When I hear the term "political correctness", I hear an oxymoron, because how can the word "correctness" be next to the word "political"? Are not these two terms contradictory? For me, politics is not a good thing, and being political is basically a euphemism for being a liar, it can't be right to be political. We know that in politics it only matters to score points, to win. Winning the elections, winning the debate, winning the discussion, triumph over the other, the truth does not matter. In politics, it is allowed by consensus to tell lies, as long as no one knows. The word "political" has strayed so far from its origin in ancient Greece where it meant "civic" (from polis = political, from city = civic) that it meant two different things. When Aristotle said that the human is a political animal, he means that the human is capable of creating complex societies; cities or poleis. But somehow, the words "civic" and "political" have been confused into what it is today. Because we have come to believe that to be civic, to be civilized, you have to lie. The lie is what holds us together as a society, apparently. Little lies that we tell here and there, all the time, and that we need to live our lives daily. Without them we fight each other. We must live deceived. That's why we lie to each other, and politicians lie to us. It's like someone asks you "what do you think of my new haircut?" And you don't answer "horrendous!", even when you might think about it, because that would be rude, which would put many people in a situation where they would rather lie and honesty would be put aside. Because we believe that with lies we can avoid inconvenience by evading reality. What we ignore is that everything that is built on the lie is built on sand, and in the face of any difficulty or setback it falls, and everything that is built based on honesty has such strong foundations that it is capable of withstanding any test.
I am not saying that we should be disrespectful and rude to other people in the name of truth, you always have to find the right way to say things, but there is a difference between being respectful and telling lies, because that is never the same. Lies are ruder than any truth.
What I see with this whole issue of political correctness is that many people are choosing to evade reality, deny it, avoiding facing the truth because the truth hurts them. So they want people not to tell things as they are, but to disguise them, so that these people don't face reality. The reality is offensive, the truth causes them suffering, and that is because they live in an unreal lie. They hate the truth, but since they cannot change it, they deny it and try to avoid it. It's like the phrase that says “the problem is people are being hated when they are real, and are being loved when they are fake”.
You cannot live in a bubble because everything there will be false, it will be delicate, it will be fragile, and it will be artificial, it will not be real. And again, I'm not saying that we should be rude or disrespectful, all people deserve respect, but in reality, political correctness is not about respect in the least, it is about censorship, about avoiding being in touch with reality, of living in denialism, and I can't see that as a good thing.
Instead of asking people to censor themselves and be afraid to say what they really think, we should encourage all people to be honest, to be their true self, to express themselves with sincerity, because in my opinion, that would make our society, a stronger society.