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Like many people, I do a lot of my deepest thinking in a steam filled bathroom, under running water, behind a curtain. The shower is the most perfect atmosphere to generate some of the best ideas, because we are typically relaxed, alone, completely naked and vulnerable, and have minimal distractions. Morning showers are for waking up, gentle acoustic, and planning for the day, night showers are for relaxation and debriefing/processing the day, and midday showers are for hungover college kids and alcoholics. In all seriousness though, regardless of where you fall on the introvert- extrovert continuum, those 10-45 minutes of naked alone time (depending on how much of an asshole you are, and who's paying your water bill) are a necessary sanctuary to begin and end each day.
Today during my deepest of shower thoughts, I was reading my face wash bottle, "For External Use Only", "Do Not Eat", etc. Although some people could use a serious internal cleansing, the fact that the FDA must include such warnings to not eat soap is indicative of the society we live in. The reason we have warning labels that seem like common sense is because there are self-entitled individuals who need a road map to make it out of bed in the morning, and step-by-step directions to make a bowl of cereal. Someone out there was bold enough to drink their shampoo and munch on the colorful speckles inside their morning burst acne treatment to necess an advisory that forewarns against such behavior. Exceptions are made for those under the age of four, but then again let us not forget the "keep out of reach of children", but hey there's no such thing as a "perfect parent".
Colloquially, I believe we have the same approach when it comes to interpersonal interactions, and self-monitoring, and by we I mean white people, myself included in the doughy batch of undercooked humans. We constantly need to come up with rules and terms like being politically correct, to monitor our behavior, then you have a group of people, usually those who aren't very politically correct, that complain that they have the freedom to say whatever the hell they want, no matter how shitty because of the first amendment. These are the same kind of people that don't know anything past the second amendment, but that's for another day.
Now, I am all for the freedom of speech, it has led our country to overcome many types of oppression, with the use of boycotting, protesting, oratory, and social movements, which has led to change in legislature and an increase of human rights for marginalized groups.
BUT HERE"S THE THING
No one should have to tell you that making racist, sexist, homophobic, and any other kind of phobic or "ist" comments is wrong. No one should have to remind you to be PC; this should be a given quality of being a semi decent human being. It's also quite ironic that the most privileged people in the world are the first ones to lose their damn minds when confronted about the shitty joke they made, like, goddam, you already have priority in society when it comes to getting married, getting a decent paying job, an education, safety, exemption of racial profiling by authorities, higher pay, not just religious tolerance, but religious acceptance and normativity, and everything is designed and marketed in your favor, down to flesh colored crayons and "nude" heels, can the rest of us just please use the historically derogatory terms used against us at our own discretion to empower or diminish?
You can keep your overpaid positions in your corporate, white collar cubicles, but we will determine who gets to call who bitches and sluts, among the other list of words in the dictionary of hetero, white, Christian, male privilege that have been used to put the rest of us in a box over the years. Don't fear though, the racist misogynists of the world are still free to call one another assholes and dick bags.