Has PC gone too far?

I'm glad we are all good friends here! :) We are pretty great. I sometimes word things wrong but I never mean to offend anyone. Yes, Applecruncher, I did see your high school photo, you reminded me a bit of a young Whitney Houston. And AprilT I got back on here to apologize to you but I guess things are OK now, we are friends. :)
 

AZ Jim said:
I believe it has. When "everything" is subjected to the microscopic examination to find something that "offends", I think some have allowed themselves to go well beyond the bounds of what normal society finds reasonable in an effort to be offended. There is a vast chasm between harmless and hurtful. Men are constantly shown on TV ads as juvenile, immature, inept and insensitivity but I don't see them on these message boards declaring war on anyone. If this post upsets anyone, I am sorry but we all do have our opinions. This was mine.
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While I understand your point, I need to see examples of what exactly you're referring to. That way, I can create a much better, more informed reply to your post. Right now my post here is lame. What is it?
 

Linda, I actually think Whitney Houston was beautiful (and I've seen pics when she was very young.) Just kiddin' with ya. :) But Halle and Tyra have more of a glamour thing going.

Also I recall my grandpa refused to say "black" - he always said "colored". He died at 90 in 2004. But my dad used to correct us back in the 70s..."don't say colored, say black". He died 5 yrs ago and never said African American.

Earlier this morning 2 friends were here (1 black, 1 Hispanic). The black friend was talking about something abd I heard him say "black" people, so did the Hispanic.

A caucasian friend (who is Jweish) always says African American. I don't correct her, but when talking with her I say black.

:shrug:
 
imp said:
"you certainly would not like anyone making fun of your weight or something like a facial disfigurement"

Been there, had that (at age 14), endured painful remarks from classmates, which ingrained mental scars lasting to this day. Teach kids to be loving, not hateful. imp
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Not sure what you are referring to here imp? Are you telling me I am fat and ugly? (JOKING) I hate having to say I'm joking every time I joke on here because in real life that isn't usually necessary. But honestly I don't know who you were talking to or what comment you were responding to with your post here. Not that it matters but I'm just saying....
 
Linda said:
Not sure what you are referring to here imp? Are you telling me I am fat and ugly? (JOKING) I hate having to say I'm joking every time I joke on here because in real life that isn't usually necessary. But honestly I don't know who you were talking to or what comment you were responding to with your post here. Not that it matters but I'm just saying....
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I use the grin smiley to indicate that I'm just joshing. Just type the word grin inside two colons. :grin:
 
Reaction to Disfigurement

Being old, I forget, thought I had told the story earlier, during my wandering verbosity. So, to explain:

Avid interest in Chemistry, had a big book of formulas and recipes, attempted making up a type of blasting powder listed in it. In our basement, in my "Lab", the stuff ignited ferociously, burning my mixing hand and face. The doctor proclaimed 2nd. degree burns, may leave scarring, my beard might come in patchy (I was actually 13, not 14 as I said earlier).

Slow healing process, when I returned to school, 8th. grade, everyone already knew what had happened. Kids I had regarded as friends treated me differently, shunned, made nasty remarks about my appearance; my face looked like a blotchy purple plum. The scars formed thus were mental. Entering puberty is not the time for such an incident. The girls continued to look better and better, but I did not.

The experience drove me to try to excel: I still hit the softball, and threw it, farther than the other guys could. It bought some respect. Tried to excel in academics, too, but only science and math prevailed with that. Not exactly a "P-C" experience, but close. Kids should be taught to be forgiving rather than nasty and hurtful. imp
 
I remember starting high school and seeing a girl in my class who had a red birthmark covering half of her face. She was otherwise a pretty girl, fair skinned with red hair and delicate features. Being raised to be polite I tried not to stare. Two years later none of us even noticed it any more. We just saw a friend.
 
Wow Imp, that is sad. It did happen at a bad time of life, that's for sure.

I have a friend who sort of had the same thing happen when he was young. He and a friend were cooking something on the stove he shouldn't have been, some explosive and looked into the kettle as it exploded. He lost enough of his eyesight to be legally blind. Then years later when we met him, he had a broken leg for some reason or another. Anyway, we were at his house and someone called trying to get a message to this other person so he said he'd drive over and tell them. As he was heading out the door my brother yelled "Hey, you can't drive like that!" and the guy said "oh I forgot" and he went back and got a helmet! He put the helmet on and got in the car and propted his leg up on the dashboard and took off driving! So my brother ran out and stopped him and got in the car and did the driving. So it's always made me wonder if he was as blind as he let on or was he just nuts enough to drive like that. I know he is legally blind.

So imp, now are you OK now? I saw a pic of you once with a snake and you looked fine.
 
Warrigal said:
I remember starting high school and seeing a girl in my class who had a red birthmark covering half of her face. She was otherwise a pretty girl, fair skinned with red hair and delicate features. Being raised to be polite I tried not to stare. Two years later none of us even noticed it any more. We just saw a friend.
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I read somewhere recently that the longer you know someone the less you notice any deficiencies in their looks. I believe that too, either that or the people I know have all gotten better looking as the years went by.
 
Warrigal said:
I remember starting high school and seeing a girl in my class who had a red birthmark covering half of her face. She was otherwise a pretty girl, fair skinned with red hair and delicate features. Being raised to be polite I tried not to stare. Two years later none of us even noticed it any more. We just saw a friend.
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Warri, so often we see ugly as not ugly and we see the beautiful become ugly based only upon their actions.
 
Growing up in predominantly white, as in British descended, Sydney I rarely saw people with dark skin or almond shaped eyes. When I did they seemed very exotic and alien. They all seemed very different to me as a teen.

Now I am so used to the technicolour population where I live that I hardly notice the difference. In particular, Asians don't seem to be different at all. The recent arrivals from Africa still seem to stand out but one of the nurses looking after my husband in hospital was from Burundi and apart from asking about his homeland, his skin colour wasn't an important issue of note. We talked about cultural differences. He was learning to look Australians in the eye which had been difficult for him because in Burundi this is considered rude.
 
Linda said:
Wow Imp, that is sad. It did happen at a bad time of life, that's for sure.

So imp, now are you OK now? I saw a pic of you once with a snake and you looked fine.
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Maybe the snake's presence averted your eyes? Ha! I am indeed OK now, physically; mentally, well,......that's something else altogether. See, to begin with, I was always shy and non-committal, looking weird magnified that quirk of personality. AAR (At Any Rate, new PC), the face healed back to fairly normal color, no visible scars. I wonder now, 60 years later, just as I did then, how or why my eyesight was spared. My eyelashes and brows had been singed off, as was the front hair above my forehead.

Next day, checking in the Lab, my cherished "Henley's 20th. Century Book of Formulas and Recipes lay open on the old oak kitchen table in the basement, the pages burnt where flaming debris had landed! Wonder the place hadn't caught fire. FWIW, the stuff was called "Berge's Blasting Powder. Potassium Chlorate, sugar, and shaved paraffin wax. The wax was to be "triturated" in to the mix, a word I failed to find adequately defined in the big Websters.

During my later similar endeavors, I always used a method of determining any substance's violent tendencies: a tiny bit placed on the vise, and soundly struck with a hammer. Dangerous stuff explodes when you do that: dynamite, Potassium Chlorate.......yep. imp
 

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