Woke

[Benny Bunter]

Don't really want to bring it up on here cos people get very upset but I must say this is exactly what's been happening with the trans debate - people on the left (or all across the political spectrum, or just normal people) with legitimate concerns dismissed as fascist meanies with these vapid mantras

 

[version]

Just as they (who?) say you could rebuild Dublin circa 1904 based on what Joyce wrote in 'Ulysses', you could rebuild version's 2023 (so far) by trawling my posts on Dissensus.

 

[Leo]

Probably a matter of context, you guys don't live here in a constant media shadow of Fox News and right-wing radio. Silverstein was reacting to the endless segments for hours on end where lots of (not all) conservatives attack and vilify people on the left for being woke. It's Ron DeSantis's entire premise for government: "Florida, where woke goes to die".

Yes, of course, plenty of people on the left feel lots of woke thinking is dumb, counterproductive, hurtful. No one is challenging that. But people on the left tend not to attack and vilify "the woke" -- they disagree and either keep quiet or try to have reasonable discussion about it -- whereas lots of people on the far right do use it as a means of attack all the time.

 

[Corpsey]

The alt-right red pill thing, that's a sort of 'wake up sheeple' call isn't it? I can imagine 'woke' being something 4chan would urge people to be

 

[version]

Probably a matter of context, you guys don't live here in a constant media shadow of Fox News and right-wing radio. Silverstein was reacting to the endless segments for hours on end where lots of (not all) conservatives attack and vilify people on the left for being woke. It's Ron DeSantis's entire premise for government: "Florida, where woke goes to die".

Yes, of course, plenty of people on the left feel lots of woke thinking is dumb, counterproductive, hurtful. No one is challenging that. But people on the left tend not to attack and vilify "the woke" -- they disagree and either keep quiet or try to have reasonable discussion about it -- whereas lots of people on the far right do use it as a means of attack all the time.

We get it a fair bit from The Mail and The Telegraph and GB News and the Tories but yeah, it does seem to be on another level in the US.

 

[IdleRich]

A lot of people on the left avoid using the term now because it's become a pejorative and part of the vernacular of the right and when people on the right use it they're gesturing at a nebulous mass of things which wind them up.

The right is often good at tarnishing words so that the left no longer want to use them for themselves.

 

[version]

The right is often good at tarnishing words so that the left no longer want to use them for themselves.

Someone on the right published an article criticising this just the other week. They said politics is currently fought on "the linguistic landscape of the left" and that the right need their own lexicon.

 

[shakahislop]

In my everyday the woke backlash seeps out every now and then. Among white men only. Who knows where that is going to lead. As ever in America all these things seem more extreme

(edit, I wrote that last line before I read everyone else talking about America in the last few posts)

 

[IdleRich]

Someone on the right published an article criticising this just the other week. They said politics is currently fought on "the linguistic landscape of the left" and that the right need their own lexicon.

It seems that the right invents insults such as cuck or snowflake, the left invents words it thinks are positive, and the right makes them into insults too.

 

[shakahislop]

Red Scare, I'm putting it very provocatively, is at least as influential as jungle I reckon (and is also an innovative form), and that's the whole animus comes from I think, the audience's drive the listen, the woke backlash

 

[shakahislop]

As ever the UK is infected by America, anything word-based that happens in America comes over to the UK, 'woke' 'BLM' 'beta cuck', all these things sound wrong in our mouths coz they're imports, they don't come from our reality, they get in the way of describing what we're trying to talk about

 

[version]

It seems that the right invents insults such as cuck or snowflake, the left invents words it thinks are positive, and the right makes them into insults too.

Here's the article by that right winger, if you're curious.

The need for a right wing lexicon | Jake Scott | The Critic Magazine

In the mid- to late-18th century, warfare in Europe had progressed to a strange development. The monarchies and republics of the continent had, for the most part, professionalised their militaries to…

thecritic.co.uk

 

[version]

In my everyday the woke backlash seeps out every now and then. Among white men only. Who knows where that is going to lead. As ever in America all these things seem more extreme

I know a fair few people who aren't straight white guys that find it incredibly irritating.

 

[luka]

the boats are not very woke. the only exposure i get to it is when young women with blue hair and hairy legs ask me to write poems about femail empowerment and the patriarchy. are you sure im the right person to ask i think silently then pocket the cash.

 

[luka]

I know a fair few people who aren't straight white guys that find it incredibly irritating.

me too. one of them had to do a course on 'micro-affirmations' the other day. wasnt impressed.

 

[shakahislop]

You're right. The biggest resistor to this I know is a woman. She works at a very expensive private school on the upper east side and seems to have to deal with this stuff all the time at work

 

[version]

You're right. The biggest resistor to this I know is a woman. She works at a very expensive private school on the upper east side and seems to have to deal with this stuff all the time at work

Apparently it's become just another tool of competition in academia.

 

[shakahislop]

Apparently it's become just another tool of competition in academia.

I was hanging out with a guy - who to set the scene looked exactly like kurt cobain - who had just finished his PhD in Chicago and told me that not only was it going to be hard for him to find an academic job because he was a white man, he also felt that he probably shouldn't take one for moral reasons. I don't particularly know if that's a good or a bad thing, but it helped me realize that this stuff is very real in the US. He said that being gay wasn't enough

 

[shakahislop]

the boats are not very woke. the only exposure i get to it is when young women with blue hair and hairy legs ask me to write poems about femail empowerment and the patriarchy. are you sure im the right person to ask i think silently then pocket the cash.

People keep talking about women with blue hair and I never see them anywhere

 

[version]

A trans friend of mine and Linebaugh's joked about feeling herself becoming transphobic after spending some time in a trans space because she hated how steeped everyone else there was in all the jargon and felt they couldn't really talk about anything else.