I'll Tumble 4 Ya

And this is the entire history of feminism and anti-rape activism: the history of people introducing ideas that are seen as prudish and crazy and extreme until they are understood as common sense. Or, in some cases, law.

Here’s a history of some of the crazy ideas advocated by the feminist fringe: that rape is still rape if you were dating or married to your attacker, since knowing or even loving someone does not necessarily make it impossible for that person to hurt you. That a woman’s prior sexual history should not be used as evidence against her in a rape trial, since having consented to sex in the past does not mean that you have implicitly consented to all sex thereafter. That rape is still rape if a woman does not or cannot physically resist her attacker, since it is generally unwise to require that all rapes come with an accompanying beating. That some rapists use no physical force whatsoever, and employ intimidation, coercion or intoxication as weapons, and that it is still rape if compliance is forced through these measures.

All of these ideas were once radical. Indeed, there are still many people who regard some or all of them with deep hostility. But most of them have become central to our understanding of sexual assault, and that understanding is often reflected in the changing rape laws of the last 40 years.

Underlying every complaint of “PC” is the absurd notion that members of dominant mainstream society have been victimized by an arbitrarily hypersensitive prohibition against linguistic and cultural constructions that are considered historical manifestations of bigotry. It’s no coincidence that “PC”-snivelers are for the most part white men who are essentially saying, “Who the hell do these marginalized groups think they are to tell me how I should or shouldn’t portray them? I’m not going to say ‘mentally challenged’ when it’s my right to say ‘retard’, goshdarnit there’s only so much abuse I’ll take!”

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Simply put, the great “PC” cliché, as commonly deployed in mainstream discourse, is cultural propaganda designed to befuddle and misdirect while defending the current power structure. All politics deal with power relations, and in the debate over America’s alleged climate of “political correctness”, there’s a stark asymmetry of power between the defiant megaphone-wielders who complain of being constrained by humorless hypersensitivity from below, and the under-represented people of color, women, LGBT, disabled, poor, and otherwise marginalized or dispossessed people who have no choice but to absorb the linguistic, cultural, and physical barbs of the ruling class. The former feel psycho-emotionally oppressed by their inability to crack puerile ethnic jokes without criticism; the latter simply are oppressed.