Overly Sensitive People

People can take language to seriously. Words obviously have different meanings to different people so then why do people make such a big deal over what is politically correct or offensive. As long as people are not being openly hateful and saying derogatory remarks to whom they are talking about its not wrong right? Maybe it might be a little insensitive and make people desensitized to racism and bigotry, and just be ignoring hate presently in front of you. So why make a big deal out of it?

Some people are overly sensitive and think that certain words should never be used and are very offensive. These people obviously don’t have many friends and don’t know that it’s ok to say “that’s gay” or “your retarded” or “Jesus Christ” because it’s all in good fun.

How can these words be negative if no one in the group finds it offensive? As long as no one hears the oppressive comment it’s not degrading right? It’s not like continuously using these slanderous remarks is making us more and more desensitized to the words. I mean why should a straight person find the saying “that’s so gay” offensive. People don’t actually believe or think that their jokes between friends are actually going to have an impact on the way we think and feel about other people. So this brings up the question of why are these sayings or words thought of as negative and what gives them power.

Ignorant people give words these evil powers. These people go around throwing out words that make no sense in situations giving words meanings that they never previously had. Does it really make sense to call an inanimate object gay or retarded? Sometimes people decide to substitute words such as stupid or difficult with gay giving it new meaning. Some people also make up new words such as "Hella" which means "A great quantity of" and is not offensive in anyway but does not make a lot of sense.

It is bad to be openly hateful to groups of people based color of skin, sexual orientation, or religious affiliation but it is equally harmful to be blindly degrading other people. Friends provide a kind of sheltered environment for us where everyone feels comfortable and does not realize that what our friends believe and say effect what we think and say internally.

Coming from a predominantly white catholic high school I personally do not know much about racial or sexual bigotry. None of my friends throughout my life I can say have been openly racist and hated a particular group of individuals but some had a bad closet case of bias towards others. Most of these biases came from parents, teachers, or role model.

The way people talk, especially people who we respect and look up to, might have an effect on our views and beliefs. If someone is surrounded by negativity and hate it will eventually make some impact on them. So then people should blame their friends and family for their intolerance because they influenced them so they are responsible. Or maybe people should think for themselves and speak what they believe.

It is commonly said that if you do not speak up when something wrong is happening you are just as responsible as the person committing the harmful act. So if one of your friends says to you, "look at that lump of lard of there he must have tried that 30 day McDonalds Diet", are you being just as hateful if you do not say anything about it? No not really unless they laughed then you might be more guilty than him.

Nothing will change if no one says anything though and laughing only encourages the hateful jokes and makes them stronger. So everyone is responsible for themselves and needs to think about what they are doing and who the environment they put themselves in. If you hang out with KKK members on the weekend don’t blame them for turning you into scum and just stereotyping everyone you see. Hell you will probably end up hating yourself.

It’s not the end of the world to say a few jokes people are not going to turn into terribly hateful people over a joke. It is a problem when people take jokes too far or continually makes jokes all the time then the jokes truly becomes hateful and degrading. So be careful and don’t let the people around you have a negative effect on you and make you ignorant to how words should be used because “that would be gay”.

Honestly though there are too many closet case biased people who do not realize that they are a part of the problem. Not a whole lot will get done if people just sit back and say nothing or even worse if you laugh! People need to know that words can be just as harmful as action and create negative stereotypes that change people’s views.

So say something about it so that all the sensitive people in the world who get all upset about not being politically correct will shut up and maybe even make the world a more tolerable place to live for everyone.