I answered "Occasionally" simply because there are a few bits of the political correctness movement that I actually agree with (despite what you might think upon reading some of my other messages).
However, yes... things like calling Midgets and Dwarves "Little People" are stupid. It's sort of like being told that "Asian" is politically correct but referring to the same groups of people as "Orientals" is non-PC? Umm, okay.
There is some logic behind some of it, but even so it seems like an exercise in being inconveinent so someone else can get their rocks off over your inconveinence and feel powerful.
But hey, given that when I worked as a Janitor, and called myself that despite my title being "Enviromental Services Tech" I guess that in of itself says a lot. No matter how much you polish up a turd, it's still a turd. No matter how fancy you make it sound, the dude who mops the floors for crappy pay, mops the bloody floors for crappy pay.
Seeing the thread here vaguely reminds me of one of the more memorable discussions I was involved in on another forum I used to call (and still check occasionally when I have time) called "Sound Off" at www.palladiumbooks.com (you need to request membership to that forum). The discussion was "Is it racist to call a spear chucker, a spear chucker?".
The exact discussion coming from a discussion involving what amount to regressed african primitives (with tribal magic) going up against mecha and such with spears (if I remember exactly). Someone (it might even had been me) used the term and it got... interesting went way off subject, with a massive divide and much lulz was had by all after the fact I guess.
My basic opinion being that it's an insult if you call some normal, civilized guy a "spear chucker" for racial reasons, but it's not racist to refer to an actual pygmy or Zulu in a fantasy game who is umm... chucking spears as a method of attack, the same way. It merely becomes descriptive.
However according to political correctness, the hypothetical question of how to stop a Mecha moving 150 miles per hour using Enchanted Spears (which can damage said armor, especially in great numbers) should probably never have been under discussion to begin with.
Might be getting the exact arguement confused at the time, but basically RIFTS has an Africa setting where most of Egypt has been taken over by a monster empire lead by this apocolyptic demon pharoah guy who is working with the Four Horsemen of The Apocolypse to end the world. Among other things he has trade agreements with Atlantis which has been taken over by a giant tentecle monster with a transdimensional merchant empire from which he procures high tech weapons. The humans of the region embraced the mysticism of the past after the magic returned (in super saturated quantities) and generally object to all of this for reasons which I hope are painfully obvious. While in general the idea of Africa is mostly to play characters from elsewhere coming to stop the Monster Empire, there are new regions, characters, etc... and the question of "okay, even with that magic, how are they supposed to be surprising" comes
up which leads to conversations about how a primitive can fight super science technology, even when you give them the boost of magical weapons that can damage super-science alloys. You know, you've got your line of dudes ready to throw spears or receive a charge, but how do you peg something that even pretty big is moving REALLY fast, and has no real reason to slow down to let you add up all those little magic spear/whatever bee stings.
Well I'm rambling, but I guess what I'm trying to say is that when political correctness can intrude on something like a bunch of nerds talking about obscure RPG conflicts, you know the movement has gone way too far. In a conversation like this someone shouldn't have to watch their every word for fear of potentially offending someone who doesn't like a turn of phrase.
