Yet more unfathomable: that there would be any affection for anything about that era’s nascent political correctness with its penchant for words like “womyn” and other idealistic but often ill-conceived efforts to reimagine the dictionary.
In the wake of my 30th college reunion last month at Brown University, a notorious locus for politically correct thought back in the day, those emergent P.C.
At that time, word purification rituals were experienced all in good fun or at least, in good fun-making.
Even at its peak, ’90s-style political correctness was at least as much self-satire as a movement to be reckoned with.
With the exception of its most earnest practitioners — strategically isolated within semiotics departments and grad school dormitories — undergrads from across the political spectrum considered political correctness a passing fad or an attempt at academic esotericism rather than an actual recommendation for how to comport yourself in public.
Persons:
Ethan Hawke’s, —, changin, ’, ”
Organizations:
Brown University, Brown Daily Herald
Locations:
Brown