Is it just me, or has the PC crowd gone completely around the bend regarding Halloween?
I realize this article won't hit the Web until after Halloween - that's one of the drawbacks to switching ISPs - but it's not like the issue won't come up next year. It seems that certain aspects of Halloween are being frowned upon as Less Than Sensitive by the PC Police, who think it's their job to force people to be accepting of diversity. (Speaking of which, why can't they practice what they preach and respect the diversity of my opinions, eh? What's the matter, is the Straight White Male too scary for them, too hard for them to deal with?)
Anyway, I'm digressing. According to the PC Police, we can't have girls dressing up like witches; that's insensitive to Wiccans. We can't have boys dressing up like hunchbacks; that's insensitive to people with physical deformities. No more vampire or werewolf costumes; those might offend someone with congenital erythropoietic porphyria. Mummies? Nope; that's insensitive to the burial practices and beliefs of early Egyptian culture. No more ghosts; that could offend someone who recently suffered a death in the family. Cheerleader and harem costumes offend feminists who think such costumes reinforce bad stereotypes. Crossdressing costumes make a mockery of transvestites. I could go on and on.
Then there's haunted houses. Some particularly clueless church groups are trying to discourage haunted houses in favor of their own indoctrination programs. Look, people, this is Halloween. You get your indoctrination on Easter and Christmas; take that and be happy. I guess they just won't be satisfied until everybody's a nice little robot who spouts Protestant dogma as a solution to everything and everyone gets their daily dose of indoctrination at work and at school, though....
Here's the crux of the matter. For everything that anybody might do, there's somebody else out there who can find a reason to get offended by it. The PC movement is simply what happens when someone decides that people have some sort of right not to be offended; considering all the things which can offend people, this is an inherently futile attempt to make people into automatons who view the delicate sensibilities of other people as more important than the honesty of their own opinions. You don't have a right not to be offended, nor should you. While I don't think people should go out of their way to be offensive (unless, of course, you're writing for a zine that's intended to shake people up), I also don't think one should be too thin-skinned. This idea isn't original, of course - I first ran across it in Fidonet's Policy 4 document:
1) Thou shalt not excessively annoy others.
2) Thou shalt not be too easily annoyed.
Look, folks - it's Halloween. The holiday got started by scared people who thought that the forces of evil were walking the earth, and that the only way to defend themselves was to dress up like them and try not to get noticed. That's some pretty scary shit. Consider how far from that concept we are now; these days, it's just kids in costumes begging for candy. The scariest things out there now are the thought of eating too much candy and getting sick, the idea of some sicko poisoning candy or sticking razor blades in apples (which is hardly a new concept), and the lengths some idiots will go to in claiming that this is "the devil's holiday". (Hmm - considering that, maybe I should thank the PC Police and the wanna-be theocrats for their efforts to put the horror back in Halloween.) If you've got a problem with the holiday, go watch a scary movie and get the fuck over it!
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to take off my makeup and go scare some people. Happy Halloween, don't eat all your candy in one sitting, and think of me when you prank that first asshole of the night.