The word "problematic" has always humoured me. It reminds me of the Rocko's Modern Life, where our wallaby star lived in O-Town and everything was something-o-matic. I guess the social justice sorts in this world found things problem-o-matic. Now, if you ask Google, 'what does matic mean?' you get this wonderful result:
""Automatic" can be broken down into auto-, meaning self, and -matic, willing. It therefore translates to "willing to self-perform".""Willing", eh? A willing problem? Of course, going back to the dictionary to dig up root meanings of words or particular suffixes or prefixes is pedantic, but this was my original line of reasoning behind why the word 'problematic' makes me laugh so much. Issues to the regressive left are simply automatically a problem, or said another way, are inherently a problem simply for existing, as subjectively evaluated by that given person or ideology.
Skype, the most ubiquitous of online call services, came into being from two Estonian programmers. The service includes a simple echo test for the user's speakers and microphone. The echo test uses a woman's voice. The woman's voice has British accent--I believe a Geordie accent to be specific. Here is how the regressive left deals with something a benign as this. The following is satire and shouldn't be taken seriously.
The Skype echo test voice is problematic as it uses a female voice to depict women as a secretary at the whims of a call service uses.
It is doubly problematic as it fetishizes the accented voice as being more desirable than the user's local accents while also keeping the woman in a submissive support role.
Echo test is triply problematic because it prevents the woman from being able to assist the user, perpetuating the stereotype of women being incompetent with technology, disposable to men's needs as a mere testing agent, and stripped of agency!
It might seem like a caricature of the modern progressive movement, but a moment of reflection on a few recent topics demonstrates the eerie accuracy of this satire. Take, for a quick example, the protests against the Silent Sam statue on UNC-Chapel Hill's campus, the protest against Thomas Jefferson's statue on the Missouri University campus in Columbia, MO, and the feminist protest/activism at the opening of Suffragette, a movie about women's empowerment.
No, this satire is pointed and accurate. That is what makes it satire. Every time I hear something is "problematic", I immediately think of the half dozen spin off issues from the original one, and then play a game of mental bingo to see how far the regressives take it.
This has been an unedited rant. @nrokchi
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