The other and much worse part is that in some situations the choice of words that you present as (as it indeed is) such a trivial matter can have very nontrivial consequences.
Not calling a black person a "nigger" may merely be a trivial moral fashion to you, perhaps, but language has been a very much non-trivial tool of fear and oppression for a long time. That's a fact.
For black people, it matters that a newspaper can't be taken seriously if it uses "nigger" as a descriptor. For women, it matters that men can't walk around at a hackathon calling them "baby" and "sweetie" like it's a Mad Men episode. Surely it's obvious why.
It's OK to disagree with that, but the burden of proof is on you. And linking to http://paulgraham.com/say.html doesn't cut it.
There is baby and there is bathwater in this discussion and it's decidedly not useful to conflate them, which is exactly what glib dismissals of the whole thing as "political correctness" do.
Using the term "political correctness" doesn't imply that one is automatically dismissing all talk about racial discrimination, for example. Political correctness is a distinct phenomenon-- at least, as distinct as any social phenomenon is-- and it's useful to be have a name for it. There are plenty of people who think racial discrimination is a problem and also think political correctness is a problem.
It is handy to have a term for political correctness.
Unfortunately many people misuse that term when they mean "politeness" or similar. These people don't want to stop using the word retard wherever they want, and they want to be outraged when people point out that they're being assholes.
Political Correctness is a form of passive agression. The entire premise is to pass it off as 'politeness'. It works in a certain way because its a defense mechanism for people entrenched in power an privledge. If you don't get the irony yet, keep thinking. It will come.
Political correctness isn't really about 'preventing offense', and simplistic arguments like this make it clear you're not aware of the issues it's trying to deal with. Political correctness is mostly about not using language which diminishes people due to factors outside their control, such as race or gender. Any single such reference is not so much a problem, but when it becomes the way people speak, it very much becomes so.
PC is, on the whole, a good thing. It's just ridiculous when taken to extremes, which is the bit everyone is focused on.
Not calling a black person a "nigger" may merely be a trivial moral fashion to you, perhaps, but language has been a very much non-trivial tool of fear and oppression for a long time. That's a fact.
For black people, it matters that a newspaper can't be taken seriously if it uses "nigger" as a descriptor. For women, it matters that men can't walk around at a hackathon calling them "baby" and "sweetie" like it's a Mad Men episode. Surely it's obvious why.
It's OK to disagree with that, but the burden of proof is on you. And linking to http://paulgraham.com/say.html doesn't cut it.
There is baby and there is bathwater in this discussion and it's decidedly not useful to conflate them, which is exactly what glib dismissals of the whole thing as "political correctness" do.