Political Correctness

God, being on the left looks like hard work. All that seriousness, all that earnest head-tilting. Everything matters so much! I was in Oxford this weekend for some entirely frivolous reason (although, word to the wise, Summer Eights is an entirely inappropriate spectator sport for 6 & 4 year-olds), and the traditional poster spots were full of posters advertising the new anti-austerity sit-ins and public meetings ("Where now after the election?" I don't know, the KA? The Turf?).

My fellow Oxonian Laurie Penny has a piece in the New Statesman chronicling the sort of crazy hi-jinks you can get up to when you live your life with a lefty zest:

Fast-forward 20 years. In a freezing-cold flat in Berlin, I’m standing under the shower with the water turned up as high and hot as it will go. I’m trying to boil away the shame of having said something stupid on the internet. The shower is the one place it’s still impossible to check Twitter. This is a mercy. For as long as the hot water lasts I won’t be able to read the new accusations of bigotry, racism and unchecked privilege. I didn’t mean it. I don’t understand what I did wrong but I’m trying to understand. I want to be a good person. It turns out that however hard you try to be politically correct, you can still mess up. I am so, so sorry.

Fun! The wider point she's making is (I think) that it's quite right for trans, queer disabled activists of color to shout at her on the internet, because of structural racism and oppression, and anyway these people are ultimately in the right. Victory gins all round.