How to Write a “Political Correctness Run Amok” Article

[Recursion]

https://medium.com/%40Juliaserano/how-to-write-a-political-correctness-run-amok-article-9b828d443018

1) Make it clear from the very beginning that you are an open-minded, social justice supporter, preferably on the left side of the political spectrum. This will contrast your take on “political correctness run amok” from those of right wing commentators — you know, those hypocrites who are pro-free speech when it comes to white, straight, Christian people making fun of minorities, but against free speech when it comes to #BlackLivesMatter, or discussions about sex education and women’s reproductive rights, or secular holiday celebrations, or homosexuals and their so-called “agenda.” You are nothing like those hypocrites! Plus, you are pitching your soon-to-be-trending article to someplace like The Nation or The Atlantic, so you will most certainly need to win over liberal readers.

2) Repeatedly remind readers (through both blatant and subtle appeals) that Free Speech = Good; Censorship = Bad. Be sure *not* to mention that the Person of Stature’s freedom of speech is not really at stake — like the rest of us, they are free to make any bigoted comments any time they want. Even more importantly, whatever you do, *never* acknowledge the fact that protests, petitions, and social media comments critiquing the Person of Stature also constitute acts of free speech. This is Pandora’s Box #1 — whatever you do, do not open it! Because if both the protesters and the Person of Stature are seen as having free speech, then this becomes a “marketplace of ideas” issue, and your readers will then feel entitled to make up their own minds as to who is in the right and who is in the wrong. And you can’t let this happen, because you have already decided this for them!

3) This can’t just be any Person of Stature, or any old comments or actions against a minority group. To use a few extreme examples, if the person was a Neo-Nazi, or if their platform was returning to the time when women were considered their husband’s property, or if they called for homosexuality to be punished by death, then the article won’t work at all. First off, your liberal readers would likely feel that these things (while constituting free speech) are beyond the pale, and they will be disturbed by your attempts to go out of your way to defend such people. Indeed, you yourself probably feel the same way: If these sorts of people were invited to speak at a University, and if students protested, you would not find such protests to be outrageous at all. Who knows, you might even join in those protests yourself! But we will never know for sure, because it’s unimaginable that any University would ever give any of these extreme groups a public platform to speak in the first place.

Actually, come to think of it, these examples highlight the fact that there is already an established (albeit unwritten) code in our society regarding what expressions are deemed tolerable and which are deemed to be beyond the pale. This is Pandora’s Box #2 — once again, do not open it! Because if you bring attention to this unspoken line-in-the-sand regarding acceptability, then your readers will recognize that this story is not really about “free speech versus censorship” (because once again, all the aforementioned people are free to speak their minds), but rather how do we (whether as a society, a public institution, a workplace, or as individuals) decide where to draw this line? Where does one person’s right to free speech end and another person’s right to go to work or school without having to deal with bigotry or harassment begin? This is an extremely complicated matter that would take way more than one pithy article to cover. Plus, there is no cut-and-dried answer to this question, just a mess of differing opinions as to where to precisely to draw this line. So you need to pose a different question, one that has a clear right answer (which non-coincidentally coincides with your position).

It's funny because it's ubiquitous