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Political Correctness Is Ruining Sport And Comedy.

Posted on 26th December 2021

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In this article on the BBC, Maureen Lipman is quoted as saying that comedy is in danger of being "wiped out" due to fears over being cancelled. I tend to agree. I recently watched Jimmy Carr: His Dark Material on Netflix; Jimmy Carr felt it necessary to point out several times the difference between a thing itself (e.g. rape) and making a joke about it, which should be totally unnecessary. Some comedians are now afraid to make jokes about certain topics, and comedy is the worse for it. I also recently watched an interview by a CNN journalist of Trevor Noah, where he was taken to task for some of the language that he uses, because it could be interpreted as racist. Trevor Noah is clearly not anti-black; he is, after all, half black himself. The problem is clearly with the interpretation, not comedy itself; if people have an inability to properly interpret in the light of the context, they should stop watching comedy, instead of trying to stop those of us with no such limitations from watching it.

JK Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter books, has been heavily criticised a lot recently. People accuse her of being trans-phobic because she has expressed concern about the unfairness of trans athletes competing against non-trans women in sport. One of the latest developments in this sorry saga is reported here by the BBC: that two Quidditch leagues in the USA are changing their names because they do not wish to be associated with JK Rowling (QuidditchUK looks like they may follow suit). Quidditch is a game invented by the author in her Harry Potter books; the Quidditch leagues in question did not licence the use of the name "Quidditch" from JK Rowling, and any association was of their own making.

If you doubt that trans athletes competing against non-trans women can (sometimes) be unfair, you should read this article on The Daily Signal, and also here. I don't understand why this is so hard for some people to accept: the science is clear, and the examples given by The Daily Signal are also very clear. Political correctness is supposed to be about the avoidance of unwarranted offence, but in the face of irrefutable evidence, political correctness must not prevent truth being spoken. The result, as suggested by The Daily Signal, could be to drive women out of many sports.