sled ride after another, but I have found true happiness while marring their verbofascist toboggan runs.  

Dating is the only area where I still have to play the “language game.”  I often keep my mouth shut but, even then, I still sometimes manage to offend sometimes.  On one occasion, I found myself being corrected by a slightly above average young thing as I drove to the United Center.  She informed me not to say “p***y” anymore as it was offensive to women.  I responded, quite accurately in fact, that there is no better term for my fellow drivers than the word p***y.  She was not receptive to my explanation.  I then illuminated that p***y really comes from the word pusillanimous and has nothing to do with a woman’s anatomy.  She ignored me and I meekly refrained from using the word for the rest of the night (which was easy after the car was parked). Yet, my competitive and base urges were somewhat satisfied later as I escorted her back to the bedroom saying the politically insensitive, “Now let me take a look at those mega hooter-mcgooters.”  Luckily, by then she was no longer in the mood for editorial comment.   

It’s not easy being green or being a politically incorrect citizen, but the pleasures of shocking everyone are unending.  My former university has now turned into the same type of chic leftist hippodrome as all the others.  The Jesuits now seem to be “storm troopers of hip post-modernism” as opposed to being the defenders of western culture.  They sent me a newsletter bragging about how they had brought Cornell West and Randall Robinson to our campus.  They followed up this offense by calling and asking for money.  I responded “Well…I’m not a racist.”  The other end of the phone line was silent.  “Did you know that you guys paid Cornell West and Randall Robinson to speak at our campus?”  I asked the undergraduate telemarketer.  “Yes” he answered.  “Okay, well I’m glad I answered your question.  No donations from me” I said and hung up the phone.  He did not call me back but I was going to read two full chapters from David Horowitz’s Uncivil Wars aloud if he did.  

In graduate school, I witnessed a vehemently anti-male professor we had, a certain Dr. Jennifer Jackson-Klingon-Martinez-Mephisto-Brown (or something along those lines), spontaneously attack the only other man in the room because he had used “gal” in a sentence.  The person she attacked was a former seminarian who happens to be one of the nicest guys on the planet.  A classmate came up to me afterwards and said “I’m surprised she didn’t do that to you.”   

I answered, “I’m not.  I know all about those iguanas and intentionally try to say nothing at all to them during class.”  As opposed to me, the other man was pure of mind and thought that speaking without a PC filter was appropriate.  I knew better.  Without the filter there is reality, and reality is PC’s naturally occurring predator.  For his “offense,” he ended up having to undergo a three hour brainwashing session with the good professor.  I can tell you sincerely that spending three hours alone with Dr. Whatever-Whatever would have been only slightly preferable than watching “The Bridges of Madison County” in slow motion.  In short, a fate worse than death.   

There is only one thing for certain about the politically correct individual, and that is they will be constantly and endlessly offended for the rest of their lives.  It will never end.  Under the draconian pressures of how they think the world should be, real life will disappoint them again and again.  That’s why they hide out in universities so often, because it guarantees that they will never have to mix with the general population under any circumstances.  The best tactic to take with them is to have a little fun at their expense.  They usually don’t know too many people who will put as much work into offending them as I will, so it’s quite enjoyable to set them up and watch them blow.  There’s never any reason to feel bad about it though, because these martinets are the ones trying to rewire your brain.  F--- them.  

I used to work with a “poor womyn’s feminazi,” meaning that she only knew the stuff about feminism they talked about in Oprah Magazine.  One afternoon we all went to lunch at a site several miles from work.  I knew that it was open season on her if she was foolish enough to say anything cross to me.  Nature being what it is, she did.  She corrected me when I said the word “chick.”  I asked her why it was offensive.  She said that women aren’t animals [!]  I corrected her that they were and then gave a lecture.  Afterwards, I told her that in the future I’d be more sensitive and use the PC word “box” instead.  She had a meltdown in the restaurant while I enjoyed my lunch.  Then she did not speak to me for a semester, so it was a win/win situation for me.  

Other things that bring pleasure to one’s days are using as much anti-PC talk as possible in simple conversation.  I try to use the word “man” in every sentence if I can.  It’s (and I’ll use one of their words here) empowering that such a simple and useful word manages to offend so many.  

Along the lines of women, who are our de facto societal sacred cows, it is very easy to offend conversationally if you divide them into two groupings: those who are attractive and those who are not.  You see, contemporary wisdom is that they all possess equal and transcendent value.  Well, like most other PC notions, this is a complete lie.  The attractive ones should be referred to by names like “babus lorabus” or exclamations like “oh mommy!” upon sighting them.  Then, as if coolly describing the topographic features on a map, describe the unattractive ones as being “wildebeests” or “troglodytes.”  This gets under the PC skin faster than blown shards of fiberglass.   

Women and physical behavior are also an important area of an anti-PC guerilla war.  It used to be, when I was not in complete revolt against the mandarins that structure our daily behavior, I resisted the temptation to turn around and salaciously examine attractive women as they passed by.  Then I realized that leering is a magnificent political statement by itself.  I now make certain to do it both as a way to please myself and also to alienate the social engineers that may be waddling down the other side of the street.   

Why deprive oneself?  One of the great joys of a man’s existence is getting a chance to visually appreciate a woman’s derriere, particularly if her waist is about seven-tenths the size of her hips.  I’d say it was also a great joy of a lesbian’s existence, but I think that we all know they’d say they’d “rather gaze into a womyn’s soul.”  Sure, that’s more fun, if you happen to be an eunuch.   

The only bad side effect of incorrect living is that, like a gunslinger in the old west, once one has a reputation for fighting the thought police, others try to court your destruction whenever someone comes into a room speaking of “being sensitive” and “promoting diversity.”  Upon hearing this, your friends and associates gaze your way in the hopes that you’ll say something about the plights of Caucasians in Zimbabwe or whether anyone in the US has actually ever watched a WNBA game.  However powerful the desire to entertain is, I usually am successful in the forcible resistance of it–at least at work.   

Yet, one time last year, when there were no witnesses around, a new social worker came into my office to ask where Mr. B was.  Mr. B runs a drug and alcohol group with me.  I whispered to her, in a conspiratorial tone, that Mr. B was off doing top level research at the moment.  After she promised not to tell anybody, I shared that he was actually down the street in the middle of a screaming bender in order to better understand the cravings and addictions of our students.  I told her that I knew this to be a fact as he had just called and asked me to wire him 18 dollars and 22 cents (he said the 22 cents was needed to bribe a public official).  He further said that I was not to mention anything about a girl named Rochelle or a chimpanzee named Hypotenuse should his wife call.  I swore the social worker to secrecy about the matter and then heard the next day that she had told everyone about it.  Ah, the distinct pleasures of the working life!  Call Studs Terkel!  

In summation, my advice is never to surrender to PC.  Fight on into that good night, even if it’s lonely.  Anything’s better than having to call a stewardess a flight attendant.  We should all follow my friend Sean’s example and call them “trolley dollies” instead.  

There is no halfway in this struggle.  It’s good to recall Chapin’s Law here:  

Those who dance with cultural Marxists end up dosed with Rohypnol and awaken sprawled out in a hotel lobby groping for their missing left kidneys.   

If you give in just a little, in a few months time you’ll be listening to Ani DeFranco, sporting a nose ring and saying things like, “I didn’t know that many earthworms died during a storm, there ought to be a law!”  Eventually, you’ll awaken in a garden apartment surrounded by radical feminists who curiously stare while calling you “gimp” as the Pulp Fiction DVD drones on as background inspiration…Don’t let this be you!  Join me in this crusade (make sure to use “crusade” in daily conversation too–the PC monsters will love that).   

Well, maybe my advice is all for naught as you’re not particularly worried about societal fascism, but as for me, whenever I hear the words “political correctness,” I’ll continue to reach for my pen.  Then I’ll launch air strikes at their dominance by writing words like “mankind” and “Anno Domini” upon old fashioned bleached paper.    

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Bernard Chapin works as a school psychologist full-time, a college instructor part-time and writes whenever possible.

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