L. Grambone

Political Correctness was around for many years before the mass media caught on. It is definitely not an invention of the late 1980's as many people seem to think. I recall hearing the term almost 25 years ago, used to describe the very sort of priggishness and authoritarianism encountered in the young woman who though it bourgeois to laugh. Political correctness was an insulting term to most of us. But early-format PC did harm the movement. There were certain things you would not dare to speak or write about. Our real opinions could only be aired among our closest friends, for if it came out that you thought Mao a mass murderer, the Black Panther Party a bunch of gangsters or that certain fringe ferminists were female fascists, you would find yourself attacked as 'reactionary', 'racist' and 'sexist'. And there was no place in the leftist counter-culture for anyone having to live under the burden of those epithets.