Corinna, Corinna

Corinna Fales is anti-PC from an old new left perspective. She had been a political organizer in Newark for three years (1965-’67). In ‘68, when our paths crossed, she was one of the essential workers running the office of “the Mobe” (the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam), which had called for protests at the Democratic National Convention.  

“By 1968,” she writes in a book subtitled The Unintended Harm of Political Correctness, “I had been arrested three times for civil-rights sit-ins and protests. I was proud of them and had never been scared. But Cook County Jail scared the crap out of me… I had only put myself in harm’s way to impress a man — a man I had worked with in Newark… After the police teargassed demonstrators in the streets, he asked a few of us women (all women of course) if we would be willing to bring teargas inside the hotels where the convention delegates were housed and the meetings were held. He said women could more easily get past the security. I volunteered because he was a big cheese to us, and I wanted him to think I was cool. Besides, I didn’t want to be the one woman in that tiny, select group who refused. But I thought it was a silly, stupid, meaningless thing to do. It was not like me at all — not my style of protest— and it made me very uncomfortable.”  

The three women went to the Palmer House in Chicago with vials of butyric acid (which smells like vomit) and wound up getting busted. ”We were charged as un-indicted co-conspirators of the ‘Chicago 7’ and when we appeared in court the guy who had put us up to all this laughed at my obvious terror at facing the judge.”

Fales is still a leftie. She cites Richard Rothstein and Arlie Hochschild in making her points. She links the rise of PCness to the single-issue focus that has come to be known as “identity politics.” It reaches a peak of “preciousness” in honoring trans people.

“The PC eagerness to embrace and endorse all forms of sexuality and sexual preferences,” she observes, “is what has led not only to acceptance of transgender individuals… but to a movement toward transgender and all forms of gender nonconformity…

“Speaking for a moment as a biological woman… trans women do not experience the monthly cycles and hormonal roller coaster that men really ridicule us for, or get fibroids, which caused many of us pain and danger. Trans women cannot get ovarian or uterine cancer, or have the ability to bear children and all that comes with it, including sometimes, death. Being a biological woman comes with a host of complex physical realities. 

“I have no problem with anyone identifying as a trans woman, but… Is it fair for biological women who have to compete in athletic events with trans women, who often beat them because of their biology?”‘ (Anne Killion of the SF Chronicle thinks it is.)

Fales assures one and all, “However you identify, be well, be happy, go live. I am not saying —I am never saying— that we should be mean to each other. I am saying that we need to accept one another and our differences, practice the Golden Rule, and include everyone in our human circle. If you don’t feel like yourself in the body you were born into, do what you need to do to feel like yourself. You are a valued member of the human family.”

A thought I wish she had expanded on: “I am convinced of a direct link between the push to advance AI and the push to obliterate gender.”

Some great throwaway lines: “In all my years as an activist, I never saw an event accurately reported that I had attended.” And, “I am still struggling with what is OK to tell and what isn’t.” Me, too, Corinna. And a funny riff from This Book is not a Safe Space:

Kitten Ears

One day, at a job in NYC where there was a dress code, a young woman came in wearing one of those kitten-ear headbands. It was cute but inappropriate for a professional setting, and several of us noticed it. We found out that she was a new intern who had come to have her picture (with the ears on) taken for her photo ID.

One of my superiors said that the intern would be told nicely to remove the kitten ears if she wore them because they were cute. But if she actually identified as a cat, we would have to check EEO laws to see if she could be asked to remove her kitten ears for work because it might not be PC.

I wish I had made this up.

Against Political Correctness (from the left)

In last week's Off the Record column the editor wrote “Asian hate isn't the problem, random attacks on Asians and citizens generally by deranged street people is the problem… Nobody likes to say it, but psychiatric incarceration with, it is to be hoped, psychiatric rehab, is the only possible strategy that will protect both crazy people and protect the public from crazy people… As some of us still recall we used to have a state hospital system that sequestered the dangerously insane.”  

This is a perfect example of Political Correctness pulling off a misdirection play that is not in our interest. When we, the people, should be demanding mental-health infrastructure —a practical political goal— PCness says instead, “Put up a lawn sign to Stop Asian Hate. Or better yet, go on a march.” 

Pot Partisans Take Note: Tod Mikuriya, MD, finished his residency in Psychiatry at the Mendocino State Hospital in 1965 and recalled it as useful, important training. “This was right before the California mental hygiene system was dismantled by Ronald Dinosaur and his ilk in Sacramento,” Tod said. “The superintendent, Ernest W. Klatte, MD had taken LSD as well as peyote, and so had some of the staff.”