I have conflated a bunch of stuff, it's very much an "all my thoughts about things relating to niceness" braindump. I tried writing more focussed posts but they never came out right.
I don't see that I'm conflating politeness and PCness in this post (I can't see that anything I've said is related to PCness apart from my last paragraph, which is talking about a specific type of situation without PCness or politeness) But as it happens I do see "PC" language as part of politeness: it's a set of general rules used to avoid hurting people's feelings, and like any sort of politeness it's pretty good most of the time but can be too rigid if you apply it dogmatically or place following the "rules" above actual decent behaviour.
The post ended up just being a criticism of niceness/politeness without mentioning it's upsides, mainly because I see those as fairly obvious (to me :)) and couldn't be bothered. But yes, politeness (including careful use of language) does definitely have it's place, and most of the time is the best approach, all things being equal. But there are times when politeness has to be secondary to other more important considerations, and most importantly you shouldn't look at an argument and assume that the more "polite" party is in the right or morally superior. (Not saying you're doing that, but some people do)
I think behaviour matching my definition of "niceness" often follows from conflict avoidance and worrying about what others think, but does not necessarily imply it. Some people really are just naturally passive, friendly etc, or make the choice to be that way for other reasons. I'm just criticising people like me who tend to be nice out of selfishness and then act all morally superior about it.
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I don't see that I'm conflating politeness and PCness in this post (I can't see that anything I've said is related to PCness apart from my last paragraph, which is talking about a specific type of situation without PCness or politeness) But as it happens I do see "PC" language as part of politeness: it's a set of general rules used to avoid hurting people's feelings, and like any sort of politeness it's pretty good most of the time but can be too rigid if you apply it dogmatically or place following the "rules" above actual decent behaviour.
The post ended up just being a criticism of niceness/politeness without mentioning it's upsides, mainly because I see those as fairly obvious (to me :)) and couldn't be bothered. But yes, politeness (including careful use of language) does definitely have it's place, and most of the time is the best approach, all things being equal. But there are times when politeness has to be secondary to other more important considerations, and most importantly you shouldn't look at an argument and assume that the more "polite" party is in the right or morally superior. (Not saying you're doing that, but some people do)
I think behaviour matching my definition of "niceness" often follows from conflict avoidance and worrying about what others think, but does not necessarily imply it. Some people really are just naturally passive, friendly etc, or make the choice to be that way for other reasons. I'm just criticising people like me who tend to be nice out of selfishness and then act all morally superior about it.