I’m Richard Lloyd Jones, and this is Thinking with Somebody Else’s Head. A quick word of warning right at the beginning of our program today … this is a delicate subject. In a world where speech is often paralyzed, not by an Orwellian Big Brother poised to punish us for deviations from the acceptable, but by our own individual and collective decisions as to what’s correct or not. Straying from the correct-speak causes raised eyebrows and pursed lips at best and outright shunning at worst.
It’s a politically correct world in the world, and the language has been sculpted and massaged and homogenized to remove any unwanted judgements or value statements in a total conviction that this is progress. Politically incorrect is simply not tolerated, a throwback to a time most consider downright evil.
But there’s a problem underneath all this. Unfortunately, not being able to say anything critical about anyone means real defects and problems don’t get pointed out anymore, and all this walking on eggshells means we can’t really develop. And this problem appears particularly formidable when we want to talk women’s pathology.
Big Sister is watching, today on Thinking with Somebody Else’s Head.