This isn’t a pro-Apple manifesto—I would write just the opposite for that, especially in regards to publishing, but the question in the title means something entirely different than Apple’s present domination of the tech world.  What I’m asking is if “political correctness” has been carried too far in general, and whether it inhibits creativity for fiction writers in particular.

Here’s an example that caught my attention:  One day last week I saw an announcement for the NY subway system that urged passengers to give up their seats to the elderly or pregnant persons.  Innocuous and well-intentioned I suppose, but I burst out laughing.  We’ve become so PC that the person (PC justified here) writing this plea used “pregnant person” to make it a unisex statement.  I was laughing at the absurdity.  Let’s face it, dear reader, be you male or female, you’ll have to agree with me: it’s pretty hard for a male human being to physically become pregnant.  (Bruce Jenner and others might psychologically be female, but inner plumbing is what it is.)

We often speak of a pregnant couple; I’d go as far as using that for two gays using a surrogate too.  That’s all the more justified by same-sex marriage and equal rights for LGBT couples, something I support because no one’s rights should be trampled on as long as they don’t affect other people’s rights (when they do, a balance has to be sought, of course—none of this denying customer service by saying it’s freedom of religion).  We speak of pregnant moments and often use “pregnant” in the same ways we use “fertile.”  I just thought that the subway ad writer had carried PC too far and created a situation where absurdity takes over.  Instead of celebrating that wonderful state of womanhood, s/he reduced it to unisex triviality.  Moreover, it reduced old-fashioned chivalry, mostly absent today, and put pregnancy at the level of the old and infirm, never mind that I’ve seen 85-year-olds in much better shape than I am.

This example that made me laugh was trivial, but it set to me thinking.  Yes, we’ve carried PC too far.  Not that I care for can’t-act Affleck, but I’m sure that’s why he didn’t acknowledge he had slave owners among his ancestors.  Instead of acknowledging it and deploring it, something I’d have done in that very situation, he now has to apologize for hiding it.  Oops!  PC tripped him up.  Of course, the media, always in search of a scandal, jumped right in.  They went from the mailman scandal (turns out that the lack of security really wasn’t the story—they tracked the old protestor for thirty miles and refrained from shooting him down—so the media lost interest in the story) to Affleck and Bruce Jenner (making a scandal out of a scandal—a decathlon star becoming a woman is a wink-wink scandal for all the rednecks out there).  Not PC is always a good story for today’s media.

When I was a boy I used to watch boxing matches with my father (he had three pro bouts and taught his sons a few tricks of the trade)—why he stopped at three is a longer story best told at another time.  One fighter Dad especially liked was Archie Moore—a big fan, in fact.  I innocently asked him how he could be a relative if he was black.  My father gave me a lesson about slavery in America and ended by saying that Archie’s ancestors were probably owned by a slave-owner with the surname Moore.  So I asked if we were related to that horrible exploiter of human beings.  My father said he didn’t think so and went on to say how common the last name Moore is (a mistake I made early on in writing—I should have used a pen name—but that’s another story too)—a true statement but intended to lessen my guilt, I’m sure.

Was my father PC?  Forget the fact that the term hadn’t been invented yet.  Unlike Affleck, he had no qualms talking about slavery in America.  That’s what PC often accomplishes—we stop discussing things because it’s not PC to do so, and when we do the media jumps all over it.  Huh?  How can we clean house well if we shove all history’s dirt under the rug?  (This is not just America’s problem—Israel and Turkey try to do it with the Armenian Holocaust—for very different reasons, of course.)  Society’s problems are complicated.  Talking about them, spinning them around and examining all the different aspects, can only help solve them.  Not talking about them just leaves them to fester.

Sometimes one just has to call a spade a spade.  On Google+ last Friday, that was my lead-in to my one-line comment on the Armenian genocide.  I don’t care if President Obama won’t mention holocaust or genocide in reference to the millions of Armenians murdered by the Ottoman Turks because Turkey is now a NATO ally—I sure will.  Like our case of slavery, historical genocide is something countries have to own up to, and when we let it slide, we are being overly PC at best and maybe giving our tacit approval at worst.  I prefer to say it like it is—in these blog posts and in my fiction.  Other authors can bury their heads in the sand if they want.  I can’t.  I’ll present contrary opinions when appropriate—our history with slavery and Turkey’s with genocide aren’t appropriate topics for erecting PC barriers.

Let’s go back to that “pregnant person” example.  Women should be up in arms about that.  They’ve taken enough crap since this country was founded, and this is just another example of many even in the 21^st century.  (Only thirty-two women have been U.S. Senators, for example.)  It’s certainly an example of the law of unintended consequences and probably taking PC too far, a bias on the part of the ad writer, and maybe an implicit assumption that pregnancy is an illness.  Maybe I’m too much of a fan of smart, intelligent women, but this seemed over the top at second thought.  My knee-jerk reaction was to laugh.  I’m ashamed of that now.  I should have immediately jumped to the thoughts expressed in this paragraph.

PC is carried too far in modern fiction.  I write fiction with controversial themes.  The Collector discussed sex trafficking (there’s a new law about that—it finally made it through congress—a law mostly about saving young children and women was held up by an attack on women, because the GOP wanted to tack on an anti-abortion provision); Silicon Slummin’…and Just Getting’ By has a stalker, a degenerate who commonly goes after women in most cases (the boiled rabbit gal is a fictional exception); The Midas Bomb, written before our financial crisis of 2008-2009,  treated capitalism without control and Wall Street issues (a Boston Globe columnist had already opened my eyes to the financial dangers lurking); and Full Medical presented the healthcare problem in this country long before Obamacare was created.

Maybe that’s not PC.  I don’t write schmaltzy mysteries or steamy romances that avoid issues; couldn’t write a cozy mystery or syrupy romance if I tried.  I don’t write thrillers about ancient myths and artifacts that avoid what’s going on in the world today either; might read them, but I’m not inspired to write them.  I don’t write sci-fi that blurs the lines with fantasy (Star Wars is a good example); in my sci-fi stories, not everyone lives “happily ever after” and there are no knights with light sabers.  PC just isn’t my thing.

Maybe that’s why I don’t have many readers.  Maybe the reading public today just wants PC books that will entertain and not educate, motivate, or depress them.  If you’re one of those readers, OK—that’s your life, your karma, and your entertainment.  As a writer, I analyze what’s successful—I’m an avid reader and reviewer–and it seems that too many “popular fiction” books (sometimes the pejorative “pulp fiction” is used to contrast with “literary fiction,” often put on an undeserving pedestal) don’t have much to say that I’m interested in reading (biographies and exposes, i.e. non-fiction do better—literary fiction rarely does!).  They might have a lot of meat to them, but I prefer steak over hamburger.  Almost every book on “Steve’s Bookshelf” is at least a ribeye.  (Even The Relic, with its stark contrast of good and evil.)  Maybe I’m just a voice crying in the wilderness, but I’d hate to see genre fiction spin down in the maelstrom of irrelevancy.  What do you think?

In elibris libertas….

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