Yeah. This. College students used to yell at each other over other things too (like Vietnam) and there is a whole group of "journalists" whose job has been talking about college kids are "going...
Exemplary
There is a fragility built in on both sides of this conversation, where somebody says, “Call me this.” You do. We don’t have to have a 10-hour-long fight over this stuff. Or you can just smile and move on. I think we can agree that that’s very silly. It’s like somebody yelled at you onetime in college that doesn’t have any power over you, and now I have to live with the consequences of — you know, fascism is knocking at the door because of that. That’s a big leap.
Yeah. This.
College students used to yell at each other over other things too (like Vietnam) and there is a whole group of "journalists" whose job has been talking about college kids are "going too far"
Just be kind. It's not that hard. But these same folks who are reacting apparently entirely out of "you can't tell me what to do/say" are equally pissed at their moms for making them share I suspect.
This part at the end sure caught my eye: There’s several people I know who voted for Trump and when asked why they would mention cultural things that have nothing to do with policy. So in a way it...
This part at the end sure caught my eye:
Spiegelman: That’s actually where I wanted to go next. The comedian Marc Maron made this joke — I’m going to paraphrase it, but basically it’s like: Did progressives annoy people into fascism?
Sow: I mean, it’s possible. It’s very possible.
Spiegelman: Brock, you’ve done so much reporting on the MAGA right youth movement. I’m curious what you’re seeing there.
Colyar: I wrote a cover story for New York magazine last year where I went to the inauguration and hung out with the new right: young, upwardly mobile, kind of good-looking, influencer conservatives. And language policing was the thing that they brought up over and over and over again. They wanted the freedom to say the R-word or the F-word. This was their main concern.
There’s several people I know who voted for Trump and when asked why they would mention cultural things that have nothing to do with policy. So in a way it really seems that progressives annoyed people into fascism.
But to them I say, no, and fuck you. The people who voted for Trump because they wanted to use slurs and whine about the “war on Christmas” were always fucking assholes who were just making excuses for being stupid and voting against their own interests. They are miserable and like to punch down rather than realize their situation is caused by their own limitations plus the system run by the other crappy leaders they and their parents have been voting for since Reagan
Since we’re quoting excerpts: This really resonated with me and I think it describes why I personally feel disgust about the cultural pendulum swinging back toward conservatism. I don’t want there...
Since we’re quoting excerpts:
I don’t think that we’re always being told what to do; some of this is just basic politeness to me. Before we started this interview, your producer asked me how I would like to be referred to. I was like, that’s great. That’s a professional courtesy. People mispronounce my name all the time. It’s fine to do that. So, if somebody is like, please call me by these pronouns, and they’re asking you earnestly, it doesn’t cost me anything to do that for someone.
And so, when I find this wanton cruelty being the driving force — because, again, everything exists in a context — I think that what I find particularly grating about the “I want to be able to use the R-word, I want to call women [expletive], and I want to call people the N-word,” you know, whatever it is, I’m like, why do you want to do that? Why is it so important to you? What is so important about being able to say that to someone who is telling you they don’t want to hear that?
This really resonated with me and I think it describes why I personally feel disgust about the cultural pendulum swinging back toward conservatism. I don’t want there to be a thought police constantly censoring assholes, I just want there to not be assholes. I want to live in a society where basic self-reflection and empathy are as default as waiting in line at the grocery store, or being quiet in a theater.
Yeah I considered including that part too. There are people who will get unreasonably pissed about their name being mispronounced by a stranger but also my response to someone being upset at me is...
Yeah I considered including that part too. There are people who will get unreasonably pissed about their name being mispronounced by a stranger but also my response to someone being upset at me is to apologize and fix it, not be like "fuck you [slur]"
And as for wanting to say it as Delroy Lindo said
"So say it. Say the word you want to say."
They don't just want to say it, they don't want to be judged for saying it. They don't want consequences for saying it. They want to hurt people and laugh about it and be praised but never criticized for it.
They can say whatever they want. Anyone can ignore people's pronouns or whatever. They just don't get to be free of being called an asshole for it.
I find this bleakly amusing to bring up directly next to the Tucker Carlson interview above this article here, where he's like no no people really just vote about economics I swear.
I find this bleakly amusing to bring up directly next to the Tucker Carlson interview above this article here, where he's like no no people really just vote about economics I swear.
Ugh, that one.. could have been nice to finish reading it but it just reeks of professional bullshitting and it's impossible to take any of what he said at face value. Feels like it's just another...
Ugh, that one.. could have been nice to finish reading it but it just reeks of professional bullshitting and it's impossible to take any of what he said at face value. Feels like it's just another role he's playing, so had to stop reading.
I had a friend (not American) who wanted Trump to win the first election solely because they were annoyed with SJW culture. Literally told me they wanted him to win to knock SJWs down a peg, as...
I had a friend (not American) who wanted Trump to win the first election solely because they were annoyed with SJW culture. Literally told me they wanted him to win to knock SJWs down a peg, as around that time SJW culture was particularly grating and preachy.
The one saving grace is that they—and to an extent, me as well—saw the position of President as close to a figurehead position with limited powers. My biggest argument at that point was that the next president was set to appoint a bunch of Supreme Court Justices, which they agreed would have a long-term effect. We both figured the oversight from Congress would keep him in check.
We genuinely had no clue just how bad Trump getting elected would be. I never realized just how much of the President's power is dependent on the person having the most basic, barest levels of decency.
I do wonder how many people did vote for him with that exact mindset.
I don't think SJW culture has ever been nearly as powerful of a force as people had made it out to be. I've never put pronouns in my bio, nor felt pressure to. I've never been yelled at for...
I don't think SJW culture has ever been nearly as powerful of a force as people had made it out to be.
I've never put pronouns in my bio, nor felt pressure to. I've never been yelled at for assuming someone's gender, even though I, just like everyone else in the world, do it constantly, every day every time I meet someone. I've never been labeled as "problematic" or anything like that, and I haven't really changed the way I act or anything, besides just growing up.
But like... You can, and always could say the word retard around your friends as long as you know them and know they're ok with it, and no one is going to yell at you.
You probably can't do it at your office job, but was there ever really a time where that was acceptable? It's just unprofessional, and has very little to do with wokeness.
I just think the whole thing is a very convinient boogeyman for conservatives, and if it wasnt that, it would be something else, so the idea that "if just we called people slurs, we'd win elections!" Doesn't hold.
They'd just move onto making compilations of trans rights supporters, or people who protest for social healthcare programs, or whatever the next culture war thing is decided to be.
It functionally made it extremely difficult for the majority of people to engage in progressive political spaces online because of an endemic culture of purity testing and crybullying humiliation...
Exemplary
I don't think SJW culture has ever been nearly as powerful of a force as people had made it out to be.
It functionally made it extremely difficult for the majority of people to engage in progressive political spaces online because of an endemic culture of purity testing and crybullying humiliation rituals for people who don’t hew to a specific vibe born on Tumblr that metastasized into Twitter. They were small numerically, but this had the effect of trickling out into the broader culture because it was happening in the specific place where all the journalists and media people spend all their time cooking their brains. Basically everyone who stayed ended up like the people in the article are talking about and the people who are still cool are the ones who left.
It doesn’t make most people turn fash, but people trim their sails, their jokes get less edgy, there’s less boundary pushing or productive disagreement or conflict because everything is wired to drive all conflicts into being vicious, highly personal, and unproductive. The really good liberal/progressive content creators actually left or dramatically scaled back how much time they spent on the big platforms because they simply could not deal with the toxicity of the scene, and largely from their own fans. The “cancellation” of Lindsay Ellis was a big turning point here where I think a lot of people just got fed up and tired of having to constantly do this rear guard action against onside wreckers, so they simply checked out.
By itself that probably doesn’t constitute much, but it means there’s less compelling cultural production going out there to influence the large numbers of mostly passive consumers who don’t think too hard about the ideological implications of what they’re doing. So instead of engaging in productive politics that works through the messy systems that exist today, you get people pushed to extreme voices because the middle ground’s just been left fallow. Even now lots of communities have had “no politics” rules for discussion that they’ve been putting into place starting around 2022 because, even though almost everyone there agrees on most things politically, as soon as you get people who enjoy discussing politics into the space reaching a certain critical mass the entire vibe goes to shit.
This thread is a very good example where people who want to argue against the piece keep insisting that it’s just about calling people what they want to be called rather than the struggle-session vibe of forcing people who do not care to sit through diversity seminars being put on by preachy White women. I think most people broadly agreed with the general goal on a lot of these things, but everything was served up with this layer of deeply off-putting snark and irony poisoned affectations. As long as people thought the “weird stuff” was just online people I think they were happy to grumble about it and move on, but after COVID the internet became real life and it genuinely broke a lot of people’s brains. Suddenly people’s view of the world is based on this distorted funhouse mirror perspective they’re getting from a rage-baiting social media algorithm “nutpicking” content from a clade of people who think merely belonging to a subaltern group somehow exempts you from norms around extending grace to others and not being a dick. You have sensitivity trainings and HR seminars being put together that seemed like they were sourced from Pinterest memes.
So yeah I think it did have the end-result of making society go right, because it adopted a bunch of mannerisms and attitudes that cloistered itself off from being able to communicate, interact with, and persuade people who weren’t already bought into its premises.
I completely understand where you are coming with this, but I think the blame is placed on the wrong group. The issue isn't 'discussing politics' so much as it is that we tolerate jerks and jerk...
as soon as you get people who enjoy discussing politics into the space reaching a certain critical mass the entire vibe goes to shit.
I completely understand where you are coming with this, but I think the blame is placed on the wrong group. The issue isn't 'discussing politics' so much as it is that we tolerate jerks and jerk behavior online. This blog post is an excellent summary of the issue - jerks push out nice people, and all that's left is jerks. You avoid charged topics both because it brings the jerk out in some people, but because it attracts jerks as well.
I find it's very much an artifact of the online space as well. Ironically the very push-back which is supposedly making people 'more right' (calling people out on their speech or treating them as hostile when they are saying hateful things) is exactly the kind of feedback present in the actual world. Think about the last time you had a political discussion among friends, or talked about an issue you disagreed with others on. It's really common for small community groups to self-regulate this with what is effectively moderation - people stepping in and saying "stop being an asshole" or pulling someone aside and talking to them or directly addressing that what they are saying is fucked up because it's attacking some person in the group. I mean hell, people self-censor a lot more in these spaces too so they're less likely to say something as inflammatory as they would online because it's a lot harder to say something mean when the person you'll affect is right in front of you and a part of a group you both are a part of.
the struggle-session vibe of forcing people who do not care to sit through diversity seminars being put on by preachy White women
You know, I find it fascinating that people feel this is the case. It's almost like people don't recognize that the internet is a huge space. They don't fully internalize the 90/9/1 rule. They make these vast assumptions about entire groups of people based on a few vocal folks. Or they let these vocal folks take up all of their attention. As someone who is in a ton of left-wing spaces, I don't ever see these so called 'diversity seminars'. Well, I mean I see them occasionally happen in toxic social media spaces where unmoderated discussion among literal millions of people happen, but I also recognize that it's chronically online people having that discussion. Do most people not recognize that this is a huge reality distortion? Like it makes me think back to the child kidnapping paranoia of the 90s and early 00s driven by media coverage, when it was exceedingly rare for it to happen in the first place. These voices are getting amplified by algorithms, but they are extremely rare.
I mean, you touch on this when you say it's a distorted funhouse, but maybe the issue is that most people still haven't de-internalized what they learned from this funhouse. Despite the beginnings of recognizing the echo chambers folks end up in and the effect of these algorithms they're still tilting at windmills because they haven't recognized they've still got their algorithm goggles on.
I think it did have the end-result of making society go right
You know I hear this a lot but I don't think the political science of it quite tracks. I think people went more right on specific social issues, namely the ones that were attacked or turned into boogeymen, but my understanding of the science is that as a whole society is more progressive than it ever has been. Then again, we live in the age of disinformation so it's really hard to make definitive statements anymore without a lot of time and effort spent on tearing apart sources and incentives - political science is often rife with bias.
Even in the real world, though, there’s always been a general social norm of not bringing up politics or religion in polite company because it has a tendency to sour the mood and foster the kind...
I find it's very much an artifact of the online space as well. Ironically the very push-back which is supposedly making people 'more right' (calling people out on their speech or treating them as hostile when they are saying hateful things) is exactly the kind of feedback present in the actual world.
Even in the real world, though, there’s always been a general social norm of not bringing up politics or religion in polite company because it has a tendency to sour the mood and foster the kind of bad-blood that’s toxic to communities. And the more necessary it is to bring a broadly selected group of the population in, the firmer that rule tends to be, like in workplaces. This is obviously a tough norm to maintain when the way you look or are becomes a point of political tension, which is why I think the shift in politics from focus on general areas of common interest to a sort of zero-sum conflict between mutually exclusive identity groups has made everything so frothy.
When you are in a place where politics or religion are being discussed, people have seen fit to set up almost boxing-match type rules of engagement around it. There will generally be a formal or informal “peacemaker” who mediates between the two sides as well as general social pressure to just shut up if things start to get heated.
Or they let these vocal folks take up all of their attention.
It’s not really a matter of “letting” it happen, it’s structural. A lot of social cues don’t exist online. For one thing, in the real world you have lots of subtle body language and expressions to signal if the people around you are uncomfortable or how a joke in landing. Online, your only cues are upvotes/likes, (sometimes) downvotes/dislikes, and people either arguing with your or agreeing with you. But there’s a whole spectrum of reactions that don’t have enough energy to manifest as engagement, like an awkward chuckle, uncomfortably glancing around, mild groans, rolling your eyes, or nodding your head, on the internet ALL of that just manifests as silence. It’s inherently biased towards amplifying the views of people who are easily driven to action/expression (low boundary of frustration before they react), and those people are likely to be intemperate just because of how personality traits tend to cluster. There’s not really good ways to gently slow things down, everything is either slamming on the gas or slamming the brakes.
Or they let these vocal folks take up all of their attention. As someone who is in a ton of left-wing spaces, I don't ever see these so called 'diversity seminars'. Well, I mean I see them occasionally happen in toxic social media spaces where unmoderated discussion among literal millions of people happen, but I also recognize that it's chronically online people having that discussion.
You’re hitting at the numbers issue here yourself. The spaces you’re in are a niche within a niche, but if a person who isn’t chronically online is curious about a topic and looks into it, their first encounter with it is going to be on the massive online platforms where millions of people are engaged in a clout-farming free-for-all. That’s their main viewport into what the world looks like outside their personal experience.
Even within left-wing or progressive spaces I find it very surprising that you wouldn’t encounter the struggle session logic because having massive schisms over pretty minor disagreements is a common enough experience to be a meme that predates the internet. The fact that you characterize the spaces as “left-wing” is probably a clue where I assume the ideological vetting has already been done before they’re ever allowed in the club. But you can’t really engage in mass-persuasion from a cloister.
I think people went more right on specific social issues, namely the ones that were attacked or turned into boogeymen, but my understanding of the science is that as a whole society is more progressive than it ever has been.
Generationally the millennial cohort is markedly more progressive than both generations before and after, and even if the average looks close it’s masking a big divergence where both poles are getting more extreme. Open and flagrant racism and outright Naziism didn’t used to be a normal feature of the political space. You didn’t even used to have to worry about people being secret Nazis, it was almost safe enough to where people started feeling comfortable making satirical jokes about it. I don’t think that’s just an extinction burst either. I think the mode through which a lot of people see politics is as a zero-sum game between immutable demographic groups. Some people identify hard with their race, others on gender and sexuality identity, and others on a vaguely defined political or spiritual tradition that they attached themselves to. But the common thread is that it’s all framed around a siege mentality of “us against the world” and political action is geared towards making the world safe for “us” by eliminating all threats wherever we find them. Once you have that, then the entire project becomes about finding and purging threats, there’s no common project anymore.
I think America is actually later to the game on this, but you see more advanced stages of rot in other pluralistic democracies in less economically developed countries like India or Brazil.
While you're right to point out that communication is more difficult in a less rich medium (such as text only), I've seen many successful smaller communities and like the blog post I linked the...
It’s not really a matter of “letting” it happen, it’s structural. A lot of social cues don’t exist online.
While you're right to point out that communication is more difficult in a less rich medium (such as text only), I've seen many successful smaller communities and like the blog post I linked the common thread has always been heavier moderation. Monolithic platforms like meta or x simply don't step in when people are being jerks (and often incentivize it because the algorithm optimizes this content). Combine that with the lack of an actual human in front of you, let alone someone you share a community with (being on the same platform is somewhat meaningless when you consider the scale) and people are just so distant from the person on the other side of the screen that they probably hardly even exist in their mind. It's easier to be mean to something you can't connect with.
but also I don't exactly want to be having a pedantic debate about the exact calculus of what makes someone an asshole online, I think we're generally on the same page here.
That’s their main viewport into what the world looks like outside their personal experience.
Right and I guess I've been online for so long that it's hard for me to see how that affects the average person. Upon reflection it's pretty obvious that most people are tilting at windmills, and it might be another 20 years before that starts to normalize because folks are only just learning to start de-internalizing these values they're seeing because they recognize how internet driven they are (funhouse levels of distorted).
I find it very surprising that you wouldn’t encounter the struggle session logic because having massive schisms over pretty minor disagreements is a common enough experience to be a meme that predates the internet.
To be clear I'm not saying it doesn't happen, just that I've self-selected out of spaces where this kind of thing happens. Over the last 5 years or so I've been putting more and more effort into finding curated spaces because I've been increasingly annoyed at the toxicity of social media (specifically the unmoderated gigantic platforms and the problems we've been discussing here).
I know more folks are going out and touching grass as a reaction to 24/7 disinfo and toxic platforms but I suppose I don't have a good grasp of quite how many are doing this. Is it 5% of the population or 50%? I really have no clue but assume its somewhere between those two numbers.
I really don't see it that way. It may be a minority of people, but it's loud enough to create real consequences. One example that I immediately thought of because it was the first publicized...
You know, I find it fascinating that people feel this is the case. It's almost like people don't recognize that the internet is a huge space. They don't fully internalize the 90/9/1 rule. They make these vast assumptions about entire groups of people based on a few vocal folks. Or they let these vocal folks take up all of their attention. As someone who is in a ton of left-wing spaces, I don't ever see these so called 'diversity seminars'. Well, I mean I see them occasionally happen in toxic social media spaces where unmoderated discussion among literal millions of people happen, but I also recognize that it's chronically online people having that discussion. Do most people not recognize that this is a huge reality distortion? Like it makes me think back to the child kidnapping paranoia of the 90s and early 00s driven by media coverage, when it was exceedingly rare for it to happen in the first place. These voices are getting amplified by algorithms, but they are extremely rare.
I really don't see it that way. It may be a minority of people, but it's loud enough to create real consequences.
One example that I immediately thought of because it was the first publicized instance that I've seen: the scientist who helped land a probe on a comet but wore an inappropriate shirt because he's a nerd: The controversy follows the revelations from the scientist’s sister Maxine that he could be “useless” in everyday life. Portraying her tattooed sibling as absent-minded, unable to find his car in the car park, and sometimes lacking in common sense, she told the Evening Standard, he didn’t like making decisions.
That shirt probably warranted a HR visit explaining to wear plain clothes for press conferences next time, but I find the reaction to be much more disgusting than what he wore.
I think it's also emblematic that this is essentially friendly fire. I doubt a nerdy scientist is the enemy of progress.
Never said SJW culture was powerful. However, some parts of it could get very vocal and annoying, especially in direct interactions. I find it very believable some people may have voted for Trump...
Never said SJW culture was powerful. However, some parts of it could get very vocal and annoying, especially in direct interactions. I find it very believable some people may have voted for Trump for purely petty spite to "get back" at SJWs after one such interaction. It's the same sort of pettiness as people who buy and eat meat in front of a very specific and annoying vegan they know.
I don't think it would have motivated enough people to completely sway the votes, but... Yeah, some people definitely did, likely with the thought that he couldn't do that much damage. Again, I never realized how much of a President's abilities and limitations basically relied on the honor system rather than formal regulations. His first term managed to exceed all of my worst expectations.
But those people suck. It's not the "annoying vegan" that made them make the choice to suck, that's displacing the responsibility for their own actions. It's very "look what you made me do." And...
. It's the same sort of pettiness as people who buy and eat meat in front of a very specific and annoying vegan they know.
But those people suck. It's not the "annoying vegan" that made them make the choice to suck, that's displacing the responsibility for their own actions. It's very "look what you made me do." And society recognizes that as abusive in a parent but somehow becomes blind to it when it's voting to harm a community.
The people who may have voted for Trump to "get back" at what is mostly a strawman are just blaming others for their shitty actions. They eagerly wanted to vote for him and if it was to intentionally upset or hurt others they're assholes. It's exhausting to keep being told that I'm not only responsible for my actions but also for every reactionary "I wanna say a slur" asshole. As I stated elsewhere, they don't want to say it, they want not to be called an asshole for it.
If a toddler knocks over everyone's blocks because they want to do something else, we understand their lack of emotional regulation and empathy and their inability to understand the impact of their actions. When adults do it, they're just being assholes.
(And when they hurt themselves in the process and cry, we don't demand the other kids whose blocks were smashed be the ones to stop crying and soothe the baby godzilla)
And it would be nice to not be like "well maybe the left made them be assholes" every five minutes.
If we have to live in a society where a majority of people are assholes, I see limiting the analysis to labeling them assholes as self-defeating. They have critical mass: our attempts to shame...
If we have to live in a society where a majority of people are assholes, I see limiting the analysis to labeling them assholes as self-defeating. They have critical mass: our attempts to shame them have insufficient power to change their behavior.
Evaluating what things have changed their behavior, and using that knowledge to strategize on how to systematically pull some of those levers to move our society towards a more comfortable place for ourselves, is a productive activity.
I'm not attempting to shame them nor in this post trying to change them. We will not change them by blaming other people for their actions. They also don't have actual critical mass, they're loud...
I'm not attempting to shame them nor in this post trying to change them. We will not change them by blaming other people for their actions.
They also don't have actual critical mass, they're loud but I firmly believe there's more of "us" than "them" but we keep telling "us" to stop being so demanding and just accommodate "them" more because it's "our fault" that they're this way.
The people doing the work of education and thus change, are already frequently the most marginalized. What I do for change is different than when I post on the internet about an article that contains an exhausting repetition of a blame-shifting narrative.
If someone is taking an action to spite or hurt someone else they're being an asshole. My typical solution to that is to individually, nicely, ask them why they're being an asshole, pointing out the impact of their actions and the motivation they're expressing. But I'm not the therapist or educator for the world. In my tiny realm, I do an excellent job.
Here, I'm going to say the very basic thing that "hurting others is bad behavior" and see if I can get told I'm not being nice enough a dozen more times. I don't see much analysis here and I'm not sure why I get graced with the tone policing of it all.
Fully agree they suck. I'm not trying to justify or defend that mindset, or say that SJW culture "made them" vote that way. I argued with that friend a LOT about wanting Trump to win for such a...
Fully agree they suck. I'm not trying to justify or defend that mindset, or say that SJW culture "made them" vote that way. I argued with that friend a LOT about wanting Trump to win for such a dumb and petty reason, especially because I would be the one who'd be dealing with the direct aftermath while they were safely in the UK. If they had been American and voted for him with that motivation, I likely would have ended the friendship then (though the friendship did ultimately fade around that time anyway for unrelated reasons).
Some people do vote for the pettiest of reasons and spite against some other group rather than policy issues. It's so damn frustrating because at that point the vote has barely anything to do with politics, it's just people being self-righteous assholes... At least with policy issues there's a chance of educating someone on an issue enough to open their minds. If they're voting based on pure pettiness, you'd need to change their whole personality.
No I get where you're coming from I'm just absolutely so over the rotating wheel of "which lefty thing pushed the right to destroy America" vs "hey these guys were plotting out Project 2025 for...
No I get where you're coming from I'm just absolutely so over the rotating wheel of "which lefty thing pushed the right to destroy America" vs "hey these guys were plotting out Project 2025 for years and are now floating the loss of women's right to vote and birthright citizenship as if that's a normal and fine thing to do despite being against the constitution in every obvious way... What if they're the baddies."
It's right up there with "women are the reason men choose the worst role models" and "trans people demanded too much by wanting to exist in public and have rights."
And apologies for you being in front of me this time.
Huh, I might be mistaken. I thought I read a whole article on it. Let me see if I can find it and otherwise disregard. Edit: You're right, seems like it was more opportunistic than anything. I...
Huh, I might be mistaken. I thought I read a whole article on it. Let me see if I can find it and otherwise disregard.
Edit:
You're right, seems like it was more opportunistic than anything. I found the following that in Joshua Green's book Devil's Bargain, Bannon is quoted saying
"These guys, these rootless white males, had monster power... You can activate that army. They come in through Gamergate or whatever and then get turned onto politics and Trump."
He hired Milo Yiannopoulos specifically to cultivate the Gamergate demographic, with Breitbart Tech launching in October 2015 as a dedicated pipeline for converting gaming culture resentment into conservative political identity.
Yeah leave it to online spaces to take one off-hand comment about something and suddenly it turns into this, or that Epstein is the one that created microtransactions in video games (because he...
Yeah leave it to online spaces to take one off-hand comment about something and suddenly it turns into this, or that Epstein is the one that created microtransactions in video games (because he wasn't already bad enough) haha
I don't really disagree. But we if we know many people are like that, is it smart to just ignore that and insist on the most advanced ethical goals we can think of? Wouldn't it be smarter to reach...
But to them I say, no, and fuck you. The people who voted for Trump because they wanted to use slurs and whine about the “war on Christmas” were always fucking assholes who were just making excuses for being stupid and voting against their own interests.
I don't really disagree. But we if we know many people are like that, is it smart to just ignore that and insist on the most advanced ethical goals we can think of? Wouldn't it be smarter to reach for lower hanging fruit? The assholes aren't going to say: "Oh, I didn't know you guys were serious. I guess you are right. Let's ignore my feelings and have it your way." They will double down, and so will we, and it will end in violence.
We usually understand this instinctively in everyday life. If a customer is sort of a dick, maybe we tell them to seek business elsewhere, but we don't tell them they are literally worse than Hitler and should go die in a ditch with a cactus up their arse. But in political discussions, we forget that for some reason. We throw diplomacy overboard and anyone who suggests compromise is a traitor. I don't see how this is supposed to do more good than harm.
Well sure. I'm ranting on the internet, not talking to people standing in the same room as me. I'm just pissed about where we are because I had to hear these "conservative" people call normal...
Well sure. I'm ranting on the internet, not talking to people standing in the same room as me. I'm just pissed about where we are because I had to hear these "conservative" people call normal non-sociopaths "snowflakes" and "woke" for the last 10 years and now they want sympathy when their leopards are eating the wrong faces.
I've always understood that there are many types of people. For example, if you leave a wallet full of money on the street:
There are some people who will pick it up, try to contact the owner, and make sure that every penny is returned
There are some people who will pocket the money and put the wallet back on the ground
There are some people who will take the wallet and use the credit cards and use the id to do identity theft.
I always thought the first group was the largest and third group was a tiny minority, but after the last few elections I think each of the three groups are about 1/3 of the population.
I think that's just the result of people giving up on getting economic or material improvements from their politicians. All you're left with is the culture war. The second Mamdani offered New York...
I think that's just the result of people giving up on getting economic or material improvements from their politicians. All you're left with is the culture war. The second Mamdani offered New York actual solutions to material problems, the culture war couldn't touch him.
Another fucking installment in "the right has no agency". I'm so fucking sick of braindead legacy media takes blaming the (sometimes annoying) twitter-left for people embracing literal Nazi...
Another fucking installment in "the right has no agency". I'm so fucking sick of braindead legacy media takes blaming the (sometimes annoying) twitter-left for people embracing literal Nazi ideology like they have no control over their own goddamn actions and beliefs.
To be fair, a lot of these people basically have no agency in this and just believe what they're told. A lot of them think in pushing whackjob theories because the whackjobs have lied about their...
To be fair, a lot of these people basically have no agency in this and just believe what they're told. A lot of them think in pushing whackjob theories because the whackjobs have lied about their schlock and told them anyone who denies them is a stupid whackjob.
Yes, they have agency over being nice people, but they legitimately lack the skills to understand that they are being manipulated.
They are victims and a result of a broken system, even if their civil rights aren't being threatened as severely.
They're victims but they're also holding other people down and punching them. Much like with people and their generational trauma they do still have the ability to choose differently. It might be...
They're victims but they're also holding other people down and punching them. Much like with people and their generational trauma they do still have the ability to choose differently. It might be harder than without that manipulation, but people opposed slavery as long as it existed and other people freed their slaves and became abolitionists. People have been shaken out of their homophobia by a queer kid. Others have beaten the kid to death.
People can be victims and also still victimize and they're still responsible for that act, unless they're literal toddlers.
I would love to be able to comment on this website without being one-upped over something I briefly touched on but didn't expand on because it wasn't the point. Yes, people who are pieces of...
Exemplary
I would love to be able to comment on this website without being one-upped over something I briefly touched on but didn't expand on because it wasn't the point.
Yes, people who are pieces of fucking shit are pieces of fucking shit. This is understood. It doesn't accomplish anything to continue to bring it up. No one is disputing this.
But the point was that many of them are not mean, spiteful, or hateful people. They just don't understand the implications of what they are voting for or the lies they've been fed.
Insisting on returning to what we all understand does not add anything that we didn't already know.
Honestly, this is the stuff that people are referring to when they say things like the headline. The constant purity tests and the need to say everything explicitly and in-depth just to pre-empt the inevitable responses that actually agree with you but don't think you were progressive enough in your wording.
Yes, the right has agency. No, it's not the let's fault.
Hey, I wasn't trying to fucking "one up" you, I was responding to your words in a theme with my previous posts in the comment section. I also never described people as "pieces of fucking shit" or...
Hey, I wasn't trying to fucking "one up" you, I was responding to your words in a theme with my previous posts in the comment section. I also never described people as "pieces of fucking shit" or spiteful or hateful. "Nice" people still do shitty things. Also some people are less nice than they think.
Your whole post was about how people are victims of the whack jobs, I don't agree that this removes their agency because they just believe what they're told. I elaborated with a comparison to abolitionists during slavery. It's possible to overcome generational trauma.
If saying "people are responsible for their own actions and even when victims themselves also make choices" is now wokeness and an exemplar of why people hate conversations like this, like, I genuinely don't know what anyone is allowed to say. I have not laid out a purity test here. I have said that people have agency and responsibility for their actions.
But yeah sure I'm wokeness gone too far or whatever.
You may not have intended it to come off that way, and I apologize if you read my response as rude because that wasn't my intent, but I think the number of votes I got—while usually a pointless...
You may not have intended it to come off that way, and I apologize if you read my response as rude because that wasn't my intent, but I think the number of votes I got—while usually a pointless metric—shows that I was not alone in getting that feeling, when comparing it to the votes on my previous comment.
I think you week like a great, truly caring person, but since I've gotten back into actively commenting on discussions on Tildes, I really have actively avoided joining discussions like this where I see your name. NOT because I disagree with you particularly often, and almost certainly unfairly to you because your username sticks out to me more because you're from Illinois and we had so many nice discussions—particularly about the em dash—but because I've seen and received so many exhausting, combative comments on this site between people who were on the same side.
I know these issues are extremely stressful to you and impact you far more than they will ever affect me. I'm very sorry that the life you live is threatened more every day by this administration (and beyond).
I genuinely don't know how to read it as anything other than being rude and uncharitable but I acknowledge you saying that wasn't your intent. And maybe that's because I'm really deeply tired of...
I genuinely don't know how to read it as anything other than being rude and uncharitable but I acknowledge you saying that wasn't your intent. And maybe that's because I'm really deeply tired of being told I, personally, am the reason for people not wanting to engage on this site and in these sorts of threads and that I make their Tildes experience worse to the extent of people DMing me that they quit the site because of me and one doing it dramatically and publicly. And while you're very kind in this response that message still sort of continues here.
I genuinely just disagreed with your take, not because I think you suck, or you didn't live up to an imagined purity test, but because I disagreed with the thing you said. I don't care about internet votes one way or the other, it's not a relevant metric to me.
Thanks for the kindness here. I hear and appreciate it, genuinely, despite disagreeing with you and my other feelings on the matter.
Edit: upon reflection, and likely no one will read this but myself, I find the original comment rude and uncharitable and completely disregarding what I actually said. And while there was kindness offered, it was not an actual apology and contained a "but actually people agree with me". I genuinely think I feel worse about it than initially.
I am tired of being told I fuck up people's experiences on this site in one breath and told how helpful I am in another. It's incredibly uncharitable and if I spent nearly as much time telling people who I disagree with that they're the worst thing about this community I'd have been banned five times over.
I'm writing this mostly for myself so I can remember how I felt here and how many. Fucking. Times it happened.
If it's any consolation, yours is one of my favorite usernames to see on virtually any thread. Likely because I agree with you a lot, of course – many of the things I find you saying are things I...
If it's any consolation, yours is one of my favorite usernames to see on virtually any thread. Likely because I agree with you a lot, of course – many of the things I find you saying are things I felt really needed to be said – but also because you're a skilled writer coming from a kind place. In threads that were otherwise difficult or upsetting for me to read, a comment from you is a huge breath of fresh air.
"I'm sorry if" is often explicitly called a conditional apology. You also ended the apology with a "but" in a way that reiterated that since people agreed with your original post it was correct....
You may not have intended it to come off that way, and I apologize if you read my response as rude because that wasn't my intent, but I think the number of votes I got—while usually a pointless metric—shows that I was not alone in getting that feeling, when comparing it to the votes on my previous comment.
"I'm sorry if" is often explicitly called a conditional apology.
You also ended the apology with a "but" in a way that reiterated that since people agreed with your original post it was correct. And spent as much "ink" on that as the conditional apology.
And I'm only bringing it up here since you came back to argue with @Drewbahr about what you said to me.
I acknowledge that I forgot there was an "if." It was about intent, not dismissal: "I'm sorry if it read as rude to you because it was not my intent, and if you didn't find it rude, then I have...
I acknowledge that I forgot there was an "if." It was about intent, not dismissal: "I'm sorry if it read as rude to you because it was not my intent, and if you didn't find it rude, then I have nothing to be sorry for because I was writing in good faith." Perhaps it was a weak wording.
The "but" and the vote reference (comparing my own comments, and not yours) was about the shared perception, not a claim of objective truth.
I responded because they made a specific claim about the words I used. I made a four-word declarative statement to Drew. You chose to litigate it further.
You forgot what you wrote and bumped the thread 5 days later. That's not litigation, I don't care if no one sees this, including you. Since you likely will... I will continue to take your...
You forgot what you wrote and bumped the thread 5 days later. That's not litigation, I don't care if no one sees this, including you. Since you likely will...
I will continue to take your statements as you have written them. As charitably as I can.
This tendency has made RF Kuang’s novels nigh unreadable because she’s trying to preempt booktok by having bad characters have to stop and monologue about how they’re bad. Babel has paragraph long...
Honestly, this is the stuff that people are referring to when they say things like the headline. The constant purity tests and the need to say everything explicitly and in-depth just to pre-empt the inevitable responses that actually agree with you but don't think you were progressive enough in your wording.
This tendency has made RF Kuang’s novels nigh unreadable because she’s trying to preempt booktok by having bad characters have to stop and monologue about how they’re bad. Babel has paragraph long footnotes in it elucidating why the wrong things characters are saying are wrong. It’s extremely tedious and I think basically EVERYONE—who doesn’t spend all their time mainlining a highlights reel of all the world’s horrors all day to the point where they need constant reassurance that everyone isn’t a secret masked Nazi in disguise—is fed up with it.
Reminds me of people talking about how bad The Last Jedi was because (among other things) the villain who was trying to get the protagonist to switch sides, and thus had every reason to lie if it...
Reminds me of people talking about how bad The Last Jedi was because (among other things) the villain who was trying to get the protagonist to switch sides, and thus had every reason to lie if it suited him, said something that fans didn't want to hear (that Rey was nobody).
God, I wanted to hear this more than anything, lol. I was so excited for the possibility that the writers were setting up a hero that didn't have a lineage. So many of the themes in TLJ were so...
said something that fans didn't want to hear (that Rey was nobody)
God, I wanted to hear this more than anything, lol. I was so excited for the possibility that the writers were setting up a hero that didn't have a lineage. So many of the themes in TLJ were so fresh in SW and it was so invigorating to me. The reaction was genuinely disheartening, and the (total lack of) follow up basically killed any interest I had in Star Wars for years.
Honestly I think people just lack the vocabulary to understand why they don’t like something and fixate on plot elements because it’s easy to deconstruct mechanically. The real issue with that is...
Honestly I think people just lack the vocabulary to understand why they don’t like something and fixate on plot elements because it’s easy to deconstruct mechanically. The real issue with that is the general sense of having characters just assert things as fact and expecting the audience to roll with it because “trust me bro, the Force told me, it does paternity tests now too.” The OG Star Wars did this (“Search your feelings, you know it to be true”), and it was bad then too only landing because of the dramatic surprise with the reveal and the acting/reaction Mark Hamill does to sell it. And even then they have Yoda and Obi Wan’s ghosts confirm it later, people who we would have reason to trust.
It was a bad reveal that wasn’t delivered well, but since everyone is media illiterate now they confuse their disappointment with how it’s presented with the thing itself.
Por qué no los dos? Ok, agreed, fascists cause orders of magnitude more damage, and continue to do so. That's well established. But is not the topic being discussed here that there's also been...
Por qué no los dos?
Ok, agreed, fascists cause orders of magnitude more damage, and continue to do so. That's well established. But is not the topic being discussed here that there's also been some overswing towards the left that's caused issues too? Just because there's proper evil bastards on the one side doesn't mean there can't be a few dumbasses causing a ruckus on the other too. Again, different scales of damage, but still worth a think.
I think that you may be misreading both the article and @tomorrow-never-knows ' comment. The article is primarily about anti-woeness rising within progressive and left circles, nowhere excusing...
I think that you may be misreading both the article and @tomorrow-never-knows ' comment. The article is primarily about anti-woeness rising within progressive and left circles, nowhere excusing hateful ideologies, and some possible excesses of the woke movement. It even goes so far to advocate for basic politeness and respect where pronouns are concerned. I don't mean to offend but your comments come off as a reaction to the title alone and not the actual content of the discussion in the opinion piece
They are a reaction to the title, and to the discussion here. I'm refusing to give the NY Times clicks on this subject. The fact that the article, and you, are discussing "wokeness" in this manner...
They are a reaction to the title, and to the discussion here. I'm refusing to give the NY Times clicks on this subject.
The fact that the article, and you, are discussing "wokeness" in this manner tells me everything I need to know about where you stand on the matter, as it were. "Anti-wokeness" by that very framing is a hateful ideology, regardless of who it's coming from.
I also have to ask, where are you posting from? Your use of „quotation marks" suggests you're not from around the United States, which makes me wonder why you feel that a single newspaper, particularly one with a well known bias against non-binary folks, would be representative of "the whole discussion" going on within different groups.
I assure you, within the various groups I'm working with and within, pronouns and "wokeness" are alive and well. None of the language that implies is dead.
You could use an archive service to avoid giving them clicks. I think it's highly uncharitable to respond to another user's post who actually read the article and is trying to engage on that level...
They are a reaction to the title, and to the discussion here. I'm refusing to give the NY Times clicks on this subject.
You could use an archive service to avoid giving them clicks. I think it's highly uncharitable to respond to another user's post who actually read the article and is trying to engage on that level field in the comments section of that posted article itself when you yourself haven't. Then there's the whole topic of introducing 'noise,' especially on a top level comment, on a site whose mission is to engender thoughtful discussion.
The fact that the article, and you, are discussing "wokeness" in this manner tells me everything I need to know about where you stand on the matter, as it were. "Anti-wokeness" by that very framing is a hateful ideology, regardless of who it's coming from.
I'm going to try to be polite and genuine here because you making these assumptions about me is way out of line. I post links to content that made me think or because I found it interesting, not much of what I post is an endorsement of any viewpoint but when it is I will be vocal about defending that viewpoint in the comments. Nowhere here have I said a single thing about my thoughts on "wokeness," I've only commented on what the article and another is trying to say. You can feel free to read whatever you want into my comment but I think it warrants self reflection on someone else's part when they try to ascribe beliefs which are very hurtful to some people to me when I have never stated support for those beliefs. I posted this piece because I found the content thought provoking and judging by the comments section it has certainly generated discussion. Period.
My use of quotation marks is due to the keyboard I use on my phone. I'm not going to explain myself past that. I've freely commented on my nationality and current country of residence, find it if you're so interested.
I'm glad that your circles still use pronouns and "woke speech," that's anyone's prerogative but I don't think this is reflective of the gross national trend. There is always danger in isolating ourselves within echo chambers or ignoring what's happening in the wider world.
Asking people who've been exhausted (at best) by "anti-woke" attitudes to read an article like this, whose title immediately gives off the vibe of being a right-wing thinkpiece, is a big request....
I think it's highly uncharitable to respond to another user's post who actually read the article and is trying to engage on that level field in the comments section of that posted article itself when you yourself haven't.
Asking people who've been exhausted (at best) by "anti-woke" attitudes to read an article like this, whose title immediately gives off the vibe of being a right-wing thinkpiece, is a big request. If their assumption is correct, you are asking them to read something from someone who hates them, and who's arguing against giving them basic respect. Imagine how you'd feel reading such a thing — functionally, it is self-harm. Incidentally, this is why I have also not read the article; nothing I've seen so far suggests it is healthy use of my time. It would very likely just upset me.
on a site whose mission is to engender thoughtful discussion.
Within reason. As a reminder, this is not an automatic defense. Some discussions are not worth having. I don't necessarily consider this one of them, as I think self-evaluation is a useful thing to do in the right circumstance. But I'm not so sure that such a circumstance would involve starting off with a New York Times op-ed, as those have a bad track record.
I didn't ask them to read the article. I was responding helping to clarify the comment made by someone who did and whose comment was, completely out of context, portrayed as saying that there's a...
I didn't ask them to read the article. I was responding helping to clarify the comment made by someone who did and whose comment was, completely out of context, portrayed as saying that there's a problem with pronouns when nobody in that thread or in the article itself ever said that. The same person then attacked me directly by insinuating I'm a bad person for things I never even said and based on their assumptions on an article they never even read. I'm getting heavy book buring vibes in here where people are reacting to a headline and completely dismissing what may be reasonable content within.
Some discussions are not worth having.
So then don't or at least explain in detail for those who may not be aware why that may be. The same commentor later goes on to say that they foresee this thread getting locked down or deleted but it certainly won't be because of the content of the piece, there's nothing hateful in it. These discussions get restricted because people start getting vitriolic in the comments section and so far the only people I've seen coming up to or crossing the line are the ones who haven't actually read the thing and are making huge assumptions and judgement calls based on a six word title alone.
Nobody deserves to be attacked or have their comment very uncharitably read because someone is not engaging in good faith. Myself and the other person read the article and are approaching the discussion based on that, someone else is acting with possible malice without even understanding what we're talking about.
Stating that not reading an article is "uncharitable" is a put-down directed towards those who've joined the discussion without doing so. I'm telling you why they made that choice, and why a...
Stating that not reading an article is "uncharitable" is a put-down directed towards those who've joined the discussion without doing so. I'm telling you why they made that choice, and why a put-down is unfair to them. You also seemed to use Tildes' purpose as a site that encourages discussion as a defense here:
Then there's the whole topic of introducing 'noise,' especially on a top level comment, on a site whose mission is to engender thoughtful discussion.
...and so, just in case you were using it as a defense, I clarified why that doesn't work here. Incidentally, it is also unfair to suggest Drewbahr's original comment is noise. It has a point and something it is responding to; brevity and emotion do not make noise.
But above all, I'm trying to get you to understand the feelings of those who've had a harsh reaction to the article you've posted, and why they've had an equally harsh response to your repeated defense of it. Unfortunately, I feel that your response here is indicating a greater interest in defending yourself than in having that understanding. Don't get me wrong, I understand wanting to defend yourself, especially in a tense context. But it's still resulting in a lack of reception to what I'm trying to communicate. So I'm not sure I'm spending my time well.
I don't think that an opinion piece in the NY Times is indicative of anything other than the opinions of its authors. It's certainly not indicative of the political views of 300+ million people....
I don't think that an opinion piece in the NY Times is indicative of anything other than the opinions of its authors. It's certainly not indicative of the political views of 300+ million people.
I'm being uncharitable here because again, the whole topic of "wokeness" has been so thoroughly poisoned by the American right that if someone presents it, particularly "anti-wokeness", as a casual topic, it gives me a very good idea of what their angle is.
I still don't understand why the conversation is always "has the left gone too far?" without any reckoning on just how extreme the right has become. The Overton Window is so far away from previous centers that it's truly shocking. I still don't understand why pronouns are something that is apparently an insurmountable obstacle for so many.
I'm going to guess that this topic will be closed and deleted within the next day, if only because this topic has been closed and deleted several times before.
For the sake of clarity, the article/op-ed in question is actually the transcript of a podcast that featured a range of progressive viewpoints, including one from a card-carrying DSA member.
For the sake of clarity, the article/op-ed in question is actually the transcript of a podcast that featured a range of progressive viewpoints, including one from a card-carrying DSA member.
Well i've watched communities dog pile and threaten the lives of people who don't get it right first try so maybe that? This framing that everyone's being reasonable about this is more than half...
Well i've watched communities dog pile and threaten the lives of people who don't get it right first try so maybe that?
This framing that everyone's being reasonable about this is more than half the problem.
There's another side of this which is basically:
What actual harm is done by people stating their preferred religion, and asking for the modicum of respect when discussing it?
Which is a mirror problem in that the issues mostly stem from the people who champion these positions and how they use it as an excuse to control or bully others.
If I tell an off color joke to my friends who find it funny, I shouldn't have to deal with supposed liberals claiming I deserve death. And I have. Frequently in some communities. Just for ADMITTING i've told such jokes. Not repeating them because yes I think respecting your group is important, just honestly answering a question.
I am tired of being told I'm a serial killer because I played violent videogames, a psycho path because I'm not religious, and a fascist because I find dark humor fine in the right setting.
I am an adult who can make their own moral decisions and see the line between fantasy/humor and reality, and am tired of the wannabe policy debater who's certain my casual use of a slur in a dumb joke is leading fascism and the biggest problem facing the world right now.
If enough people tell you that a joke is in bad taste, it might be time to take pause and consider that viewpoint. That said, you've clearly indicated that you understand the difference between...
If enough people tell you that a joke is in bad taste, it might be time to take pause and consider that viewpoint.
That said, you've clearly indicated that you understand the difference between reality and "a joke", so I won't belabor that point.
Please don't take the following post as "blaming the victim", that's not my intention. But I felt that a response warranted me actually typing something out, rather than swiping on my phone.
If you've had your life threatened (I'm assuming online but I could be very wrong) for making a joke, that's not good! Not good at all. Communities dogpiling on people and threatening them for saying things is wrong.
Generally.
Many of the people that you're condemning in this post, whether intentionally or not, are the very same people that are being threatened by attitudes similar to that shared here - "don't take it personally, I didn't mean it that way!" or "I'm not really like this" or "it's just a joke". I've said it so many times in my life that it's become rote, but I'll say it again -
Ironic racism is still racism.
The note there is transferable between -isms. A joke at someone's expense is always at that person's, or those people's, expense.
If you're telling these jokes in private, with friends who all "get it", then there's no harm, is there? But if you're sharing those views online, you might as well be shouting them downtown in your city. It's a public space, and anyone - even the crazy people! - can chime in with their opinions.
For what it's worth, I've been a lifelong videogamer (since I was like ... 4), I'm an atheist, and I find dark humor fine in the right setting too! But I also wouldn't share all of my thoughts online, for the very reasons you've outlined here. Too many people can take them too many different ways.
I spent an inordinate amount of time for a couple of years on 4chan in the mid 2000s. I'm not sure what drew me there, and I'm not sure why I stayed, but there was a lot of what I perceived to be...
Ironic racism is still racism.
I spent an inordinate amount of time for a couple of years on 4chan in the mid 2000s. I'm not sure what drew me there, and I'm not sure why I stayed, but there was a lot of what I perceived to be "ironic" hate there, and I thought it was very funny and edgy at the time. It wasn't until later that I really processed that: 1. It didn't actually seem to be ironic for an appreciable portion of the userbase. And 2. It was becoming less ironic in myself.
I got out of that space, mostly because I started dating seriously and rediscovered an irl social life, and it took years to unpack attitudes that I had picked up without realizing them, all from what I perceived as stuff that was purely "for the lulz".
I know it's a cliche, but I think that's because it's true, that you eventually "become the mask you wear" or whatever. I know that's not universal, but it's something I think about a lot. I've been trying over the years to just say the things I feel, and not try and wrap everything in layers of irony until nobody knows what I actually think or feel (including myself). I think it's just better if we can be earnest, and fuck it if that makes me cringe.
So to be clear your stance is I should listen to strangers on the internet who don’t care about context vs the opinions and feelings of those around me who are perfectly fine with it and will...
If enough people tell you that a joke is in bad taste, it might be time to take pause and consider that viewpoint.
So to be clear your stance is I should listen to strangers on the internet who don’t care about context vs the opinions and feelings of those around me who are perfectly fine with it and will gladly voice when they are not?
Do you not see how leading with this completely undermines the entire point of the rest of your post?
Would it be fine if they didn’t threaten violence? Why does anyone else have a say in how I interact with consenting adults in private?
My stance is that we (you and I) wouldn't be having this conversation if you hadn't brought it up in a public place (tildes). You chose to discuss the fact that you drop "casual slurs" in "dumb...
My stance is that we (you and I) wouldn't be having this conversation if you hadn't brought it up in a public place (tildes). You chose to discuss the fact that you drop "casual slurs" in "dumb jokes". I was simply commenting on that.
My stance is also that it's your call as to what voices you wish to listen to! You can even ignore me and any other topics I've raised. It's entirely within your power to opt in and out of any conversation, here and elsewhere.
Yes. And my question to you is do you have a problem with what consenting adults do in private. Be it jokes or otherwise. Because I frankly don’t see a difference in your arguments and methods to...
Yes. And my question to you is do you have a problem with what consenting adults do in private. Be it jokes or otherwise. Because I frankly don’t see a difference in your arguments and methods to anyone else who has sought to control that space.
“If you do it keep it private and don’t dare discuss it or we have the right to shun and bully you” is an attitude I clocked as, at the very bare minimum , unproductive a long time ago and I dislike seeing people claim to champion causes I feel strongly about with methods I find gross, and that in my eyes is the standard you are dancing around.
None whatsoever, that's just basic courtesy. Forgive me, but what had you thinking I was implying otherwise? To clarify, the linked discussion touches on several more points than pronouns....
None whatsoever, that's just basic courtesy. Forgive me, but what had you thinking I was implying otherwise? To clarify, the linked discussion touches on several more points than pronouns. Personally, I disagreed with their particular stances more so than not, but I think the broader idea behind the conversation merits some discussion, and that there's a few nuggets in there that the community here could handle with a bit more nuance than they did.
When well-meaning folks get crucified for making honest mistakes in their language, or for simply not keeping lock-step pace with cultural developments. I'm referring to an overzealous militant...
When well-meaning folks get crucified for making honest mistakes in their language, or for simply not keeping lock-step pace with cultural developments. I'm referring to an overzealous militant wing here, and a rare exception I think, who aren't really helping the cause with their hostility. When does that ever change a persons mind? Compassion is the only way forward for real, long-term change.
On a larger level, I think woke encompasses a nice sentiment that works on more casual grounds, a simple way of signalling ones general social views, but lacks enough rigour or cohesiveness to hold up as any sort of robust philosophical movement. I feel the end result has been turned into a sort of 'political correctness 2.0.' If we want to discuss issues of discrimination and inequality then I think perhaps the likes of intersectionality would make for far more useful tools for examining the depth of issues we face in our societies today.
I would like to politely reiterate my earlier question though as I was genuinely curious in my asking: what was it in my initial comment that made you think I had an issue with any person choosing the pronouns that make them most comfortable? I see from your other comments that you don't want to engage with the article, and if it was just based off an assumption you made on that, then fair enough. But if there was something in what I said, then, yeah, that's someting I would like to know so as to avoid causing offense in the future.
I return to my question - where has "woke" gone too far? Intersectionality is a great talking point, one that the American right has lumped in with critical race theory as being woke (pejorative)....
I return to my question - where has "woke" gone too far?
Intersectionality is a great talking point, one that the American right has lumped in with critical race theory as being woke (pejorative). I'd love to talk intersectionality! With you or anyone. But that's not the topic here.
The topic is "did wokeness leave us worse off?" And my answer is no. Because we never had a chance to sincerely engage with it. We had a moment, in 2020, where it seemed like we might. Then the right wing adopted "woke" as a bad thing, and seemingly everyone in the USA forgot that maybe being racist isn't okay.
Look at where we are now, and tell me that it's because of "wokeness". Even a little bit. Because I say no, we're not where we are because some people wanted the world to be a Little more flexible with pronouns and tone it down with the racism.
We're where we are now because of white supremacy, in a country that has never actually had a reckoning with its foundational racism (and yes I know there was a whole Civil War).
Now, as for the offense taken - I'm not offended by you or anyone here. I asked a simple question - what harms has "woke" actually wrought? And I have yet to see an answer.
I personally do not agree that asking for a modicum of respect (in terms of pronouns, or bathroom access, personal rights, etc) is being "condescending", but I also admit that I'm on the side of...
I personally do not agree that asking for a modicum of respect (in terms of pronouns, or bathroom access, personal rights, etc) is being "condescending", but I also admit that I'm on the side of the condescenders, so to speak.
I also don't agree that this condescention, so to speak, is what led to Trump's win in 2024. I have a much more negative view on that - it was this country doing what it does best, which is being racist and sexist in extreme ways. Just look at the history of the country, in my opinion, and see what I see, and I think you'd agree.
So maybe that's my blind spot. My family comes from "flyover country" and I grew up in a small, rural, farming town (admittedly, one with a university), so I don't speak to "those people" as the problem, because American culture is the problem. Ours is an incredibly white, and incredibly racist culture, and it has been for over 400 years. It still is. I mean, we're what - two generations out from when Black folks didn't have the right to vote. We're 50 years out from when women couldn't open a line of credit. All of these advancements are still very very new, and the underlying culture hasn't actually kept up with them - in large part because, IMO, it doesn't want to.
And I fail to see how that's a problem of "the left", personally.
Earlier while combing through this IED of a thread, I ended up thinking about the dreaded "Kamala is for they/them ad" and whether that would've worked against a candidate like Zohran Mamdani. I...
Earlier while combing through this IED of a thread, I ended up thinking about the dreaded "Kamala is for they/them ad" and whether that would've worked against a candidate like Zohran Mamdani.
I have always been of the mind that the more impactful line of that ad was the second, and often forgotten line, "Trump is for you." The implication being that Kamala doesn't care about common/everyday people. I don't think that ad would be effective if voters genuinely thought Kamala was truly focused on advancing their interests. How could someone say Mamdani doesn't care about New Yorkers when all he ever talks about is how he plans to improve the lives of New Yorkers? Instead of having a simple, universal, and steady message about addressing the material needs of Americans a la Zohran, Kamala gave us a medley of means-tested Washington mumbo jumbo and tried to position herself as a tougher, more moderate candidate than the one she was in the 2020 primary. "What do you mean I'm not for you? I've got 50k for small businesses and I'll sign a border bill that I would have vehemently opposed at any other point in my career! What more could you want from me?"
Conversely, had Zohran applied the same tactics as the Harris campaign, he would've spent the early days of his campaign focused on crime, because that's what the number one issue was at the start of the primary. Had that been the case, he likely would've ended up being an also-ran whose political career would've been as memorable as his rap career, and "affordability" would be just another word instead of the word in American politics.
I think there's still plenty of room for wokeness in politics. Not enough for a candidate to be defined by their wokeness, but it's not a killer as long as the primary focus remains on the material needs of the majority. And as Zohran recently said, "There's only one majority in this country, and that's the working class."
Ah, I think I see where we are misaligned here. Is it right to say that in your question you mean to take the effect of 'woke' as an entire movement? The article title may imply as much, in...
Ah, I think I see where we are misaligned here. Is it right to say that in your question you mean to take the effect of 'woke' as an entire movement? The article title may imply as much, in fairness, but, again, things get more granular in the content, which is what I'm responding to. Overall, no, I don't think it has left us worse off, quite the opposite. And I agree with you, there was a window within the cultural moment to make some really great advancements. Back to my earlier comment, I don't think 'woke,' as it developed, was strong enough to push things as far as they should have gone and we ended up with, in effect, some patchwork fixes rather than the deeper changes necessitated. I'm not saying the idea behind woke has left us worse off, only that the implementation has been flawed.
So, in answering your question, I was speaking to the parts that have gone wrong, not the totality. I am coming from this whole topic from a position of: "okay, we missed some opportunites and right now things are getting worse, so, instead of always focusing on the other side let's take a moment here to look at where we might have gone wrong and ask how can we better hone our approach." This is what I've been trying to get at, and was hoping to see local Tilderinos providing better answers for than we got in the NYT piece.
Also, just to clarify, I'm in Europe and have only been to the U.S. once briefly, so I can't speak to the specifics there and am likely missing oceans of implied context here. There is a caveat in that when I am discussing terms and concepts of American origin, i.e., woke, it is going to be heavily coloured by how these ideas have landed within my own culture. But in saying 'us,' as I have above, please understand that I am searching for commonality in what I take to be shared ideals of egalitarianism and acceptance.
You're still not engaging with the question - where has "woke" gone too far? What parts have gone wrong? I'm asking for your input because you've done the same here. I personally don't think any...
You're still not engaging with the question - where has "woke" gone too far? What parts have gone wrong?
I'm asking for your input because you've done the same here. I personally don't think any parts of "wokeness" were "wrong", because many of the left-wing movements since 2020 have focused on such simple ideas as "stop killing people" and "respect each other". I don't agree that "language policing" is that much of a problem, because - as stated in the article - so many people are becoming comfortable with throwing slurs around again. That's something that should be "policed" - we shouldn't be accepting that people will just throw the R word or N word around in public.
I genuinely thought I was engaging, and tried using two different readings of your question in the hopes of providing a satisfactory answer. Regarding the issue that was put forth relating to...
I genuinely thought I was engaging, and tried using two different readings of your question in the hopes of providing a satisfactory answer. Regarding the issue that was put forth relating to language policing, my point was that it has gone too far at times, not that it is wrong in and of itself, while you have said you don't agree and, as I read it, you believe that it can't so long as there are assholes out there still using slurs (please correct if I have stepped too far in my interpretation there). I think at this point we are starting to get stuck in the weeds a little so before going any further I would just like to confirm where we stand on one point: do you believe it is at all possible that those on the left could go too far in their methods, even though their intentions may still be sound?
Not the previous poster, I think there's a difference here in the question "have people on the left gone too far?" vs "has the left gone too far?" Some individual always goes "too far", someone...
Not the previous poster, I think there's a difference here in the question "have people on the left gone too far?" vs "has the left gone too far?"
Some individual always goes "too far", someone screams at people for not using their pronouns or someone chastises a colleague for not changing their profile picture to a black square or a company hires a bad trainer who advocates for things that the groups in question never wanted.
But that's a small number of people out of a very large population and exists across any number of axes - I've had bad trainings, controlling coworkers and random encounters with unreasonably angry people of all stripes. For example, I was chased through Costco while someone yelled "actually it's murder" to my Abortion is Healthcare T shirt for example. (Wait... actually maybe it's my fault that she yelled at me, I went too far! /j.) I also had a (pre-"woke" language) coworker who wouldn't document his "brown" employee, did try to write up his white employee, and pissed off almost every woman he worked with except his boss(es) by being a patronizing ass. The congressional Dems kneeling in kente cloth stoles was widely derided - and it was organized by the Congressional Black Caucus - but since those people had the literal power to do more, performative acts were much less well received.
Those are different than "can/has the left go/ne too far?" And asking if "wokeness" has gone too far is more similar to the latter. I don't think the "movement" has gone too far, rather not far enough, personally. I don't think performative or "cringe" acts "go too far" they're just missing the mark and that typically comes from thinking that any contribution from a majority (often white in the context of "woke") person will be welcomed with open arms, rather than listening to the people already doing the work and following them.
Like I'd be real dumb to have walked up to the people doing the hard work to maintain the bus boycott during the civil rights movement and suggest that we all stand in the street and protest by blocking the busses with our bodies as if they don't know exactly what will happen to Black bodies in that situation.
So if "wokeness" is only the completely performative stuff, yeah maybe it "goes too far." If it's respecting pronouns and working to ensure Black/Trans/Immigrant/etc. people have civil rights, then absolutely not. If it's murdering people for telling you they made a racist joke, then we're back to "too far."
But that's why not defining it in the discussion is the problem. Because the way that the right is defining "woke/ness" right now is like how they claim any Black pilot is a DEI hire or how the DOGE purges worked. It's just shoving anything they don't like that has any "ctrl-F" of the words "Woman, Black, Queer, Latino, etc." into the same pile and lighting it on fire. And it's why many of us are so critical of the very premise of the article/podcast and the headline attached. If you never define wokeness then it will simultaneously have gone way too far and never have gone far enough. And everyone gets to yell about how they're right.
It's why I highlighted a portion of the transcript and talked about it rather than the headline, but I'm still frustrated at the implications made there (and direct statements here too) that obviously the left has gone too far, that non-binary people are too big of an ask, that it's "our" fault that "they" are hurting us. And if we don't give up our values and throw some group - immigrants, queers, women, - under the bus, we'll never make the reactionaries who allegedly voted to spite us actually like us.
That isn't how stopping bullies works, it isn't how soothing abusers works, it's also not how you keep voters liking you. No one respects the person who sucks up to the bullies in hopes of ingratiating themselves, especially not the bullies. So the strategy just doesn't make sense unless you were already willing to pitch those groups under the bus because those weren't your values.
There are ways to persuade and convince people but they're entirely separate from these sorts of conversations and they will require people to accept responsibility for their own actions. Blaming the left will only impede that process, not improve it.
I think you've manage to pinpoint exactly where this conversation has gone out of phase, cheers! Yes, I did previously note that I share the sentiment that 'woke' as a movement hasn't gone far...
I think you've manage to pinpoint exactly where this conversation has gone out of phase, cheers! Yes, I did previously note that I share the sentiment that 'woke' as a movement hasn't gone far enough, so I thought that had made it clear that my thoughts are following the actions and attitudes of individuals working in the name of 'woke.' You've also highlighted one of the key issues with the article, and also a real bugbear of the comments here, in that the term 'woke' hasn't been fully defined. It goes back to my earlier comment about my issues with woke not being rigorous enough to stand as a formal movement, and I would consider this a direct consequence of (as I understand it) the loose spirit in which the term was coined, that is, in encouraging a general state of awareness towards the failings of social and institutional norms. That it has now, as a movement, come to encompass a largely ill-defined array of leftist ideologies is working to its detriment, and has made it easier for bad actors to toxify the term. Also worth bearing in mind, outside the US, woke as a term has only really caught on within the last ~10 years, so for many it is quite divorced from its long pre-BLM cultural origins, and arrived with many of its modern political attachments, often inferred from online discourse, and so was frequently received as being reminiscent, however incorrectly, of the political correctness of the '90s / '00s many were already familiar with.
Key to my own opinions here is that I don't see 'going too far' as a relative judgement, where extremist behaviour on one side winds up setting the bar at murder. For me, 'too far' can just mean being an insufferable dick to others, or else, more benignly, having fallen into absurdity. Yes, you can travel very, very far beyond that line, and, for sure, there's a lot more runway on one particular side of it, but that's where it sits for me. To say something has 'gone too far' isn't a scathing indictment of a whole concept or movement, it can just be pointing out where some of the edges have gotten too sharp or squirrelly.
It's a term that originated among the Black community in the 1960s and explicitly was intended to refer to staying alert to and aware of systemic racism and injustice. It's shifted overtime, but...
the loose spirit in which the term was coined, that is, in encouraging a general state of awareness towards the failings of social and institutional norms
It's a term that originated among the Black community in the 1960s and explicitly was intended to refer to staying alert to and aware of systemic racism and injustice. It's shifted overtime, but many folks would say that systemic racism is not a "failing" of norms, but that the norms were set up to enforce racism. I think that distinction is important. It was revitalized as a term in 2014, really gaining use more broadly as the BLM movement kicked up higher in 2020 iirc. Which means for most non-Black, especially non-Black non-activist Americans they're on the same time scale as you're describing outside the US. Woke being perceived as the same as "PC" is because they tricked you (everyone) into thinking PC was anything other than again, being polite and kind to each other. It's their one move.
As the language was adopted/co-opted by other Americans it has been diluted somewhat, and most people I know wouldn't use it to describe anyone. And thats the issue, there isn't really a "movement" with wokeness. There are leftist movements and activist movements but calling all that "woke" is buying into the right's framing of things. (Like when they called everything Critical Race Theory and banned it, or everything DEI and targeted it, or everything with any discussion of queerness as "grooming* and banned it... Seriously they have one move and everyone keeps falling for it.)
And my frustration with discussions of individual or relatively isolated "too far" moments is that they're usually only discussed by the media in two capacities
By this class of columnists who all would coincidentally call themselves "a liberal but..." And think that college kids have "gone too far" sometimes complaining the students wouldn't talk to them even though they just wanted to ask the students questions about why they hate free speech! ＼(°o°)／. Here they reiterate all the ways that the youth are out of line in their extremism. And they find annoying college students who do annoying college student stuff. (And some very reasonable young adults who they portray as annoying college students too.)
"Why the left's extremism is to blame for the right's behavior."
It's never the opposite, it's rarely any sort of pearl clutching at the literal rapists in charge of the country. The scandal of Noem disappeared in a poor when she was fired oh wait she was just reassigned and is still theoretically employed. The Epstein files went away after people found plenty of concerning things including redactions of Trump's name. There's no discussion of how the right is saying slurs and that this caused the left to... Go further left?
And that to me is why I don't think the "extremes" of the leftists matter as a group (individuals can still suck) because despite many times the provocation from the right, the left didn't vote to take away their rights just to spite them. The left actively works and advocates for things that would make those spiteful lives better. It's incredibly infantilizing to say that the left is responsible for the right's actions. Especially since if they had their way we'd live in a white nationalist theocracy where only certain men could vote at best. (The theocracy part is where the right splinters.)
I just don't get the idea that we can appease them with the blood of trans people and immigrants.
But I digress, there are assholes abounding, but I don't find discussion of individual assholes useful, especially when it's only ever about those on the left and not talking about the people sig heiling on the street as being responsible for the bad things. And I get that to you those individuals are included in the "too far" but that isnt how "has (group) gone too far" will ever be usefully interpreted for me and I suspect many folks here, especially when it's not a group in this case.
No one operationalizes their terms anymore and it really breaks down the conversation
I was searching for broad phrasing there but, yeah, 'failings' wasn't the most apt word for what I was trying to convey, rest assured no trivialisation intended! And thanks for the background...
I was searching for broad phrasing there but, yeah, 'failings' wasn't the most apt word for what I was trying to convey, rest assured no trivialisation intended! And thanks for the background information, I wasn't sure how active usage of the term was in America in those intervening years.
The political climate here is quite different and I have had no experience of anything of the severity of what has happened with the targeting of CRT, DEI, etc., but I do appreciate where you're coming from and your frustrations with this line of discussion are very understandable.
I just don't get the idea that we can appease them with the blood of trans people and immigrants.
May be a digression but this did stand out to me. Are you referring to the Democrat party specifically here, have they taken to selling out trans and immigrant people to try grab more votes?
No one operationalizes their terms anymore and it really breaks down the conversation
Since 2024 and to this day, folks have blamed the loss of the election on "too much identity politics" and "talking about trans people too much" despite the Dem candidate leaning Hard right to...
Since 2024 and to this day, folks have blamed the loss of the election on "too much identity politics" and "talking about trans people too much" despite the Dem candidate leaning Hard right to appeal to the middle. And in this thread you'll see folks say that non binary people were too much to "ask" America to accept. In other threads there's been the "trans people being banned from certain things might be ok." Gavin Newsom has waffles on trans rights and courted the right, and he's considered a serious nominee for president even if no one actually likes him.
Be tough on immigration, be tough on crime, don't talk about identity politics but appeal to poor white men, etc. so that the reactionary right might vote for you! And I say the blood of those groups because people die due to these policies, whether due to ICE agents, healthcare cuts or suicide rate increases.
So yes that's often the message both to the Dem party from pundits and articles like this, from the party as candidates weasel out of supporting these groups, and to the general public from the media. Kamala talked big about signing a tough on immigration bill, having conservatives speak at the convention, courting endorsements from the "never trumpers" on the right, etc.
I believe it is possible that folks on the left could go "too far" in their methods. What I have yet to see is an example of what that means, or any concrete example of the left actually "going...
I believe it is possible that folks on the left could go "too far" in their methods. What I have yet to see is an example of what that means, or any concrete example of the left actually "going too far".
An example could be The Weather Underground, which sought to overthrow the government (at least, according to Wikipedia) using such methods as bombings of government buildings. That is definitely "going too far" despite being a "leftist" organization with goals that I don't necessarily disagree with (the United States is, after all, extremely imperialistic).
Thus far, what I have seen "the woke left" do is ... what, talk down to people while advocating for justice? For centuries of murder?
People are going to bring up Charlie Kirk, to which I respond with Mark and Melissa Hortman (and their dog), or January 6th, or any other myriad examples of the political right murdering people without consequence.
What I am asking for are concrete examples of something that you feel a "woke" person has asked for, or done, that went too far. Was asking for pronoun recognition a step too far? Was asking for racial justice too much? What specific "demand" that has been made has been too much?
I'd argue that the reason you're coming up empty is for a number of reasons:
the demands aren't actually extreme
you can't find a single set of concrete demands, because there is no "woke movement", no single organizing faction, no singular set of ideals - "woke" isn't a group
you may be affected by right-wing propaganda being exported from the USA
it's always fun to simply dismiss others' points of view, but this is also a poignant example of the condescension that many people in this thread have explained is the common thread that hooks...
it's always fun to simply dismiss others' points of view, but this is also a poignant example of the condescension that many people in this thread have explained is the common thread that hooks people into a moral panic, should they not already agree with you
Disagreement isn't dismissal, and engagement isn't dismissal either. I'm still confused as to the harms that are being claimed that have been done by "woke". The claim is there that "well meaning...
Disagreement isn't dismissal, and engagement isn't dismissal either. I'm still confused as to the harms that are being claimed that have been done by "woke".
The claim is there that "well meaning folks have been crucified in the name of pronouns", which is simply not a thing I've seen really happen outside of, perhaps, some extremely online spaces. I've never seen it happen in-person, face-to-face, with or to anyone, apart from obvious bigots who misgender people on purpose. So I disagree with the assertion that "crucifixion in the name of pronouns" is a thing that happens on any statistically significant level.
In the meantime, people have been murdered for being members of the Democratic Party, have had their houses raided by the FBI for being Democrats - actual, real harms.
Then there's the idea that "woke left us worse off" because it didn't go far enough in the moment ... to which I say, is that an actual harm? It harmed us by not being adopted by people in this country? Or is the harm the pushback against that movement, that halted it before it got rolling?
Now, are there things worth examining in how certain movements succeeded or failed? Of course. But "woke" isn't a thing. "Wokeness" isn't a movement, it isn't an organization. It's a poorly-defined boogeyman being held up by the American right as a strawman that they can pin whatever evils they want onto, as a scapegoat to keep their supporters incensed and donating. And it's working!
So all of that is to say, I reject the premise of the article/podcast, and in explaining myself I'm now being called condescending and dismissive.
I mean, in the context of that exchange? it was dismissal of the person you replied to, and dismissal of other's points of view. Say disagreement is not dismissal all you want, but you don't get...
I mean, in the context of that exchange? it was dismissal of the person you replied to, and dismissal of other's points of view. Say disagreement is not dismissal all you want, but you don't get to play that card if
[you] have yet to see is an example of what that means, or any concrete example of the left actually "going too far".
That is dismissal of opposing viewpoints as failing to engage, when plenty have.
You can rattle all that off. I don't really disagree. But I can read between the lines and grasp that people dislike being expected to change their language at the drop of a hat and that the hyperperformative side of progressivism is literally the subject at hand. Pretending that the pushback hasn't been continual, even within groups of relatively sympathetic individuals, because you agree with the end goals, is disingenuous and fucking insulting.
I'd go back and edit it to say more, but there's two things: I feel like I said what needed to be said about my stance on the matter in that single sentence. After a day or so now, it feels cheap...
I'd go back and edit it to say more, but there's two things:
I feel like I said what needed to be said about my stance on the matter in that single sentence.
After a day or so now, it feels cheap to go in and add a big ol' thing onto it after the fact. People may agree with the single sentence, but may not agree with the edit, were it to occur.
That said, I'm planning (now) to read the article and actually state my position on its content. TreeFiddyFiddy has (somewhat rightfully) pointed out that it's not fair of me to rake them, and the article, over the coals without having actually read it. So I figure I'll see if I can dig up an archived version of the article, so as to deny the NYT their click, and see what's what.
I don't pretend to be unbiased, though, and I fully expect my assumptions about the content to be found to be accurate.
So, I've decided to engage with and read the article - or rather, the transcript of a podcast. I feel I was initially unfair to TreeFiddyFiddy, and I feel like the discourse has gone on long...
Exemplary
So, I've decided to engage with and read the article - or rather, the transcript of a podcast. I feel I was initially unfair to TreeFiddyFiddy, and I feel like the discourse has gone on long enough that there may be some "value" in informing myself about this.
First off, my biggest question: do they define "wokeness"? I'll find out.
The first thing I will say is, the title of the "article" is clearly click- and engagement-bait. It's not asking the reader to engage honestly, but rather it's trying to incite the very conflict we're seeing throughout this thread. I will also say that by titling the article in this fashion, it informs me of what their intentions are. It's not to have an honest discussion about "wokeness" and its excesses; it's to take shots against the left.
My opinions, etc etc.
So, here's where I start reading.
First off, they say our culture is abandoning "political correctness", not "wokeness". They're inconsistent with their terms and topic.
The "game" of stating whether a word is "alive" or "dead" seems like a dumb gimmick, punching down (again) on the left.
People opining on "folx" and "latinx" without actually being a member of the people who use such terms feels like an issue. I understand latinx has baggage, and there's a lot of arguments for and against the term. I won't weigh in with my opinion, because I don't have one - I'm a cishet white man. It's not my word to use "towards" people. I won't assume someone's identity in that fashion.
Now they have "defined" woke as just "politically correct" in a new suit. Colyar here defines themselves as "anti-woke", which tells me everything I need to know about them. The fact that they unironically call being "the woke of five years ago" as "cringe" is also very telling. Five years ago, "woke" people were protesting in the streets because of the murders of George Floyd, Brianna Taylor, and so, so many others. I don't think that's "cringe". Now, I may be conflating the "wokeness" of ... well, not murdering people with the "wokeness" of pronoun choice, which is probably what Colyar is actually in opposition to - but they never define terms, so here we are.
To Spiegelman's point, if a white person says they're "woke", that is definitely a red flag - because of the conversation throughout this thread. "Woke" has taken on far too much baggage thanks to the American right for people to use it earnestly anymore. Furthermore, as I've seen throughout a variety of circles I run with, being "woke" isn't a label you apply to yourself. That misses the point of the original use of the term.
Now we're taking pot shots at the "pink pussyhats" and books on anti-racism. Again, what is the actual problem with those things? Many of the books on anti-racism predate 2020, they weren't written "for the moment". Now their issue seems to be more about how people chose to show their political affiliation and resistance against Trump and the "culture war", rather than the message itself. So is the problem "wokeness", or is the problem that people showed up in ways you don't like?
Again, they are continuing to attack the style of the message, but not the message. They don't like "black square day", they don't like people posting infographics, they don't like certain books, fine. But what do they think of "wokeness"? They aren't engaging with the premise of their article/podcast - which was "did wokeness leave us worse off?"
People rankling at the "anti-racist training in workplaces" now, saying it doesn't feel effective. My main issue with that workplace training has less to do with the fact that it exists, and more to do with the fact that people won't actually engage with it. I can understand pushing back against it because "work is telling me what to do/say/think", but honest to God if people actually took a step back and engaged with the content, they may see where it's coming from. At the very least they'll have an informed opinion about it - much like I'm doing with this article.
Shockingly, Colyar discovers that "the left" isn't a monolith. People have a diversity of opinions!
Sow speaks to her experience as an African later moving to the USA. It's good insight. I'd have been curious to have had the insight of a Black American born and raised in the racism from day one, too. I've sought out such voices, and ... well, I'll just say I don't think they would agree with this article at all.
Now we're taking a joke seriously (Marc Maron).
Sow and Colyar seem to feel that the past five years may have actually annoyed people into fascism, and not - y'know, the past 400+ years of institutionalized racism, or the fact that the Nazis were inspired by American racism, or the fact that concentration camps (as we know them) were created in the United States, or any other such thing. People, these article people included, seem to feel that American Fascism is a new construct, born of the modern era - without wrestling with sundown towns or the Asian Exclusion Acts or any of our actual history. For fuck's sake, the Oregon Territory was initially created to be a haven for white people!
I think Colyar's right, in the sense that "the right" talks like "normal people". I don't think they're right for the same reason they think, though. I think Colyar is right because there's a deep, deep undercurrent of racism and hatred in white American culture, so much so that using those offensive slurs is normal. And that's a problem, one that should be corrected! I don't want people running around throwing slurs at anyone.
Now Sow is talking about politeness and civility in terms, which seems to be in direct opposition to their stated opinions about the frivolity of "woke language". It's hard to circle that square - why is it now basic decency to refer to someone by their preferred pronouns or name, when earlier it was "cringe"?
Sow is a card-carrying member of the DSA, and we have fundamental disagreements about language! The left does contain multitudes.
I think Colyar and Sow have gotten far, far too internet focused on these interactions. I have never, ever in my life, met someone in meatspace/"the real world" that got brutally offended over the earnest misuse of a pronoun, or being personally offended when asked what their pronouns are. And even if they were, it costs no one anything to apologize and move on. They say "people do not give each other grace", and maybe that's true - on the internet. I could learn something from that, except for the fact that my friends can all vouch for the fact that I talk (and am confrontational) like this in the real world too. And maybe that's not a good thing. Regardless, I feel like they're making strawman arguments left and right - they're creating "militant students" that bite the heads off their professors as a target dummy for their misgivings about the way language is moving.
Again, Sow making statements about fragility that are in direct contrast to their stated opposition to the "cringe language" of yesteryears.
Colyar doesn't seem to think that people were taking steps against rising fascism while also fighting about pronoun use. I don't think they've been paying attention the past several years. People can walk and chew gum - or, alternatively, argue on the internet and take direct action - at the same time. It's not either/or. The fact that the Democratic Party (nation level) is wholly unprepared for the moment is a problem, and some would argue that they are PART of the problem, but that's another story. Suffice it to say, I can post on Tildes and attend rallies, and write letters to my representatives, and do many things at once.
Frat houses, "hotbeds of the R word"? Shocking. That's consistent with literally every frat I've ever known.
Colyar talking about a small school that had a small pro-Palestine protest, as if that is surprising.
Colyar feels that kids these days don't align with the left or the right. And that's true! It also has nothing to do with the topic of the article - which, to-date, they have only defined "wokeness" as "political correctness" again.
Now we're complaining about language drift. Language changes all the time and that should never be controversial. Polite words from yesteryear become offensive words over time, and vice versa. It happens, it has always happened, it will continue to happen.
The folks on the article continue to not discuss the topic of the article.
Sow continues to contradict herself on whether pronouns are a good thing or "cringe".
Colyar continues to confuse online discourse with the real world (which shouldn't have much of a divide, but there is one). They're also bemoaning the fact that people raked them over the coals for stating their use of bad humor, much like has been done in this thread. Again, I reiterate - when you make your private thoughts and actions public, you invite the public to comment on them. If you're making racist/sexist/-ist jokes in private (or, if you're a comedian and the expectation is that you are making jokes), that's one thing - but to tell the world that you use certain slurs in private invites discourse about it! That shouldn't be surprising, particularly to someone who writes for a major magazine.
"New leaders of the woke" is a phrase I never thought I'd read/hear. Once again, they've just said "woke" is "political correctness". Which I fundamentally disagree with. For my money, "woke" is opening your eyes to the injustices of the world, particularly of the United States, and seeing the inherent racism, sexism, and other -isms built into our society. But that's the thing, it's warped into a near-meaningless word because the American right has weaponized it against people and its intended meaning and use, much like they've done with "critical race theory". Fancy that - two terms that arose from "the left" (either from Black American use, or from academia) that have been weaponized against them by the right.
Language policing happens across all fronts, in all spaces - there's words I can say with friends but not at work, and certainly not in public, loudly, for all to hear. Language policing isn't unique to "the left" either, and I think I know why they're taking aim at the left - because the right is currently the flavor du jour and they don't want to write in opposition to the current state of things (IMO).
Colyar insists that "woke policies" have lost, despite people like Zohran Mamdani winning in resounding fashion on "woke policies". Colyar insists that "wokeness" shouldn't come back in the same way ... why? Again, other than being upset that certain words seem "cringe", they haven't actually stated what damage "wokeness" has done to the culture. They have stated what damage has been done by the response to wokeness, which is FAR more telling.
Now we're talking about conspiracy theorists (Candace Owen, Joe Rogan). Joe Rogan enjoys a large cultural following, but I don't think Candace Owen is nearly on the same level. Then again, I don't pay attention to right wing pundits, because I don't have space for that kind of hate in my life.
Now they're taking more pot shots at language. "Cados" and "ayos". Who the fuck cares what people say to each other when there's no harm done? Seriously.
Article over.
Now, having engaged fully with the article, here are my takeaways:
The hosts don't like words that people used five years ago.
They define "wokeness" as "political correctness". Which I disagree with.
They create a lot of strawmen.
They really don't like cutesy language.
On the one hand they feel like language used in years past is "cringe". On the other hand, Sow states "if it doesn't hurt anyone, who cares?" Which should have been the title of the article/podcast from the start.
They never engage with the topic - they never state what damage has been done by "wokeness". They stated several times what damage has been done in response to wokeness, though, which should be far more telling.
If people really don't like "being told what to think", why do they listen to Joe Rogan or Candace Owens or any of the other bad-faith right wing pundits? Because that's what their living has been for decades.
This comment displays signs that you went into it ready to disagree with it no matter what it said. Not only do I completely disagree with you when you say that the speakers are not addressing...
This comment displays signs that you went into it ready to disagree with it no matter what it said. Not only do I completely disagree with you when you say that the speakers are not addressing their stated topic, but some of these criticisms are snarky for no reason whatsoever.
Frat houses, "hotbeds of the R word"? Shocking. That's consistent with literally every frat I've ever known.
That part was merely conveying a description that a college student told them. The description was about a change where more frat houses sprang up post-Trump and what it did to campus culture. To be mad at the speakers here makes no sense. If you choose to be snarky and come in with preconceived notions to respond play-by-play rather than listening to the message first, then you have merely wasted your own time in an attempt to appear to be "fair" to @TreeFiddyFiddy.
One offhand comment about frat houses is all it took for you to disagree with everything? Really? I'm not "mad at the speakers" for this. I made an observation that "dudebro" culture has been...
One offhand comment about frat houses is all it took for you to disagree with everything? Really?
I'm not "mad at the speakers" for this. I made an observation that "dudebro" culture has been ever-present at frat houses for as long as I can remember. Am I not allowed to make a snarky but otherwise unimportant observation?
Beyond that, you're entitled to your opinion, and I'll take your criticism as seriously as it's warranted.
EDIT TO ADD: I should note:
This comment displays signs that you went into it ready to disagree with it no matter what it said.
Absolutely. I went into reading the article ready to disagree with it, because I disagree with the premise, and title of the article: Did Wokeness Leave Us Worse Off?
I don't see how I could go into the article with an open mind, when I disagree with the title of the article itself.
Before I say anything else: I agree with you fully about the article. That said... A problem I have with one part of your comment, put in a collapsible since I don't want you to have to view it...
Before I say anything else: I agree with you fully about the article. That said...
A problem I have with one part of your comment, put in a collapsible since I don't want you to have to view it unless you're feeling alright
One offhand comment about frat houses is all it took for you to disagree with everything? Really?
...this is a knee-jerk reaction to a small part of gary's comment, and because it's knee-jerk it leads to a very bad interpretation of what they wrote. They never said nor implied that what they quoted was why they disagree with your comment, much less the sole reason why. Your later edit, by contrast, is doing a much better job.
As much as I agree with your feelings regarding the article, it's pretty clear this is causing you enough distress (very understandable!) to the point of making comments off-the-hip, as it were, which isn't very healthy for anyone. I mean only kindness here when I say: Maybe a break is due?
I was taking a break, right up until you replied to a days-old thread. I'm not distressed. I'm sick of having the same conversation over and over again, for years. And this is the same...
Maybe a break is due?
I was taking a break, right up until you replied to a days-old thread.
I'm not distressed. I'm sick of having the same conversation over and over again, for years. And this is the same conversation. Every part of it. And we'll keep having this conversation, for generations to come, until this country has an actual reckoning on its racism.
I'm a little worried the fact that I'm responding out of concern is not making it through in my comments, so I'm just gonna back off. For what it's worth though, I hear you. This shit is exhausting.
I'm a little worried the fact that I'm responding out of concern is not making it through in my comments, so I'm just gonna back off.
For what it's worth though, I hear you. This shit is exhausting.
It takes at least two people to have a conversation. If the ones you’re in keep turning out the same way have you considered changing the variables that are under your control?
It takes at least two people to have a conversation. If the ones you’re in keep turning out the same way have you considered changing the variables that are under your control?
Many of us are sick of having the same conversation, but without our input it becomes a worse one, often leaning into the very things we're speaking against. It'd be like not countering racist or...
Many of us are sick of having the same conversation, but without our input it becomes a worse one, often leaning into the very things we're speaking against. It'd be like not countering racist or transphobic statements...
So yeah, I mean it'd be nice if everyone else knocked it off too. But here we are.
Thanks. I'm having trouble figuring out who's replying to who here. When their comment was marked as "new" to me, it was shown as a reply to my comment here. But when I open this thread again,...
Thanks. I'm having trouble figuring out who's replying to who here. When their comment was marked as "new" to me, it was shown as a reply to my comment here. But when I open this thread again, it's not even present. I'm confused as hell.
EDIT: Figured it out. Had to disable an extension.
Sorry! I should’ve been a little clearer in my statement! Parsing the right chain is really tricky with all the various branches - I’ve done the same multiple times in the past!!
Sorry! I should’ve been a little clearer in my statement!
Parsing the right chain is really tricky with all the various branches - I’ve done the same multiple times in the past!!
If people had listened to the people who are far more patient and eloquent than I, I wouldn't still be shouting about it. And yet, here we are. I'll never say I'm the most effective about this...
If people had listened to the people who are far more patient and eloquent than I, I wouldn't still be shouting about it.
And yet, here we are.
I'll never say I'm the most effective about this topic, and there's always room for improvement in messaging. But as you said, it takes two people, and if the people that shared stuff like this transcript would take a step back and consider whether it's adding to the discourse, or just noise intended to start a flight, we'd be in a better place still.
So, do you believe that the transcription answered the question posed by the title of the piece? If so, how? I didn't see any conclusive point throughout the entire piece.
Not only do I completely disagree with you when you say that the speakers are not addressing their stated topic,
So, do you believe that the transcription answered the question posed by the title of the piece? If so, how? I didn't see any conclusive point throughout the entire piece.
Unfortunately, I don't have enough time to engage with your takeaway from the original post, but I want to give you props for acknowledging the issue with your previous comment and taking the time...
Unfortunately, I don't have enough time to engage with your takeaway from the original post, but I want to give you props for acknowledging the issue with your previous comment and taking the time to not only read the material, but also add a long and thoughtful response. More of this, please.
One quick thing that your comment reminded me of and that I wanted to point out elsewhere is the lack of a clear definition of "woke" and how the current iteration of the word is completely different from what it was when it first crossed over into mainstream lingo in the late-2010s.
Initially, to be "woke" was (basically) to be aware of the historic and systemic injustices against marginalized people and to reject the sleepy, whitewashed, middle school version of history that we're spoonfed from birth. Woke was a way to describe a person's awareness or understanding, not the way that they interact with the world. Somewhere along the way, that got lost and now it's essentially a rebrand of the term SJW (or PC), but people still conflate the two all the time. Julian Casablancas calls out Zionists and American imperialism, or, your grandma recognizes the preferred pronouns of your non binary friend? Wow, they're so woke! Purple-haired woman chastises DSA-endorsed candidate for saying they support veterans, or a boy calls his dad a fascist for referring to the unhoused as "homeless"- ugh, they're so woke. I feel like I'm seeing a version of this play out in the comments. Some are quick to defend wokeness as the former, while others criticize it for being the latter.
It took over an hour to put that post together, and the OP is unlikely to read or engage with it. The story may have been different had I done so from the beginning, but nothing that I've seen in...
More of this, please.
It took over an hour to put that post together, and the OP is unlikely to read or engage with it. The story may have been different had I done so from the beginning, but nothing that I've seen in this thread suggests that that hour was spent well.
"Unfair" opinion incoming!
The podcast transcription suggests that it was 30 minutes of people saying "Man, aren't woke people exhausting?" That isn't worth anyone's time, IMO, and I called it out from the start. And instead of people reflecting on the obvious bad-faith framing of the article/podcast, they instead insist upon asking us to listen to this, without forming an opinion of the material themselves, other than to say "I don't agree with all of it, but some of it I found interesting or thought-provoking."
You'll see that throughout this thread, I ask a simple question - "where has wokeness gone too far?" "Where did wokeness leave us worse off?" And other than people describing "the left" as patronizing and condescending, leading to a shitty outcome in 2024 ... there's nothing.
And yes, 2024's election was a shitty outcome. Part of that may come down to messaging, sure. But at the end of the day, white Americans chose Trump again. They chose a man with decades of documented racism, who inspired a mob to try and overthrow the government, and some people here are claiming that it's because "the left" wasn't nice enough, or Kamala Harris bungled her messaging.
I would argue that Trump won because ours is a deeply racist country, and he reflects what we are. But that's getting a bit off-topic, so I'll stop that there (this time).
This conversation gets more and more tiring every time it happens. And it has happened many, many times, here and elsewhere. And it will happen again, here and elsewhere, with a new coat of paint and insistence that no actually it's a different conversation this time when it's just ... not. It's just not.
I get ya, but that's the burden one must accept when they become a tildo. But hey, even if no one responds, you never know who might read it and take something from it. If nothing else, it's a...
Exemplary
It took over an hour to put that post together, and the OP is unlikely to read or engage with it.
I get ya, but that's the burden one must accept when they become a tildo. But hey, even if no one responds, you never know who might read it and take something from it. If nothing else, it's a good exercise to write out your thoughts. I often feel like I get more out of writing the comment than posting it. For every effort post I make, I have two or three that I end up scrapping, maybe more. I actually have a Google drive file with dozens of unposted comments lol.
As for the rest of your post, I don't think your opinion is unfair, and I don't really disagree with the specific point you're making about 2024, I just think we're just looking at it differently.
We have both pointed out that there is something along the lines of a woke value system and a woke messaging system. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to be referring to woke the value system when you keep asking where woke went too far or failed. I wholeheartedly agree with what I think you're getting at there. I don't think that “woke” progressive policies are a problem, and I've disagreed with how Third Way centrist Dems made it out to be the defining issue of the 2024 election. But that doesn't seem to be the point that the original discussion or many of the comments here are focused on. They're focused on woke the messaging system, which is often perceived as performative, cringey, scolding, or just flat out annoying. That's a failure. Now, you can't control how people receive your message, but you can control how you deliver it. That, in my mind, is the purpose of the wider discussions around the failure of woke.
I don't know enough about the entire panel to say what their values are, but they certainly didn't strike me as having “anti-woke” beliefs. No one in that conversation was saying things like “they want men to compete in women's sports” or "they're demonizing white people in history class,” so I'm willing to give a little grace and assume that their criticisms of woke messaging were leveled with the hope that something more effective emerges. I've been around this site long enough to know that most people feel the same way to some extent. Or maybe I'm just projecting my own woke desires onto other people. I don't know.
I would argue that Trump won because ours is a deeply racist country, and he reflects what we are. But that's getting a bit off-topic, so I'll stop that there (this time).
I am genuinely curious about the rest of your political identity though. I've seen you get passionate a number of times about bigotry and identity politics, and obviously we've discussed 2024 through that lens, but I can't recall seeing anything else about what type of world you want to live in, the type of candidates you support, or who/what your influences are.
The sort of effort that it takes to refute a “provocational” topic like this just isn’t sustainable. In my personal experience, when I say that threads like this are exhausting, it’s because I’ve...
Exemplary
I get ya, but that's the burden one must accept when they become a tildo.
The sort of effort that it takes to refute a “provocational” topic like this just isn’t sustainable.
In my personal experience, when I say that threads like this are exhausting, it’s because I’ve had to burn so much more of my time than the person that I’m explaining something to, and it isn’t the first time I’ve chosen to burn my time in such a way.
Eventually, I think I’ll choose to just not respond, and that deeply saddens me. I just don’t think there’s another option out there, when I’m just so tired of being punched.
The reason it took Drewbawr an hour to put the post together is because they insisted on writing the response as they read it. They could have instead read the thing in 20 minutes and then...
The reason it took Drewbawr an hour to put the post together is because they insisted on writing the response as they read it. They could have instead read the thing in 20 minutes and then responded. In fact, I'm so disappointed by the response to Drewbawr's comments because it shows that few people actually read the damn article. The way Drewbawr's comment reads, it only makes sense if it disregards context which it constantly does since it's responding to sentences without regard for what came before/after. It's a reactionary piece that doesn't manage to first understand what the speakers are saying before responding. It's playing to the audience here at Tildes who like to imagine they're so educated but simultaneously intentionally choosing to not read.
What does the article boil down to? Some of the actions taken in the last decade were performative, not effective at bringing about progressive change, and became mainstream which drove a counter-culture. None of that should be controversial for anyone paying attention unless the reader believes that their black square profile picture was super duper effective.
The ongoing debate about how other people are writing their comments and whether they should or shouldn't is exhausting too. You didn't watch them write. You clearly disagree with them and replied...
The reason it took Drewbawr an hour to put the post together is because they insisted on writing the response as they read it. They could have instead read the thing in 20 minutes and then responded.
The ongoing debate about how other people are writing their comments and whether they should or shouldn't is exhausting too. You didn't watch them write. You clearly disagree with them and replied directly so maybe just talk about them to them instead analyzing their actions to someone else. Similarly assuming other people didn't read the article - I did - and therefore are somehow being "duped" rather than broadly agreeing with someone is insulting.
Uh, I only brought it up because Drewbahr mentioned that they spent over an hour to write their comment. If they want to complain about the length of it, then I will point out that it was...
The ongoing debate about how other people are writing their comments and whether they should or shouldn't is exhausting too.
Uh, I only brought it up because Drewbahr mentioned that they spent over an hour to write their comment. If they want to complain about the length of it, then I will point out that it was self-inflicted. Otherwise, I left the comment in peace until then.
I didn't mention you at all, so why are you assuming I meant you? For the part about Drewbahr, I mentioned their writing style in the thread that was started by them and I also then added a direct reply to them as well; I don't think it's considered talking behind their back if I do this, but opinions can differ here. Also, isn't this policing how comments are being written?
I didn't assume you meant me and never said so. I used myself as an example. You're not the first post talking about who should write comments and how they wrote the comment and whether certain...
I didn't assume you meant me and never said so. I used myself as an example.
You're not the first post talking about who should write comments and how they wrote the comment and whether certain people should have commented at all and it's exhausting. As is the "this person writes slop for the idiots who didn't read the article"
This is so incredibly passive aggressive and reminiscent of twitter subtweeting that it makes it practically impossible to engage with the rest of your post I get that you're frustrated with the...
It's a reactionary piece that doesn't manage to first understand what the speakers are saying before responding.
It's playing to the audience here at Tildes who like to imagine they're so educated but simultaneously intentionally choosing to not read.
This is so incredibly passive aggressive and reminiscent of twitter subtweeting that it makes it practically impossible to engage with the rest of your post
I get that you're frustrated with the way conversation has happened but if you're going to accuse others of not leaving their emotions at the door the least you can do is lay out the behavior you wish to see
Anyhow to address what you did bring up in this reply
Some of the actions taken in the last decade were performative, not effective at bringing about progressive change, and became mainstream which drove a counter-culture. None of that should be controversial
It seems to me that what you're missing is that basically no one is arguing against this? We're talking about something that is broadly categorized as 'politics'. Politics is like 90% performance. Pretty much everyone who came in here who took issue with the very premise were explicitly pointing out that this very article is performance and choosing to engage with it is yet another act of performance.
You can't simultaneously act like there's a serious issue to discuss here while also engaging with an act of performance - those two are at odds with each other.
Yes, I "insisted" upon writing a response as I read it - because I wanted to break down my thoughts and feelings as they came to me as I went through the piece. What's wrong with that? What...
Yes, I "insisted" upon writing a response as I read it - because I wanted to break down my thoughts and feelings as they came to me as I went through the piece. What's wrong with that?
What context am I disregarding? I constant refer back to where the speakers themselves change their opinions mid-podcast on the very topic they're discussing.
Did I write a reactionary piece? OF COURSE. It's a reaction to this topic/podcast! What else could it be?
It's playing to the audience here at Tildes who like to imagine they're so educated but simultaneously intentionally choosing to not read.
Pot and kettle?
What does the article boil down to? Some of the actions taken in the last decade were performative, not effective at bringing about progressive change, and became mainstream which drove a counter-culture. None of that should be controversial for anyone paying attention unless the reader believes that their black square profile picture was super duper effective.
The stated headline of the article/podcast is "Did Wokeness Leave Us Worse Off?" Sure, some of what some people did was performative - there's extensive documentation out there that suggests even "performative" demonstrations can be effective in getting people on your side, and I would argue that rallies, protests, etc are also "performative". But I see the point there and I don't disagree with it. But what, in your paragraph there, addresses the question from the article - "Did Wokeness Leave Us Worse Off"?
The word "woke" is hitting semantic satiation for me. "Did wokeness leave us worse off?" and "woke value system" and "woke messaging system" and, and, and ... do you see what the problem here is?...
The word "woke" is hitting semantic satiation for me. "Did wokeness leave us worse off?" and "woke value system" and "woke messaging system" and, and, and ... do you see what the problem here is? "Woke" doesn't mean anything anymore, not just in this thread but in media generally.
What is a "woke value system"? What is a "woke messaging system"?
If people find "wokeness" as "performative, cringey, scolding, or just flat out annoying" ... then why? What part(s) of "wokeness" hit them that way?
If it's because they felt like they were being "hit over the head" with messaging about murders, police killings, etc, from a racial standpoint ... then they missed the point entirely. The fact that people are paying attention and talking about how bad things are shouldn't be "annoying", it should be infuriating! And if it isn't ... why is that?
If it's because they don't like being confronted with LGBTQ+ issues ... same question about, why is that annoying?
If people are getting irritated with the delivery and not the message, then maybe that's a conversation worth having - but it doesn't address the article! Did Wokeness Leave Us Worse Off? continues to go unanswered (in my opinion - because I suspect some people are going to accuse me, again, of "not engaging with peoples' responses).
I don't know enough about the entire panel to say what their values are, but they certainly didn't strike me as having “anti-woke” beliefs.
One of the panelists specifically says they have "anti-woke sensibilities". Given that you and that panelist appear to disagree on what that means, we bump into the age-old problem, again, of what "woke" means.
I am genuinely curious about the rest of your political identity though. I've seen you get passionate a number of times about bigotry and identity politics, and obviously we've discussed 2024 through that lens, but I can't recall seeing anything else about what type of world you want to live in, the type of candidates you support, or who/what your influences are.
I want to live in a world in which people stop murdering each other over race, sexual identity, religion, etc. I don't really want to go further than that, because as this thread has shown, there's people that will find ways to lambaste others over such statements (I've done it too, I admit).
Idk man, they just all seem like whiny assholes who make me learn what pronouns are so I can say that I don't use them. /S This is your contentious topic Rest Area. This is just a general self...
• If it's because they don't like being confronted with LGBTQ+ issues ... same question about, why is that annoying?
Idk man, they just all seem like whiny assholes who make me learn what pronouns are so I can say that I don't use them.
/S
This is your contentious topic Rest Area. This is just a general self care reminder in case you need a pause. Fruit snacks and iced coffee are available for your convenience.
Sorry for the late reply, I've been touching a lot of grass lately, but I didn't want to leave you hanging. Or maybe I just want to get one more word in because the lack of progress we've made in...
Sorry for the late reply, I've been touching a lot of grass lately, but I didn't want to leave you hanging. Or maybe I just want to get one more word in because the lack of progress we've made in this conversation is deeply frustrating.
I don't know where I go wrong every time I have these types of conversations with you, but I feel like when I try to explain one of the marginal disagreements I have with you, that explanation falls of deaf ears. But hey, I'm a masochistic loser with way too much time on my hands, so let's give it another go.
One of the panelists specifically says they have "anti-woke sensibilities". Given that you and that panelist appear to disagree on what that means, we bump into the age-old problem, again, of what "woke" means.
No, dude. I'm actually trying to rephrase and expand on what that panelist said. Here's the rest of the quote regarding the "anti-woke" sensibilities.
And by saying that, I think what I’m often trying to do is distance myself from the woke of five years ago — this way too earnest, super p.c. kind of cringe, resistance-y culture, whose politics I mostly support, but the way that it’s carried out is cringe to me.
That's why I'm trying to make the distinction between values and messaging. Maybe there's a better way to differentiate the two, but I don't know how else to put it. They said it succinctly, I touched on it broadly and then expanded with examples. I don't know whats happening? Where is the disconnect?
If people find "wokeness" as "performative, cringey, scolding, or just flat out annoying" ... then why? What part(s) of "wokeness" hit them that way?
If it's because they felt like they were being "hit over the head" with messaging about murders, police killings, etc, from a racial standpoint ... then they missed the point entirely. The fact that people are paying attention and talking about how bad things are shouldn't be "annoying", it should be infuriating! And if it isn't ... why is that?
If it's because they don't like being confronted with LGBTQ+ issues ... same question about, why is that annoying?
I’d say neither of those very specific options apply, but what difference does it make? Politics is about persuasion, so it's not always what you say, but how you say it. You can have the right beliefs and the better policies, but it doesn't matter if your message doesn't resonate, or worse, turns people off. When that happens (which is all the time if you are on the left) you can do one or three things: you can adjust your message, you can keep it the same and tell people how stupid and wrong they are when they disagree, or you can go the third way and compromise your values.
If people are getting irritated with the delivery and not the message, then maybe that's a conversation worth having -
Yay!
but it doesn't address the article! Did Wokeness Leave Us Worse Off? continues to go unanswered
Oh.
Well, first of all, I wouldn't fret too much about NYT op-ed titles. It's just an attention getter and they change them all the time. In fact, I'd bet that this isn't the original title. As for the question itself, there are plenty of ways to interpret it. Given your original comment, you appear to be interpreting it as a reference to the state of the world? Maybe it's the state of American politics? Obviously, and for the third time, the answer to that question is no. But let's take another look at how they open the article and discussion:
The right is known for using provocative language. But lately there’s been a push to be transgressive, even on the left — from the return of certain slurs to the removal of pronouns from bios. Nadja Spiegelman, a Times Opinion culture editor, is joined by the writer and culture critic Aminatou Sow and the New York magazine writer Brock Colyar to debate whether our culture is abandoning political correctness — and if so, why?
Nadja Spiegelman: Did woke go too far? I’ve noticed some people are saying the R-word again, and pronouns and emails no longer feel so obligatory. It feels as if we’re just being a little less careful with what we can say and who we might offend. So, where are we with language policing, and are we simply done with being politically correct?
Between that opener and the rest of the 30-minute conversation, here's how I interpret the question: "Is the return of off-color and offensive langue a backlash to the politics of language policing, and will the return of such language damage solidarity?" But again, I think it's very silly to get caught up on the title.
I don't really want to go further than that, because as this thread has shown, there's people that will find ways to lambaste others over such statements
Fair enough. Not sure what kind of cards you're keeping close to your chest, but either way, I would encourage you to be a little more charitable in regards to the American electorate 's potential for growth. In this conversation and the previous one I linked to, there's this cynical and defeated vibe that all these racist people who have supported this fascist movement can't be reasoned with, or that their change must come solely from within. Maybe that's a misread on my part, but it's something that I fundamentally disagree with.
Before I end my participation in this conversation, I want to leave you with some food for thought. If you follow left-wing politics, then there are two names you might've seen pop up a few times over the past month, and that's Contrapoints and Hasan Piker. If you don't know who they are, they're both unabashedly left-wing and would qualify as having "woke" values. Contrapoints is a trans woman who makes these long, elegant, stylistic video essays that touch on philosophy, psychology, politics, and media criticism. Hasan Piker is a big, bro-type guy who streams on twitch and is known for using vulgar language, yelling at his audience, and going on bizarre and juvenile detours during his news coverage, like if the cars in Disney's Cars have vaginas. What I'm trying to say is that while there is some overlap in their politics, these two people couldn't be more different. However, there are two things they have in common. (1) They are both widely credited for deradicalizing right-wing men, and (2) they've both clashed with their audiences many times over the type of tone/language policing that would qualify as "woke." They might be on to something.
My belief that people have to choose to, and want to change before they do is not cynical nor defeatist, it's based on my understanding of human nature. To create that desire to change, individual...
there's this cynical and defeated vibe that all these racist people who have supported this fascist movement can't be reasoned with, or that their change must come solely from within.
My belief that people have to choose to, and want to change before they do is not cynical nor defeatist, it's based on my understanding of human nature. To create that desire to change, individual conversations are the most effective, including everything from therapy to trusted peers redirecting them when they say something shitty. This is a group particularly inclined to ignore advice/influence/etc. they don't like out of spite, but who also are easily swayed by peers they look up to.
But that, IME, is just how people work. I'm not a sociologist so I may be biased by my professional perspective.
The first statement in the transcript is "did woke go too far?" So I don't think the title of the podcast is all that editorialized. The disconnect is in what "woke" means. To you, to the authors,...
The first statement in the transcript is "did woke go too far?" So I don't think the title of the podcast is all that editorialized.
The disconnect is in what "woke" means. To you, to the authors, to me, to anyone. What does it mean? Why is some "wokeness" cringey, and some of it not-so? What makes the difference?
Why is being "earnest" a bad thing?
Politics is absolutely about persuasion, and if I were trying to be persuasive, I would be using different language. It just so happens that I'm not really trying to be persuasive here. I'm not trying to convince you, or anyone, about "wokeness" - because the topic is ridiculous on its face. It's a right wing bogeyman being trotted out at this point, and I'm not going to take it seriously, so to speak.
So now, if we're changing topics from "what the article says it's about" to "what I think the article is about" then we're having a different discussion. Maybe I got hung up on the title, but I'm also not impressed by the content of it either.
You don't need to tell me to be charitable about the American electorate. My family goes back hundreds of years in this country. So does my wife's family. But our familial experiences are vastly different. The fact that this country embraced Trump twice is informative. What the SCOTUS is doing, is informative. What Black and Asian and various other non-white people say about their experiences, their realities, is informative.
I listen to them.
And I agree with DefinitelyNotAFae - "real" change comes from within. You can be presented with every fact under the sun, in so many different ways, but ultimately it's up to you (the audience) to make that change yourself. I can't make anyone listen to me. Even if I phrase my thoughts in a completely different manner, there's zero guarantee that it works.
The rhetoric I'm using, is the rhetoric that worked on me.
This is a natural phenomenon for all kinds of labels, I think. Shitty antisocial people have a tactic of attaching themselves to positive sounding labels, as a way of preemptively deflecting...
This is a natural phenomenon for all kinds of labels, I think.
Shitty antisocial people have a tactic of attaching themselves to positive sounding labels, as a way of preemptively deflecting criticisms of their personality.
So like Christianity used to be held in high regard as a moral authority in society, and as a result lots of mean spirited people become really intensely religious in order to associate themselves with that moral authority and assert themselves as a representative of that authority.
But of course this is just a superficial ploy, and most people understand that these people still suck. Because of this, at a large scale people start to correlate being intensely passionate about "virtuous" movements with socially intelligent bullying and douchebaggery.
This in my opinion is not a "woke" problem in itself, but the natural cycle of social branding. Moralism needs to constantly distance itself from the people who would aspire to be seen as moral, and movements need to constantly reinvent themselves to avoid being corrupted by the people they are composed of.
No offense but why even share this article? Why give it clicks? Why even discuss it? This topic is so incredibly played out and boring. Free speech folks whine about speech being used freely....
No offense but why even share this article? Why give it clicks? Why even discuss it? This topic is so incredibly played out and boring. Free speech folks whine about speech being used freely. "Woke" people ruined my life for spreading hate- no, you are just finally facing consequences for being a jerk.
Legitimately, for what purpose are we engaging with this?
Because it’s highly relavent to the political and cultural discourse in the US. The premise of the discussion is that „wokeness“ is culture on the way out for both the left and the right. As...
Because it’s highly relavent to the political and cultural discourse in the US. The premise of the discussion is that „wokeness“ is culture on the way out for both the left and the right. As impactful as the cultural moment was, it’s dying will be equally impactful. There is merit in examining cultural movements while they are happening and changing, especially along a large swath of society.
You claim it’s played out and boring but it’s a topic I haven’t seen come up very much on Tildes, the group I’ve shared it with. If you feel it’s too boring for you, you’re absolutely free to ignore the post. Or likewise share a more constructive argument that furthers the discussion instead of attempting to shut it down, for example.
I disagree that asking "for what purpose are we engaging with this", "why give this clicks", and "why share this article" are trying to shut down discussion. I'm explicitly inviting a discussion...
I disagree that asking "for what purpose are we engaging with this", "why give this clicks", and "why share this article" are trying to shut down discussion. I'm explicitly inviting a discussion about why this is something we are focusing time and effort on. I think there's also a lot of merit in discussing why articles like this get created in the first place, considering who's pitching the discussion (I don't exactly see the NYT as unbiased on this issue for a dozen different reasons) and their biases/incentives, and ultimately whether this is even worth discussing given these contexts. For example, I agree that examining cultural movements is important, but I heavily disagree that this article is even attempting to do so in any critical manner. It's an opinion article in NYT seemingly designed to generate clicks and engagement- I mean hell, the very first quote literally starts with "Did woke go too far?"
I appreciate you sharing that this is something you haven't seen come up much on tildes. I've been here a long time and seen a lot of these kinds of articles, which is part of the reason I posed the question.
In an effort to further a discussion, I'd love to hear any thoughtful arguments on why this is a topic that doesn't warrant engagement. What biases and incentives do you see the NYT as having in...
In an effort to further a discussion, I'd love to hear any thoughtful arguments on why this is a topic that doesn't warrant engagement. What biases and incentives do you see the NYT as having in posting this article? Why is the NYT, to you, a biased publication on this topic? You say you have a dozen reasons, I'd love to hear six, ten, or even all of them.
You seem passionate about this issue being brought up, at least in this context. I'd be very interested to hear the motivations behind that passion.
Keeping that discussion within the context of the piece, I'd love to hear responses other than attacking 'fascists' and 'nazis' for hate speech when the major premise is that woke speech is on the decline also within progressive circles.
Did woke go too far? What are your thoughts on that?
This topic doesn't warrant engagement precisely because the source material isn't critically engaging with it. This is a discussion between "a Times Opinion culture editor", a "writer and culture...
This topic doesn't warrant engagement precisely because the source material isn't critically engaging with it. This is a discussion between "a Times Opinion culture editor", a "writer and culture critic" and "the New York magazine writer". Explain to me how any of these folks can be considered experts on culture? Linguistics? Politics? They're writers and editors, not scientists. I don't see a single figure in their discussions, nor really any important nods to notable people studying culture or politics. I think it's equally noteworthy that this is an opinion piece, published in the NYT in their online platform that's heavily framed as clickbait for the reasons I already mentioned.
If you really want to have an engagement in good faith, I need to see good faith before I bother to take on any educational burden. Rather than asking me leading questions like "what biases and incentives do you see the NYT as having", show me that you're engaged by pointing out what biases the NYT has (a quick google search can reveal that to you), what biases an opinion piece by writers might have, and how those aren't of concern or might be addressed before asking for my thoughts - that would show me that you've actually done some research on the topic or actively engaged with it rather than hoping for others to educate you. In addition you talk about the "major premise" and yet it's just three writers and editors having a very non-scientific discussion. Is "woke speech" on the decline in progressive circles? I hardly see an academic definition on what wokeness might entail, let alone any papers studying linguistic drift, culture, or politics. I don't feel particularly interested in engaging with a hypothesis that doesn't come from a place of good faith in the first place. Who are these editors and writers and why should I care what they think when the incentives of this article are so clearly aligned on clickbait and emotional engagement?
It's literally a culture editor, culture critic, and writer for a cultural magazine. Even though they aren't academics or researchers, surely they are heavily exposed in their work, knowledge, and...
Explain to me how any of these folks can be considered experts on culture?
It's literally a culture editor, culture critic, and writer for a cultural magazine. Even though they aren't academics or researchers, surely they are heavily exposed in their work, knowledge, and probably education to have informed discussions. Holding such a lofty post at a national newspaper are definitely bonafide credentials to discuss a topic, regardless of anyone's personal feelings towards that publication's supposed stance on the issue.
If you really want to have an engagement in good faith, I need to see good faith before I bother to take on any educational burden. Rather than asking me leading questions like "what biases and incentives do you see the NYT as having", show me that you're engaged by pointing out what biases the NYT has
May I, respectfully, point out to you that you posed questions first to me. You have shown no good faith by your standards by giving salient examples and have instead posed leading questions to me. Why should I make effort to actually engage with those questions and your post when no effort or good faith was given to me in the first place?
This argument holds a lot more water when the discussion is of any substance. I see none. As I already stated, no facts, no figures, no definitions, no studies, no scientists mentioned- it's all...
Holding such a lofty post at a national newspaper are definitely bonafide credentials to discuss a topic, regardless of anyone's personal feelings towards that publication's supposed stance on the issue.
This argument holds a lot more water when the discussion is of any substance. I see none. As I already stated, no facts, no figures, no definitions, no studies, no scientists mentioned- it's all just hand-waving and engagement bait. Hell, the very least they could do is at least point out arguments the other side might have and attempt to address them (basic debate principles) but they don't even do that, do they?
May I, respectfully, point out to you that you posed questions first to me
Yes, I asked why I should treat this with good faith. You can't then put the good faith burden back onto me because I don't want to engage with something that is bad faith in the first place. I've pointed out incentives present in online platforms and present in opinion pieces, I've pointed out explicit use of engagement language. I'm actively trying to engage with this in good faith, but without these issues being addressed I see no way in which I can engage with this in good faith.
If you want to have a discussion grounded in good faith then you need to present a source grounded in good faith in the first place. Or, if you'd prefer to start the discussion here, you need to address the potential sources of bad faith to show that you are actively engaged in the first place.
I was never actively engaged, you engaged me which brought me here. I posted a piece that inspired thought and self-reflection in myself. That does not always need to be backed up by facts,...
I was never actively engaged, you engaged me which brought me here. I posted a piece that inspired thought and self-reflection in myself. That does not always need to be backed up by facts, figures, and definitions, we do it all the time with art and writing and we can certainly find thoughtfulness by watching people having discussions and then talking about what they discussed. You directed questions to me and I addressed them, I don't think it's out of order for me to do the same. Again, you engaged me and not the other way around - I responded in good faith to that initial engagement and am now disengaging from it.
Because the starting point was this article, which I believe to be engagement bait. It's not treating the topic seriously. They don't and it's possible to have a good faith discussion about...
How is it different than if someone asked the question in ~talk and people on Tildes had a discussion about it.
Because the starting point was this article, which I believe to be engagement bait. It's not treating the topic seriously.
Why does someone need to be a PhD to have a valid opinion. And why does there has to be numbers?
They don't and it's possible to have a good faith discussion about something without it, but this is published article with supposed "experts". If we're operating from that start point, we need to assess whether that's true. It's my opinion that these are not experts, at all, and the 'discussion' is just smoke and mirrors. They don't care about having anything resembling an actual discussion because their goal is simply to bring in revenue via clicks. The content is functionally irrelevant to them.
I agree the discourse has already been hashed out, but only among people who are really into politics.
In my case it's more that I'm exhausted about having bad faith discussions about it. But I guess that's always going to be true for someone who belongs to a group which is the target of weaponizing discussions like this.
It's not my definition, it's the participants' in the discussion I've linked to. I'll defer to the article instead of potentially mangling something I didn't even write.
It's not my definition, it's the participants' in the discussion I've linked to. I'll defer to the article instead of potentially mangling something I didn't even write.
I'm going to ask you not to engage with me further in this comment section. You have insinuated both that I am attempting to spread hateful ideology and questioned whether I have an agenda because...
I'm going to ask you not to engage with me further in this comment section. You have insinuated both that I am attempting to spread hateful ideology and questioned whether I have an agenda because of a quotation mark. Your behavior towards me is making me feel angry and I don't want that.
As I've stated to you before in another comment. I am referencing the discussion that is linked to, where they discuss "wokeness." It is never my word, I have never here discussed any of my views on it, if you want to understand how it is defined or what I'm referring to then I urge you to confront the source material.
Have a good day and please don't engage with me again in this topic.
Your comment is needlessly personal, inflammatory, accusatory and paranoid. The first time you talked to me, years ago, you accused me of being a white American alt right. I'm an Afro Brazilian...
Your comment is needlessly personal, inflammatory, accusatory and paranoid.
The first time you talked to me, years ago, you accused me of being a white American alt right. I'm an Afro Brazilian progressive left wing who never left the country. You were very aggressive.
Try to relax a bit with the implications. Not everyone is trying to get you.
Note, in this case, I believe the “you” being used is directed at the author of the article, (or maybe even the fictional person “harmed” in this scenario) rather than the person posting it. I...
Note, in this case, I believe the “you” being used is directed at the author of the article, (or maybe even the fictional person “harmed” in this scenario) rather than the person posting it.
I personally agree with the sentiment being expressed - when you have people taking a broad “this movement is good / this movement is bad” stance, it’s going to really difficult to get any meaningful discussion out of it.
It’s great at generating arguments though, I think, which seems to have been successful in this case!
I'm not going to ask if you read the article but you may have overlooked something. That doesn't come up in the discussion linked to, in fact it gets pretty nuanced at times about what worked in...
I'm not going to ask if you read the article but you may have overlooked something.
when you have people taking a broad “this movement is good / this movement is bad”
That doesn't come up in the discussion linked to, in fact it gets pretty nuanced at times about what worked in the "woke" movement and what didn't. What was a stretch and what is just human decency.
Remember that the comment you're defending was posted without having read or watched the linked discussion and a complete unwillingness to engage with it.
I don't think that the transcription of the linked video has a lot of substance to it. In the beginning of the article, it looks like they're defining "wokeism" as the specific use of a set of...
I don't think that the transcription of the linked video has a lot of substance to it.
In the beginning of the article, it looks like they're defining "wokeism" as the specific use of a set of words, in a misguided attempt to be inclusive. It's a way of poking fun at the sillier parts of trying to be respectful and inclusive.
To start, I wanted to play a game where I am going to say a word and you guys are going to tell me if it is alive, dying or dead.
Aminatou Sow: Sounds great.
Brock Colyar: Let’s do it.
Spiegelman: OK: problematic.
Colyar: Dead.
Sow: Hmm. Should die. But it’s around. You know what I’m saying? It’s around, but it should die.
Spiegelman: Triggered.
Sow: That one’s going to come back. It’s going to come back, but it’s dead.
Colyar: I still see quite a bit of that, especially on the internet, which is really disturbing because it’s like, “trigger warning,” and then here’s a video of some horrifically violent thing.
Sow: But it’s why I love it. I’m just like, thank you for triggering me with the trigger. It’s like the reaction came 10 seconds before, so I love it.
Spiegelman: Microaggression.
Sow: Dead.
Colyar: Dead.
Spiegelman: OK. Safe space.
Sow: Dead.
Colyar: Dead.
Spiegelman: “Folx” — with an “x.”
Colyar: Dead.
Sow: Never alive.
Colyar: I mean, talk about ridiculous. That really makes me so mad, because I know people who have dutifully and earnestly used that, and it’s like, oh my gosh.
I think that comparing the usage of "Folx" (which I've never seen, but may exist) to the usage of various slurs is pretty wild.
My personal definition of "woke" is being aware that my experiences aren't the same as others' experiences, and wanting to listen to those that may know better. If someone wants me to use specific pronouns, I'm going to try my best to do so, and I'd like it if they told me about it!
In that case, I don't think that anything is "worse off", and I don't think they make a case for it.
They don't ever really define "wokeism" in the transcription, to the best of my knowledge. They suggest that it's just a rebranding of "political correctness", but I don't think they get any more definitive than that. I think it's worth pointing out that both "woke" and "politically correct" are right-wing-slanted terms.
In my opinion, the left-wing-slanted version of the same concept would be "open-mindedness", or "kindness-as-default".
It's a difficult thing to discuss in a productive way.
Can you please quote that part? I think I may have missed where they make that comparison. I didn't feel that they were trying to make that case. Betteridge's Law and all, the answer to the...
I think that comparing the usage of "Folx" (which I've never seen, but may exist) to the usage of various slurs is pretty wild.
Can you please quote that part? I think I may have missed where they make that comparison.
In that case, I don't think that anything is "worse off", and I don't think they make a case for it.
I didn't feel that they were trying to make that case. Betteridge's Law and all, the answer to the headline question seemed to be a "no" to me. They definitely point out some excesses of the movement, and what social movement doesn't have its excesses, but I didn't walk away from the discussion feeling like they were trying prove the title. The title was probably chosen by an editor anyway.
They don't ever really define "wokeism" in the transcription, to the best of my knowledge.
I think you're right but I found the "definition," to use that term loosely, in the entire context of the conversation.
I think it's worth pointing out that both "woke" and "politically correct" are right-wing-slanted terms.
The term may have been coopted by right-wing groups but I think it definitely originated in progressive circles in the wake of George Floyd's murder, if I'm remembering correctly.
It's a difficult thing to discuss in a productive way.
Agree and disagree. I think I've seen some productive discussions in the comment section already and even if it is difficult I don't think we shouldn't at least try.
I asked why it was being discussed. I then made a general statement about "free speech folks". Please, help me understand how this is "personal"? Inflammatory is something designed to incite...
Your comment is needlessly personal, inflammatory, accusatory and paranoid.
I asked why it was being discussed. I then made a general statement about "free speech folks". Please, help me understand how this is "personal"?
Inflammatory is something designed to incite anger... unless you find yourself aligned with one of the groups I mentioned and reading into my comment and abstracting that I'm attacking you specifically, I don't see it. But maybe I'm blind to my own biases - help me understand?
Accusatory? Absolutely, towards the specific bad behavior I'm calling out (people being a jerk and facing consequences for it).
Paranoia? Who or what am I being paranoid about? Paranoia means distrusting someone without reason. I specifically called out a group of people exhibiting bad behavior and said I wasn't feeling sorry for them. I didn't exactly state they were distrustful but I suppose you could interpret that from my language. I'm certainly not exactly feeling anxious or fearful towards towards jerks who get what's coming to them. So help me understand where the paranoia is either.
Try to relax a bit with the implications. Not everyone is trying to get you.
I find it interesting that you assume I'm implicating... well, really anyone besides explicitly 'free speech folks' who are whining about speech being used freely or jerks facing the consequences of their actions. I don't think anyone is 'trying to get me'.
Why do you think I posted what I did? Help me understand how you read this comment, because I really have no idea where you're going with this. I'm genuinely flabbergasted as to how you're perceiving me and would love to understand it.
Oh great. Not only are conservatives manufacturing outrage against things like wokeness... but now formerly liberal establishments are getting in on the act.
The New York Times has faced criticism for publishing controversial opinion pieces, such as "Did Liberal Feminism Ruin the Workplace?"
Oh great. Not only are conservatives manufacturing outrage against things like wokeness... but now formerly liberal establishments are getting in on the act.
Thank you for sharing this. I have been hearing from those close to me that the NYT is not to be trusted, and this video reaffirms that with facts and evidence. Especially appreciative of the push...
Thank you for sharing this. I have been hearing from those close to me that the NYT is not to be trusted, and this video reaffirms that with facts and evidence. Especially appreciative of the push towards the end towards independent media.
I agree with that Coylar person. Probably cause I’m closer in age than I am to the millennial person. I think the millennial person’s framing about the pronoun conversation is the norm around here...
I agree with that Coylar person. Probably cause I’m closer in age than I am to the millennial person.
I think the millennial person’s framing about the pronoun conversation is the norm around here and was the norm around the internet for 10 years or so. To act like it’s not a big deal to just call someone Xe\Xim or something. That’s it’s just polite and blah blah blah. That’s part of the framing that I think unnerved people. It’s like you’re trying to one, inconvenience people by changing what they’ve been used to calling others for decades and then secondly pretending it’s not a big deal and that actually it’s such a minimal statement. The pronoun stuff requires a lot of active participation from everyone that it’s just not reasonable to be like “well actually it’s not even a big deal just call them what they want.”
I do think it’s interesting that it’s not brought up that the “left” was transgressive in the 00s and were pushing the boundaries of what we could say and do. And that there were people during the woke 1 era that were still doing that. Look at Nick Mullen with the CumTown podcast or ChapoTrapHouse. But they would get called fascists, racists, whatever by the more in line woke crowd.
Pronouns really don't require more active participation than remembering someone's name. You can even avoid using them if you're not sure about it. And very few people use neopronouns to the point...
Exemplary
Pronouns really don't require more active participation than remembering someone's name. You can even avoid using them if you're not sure about it.
And very few people use neopronouns to the point that much of the complaints about them are overblown hype by the media or coded "I don't respect binary trans people either."
But idk, even with neopronouns, it's the equivalent of telling someone from another country that you can't pronounce their name so you'll call them "Becky" instead. I have a Kyrgyz colleague and I'm not an ass to her because her last has functionally a pronoun at the end of it ("-kyzy" a patronymic but functions to gender her) because not only is it her name but it's also a big cultural deal for folks to have traditional surname spellings instead of Russian ones.
Is that "woke" (derogatory)? Or just respect given with a bonus of cultural learning? Singular "they" is old AF but is still a fight. Is that "wokeness" (derogatory) too?
I could probably count on one hand the number of times I've encountered a person who insisted on neopronouns and didn't also include they/them as an option, and every time I did it was in some...
I could probably count on one hand the number of times I've encountered a person who insisted on neopronouns and didn't also include they/them as an option, and every time I did it was in some very niche online space. And I'm not totally sure that at least one of those times wasn't someone doing an "attack helicopter" style troll, either. I'm not saying that people who only prefer neopronouns don't exist - and if I met someone who went by fae/faer of xe/xem I'd do my best to honor that, although I've always been a little iffy on how xe/xem is supposed to be pronounced so if it was irl I'd probably fumble it pretty hard - but it's got to be a vanishingly small percentage of the population as a whole for all the attention it gets.
It's more common among my college students to see multiple sets of neopronouns, but they also still mostly use they. (Bug pronouns were new to me) And like, I'm too gender apathetic to actually...
It's more common among my college students to see multiple sets of neopronouns, but they also still mostly use they. (Bug pronouns were new to me) And like, I'm too gender apathetic to actually care, but I think if I were I'd be a fae/they. (Xe/xem is usually pronounced zee/zem but just like a name, someone will usually correct you or tell you if they pronounce it differently. Like Ajyah is Asia, or A-jai-ah or Andrea is An-dree-a or Ahn-dray-a.)
But also probably most of them will settle on either they or a binary pronoun they like long term out of cultural momentum. It's kind of sad but also practical. Like, eh. I'm she/they because I don't want to deal with it and my lack of gender attachment mean it isn't dysphoric.
I'm probably hyper-scrupulous about names and pronouns with my students in part because a) other staff aren't and b) we may be the only space a student can try things out.
Yeah college is definitely a space where people should be able to experiment with identity and figure out what works for them. I assume that means that sometimes you get people who are a little...
Yeah college is definitely a space where people should be able to experiment with identity and figure out what works for them. I assume that means that sometimes you get people who are a little annoying with how they're putting that out into the world, but that's to be expected and honestly "a little annoying" isn't exactly the end of the world. Young people are frequently a little annoying, it goes with the territory. I'm glad your students have somebody safe they can try pronouns out with.
The only genuinely off-putting experience I've had surrounding pronouns was someone insisting that others should use capitalized pronouns because this individual identified as divine, and accusing people of transphobia when they balked at that (or just didn't clock that "They/Them" was different than "they/them" to this person). It blew over pretty quickly, though, and this was in a pretty obscure, very lefty online space so it's not like that's anybody's daily experience.
I guess in the long run, I don't think any of this should be that big of a deal to anybody. Sure there might be some friction with having to remember someone's pronouns or being corrected, but social friction and etiquette are a thing that people deal all the time, and have dealt with forever. In some modern societies, you need to be conscious of someone's age, gender, and social status to know how you need to address them, after all, but American's get SO mad about the singular they, of all things.
Yeah, that's the thing. My college students are frequently annoying, very rarely is that pronoun related. There are easily 20 other things I could come up with right now that irritate me about the...
Yeah, that's the thing. My college students are frequently annoying, very rarely is that pronoun related. There are easily 20 other things I could come up with right now that irritate me about the youth of today as I shake my fist at a cloud. Most of them work through most of those things. It's developmentally appropriate annoyingness. But it's why the furor over having to use pronouns is bullshit.
There's a creator whose videos I see sometimes who debates (baits) conservatives and asks for name and pronouns. I have no idea what he actually talks about with them, because the videos I see are the ones where the (always a) guy responds "I don't use pronouns." To which the creator responds, ok I'll just buzz you every time you use a pronoun then and it turns into buzz buzz buzz buzz because the callers dont have a clue what a pronoun is and would rather die on the hill than say "he/him.
People would have you believe that's what meetings in higher ed are like. They're not. There's been a shift from everyone saying their pronouns to only trans people and particularly staunch allies saying them. And it's ok and also is sad IMO.
I have not met somebody with Divine pronouns, But I would probably have made the point that you can't force anyone to recognize your Divinity because that infringes on freedom of religion. I also would probably have tried to do what they asked in text, and if they were that annoying or aggressive about it, then not talked to them much. Because trans folks can be assholes
I looked up bug pronouns (bugself, "bug is going to the store") and...okay, whatever. Unusual but doesn't affect or bother me. But divine pronouns? What are those?
I looked up bug pronouns (bugself, "bug is going to the store") and...okay, whatever. Unusual but doesn't affect or bother me.
The person above me reference someone who identified as "Divine" and insisted on having capitalized They/Them Pronouns (like being God vs god.) I've never heard of it before either. IMO the issue...
The person above me reference someone who identified as "Divine" and insisted on having capitalized They/Them Pronouns (like being God vs god.) I've never heard of it before either. IMO the issue is it sounds like they were a jerk, not their pronouns.
The usual number that gets thrown around is that 0.5% of the population is in some way shape or form transgender. I feel like that's way too high but let's just say that that's the number....
The usual number that gets thrown around is that 0.5% of the population is in some way shape or form transgender. I feel like that's way too high but let's just say that that's the number. Probably less than 1% of those 0.5% want to use these neopronouns. So yeah, vanishingly small percentage - yet brought up over and over as a point by anti LGBT+ people. I have met exactly 1 person who used something out of the ordinary, "it" as a pronoun. Then maybe 2-3 people using "they". The rest dozens of trans people that I know and have met are all the usual binary he or she. It could definitely be an age thing too. People 30+ don't really hang out in those online spaces.
They exist, yes, but it's a minority of a minority of a minority. But it's so useful for the anti crowd, it's such a great feeling of outrage for them. Free speech right!? But yeah, it's just the same deal all over again that was (still is) a thing that racists like to do about criminals of a minority ethnicity or minority immigrants. It exists, yes, but they're blowing it up to be a big deal when it isn't at all.
It's a good point about it being not much different from non-English names because I feel like I've seen this same cynical energy about pronouns being redirected to Indigenous names here in...
It's a good point about it being not much different from non-English names because I feel like I've seen this same cynical energy about pronouns being redirected to Indigenous names here in Canada, where a lot of boomer types have been increasingly complaining about places and things being renamed back to their original Indigenous names. The complaints always have the same tenor as the ones about pronouns, from "How am I supposed to remember that?" and "If I can't easily assume what I can call it, it's too much".
It takes two seconds to learn how to address someone or something, as long as you don't go in wishing you didn't have to.
I’m going to push back on the indigenous naming of things. “šxʷməθkʷəy̓əmasəm Street” as well as Musqueamview is a stupid thing to do. Even if I could remember this, it’s not physically possible...
I’m going to push back on the indigenous naming of things. “šxʷməθkʷəy̓əmasəm Street” as well as Musqueamview is a stupid thing to do. Even if I could remember this, it’s not physically possible for me to communicate this without cut and paste. And that’s only about half the technical burden of this dual naming monstrosity.
Musqueamview is totally fine with me. I do not care about replacing Trutch Street. I am supportive of renaming things that were named after assholes.
Sorry, I'm going to push back on the push back. No one has caught fire and exploded because there's an alternate street name; you can type "Musqueamview" or "šxʷməθkʷəy̓əmasəm" into Google Maps...
Sorry, I'm going to push back on the push back. No one has caught fire and exploded because there's an alternate street name; you can type "Musqueamview" or "šxʷməθkʷəy̓əmasəm" into Google Maps and it works just fine. Similarly, you can type in "Île de Vancouver" (or, maybe you can't, and you need to physically communicate that only with copy/paste, despite French being an official language of the country) and get Vancouver Island just fine.
My personal opinion is that this is a powder keg that some virtue signalling politicians lit up in order to score points, then it predictably blew off their arms -- no one has ever accused politicians of being too intelligent. Naming the street using the Musqueam language's preferred orthography is not an inherently stupid thing to do; it's only stupid in this moment because people are reactionary and heavily influenced by our media's framing of their reality. As of 2026, a substantial amount of voting citizens that see anything vaguely related to the First Nations will instantly pee themselves screaming about rights, rolling and thrashing in the mud, begging for a conservative politician to make the scary indigenous people go away.
I don’t even know what point you are trying to make here. Île de Vancouver is easy to type. I long press the letter I. This is a standard letter in one of the two official languages of Canada....
I don’t even know what point you are trying to make here.
Île de Vancouver is easy to type. I long press the letter I. This is a standard letter in one of the two official languages of Canada. Even without the accent, Ile de Vancouver is easily recognizable.
This isn’t about indigenous people. I would be as irritated if some politician decided to legally rename a street in Chinatown using hanzi or a street in little Japan in kanji.
My point is that this is a bad take: It is in fact a fine thing to do in any sane country, with sane people. We do not live in sane times. It is for the ravenous hordes of conservative voters that...
I don’t even know what point you are trying to make here.
My point is that this is a bad take:
[Naming?] “šxʷməθkʷəy̓əmasəm Street” as well as Musqueamview is a stupid thing to do.
It is in fact a fine thing to do in any sane country, with sane people. We do not live in sane times.
This isn’t about indigenous people.
It is for the ravenous hordes of conservative voters that are screaming about repealing DRIPA, ending wokeness, etc. A true statement is that it isn't about indigenous people for you, but it absolutely is for others.
I would be as irritated if some politician decided to legally rename a street in Chinatown using hanzi or a street in little Japan in kanji.
Vancouver is built on unceded First Nations land, as they note in every meeting run in the darned city. This land wasn't owned by the Chinese or Japanese. There are valid reasons for wanting First Nations names to be used here.
Just to clarify: are you aware of the state of politics in BC right now? Issues like this are important because they're galvanizing the public against First Nations, in a moment where the provincial Conservative party is well positioned to fan the flames and wreck havok in the next election. I'm aware that this whole kerfuffle has been broadcast across the nation (and potentially into other countries) in order to ruffle conservative feathers, so it's plausible that you're simply commenting on someone else's local politics without understanding the broader context they live in.
Sick, same. So my point stands: I push back on the notion that this renaming is stupid. It should've been handled better, but it is literally less than the least that we could do w.r.t....
Sick, same. So my point stands: I push back on the notion that this renaming is stupid. It should've been handled better, but it is literally less than the least that we could do w.r.t. reconciliation. Equally, in the current political climate, backlash against trivial matters -- such as adding a second name to a renamed street -- is being used as a cudgel to divide us, and cause harm to minorities.
Please feel free to disagree; I'm just restating here to clarify my point. Not trying to convince you of anything, I just don't want to see a statement which furthers our current divides go unaddressed in a public setting. I won't respond to this comment if you'd like to have the last word.
In my city there's a few street signs in Chinese - this is Odense, Denmark which has very few actual Chinese immigrants, it's solely to cater to tourists. The signs are also in Danish right next...
In my city there's a few street signs in Chinese - this is Odense, Denmark which has very few actual Chinese immigrants, it's solely to cater to tourists.
The signs are also in Danish right next to them. So it seems very easy to ignore. Why does it irritate you?
Then we're talking past each other. I thought we were talking about the article you linked above? With the picture of the sign that is in both the native language and the English language?
Then we're talking past each other. I thought we were talking about the article you linked above? With the picture of the sign that is in both the native language and the English language?
I would actually have no issue if it were just a sign and not the legal name of the street. I am in favour of multilingual signage. I also support the road side display of place names in native...
I would actually have no issue if it were just a sign and not the legal name of the street. I am in favour of multilingual signage. I also support the road side display of place names in native languages, eg “Siyám Smánit” for the Chief.
If there's a way to spell it with standard English keyboard, and there's also a sign right next to it in those characters, what's the issue? It's the same street name, just in a different...
If there's a way to spell it with standard English keyboard, and there's also a sign right next to it in those characters, what's the issue? It's the same street name, just in a different language's alphabet.
Is it also stupid and a monstrosity that they printed signs for Spadina Ave. in Mandarin Chinese in Toronto to celebrate the fact that it's Chinatown? Greek signs on the Danforth? Urdu and Punjabi in some other areas? People can still refer to those streets with their Latin alphabet characters.
And also, this is a pretty unique case. As far as I can tell, it's the only time a renaming to Indigenous names used the Indigenous alphabet. From what I can tell, it's to try to acknowledge a language killed by colonialism there. Otherwise all other Indigenous renaming is using the Latin alphabet. To use this exceptional situation to suggest all Indigenous renaming should be pushed back on is quite the ethos.
Not a single one of those is the legal name of the street, so it’s completely irrelevant to me. As I mentioned further down in the thread, I would not care in the slightest if “šxʷməθkʷəy̓əmasəm”...
Is it also stupid and a monstrosity that they printed signs for Spadina Ave. in Mandarin Chinese in Toronto to celebrate the fact that it's Chinatown? Greek signs on the Danforth? Urdu and Punjabi in some other areas? People can still refer to those streets with their Latin alphabet characters.
Not a single one of those is the legal name of the street, so it’s completely irrelevant to me. As I mentioned further down in the thread, I would not care in the slightest if “šxʷməθkʷəy̓əmasəm” were simply printed on the sign and I am in fact in favour of informational place name signage in non-English/French languages, including indigenous languages.
What does it matter if it's the legal name when you can still use the Latin alphabet to refer to it everywhere? The legal spelling of a street has never been important.
What does it matter if it's the legal name when you can still use the Latin alphabet to refer to it everywhere? The legal spelling of a street has never been important.
Interestingly enough, at my work place which is decently diverse the immigrants who came here with difficult to pronounce names have all taken it upon themselves to 'create' themselves an easily...
But idk, even with neopronouns, it's the equivalent of telling someone from another country that you can't pronounce their name so you'll call them "Becky" instead.
Interestingly enough, at my work place which is decently diverse the immigrants who came here with difficult to pronounce names have all taken it upon themselves to 'create' themselves an easily pronounceable western name to go by. In fact I actually don't even know their birth names at all and they are just now known by the western name they chose when they immigrated. Sometimes it's a shortened 'easier' version of their birth name (closer to a nickname) and sometimes it's a completely new name which has nothing to do with their birth name. The important part is that they chose to do this automatically so they could integrate into society here more successfully.
This is very common, and sometimes it's voluntary integration, sometimes it's cultural expectations, and sometimes it's "I do not want to hear 35 different mispronunciations of my name; call me...
This is very common, and sometimes it's voluntary integration, sometimes it's cultural expectations, and sometimes it's "I do not want to hear 35 different mispronunciations of my name; call me Dorothy."
But similarly, that's also falling into my point about respecting what people choose to be called. I always check with a student if that's what they prefer vs feeling expected to do it and call them what they want. But my coworker wanted to be called the full, correct version of her name instead of the more easy diminutive version she'd used previously and so we did.
Yes, an effort should absolutely be made to call people what they want, anything else is really being an asshole. But there is something to say about trying to make things easier for those around...
Yes, an effort should absolutely be made to call people what they want, anything else is really being an asshole. But there is something to say about trying to make things easier for those around you. If someone chooses to go with their difficult to pronounce name or use irregular gender pronouns they should accept that people are going to screw it up and as long as it isn't coming from a hateful place they should just accept that is how it is going to be. My real first name has 2 very common spellings and when in a situation where it doesn't matter and someone asks which spelling I use I usually tell them to spell it anyway they want because it doesn't matter to me (this actually gets me weird looks sometimes).
I don't agree that using your name, chosen or given, or non-binary pronouns means you should just accept it. It's perfectly fine to set a boundary of being addressed correctly even if the failure...
If someone chooses to go with their difficult to pronounce name or use irregular gender pronouns they should accept that people are going to screw it up and as long as it isn't coming from a hateful place they should just accept that is how it is going to be.
I don't agree that using your name, chosen or given, or non-binary pronouns means you should just accept it. It's perfectly fine to set a boundary of being addressed correctly even if the failure is apathy.
And people are used to it. Most people do just take it. You usually only hear otherwise if someone's had a really bad day. But the misgendering happens even when it's a binary pronoun. It's not about it being too hard. It's usually about not respecting the person's identity even if not "out of malice."
Yeah usually uninitiated people just call it as they see it. I sure as hell wouldn't expect anyone (except those close to me) to ever get it right ever when I'm a stranger to them. And I think 99%...
accept that people are going to screw it up and as long as it isn't coming from a hateful place they should just accept that is how it is going to be.
Yeah usually uninitiated people just call it as they see it. I sure as hell wouldn't expect anyone (except those close to me) to ever get it right ever when I'm a stranger to them. And I think 99% of us don't either. Yeah, it really sucks, and it would be nice if things were the other way, but people don't usually go out of their way for random people.
Thankfully I now pass as what I feel and so I can hardly recall the last time I got called wrongly by a stranger. I got sad, upset, annoyed, etc. in the past when it happened but that was my lot in life and the world isn't a safe space. It sucks, but that's the way that it is, and the vast majority of us do accept it (and really, really, really dislike those videos like the it's ma'am one which no matter how you slice it only serves to give the hateful ones more ammunition).
My Son-in-law (mid 20's) is dating someone who identifies as 'non-binary' and goes by 'they-them'. No problem, I support people's choice to present and call themselves what they want and I will...
My Son-in-law (mid 20's) is dating someone who identifies as 'non-binary' and goes by 'they-them'. No problem, I support people's choice to present and call themselves what they want and I will respect that as much as possible. The problem my brain has is his partner physically presents as what my brain considers to be fully 'female'. So I screw it up sometimes, I find I have to consciously pre-think out my sentences to make sure I am using they/them because my brain sees a 'female' and says 'she/her' automatically. They have never make a big deal out of it and I never make a big show of apologizing when I do screw it up, I hope they respect that I am trying my best and I fully support their right to be non-binary and present however they wish.
For what it's worth as someone else who is non-binary, even a quick check in with them (text message, 1:1, whatever) just stating this goes a long way. They almost certainly notice the effort, but...
For what it's worth as someone else who is non-binary, even a quick check in with them (text message, 1:1, whatever) just stating this goes a long way. They almost certainly notice the effort, but it never hurts to hear direct support.
Ah, cool. Polish works that way too. I have a -ski name (of which people are frequently rude about pronunciation), which traditionally would be altered to -ska for a woman. e.g. Marie Curie's...
her last has functionally a pronoun at the end of it ("-kyzy" a patronymic but functions to gender her) because not only is it her name but it's also a big cultural deal for folks to have traditional surname spellings instead of Russian ones.
Ah, cool. Polish works that way too. I have a -ski name (of which people are frequently rude about pronunciation), which traditionally would be altered to -ska for a woman. e.g. Marie Curie's maiden name was Skłodowska, and her father would have been Skłodowski.
Ah that's cool, I'm aware of the Russian versions of that too, but the "kyzy" was new to me and the fact that due to their history it used to be disallowed. I think it's awful how many folks want...
Ah that's cool, I'm aware of the Russian versions of that too, but the "kyzy" was new to me and the fact that due to their history it used to be disallowed.
I think it's awful how many folks want to flatten cultural nuances like this. The world is so much richer for "weird" (to us) names and different traditions.
How many millennials do you know and where is here? This is just so far from anything I’ve ever experienced as an sjw/snowflake millennial.
...the millennial person’s framing about the pronoun conversation is the norm around here and was the norm around the internet for 10 years or so. To act like it’s not a big deal to just call someone Xe\Xim or something.
How many millennials do you know and where is here? This is just so far from anything I’ve ever experienced as an sjw/snowflake millennial.
I agree that it's a big deal, and I'm not sure why people pass it off as not being a big deal. But it depends on the relationship you have to the person in question. It definitely should not be...
It’s like you’re trying to one, inconvenience people by changing what they’ve been used to calling others for decades and then secondly pretending it’s not a big deal and that actually it’s such a minimal statement. The pronoun stuff requires a lot of active participation from everyone that it’s just not reasonable to be like “well actually it’s not even a big deal just call them what they want.”
I agree that it's a big deal, and I'm not sure why people pass it off as not being a big deal. But it depends on the relationship you have to the person in question.
It definitely should not be minimized that it's a pretty big change if it's someone you've known for years and decades that's transitioning. If you are close to that person, you make an effort and it will become second nature after a while.
If you are not close to that person.. well who cares? If people expect you to remember pronouns of some far removed cousin or acquaintance who you never really talk to, then the problem is with them. But if you get reminded of their pronouns, you just say: oh right my bad. And then you move on with your day. It's not a big deal to forget it when they aren't really in your social circle.
Eh, I don't know... Is it? I transitioned relatively recently, and the only people for whom it didn't just "click immediately" were my grandparents, who are very old and thus their brains are not...
It definitely should not be minimized that it's a pretty big change if it's someone you've known for years and decades that's transitioning.
Eh, I don't know... Is it? I transitioned relatively recently, and the only people for whom it didn't just "click immediately" were my grandparents, who are very old and thus their brains are not functioning that well anymore. Everyone else - my mom and dad, my partner, my friends, etc. pretty much just got used to it within 1-2 days.
Social constructs are artificial and made by people and are also very real. National borders are social constructs, so is money, and time and etiquette. They're meaningful to many people and to...
I think the left is tying itself in knots over this one. Either gender/difference/identity has meaning and therefore changing genders is a big shift, or actually it’s really like putting on a different shirt and who cares because that gender stuff means nothing anyway. It’s one or the other, not both.
Social constructs are artificial and made by people and are also very real. National borders are social constructs, so is money, and time and etiquette. They're meaningful to many people and to others they're stupid fabrications.
Gender roles, gender expression and gender identity aren't unique in being both meaningful and meaningless in turn. They're just the target of a campaign of hatred. There were women living in Boston Marriages, "confirmed bachelors", sworn virgins who lived as men, children born with both "spirits" in them throughout history and most of the time people just went "yeah that's Steve, he wasn't born Steve but he's been Steve for a decade. He and his wife always bring her famous spinach puffs." and moved on.
Of course it is!!!! The person they've known and loved for decades suddenly made a huge change in their life. That's a huge deal, especially the parents. They probably nurtured and loved someone...
Eh, I don't know... Is it?
Of course it is!!!! The person they've known and loved for decades suddenly made a huge change in their life. That's a huge deal, especially the parents. They probably nurtured and loved someone in a certain way, always thought of their child that way, bought gendered toys, had gendered expectations of the future.
I'm happy for you that it seems to have clicked so fast with most of your family and friends. 1-2 days is definitely not the norm in my experience + friends' experience.
What I'm saying is that, at least in my culture and "extended circle", that "huge" part was just not really a thing. It was never an integral part of my identity for people because there was a...
What I'm saying is that, at least in my culture and "extended circle", that "huge" part was just not really a thing. It was never an integral part of my identity for people because there was a distinction between the person themselves as an "entity" vs their gender. My parents specifically said, among other things, "why were you even thinking this is a big deal lmao", so I just genuinely can't comprehend why it's a big deal for some people.
It's pretty damn hard to re-teach yourself a not-too-close inlaw changing their name to something nonsensical (Think like changing name to "usb-c"). But that doesn't make it OK to just give up and...
It's pretty damn hard to re-teach yourself a not-too-close inlaw changing their name to something nonsensical (Think like changing name to "usb-c").
But that doesn't make it OK to just give up and make the decision to deadname them intentionally.
I've never encountered a single person in my entire (real) life that used neopronouns. It's a phenomenon that's so vanishingly rare in the real world that it really isn't even worth considering....
I've never encountered a single person in my entire (real) life that used neopronouns. It's a phenomenon that's so vanishingly rare in the real world that it really isn't even worth considering.
The other thing is that discussions around pronoun usage in general is usually theoretical. There's a practical reason for that.
In English, virtually the only time gendered pronouns are ever used is when talking about a person, not to them. Usually, when you talk about someone, that person isn't there, so they're not really in a position to be upset about your pronoun usage anyway.
If someone tells me their pronouns are xe/xey/xeyself, they're not going to be around when I use them. If I saw them, I'd say "hey what's up <xeyname>" or "how are you doing?". Because I don't go up to men and say "Hello, he!".
Because of that fact, all of these confrontations and arguments that people talk about are purely theoretical. They don't happen in real life, because that's just not how the English language works.
We waste a lot of energy talking about something that doesn't even really exist for the most part.
I mean, there are plenty of situations where you might be in a group setting, talking about something that someone present did or said. Like, a work meeting where you say something like, "I asked...
I mean, there are plenty of situations where you might be in a group setting, talking about something that someone present did or said. Like, a work meeting where you say something like, "I asked Brenda to research x topic, and she will be reporting on her findings in a moment" or whatever. It's not that far fetched. I agree that people's problems with pronouns are way overblown, but it's not that hard to imagine lots of scenarios where you might use a pronoun for someone in a casual setting where there are more than 2 people involved.
From looking at the discussion on this thread, it kind of seems like everyone's perception of this whole topic has been primarily shaped by online "discourse" to the point where the whole thing...
But the people who seemed most riled up about 'all these pronouns being forced on us' seem to hang out online more than offline.
From looking at the discussion on this thread, it kind of seems like everyone's perception of this whole topic has been primarily shaped by online "discourse" to the point where the whole thing seems incredibly warped. And you can't just say "online isn't real life" because of course it is - an increasingly significant proportion of our time is spent in online spaces, which is something that I am coming to believe may be much more of a negative than a positive.
But I think Twitter in particular probably had an outsized effect on shaping people's thinking about this subject, and Twitter is such a distortion of reality. It functioned to amplify the loudest, most strident voices in every discussion, and was prone to forming mobs about every topic, not just this one. There are a lot of comments about progressives "crucifying" people for getting pronouns wrong, and I don't doubt that happened, but I suspect it was primarily driven by Twitter and similar online spaces. I think a huge component of our current political/social disfunction is mainly due all of us being subjected to a social experiment where me move all of our collective discourse onto a set of platforms that seem to have been the worst possible places for those discussions to take place in any meaningful, substantive way.
It seems like this article is really dialing up the friction here and it kind of feels like that's the whole point of the article. "Wokeness" is this undefined, untethered thing that we can all...
It seems like this article is really dialing up the friction here and it kind of feels like that's the whole point of the article. "Wokeness" is this undefined, untethered thing that we can all define by our own standards. For some it might be near to it's origin of being aware of structural violence. To others it seems like it's online bullying and purity tests. To the rest it seems like it comes down to pronouns.
Maybe we can agree that we would like to talk about one of those topics: liberal purity tests, treatment of trans people in the USA, a rise in fascist ideology; and that it might be help us to understand more about our current moment. But it feels like lumping it into one article with a clickbait headline and a poorly defined subject has only had the intended effect of driving lots of engagement. Mostly in the form of rage at each other.
As long as civil rights and human decency and mutual respect etc. are not equal, then woke still has not gone far enough. However as pertains to real world politics, actually changing things, at...
As long as civil rights and human decency and mutual respect etc. are not equal, then woke still has not gone far enough.
However as pertains to real world politics, actually changing things, at all possible of getting things done? Way too far.
It is realpolitik in a nutshell. Or rather, isn't.
You have to meet your opponents where they are. Like it or not, the US as a whole was not ready for non-binary people. Talking LGBT+ rights, it has for decades been warming up to, and increasingly accepting, gay people. Maybe transgender people. But non-binary people for some reason was too much and so the opponent lashed out and dragged the rope way to the other end into regressive politics. Society and politics will always be a back and forth between the wings, sometimes towards the center and unfortunately now going to the extremes.
I disagree. I think that this was an intentional targeted politicization of the trans umbrella when they lost their moral argument about same sex marriage and by proxy gay people in general. Much...
I disagree. I think that this was an intentional targeted politicization of the trans umbrella when they lost their moral argument about same sex marriage and by proxy gay people in general. Much like how post Civil Rights the "moral majority" of evangelicals pivoted from being neutral on abortion (or even ok with it up til a much later ensoulment moment) to starkly anti-abortion was to keep their tax exempt status that segregated schools were going to lose.
The same thing is happening with trans folks now. It's not "too much" it's politicized, fomented hate. Even the NYT managed to figure it out.
It's no different than any other moral panic. They are doing this on purpose. Not because my using they/them pronouns is overwhelming and scary.
I'm with you on all of that. They don't think pronouns are scary, but they do think it's dumb and they don't want others to police how they speak. Be it how they (to them, out of nowhere and...
I'm with you on all of that. They don't think pronouns are scary, but they do think it's dumb and they don't want others to police how they speak. Be it how they (to them, out of nowhere and suddenly) can't use the r-word anymore, the fa-word, and in the past the n-word. It's uncomfortable more than dangerous or scary I guess.
But we won't win a culture clash by yoinking at the rope and making them fall over. It's won in many small tugs over a long period of time so that everyone gets used to their new footings and come to meet somewhere in the middle. Like it or not, being non-binary is not really something you see anywhere else than the far left. Not going to ever convince the far right of anything but maybe the center and center right can be.
They can say the words. They just don't want people to judge them for it, while they judge others for dozens of things. This is no different than the right stirring up hatred of immigrants in the...
They can say the words. They just don't want people to judge them for it, while they judge others for dozens of things.
This is no different than the right stirring up hatred of immigrants in the US and outright lying to create support for violence. Its ridiculous to say that the left went too far expecting people to be ok with Haitian or Somali refugees because people are scared of them.
If it wouldn't have been trans people it would have been someone else, it already is other people. And I cannot help that the people who are educated about other options for gender identities and around people open to it are the most likely to come out publicly as nonbinary. There are conservative trans people, there are definitely conservative non-binary people who are shamed into the closet by "my pronouns are fuck you".
Yes and I am agreeing with you. I explicitly said above that woke has not gone far enough. So I tried to say: so what? Where do we go from here? How do we make progress now? This is not pragmatic...
Yes and I am agreeing with you. I explicitly said above that woke has not gone far enough. So I tried to say: so what? Where do we go from here? How do we make progress now?
This is not pragmatic politics. This will not create societal, cultural, wide, progress. This will create camp A and camp B and each will dig into trenches instead of finding common ground. That is not realpolitik. It is ideology which 90% of the planet will not agree on in any foreseeable future.
Realpolitik is to deal with what you have. Sticking to our ground not moving an inch is very much what I want to do as well. But it is not how we convince everyone to come along with us.
I just disagree with standing ground being a losing strategy or that being non binary is a bridge too far When folks respond to this overblown rage with very simple but popular statements like how...
I just disagree with standing ground being a losing strategy or that being non binary is a bridge too far When folks respond to this overblown rage with very simple but popular statements like how everyone deserves to be allowed to work, rent or own a home, feed their families, or that everyone deserves equal protection under the law, even people we may not know well, not understand or disagree with, voters seem to go for it. When people get wishy washy about trans people or human rights in general, the left bails and the liberals are stunned to find the right winning.
You don't beat them by buying into the bullshit you beat them by having values and better marketing while pointing out how "they" want to end women's right to vote.
I mean even the Pope is standing his ground on the matter more than some pundits think Dems should.
Yeah I 100% get that. A couple years ago we actually got a new spokesperson for the socialist party and he has been really good about dropping the identity politics stuff. Not because he or the...
Yeah I 100% get that.
A couple years ago we actually got a new spokesperson for the socialist party and he has been really good about dropping the identity politics stuff. Not because he or the party doesn't still believe it, but because they know it's a losing issue. Their focus or in your words marketing is great because he never bites when the right try to talk up and import American culture war stuff like what we have been discussing here today. And it seems to have won him and the party some ground.
I (not smoontjes) just feel like language is more personal for the user than this line of thinking credits. Sure, slurs are slurs, pronouns are pronouns, and gender is in the eye of the performer,...
I (not smoontjes) just feel like language is more personal for the user than this line of thinking credits. Sure, slurs are slurs, pronouns are pronouns, and gender is in the eye of the performer, but we spend years training to "use language properly", at penalty of failure in school, people build their worldviews through that language, and not only are we asking people to give up their (pathetic) guilty pleasures, not only to challenge how they interpret their own position in society by centering gender discomformity, but also to loudly proclaim that referring to someone in the third person is something that is now Deeply Personal and Very Simple and if you don't understand you should simply accept this and educate yourself, in the span of like one or two election cycles. I'll never not be woke in every sense of the term, but strategically, the language policing seems to have generated more victimization than it ever could have prevented.
Like you said elsewhere, this isn't a conversation that should be centered on the left going too far, or how wokism triggered the fascist hammer. That's been building for half a century, at least. But if we want to peel away at the people who simply vote for their wallet, we don't need to throw nonbinary people in the trash to say "we need to be strong in the face of strongmen, and that includes not letting their petty words set the bounds of discussion." Because that's what this is: taking the brute fact of misgendering and dismissal and mockery as an issue in itself, when it's only ever been growing pains. And no, that won't be fair to marginalized people. We can't make that transition without doing the hard work of revolution. But just because we can learn to respect neopronouns and sit with our uncertainty does not make it a ballotable issue. It means we (those of us who are less marginalized, not necessarily speaking for you) need to make private space for those more marginalized, and erode the gender binary through dissolving language, not put the vulnerable on a billboard and use confrontational public discourse that simply reifies a baggy temporary concept of gender which nobody in particular cares for (ie transmedicalism).
I assume you mean using "they" because we do refer to people in the third person all the time. I find it simple in part because it was for me, long before it was relevant to my identity. But this...
referring to someone in the third person is something that is now Deeply Personal and Very Simple
I assume you mean using "they" because we do refer to people in the third person all the time. I find it simple in part because it was for me, long before it was relevant to my identity. But this same case can be made for immigrants or Black people. You just want people to accept them as equals and not assume they're eating your cats? Without any effort?
No but I expect people to work through their shit when they have it. If a black person getting a job sends them into a froth about affirmative action (old) or DEI (new) sociologists can study why but that's still the frother being racist.
Kamala didn't talk about trans people hardly at all and there's still post mortems about how trans people lost the election. The fear of language policing, like the fear of trans people, is way larger than the either - because the right made it an intentional tactic to foment that fear to turn elections.
What you're describing already happens. Black folks are still called on to educate white colleagues about a black student's hair, but kindly and gently, not too mean; queer people still have to speak as often the only ones ensuring a student's name is respected at graduation, the Spanish speaking employee makes sure the name tag gets printed with the right accents, and people are pushing those basic policy platforms that would help everyone without ever mentioning minorities. That work is happening every single day. And then the right screams "YOUR GIRLS ARE AT RISK FROM MEN IN SPORTS AND CAT EATING HAITIANS" for six hours a night on Fox and none of it matters.
When it's an intentional strategy, and sure a manipulation of some of their co-opted victimizers, it's not because of anything "we" did, it's their choice.
No, I meant specifically neopronouns there, but also, that you get to choose how people refer to you in general. That's a fundamental paradigm shift. Previously people thought "there is man, there...
No, I meant specifically neopronouns there, but also, that you get to choose how people refer to you in general. That's a fundamental paradigm shift. Previously people thought "there is man, there is woman, I use he for man, and she for woman", and 'they' floats as kind of a loose alternative in the mix without real value. Grammar, utilized by the speaker. Neopronouns are not generic, in how they've been discussed. They are not based on public information. While few people may actually utilize them, and fewer still throw fits about them being dismissed, it's not small potatoes. It's a foundational shift.
The difference between progressivism in gender and antiracism is that we have been working on antiracism for a long time. Abolishing the gender binary as a political project is, realistically, about thirty or forty years old. Not to mention that Race was established in the past four hundred years, meanwhile most linguistic genders have been either irrelevant to social gender or broadly aligned with the patriarchal binary for like twice as long, at least. One traces a real phenomenon, in the form of sexual dimorphism in ways that were central to society for as long as human history, even if it's always been more nuanced on the ground, and the other is European culture coping with being materially rooted in pure evil. We can throw away race entirely, and we lose nothing. Gender must be continually deconstructed to prevent the social reification of a binary, though.
The only reason that the right wing is able to muster these methods is because people are playing around on the level of representation instead of refusing to be legible to the dominant powers. Language is how they win, if we don't keep confounding their rhetoric. But no, let's keep insisting that the incidental reference to a person is necessarily correlated to their access to medical care.
I think this is spot on and an insight woefully missed by many LGBT+ advocates. The gay rights movement took decades after stonewall to win pluralistic acceptance, I saw many progressives take...
You have to meet your opponents where they are. Like it or not, the US as a whole was not ready for non-binary people. Talking LGBT+ rights, it has for decades been warming up to, and increasingly accepting, gay people. Maybe transgender people. But non-binary people for some reason was too much and so the opponent lashed out and dragged the rope way to the other end into regressive politics. Society and politics will always be a back and forth between the wings, sometimes towards the center and unfortunately now going to the extremes.
I think this is spot on and an insight woefully missed by many LGBT+ advocates. The gay rights movement took decades after stonewall to win pluralistic acceptance, I saw many progressives take that win and run with it hoping to win equal acceptance for Trans and non-binary folks right after. Commendable, for the record I do support acceptance of those people, but they were blinded by their victory and (sometimes smugly) pushed too far on a topic that America just wasn't there on yet. Not to excuse inhumane treatment of minority groups in any way - we don't need to accept or condone their mistreatment - but it would have behooved advocates to recognize that gay rights took decades and that it would also take time to bring the same level of understanding to a largely naive and therefore resistant audience. It is sad but, as you said, it's realpolitik.
This frames the public as undeserving victims of aggressive progressives pushing LGBTQ issues, which is a right-wing canard. In the US, right-wing politicians and commentators have been heavy on...
This frames the public as undeserving victims of aggressive progressives pushing LGBTQ issues, which is a right-wing canard.
In the US, right-wing politicians and commentators have been heavy on anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and policy since the rise of the alt-right, and it's accelerating drastically. Take a look at the graph on this page.
They attempt to hide this injustice by making it sound like they're defending the average person against a terrible enemy, but it's simply not true. They are the aggressors. The entire policy platform and social milieu of the political right in the US revolves around the idea of creating a sense of aggrieved victimhood in the dominant population by framing them as victims of minorities so that resulting perceived victimhood can be leveraged for political power.
Here's an excerpt from How Fascism Works by Jason F. Stanley that summarizes the concept:
There is a long history of social psychological research about the fact that increased representation of members of traditional minority groups is experienced by dominant groups as threatening in various ways. More recently, a growing body of social psychological evidence substantiates the phenomenon of dominant group feelings of victimization at the prospect of sharing power equally with members of minority groups. A great deal of recent attention has been paid in the United States to the fact that around 2050, the United States will become a “majority-minority” country, meaning that whites will no longer be a majority of Americans. Taking advantage of the salience of this information, some social psychologists have tested what happens when white Americans are primed with it.
In a 2014 study, the psychologists Maureen Craig and Jennifer Richeson found that simply making salient the impending national shift to a “majority-minority” country significantly increased politically unaffiliated white Americans’ support for right-wing policies. For example, reading about an impending racial shift of the country from majority white to majority nonwhite made white American subjects less inclined to support affirmative action, more inclined to support restrictions on immigration, and, perhaps surprisingly, more likely to support “race neutral” conservative policies such as increasing defense spending. Summarizing this research in a forthcoming review article, Maureen Craig, Julian Rucker, and Jennifer Richeson write, “this growing body of work finds clear evidence that White Americans (i.e., the current racial majority) experience the impending ‘majority-minority’ shift as a threat to their dominant (social, economic, political, and cultural) status.” This feeling of threat can be marshaled politically as support for right-wing movements. This dialectic is far from native to the United States; it is rather a general feature of group psychology. The exploitation of the feeling of victimization by dominant groups at the prospect of sharing citizenship and power with minorities is a universal element of contemporary international fascist politics.
Yes exactly. And I wrote a paper on Stonewall actually! And on gay rights. It's a few years ago now so my facts and stats are a bit muddy but my conclusion more or less was that trans rights/trans...
Yes exactly. And I wrote a paper on Stonewall actually! And on gay rights. It's a few years ago now so my facts and stats are a bit muddy but my conclusion more or less was that trans rights/trans acceptance is where gay rights/gay acceptance was 30 years ago. I still think that's true and I still think that that's the pace of change.
People not usually engaged in LGBT+ circles need to get used to us because we are, by the very definition of the word, not normal. That's the way it was, the way it is, and the way it always will be. And progress is extremely slow but it will get there eventually as more conservative folk realize we aren't for some reason dangerous or anything.
(not aiming this comment at you, ~TreeFiddyFiddy, fwiw :3 just responding to the article) ^ I have never in my real life heard a single person -- white or otherwise -- describe themselves as...
(not aiming this comment at you, ~TreeFiddyFiddy, fwiw :3 just responding to the article)
Spiegelman: And does it go further than time? If a white person says to you, “I’m woke,” what do you think of that?
^ I have never in my real life heard a single person -- white or otherwise -- describe themselves as "woke". This is an article targeting a cultural milieu that I don't exist in.
[It] is the perception of out-group members as more similar to one another than are in-group members, i.e. "they are alike; we are diverse".
Probably something to keep in mind while thinking through these sorts of topics? A lot of the topics that the linked podcast transcript glazed over touch on the safety and rights of vulnerable populations, which is ... emotionally jarring for me, at least. But it seems important to avoid reading too much into others' reactions to all this, if only to avoid expanding the blast radius of those podcasters' poor takes into this community, too.
I'm sure there has been some small number of folks who have said "I'm woke" just like the black squares on Facebook and the safety pins and the blue bracelets and all the other "let me signal I'm...
I'm sure there has been some small number of folks who have said "I'm woke" just like the black squares on Facebook and the safety pins and the blue bracelets and all the other "let me signal I'm ok" things which mostly pop up because some folks are super earnest and naive and others are just hopping what they think the next train is. It speaks to the fragility described in the article if when those gestures are read as functionally meaningless and not met with warm embraces, certain people's responses are "fuck you I won't support you anymore." It's very reminiscent of the dating app experience of "hey girl what's up" and when no response is forthcoming "fuck you fat bitch."
Personally I never see anyone say "you're literally worse than hitler" for some sort of "unwoke" admission but I'm sure a jackass has somewhere.
Someone said "oh it's not about pronouns it's about white women doing DEI trainings" in which case I say then the article/discussion could have been about "white women doing DEI trainings" and not "wokeness". I talked about a quote from the transcript about pronouns and it seemed directly relevant to the conversation both as it is and as a stand-in for having to bother to do any effort to get along with people.
I mention this because let's distill it down, like is the problem really someone who says I'm woke? No that's just awkward. Is the problem pronouns? Nope that's just polite. Is the problem you can't say slurs? No, you can say them, society just judges you for it. So is the problem that society disapproves of your slurs? Yeah. That's part of it.
But the articles never get there. They insist on circling around "who made them this way" with any answer other than "they chose it" and certainly without any "well it's been an intentional courting of and support for these alt-right pipelines for years, you know the way the gang in the first TMNT movie had a skateboard park and video games but were actually a secret ninja villain org? It's that.
I'm genuinely trying not to make a monolith out of "them" in any sense because "they're" not. I just want people to own their own actions and be honest about their motivations - and if they're not honest that "we" or at least "I" don't believe the bullshit.
I'm certainly not aiming this comment at you, either, fwiw. If anything, I'm aiming it at myself: I probably burned my morning + a chunk of the afternoon fuming about this podcast transcript, and...
I'm genuinely trying not to make a monolith out of "them" in any sense because "they're" not. I just want people to own their own actions and be honest about their motivations - and if they're not honest that "we" or at least "I" don't believe the bullshit.
I'm certainly not aiming this comment at you, either, fwiw. If anything, I'm aiming it at myself: I probably burned my morning + a chunk of the afternoon fuming about this podcast transcript, and I needed to pen a reminder to myself to "remember the human", then check out. Hitting enter was intended to share that sentiment with anyone else in a similar predicament.
No I understand, I was just speaking on it, broadly because I do very much appreciate your post in general and this one in particular. I think it's an important reminder. I also think when you're...
No I understand, I was just speaking on it, broadly because I do very much appreciate your post in general and this one in particular. I think it's an important reminder.
I also think when you're talking about people in an aggregate you're inevitably making some assumptions and generalizations and that's different than the instinct to say every single one of these people is a horrible, evil person who would kick a puppy.
From the article: The right is known for using provocative language. But lately there’s been a push to be transgressive, even on the left — from the return of certain slurs to the removal of...
From the article: The right is known for using provocative language. But lately there’s been a push to be transgressive, even on the left — from the return of certain slurs to the removal of pronouns from bios. Nadja Spiegelman, a Times Opinion culture editor, is joined by the writer and culture critic Aminatou Sow and the New York magazine writer Brock Colyar to debate whether our culture is abandoning political correctness — and if so, why? Plus, stick around to hear what words Aminatou and Brock would like to ban.
This is why I hate the NYT. "Provocative" is a really weird way of phrasing "saying obviously bigoted shit to piss people off intentionally." In it's best light, provocative implies encouraging...
This is why I hate the NYT.
"Provocative" is a really weird way of phrasing "saying obviously bigoted shit to piss people off intentionally."
In it's best light, provocative implies encouraging deeper thought. That's not what's happening. Ever.
"The right is known for being assholes to people who ask for a modicum of respect." is a much more accurate statement given the context.
I‘m not going to claim that the NYT is at the pinnacle of news organizations but I find their reporting relatively balanced in the scheme of things and a good source of reporting when also...
I‘m not going to claim that the NYT is at the pinnacle of news organizations but I find their reporting relatively balanced in the scheme of things and a good source of reporting when also ingested alongside other news across a wider spectrum.
But this isn’t Vox. NYT writing is a little less streetwise and at least pretends to aim at a more sophisticated audience.
saying obviously bigoted shit to piss people off intentionally
That’s literally the definition of provocative speech. I don’t know what you’re looking for exactly
I agree, though "provocative" literally means "tending to provoke" (i.e., piss people off intentionally) so maybe it's not a weird phrasing as much as a technical one. And it's used in an informal...
I agree, though "provocative" literally means "tending to provoke" (i.e., piss people off intentionally) so maybe it's not a weird phrasing as much as a technical one. And it's used in an informal context that's inconsistent with that level of technicality, creating dissonance.
I feel the same way about "transgressive" as it's used here. The word literally means "exceeding a limit or boundary" which is... technically correct. But it doesn't tell the whole story. Some transgressions challenge people to broaden their conceptions of the world, to reconsider dogma, to wrestle with moral ambiguity. Other transgressions have no purpose other than to bully, shame, and marginalize. The former is expansive; the latter constricts. When the NYT lumps fascist transgressions and progressive transgressions into the same group, they're creating a false equivalence.
It's kind of like saying 'Halloween costume of questionable taste' to refer to blackface. The technical definition masks the profanity of the situation. CBS recently reported '60% of Americans...
It's kind of like saying 'Halloween costume of questionable taste' to refer to blackface. The technical definition masks the profanity of the situation.
CBS recently reported '60% of Americans have trouble making ends meet.' Which is a really weird way of saying "Most people." It's not that it's wrong, but using percentages yanks the soul out of the headline and gives it the same tone as a stock ticker.
I wouldn’t say 60% of people counts as “most”. 60% of people is the majority of people. But I think you have to get above ~80% for it to start counting as most
I wouldn’t say 60% of people counts as “most”. 60% of people is the majority of people. But I think you have to get above ~80% for it to start counting as most
Did they do that though? I think they pretty clearly indicate there's a difference between being transgressive for good reasons and for bad reasons. At the end of the day, transgression is a...
When the NYT lumps fascist transgressions and progressive transgressions into the same group, they're creating a false equivalence.
Did they do that though? I think they pretty clearly indicate there's a difference between being transgressive for good reasons and for bad reasons.
At the end of the day, transgression is a neutral term. Its not necessarily good or bad. If you're transgressing against immoral norms, its good. If you're transgressing against moral ones, it's bad. It's transgression either way though.
I‘ll respectfully disagree with the framing here. The article is about the diminishing of woke speech and some of the missteps that may have come along with it. I don’t really see much...
When the NYT lumps fascist transgressions and progressive transgressions into the same group, they're creating a false equivalence.
I‘ll respectfully disagree with the framing here. The article is about the diminishing of woke speech and some of the missteps that may have come along with it. I don’t really see much equivocating going on other than to say it’s a phenomenon happening across political lines
It was 30 minutes of anecdotes and “feels” that concluded with the cancellation of “cados.” I appreciate you posting it but I also recognize I wasted 30 minutes.
It was 30 minutes of anecdotes and “feels” that concluded with the cancellation of “cados.” I appreciate you posting it but I also recognize I wasted 30 minutes.
This transcript made me feel like I’m falling behind again in language. I’ve never seen “folx” before and don’t see the point. Is “folks” not neutral enough? What is the r word? Republican?...
This transcript made me feel like I’m falling behind again in language. I’ve never seen “folx” before and don’t see the point. Is “folks” not neutral enough? What is the r word? Republican? Racist? This bothered me enough that I wasn’t able to finish the transcript, I was mad they didn’t define anything despite complaining that word definitions are confusing.
"folx" comes from queer spaces The "r-word" is the slur for people with intellectual disabilities. Not defining things was one of the foundational issues of this piece
"folx" comes from queer spaces
The "r-word" is the slur for people with intellectual disabilities.
Not defining things was one of the foundational issues of this piece
Yeah. This.
College students used to yell at each other over other things too (like Vietnam) and there is a whole group of "journalists" whose job has been talking about college kids are "going too far"
Just be kind. It's not that hard. But these same folks who are reacting apparently entirely out of "you can't tell me what to do/say" are equally pissed at their moms for making them share I suspect.
This part at the end sure caught my eye:
There’s several people I know who voted for Trump and when asked why they would mention cultural things that have nothing to do with policy. So in a way it really seems that progressives annoyed people into fascism.
But to them I say, no, and fuck you. The people who voted for Trump because they wanted to use slurs and whine about the “war on Christmas” were always fucking assholes who were just making excuses for being stupid and voting against their own interests. They are miserable and like to punch down rather than realize their situation is caused by their own limitations plus the system run by the other crappy leaders they and their parents have been voting for since Reagan
Since we’re quoting excerpts:
This really resonated with me and I think it describes why I personally feel disgust about the cultural pendulum swinging back toward conservatism. I don’t want there to be a thought police constantly censoring assholes, I just want there to not be assholes. I want to live in a society where basic self-reflection and empathy are as default as waiting in line at the grocery store, or being quiet in a theater.
Yeah I considered including that part too. There are people who will get unreasonably pissed about their name being mispronounced by a stranger but also my response to someone being upset at me is to apologize and fix it, not be like "fuck you [slur]"
And as for wanting to say it as Delroy Lindo said
"So say it. Say the word you want to say."
They don't just want to say it, they don't want to be judged for saying it. They don't want consequences for saying it. They want to hurt people and laugh about it and be praised but never criticized for it.
They can say whatever they want. Anyone can ignore people's pronouns or whatever. They just don't get to be free of being called an asshole for it.
I find this bleakly amusing to bring up directly next to the Tucker Carlson interview above this article here, where he's like no no people really just vote about economics I swear.
Ugh, that one.. could have been nice to finish reading it but it just reeks of professional bullshitting and it's impossible to take any of what he said at face value. Feels like it's just another role he's playing, so had to stop reading.
I had a friend (not American) who wanted Trump to win the first election solely because they were annoyed with SJW culture. Literally told me they wanted him to win to knock SJWs down a peg, as around that time SJW culture was particularly grating and preachy.
The one saving grace is that they—and to an extent, me as well—saw the position of President as close to a figurehead position with limited powers. My biggest argument at that point was that the next president was set to appoint a bunch of Supreme Court Justices, which they agreed would have a long-term effect. We both figured the oversight from Congress would keep him in check.
We genuinely had no clue just how bad Trump getting elected would be. I never realized just how much of the President's power is dependent on the person having the most basic, barest levels of decency.
I do wonder how many people did vote for him with that exact mindset.
I don't think SJW culture has ever been nearly as powerful of a force as people had made it out to be.
I've never put pronouns in my bio, nor felt pressure to. I've never been yelled at for assuming someone's gender, even though I, just like everyone else in the world, do it constantly, every day every time I meet someone. I've never been labeled as "problematic" or anything like that, and I haven't really changed the way I act or anything, besides just growing up.
But like... You can, and always could say the word retard around your friends as long as you know them and know they're ok with it, and no one is going to yell at you.
You probably can't do it at your office job, but was there ever really a time where that was acceptable? It's just unprofessional, and has very little to do with wokeness.
I just think the whole thing is a very convinient boogeyman for conservatives, and if it wasnt that, it would be something else, so the idea that "if just we called people slurs, we'd win elections!" Doesn't hold.
They'd just move onto making compilations of trans rights supporters, or people who protest for social healthcare programs, or whatever the next culture war thing is decided to be.
It functionally made it extremely difficult for the majority of people to engage in progressive political spaces online because of an endemic culture of purity testing and crybullying humiliation rituals for people who don’t hew to a specific vibe born on Tumblr that metastasized into Twitter. They were small numerically, but this had the effect of trickling out into the broader culture because it was happening in the specific place where all the journalists and media people spend all their time cooking their brains. Basically everyone who stayed ended up like the people in the article are talking about and the people who are still cool are the ones who left.
It doesn’t make most people turn fash, but people trim their sails, their jokes get less edgy, there’s less boundary pushing or productive disagreement or conflict because everything is wired to drive all conflicts into being vicious, highly personal, and unproductive. The really good liberal/progressive content creators actually left or dramatically scaled back how much time they spent on the big platforms because they simply could not deal with the toxicity of the scene, and largely from their own fans. The “cancellation” of Lindsay Ellis was a big turning point here where I think a lot of people just got fed up and tired of having to constantly do this rear guard action against onside wreckers, so they simply checked out.
By itself that probably doesn’t constitute much, but it means there’s less compelling cultural production going out there to influence the large numbers of mostly passive consumers who don’t think too hard about the ideological implications of what they’re doing. So instead of engaging in productive politics that works through the messy systems that exist today, you get people pushed to extreme voices because the middle ground’s just been left fallow. Even now lots of communities have had “no politics” rules for discussion that they’ve been putting into place starting around 2022 because, even though almost everyone there agrees on most things politically, as soon as you get people who enjoy discussing politics into the space reaching a certain critical mass the entire vibe goes to shit.
This thread is a very good example where people who want to argue against the piece keep insisting that it’s just about calling people what they want to be called rather than the struggle-session vibe of forcing people who do not care to sit through diversity seminars being put on by preachy White women. I think most people broadly agreed with the general goal on a lot of these things, but everything was served up with this layer of deeply off-putting snark and irony poisoned affectations. As long as people thought the “weird stuff” was just online people I think they were happy to grumble about it and move on, but after COVID the internet became real life and it genuinely broke a lot of people’s brains. Suddenly people’s view of the world is based on this distorted funhouse mirror perspective they’re getting from a rage-baiting social media algorithm “nutpicking” content from a clade of people who think merely belonging to a subaltern group somehow exempts you from norms around extending grace to others and not being a dick. You have sensitivity trainings and HR seminars being put together that seemed like they were sourced from Pinterest memes.
So yeah I think it did have the end-result of making society go right, because it adopted a bunch of mannerisms and attitudes that cloistered itself off from being able to communicate, interact with, and persuade people who weren’t already bought into its premises.
I completely understand where you are coming with this, but I think the blame is placed on the wrong group. The issue isn't 'discussing politics' so much as it is that we tolerate jerks and jerk behavior online. This blog post is an excellent summary of the issue - jerks push out nice people, and all that's left is jerks. You avoid charged topics both because it brings the jerk out in some people, but because it attracts jerks as well.
I find it's very much an artifact of the online space as well. Ironically the very push-back which is supposedly making people 'more right' (calling people out on their speech or treating them as hostile when they are saying hateful things) is exactly the kind of feedback present in the actual world. Think about the last time you had a political discussion among friends, or talked about an issue you disagreed with others on. It's really common for small community groups to self-regulate this with what is effectively moderation - people stepping in and saying "stop being an asshole" or pulling someone aside and talking to them or directly addressing that what they are saying is fucked up because it's attacking some person in the group. I mean hell, people self-censor a lot more in these spaces too so they're less likely to say something as inflammatory as they would online because it's a lot harder to say something mean when the person you'll affect is right in front of you and a part of a group you both are a part of.
You know, I find it fascinating that people feel this is the case. It's almost like people don't recognize that the internet is a huge space. They don't fully internalize the 90/9/1 rule. They make these vast assumptions about entire groups of people based on a few vocal folks. Or they let these vocal folks take up all of their attention. As someone who is in a ton of left-wing spaces, I don't ever see these so called 'diversity seminars'. Well, I mean I see them occasionally happen in toxic social media spaces where unmoderated discussion among literal millions of people happen, but I also recognize that it's chronically online people having that discussion. Do most people not recognize that this is a huge reality distortion? Like it makes me think back to the child kidnapping paranoia of the 90s and early 00s driven by media coverage, when it was exceedingly rare for it to happen in the first place. These voices are getting amplified by algorithms, but they are extremely rare.
I mean, you touch on this when you say it's a distorted funhouse, but maybe the issue is that most people still haven't de-internalized what they learned from this funhouse. Despite the beginnings of recognizing the echo chambers folks end up in and the effect of these algorithms they're still tilting at windmills because they haven't recognized they've still got their algorithm goggles on.
You know I hear this a lot but I don't think the political science of it quite tracks. I think people went more right on specific social issues, namely the ones that were attacked or turned into boogeymen, but my understanding of the science is that as a whole society is more progressive than it ever has been. Then again, we live in the age of disinformation so it's really hard to make definitive statements anymore without a lot of time and effort spent on tearing apart sources and incentives - political science is often rife with bias.
Even in the real world, though, there’s always been a general social norm of not bringing up politics or religion in polite company because it has a tendency to sour the mood and foster the kind of bad-blood that’s toxic to communities. And the more necessary it is to bring a broadly selected group of the population in, the firmer that rule tends to be, like in workplaces. This is obviously a tough norm to maintain when the way you look or are becomes a point of political tension, which is why I think the shift in politics from focus on general areas of common interest to a sort of zero-sum conflict between mutually exclusive identity groups has made everything so frothy.
When you are in a place where politics or religion are being discussed, people have seen fit to set up almost boxing-match type rules of engagement around it. There will generally be a formal or informal “peacemaker” who mediates between the two sides as well as general social pressure to just shut up if things start to get heated.
It’s not really a matter of “letting” it happen, it’s structural. A lot of social cues don’t exist online. For one thing, in the real world you have lots of subtle body language and expressions to signal if the people around you are uncomfortable or how a joke in landing. Online, your only cues are upvotes/likes, (sometimes) downvotes/dislikes, and people either arguing with your or agreeing with you. But there’s a whole spectrum of reactions that don’t have enough energy to manifest as engagement, like an awkward chuckle, uncomfortably glancing around, mild groans, rolling your eyes, or nodding your head, on the internet ALL of that just manifests as silence. It’s inherently biased towards amplifying the views of people who are easily driven to action/expression (low boundary of frustration before they react), and those people are likely to be intemperate just because of how personality traits tend to cluster. There’s not really good ways to gently slow things down, everything is either slamming on the gas or slamming the brakes.
You’re hitting at the numbers issue here yourself. The spaces you’re in are a niche within a niche, but if a person who isn’t chronically online is curious about a topic and looks into it, their first encounter with it is going to be on the massive online platforms where millions of people are engaged in a clout-farming free-for-all. That’s their main viewport into what the world looks like outside their personal experience.
Even within left-wing or progressive spaces I find it very surprising that you wouldn’t encounter the struggle session logic because having massive schisms over pretty minor disagreements is a common enough experience to be a meme that predates the internet. The fact that you characterize the spaces as “left-wing” is probably a clue where I assume the ideological vetting has already been done before they’re ever allowed in the club. But you can’t really engage in mass-persuasion from a cloister.
Generationally the millennial cohort is markedly more progressive than both generations before and after, and even if the average looks close it’s masking a big divergence where both poles are getting more extreme. Open and flagrant racism and outright Naziism didn’t used to be a normal feature of the political space. You didn’t even used to have to worry about people being secret Nazis, it was almost safe enough to where people started feeling comfortable making satirical jokes about it. I don’t think that’s just an extinction burst either. I think the mode through which a lot of people see politics is as a zero-sum game between immutable demographic groups. Some people identify hard with their race, others on gender and sexuality identity, and others on a vaguely defined political or spiritual tradition that they attached themselves to. But the common thread is that it’s all framed around a siege mentality of “us against the world” and political action is geared towards making the world safe for “us” by eliminating all threats wherever we find them. Once you have that, then the entire project becomes about finding and purging threats, there’s no common project anymore.
I think America is actually later to the game on this, but you see more advanced stages of rot in other pluralistic democracies in less economically developed countries like India or Brazil.
While you're right to point out that communication is more difficult in a less rich medium (such as text only), I've seen many successful smaller communities and like the blog post I linked the common thread has always been heavier moderation. Monolithic platforms like meta or x simply don't step in when people are being jerks (and often incentivize it because the algorithm optimizes this content). Combine that with the lack of an actual human in front of you, let alone someone you share a community with (being on the same platform is somewhat meaningless when you consider the scale) and people are just so distant from the person on the other side of the screen that they probably hardly even exist in their mind. It's easier to be mean to something you can't connect with.
but also I don't exactly want to be having a pedantic debate about the exact calculus of what makes someone an asshole online, I think we're generally on the same page here.
Right and I guess I've been online for so long that it's hard for me to see how that affects the average person. Upon reflection it's pretty obvious that most people are tilting at windmills, and it might be another 20 years before that starts to normalize because folks are only just learning to start de-internalizing these values they're seeing because they recognize how internet driven they are (funhouse levels of distorted).
To be clear I'm not saying it doesn't happen, just that I've self-selected out of spaces where this kind of thing happens. Over the last 5 years or so I've been putting more and more effort into finding curated spaces because I've been increasingly annoyed at the toxicity of social media (specifically the unmoderated gigantic platforms and the problems we've been discussing here).
I know more folks are going out and touching grass as a reaction to 24/7 disinfo and toxic platforms but I suppose I don't have a good grasp of quite how many are doing this. Is it 5% of the population or 50%? I really have no clue but assume its somewhere between those two numbers.
I really don't see it that way. It may be a minority of people, but it's loud enough to create real consequences.
One example that I immediately thought of because it was the first publicized instance that I've seen: the scientist who helped land a probe on a comet but wore an inappropriate shirt because he's a nerd: The controversy follows the revelations from the scientist’s sister Maxine that he could be “useless” in everyday life. Portraying her tattooed sibling as absent-minded, unable to find his car in the car park, and sometimes lacking in common sense, she told the Evening Standard, he didn’t like making decisions.
That shirt probably warranted a HR visit explaining to wear plain clothes for press conferences next time, but I find the reaction to be much more disgusting than what he wore.
I think it's also emblematic that this is essentially friendly fire. I doubt a nerdy scientist is the enemy of progress.
Never said SJW culture was powerful. However, some parts of it could get very vocal and annoying, especially in direct interactions. I find it very believable some people may have voted for Trump for purely petty spite to "get back" at SJWs after one such interaction. It's the same sort of pettiness as people who buy and eat meat in front of a very specific and annoying vegan they know.
I don't think it would have motivated enough people to completely sway the votes, but... Yeah, some people definitely did, likely with the thought that he couldn't do that much damage. Again, I never realized how much of a President's abilities and limitations basically relied on the honor system rather than formal regulations. His first term managed to exceed all of my worst expectations.
But those people suck. It's not the "annoying vegan" that made them make the choice to suck, that's displacing the responsibility for their own actions. It's very "look what you made me do." And society recognizes that as abusive in a parent but somehow becomes blind to it when it's voting to harm a community.
The people who may have voted for Trump to "get back" at what is mostly a strawman are just blaming others for their shitty actions. They eagerly wanted to vote for him and if it was to intentionally upset or hurt others they're assholes. It's exhausting to keep being told that I'm not only responsible for my actions but also for every reactionary "I wanna say a slur" asshole. As I stated elsewhere, they don't want to say it, they want not to be called an asshole for it.
If a toddler knocks over everyone's blocks because they want to do something else, we understand their lack of emotional regulation and empathy and their inability to understand the impact of their actions. When adults do it, they're just being assholes.
(And when they hurt themselves in the process and cry, we don't demand the other kids whose blocks were smashed be the ones to stop crying and soothe the baby godzilla)
And it would be nice to not be like "well maybe the left made them be assholes" every five minutes.
But then blames the left (or women, or any minority group) for that moral failing. Because "look what you made me do."
If we have to live in a society where a majority of people are assholes, I see limiting the analysis to labeling them assholes as self-defeating. They have critical mass: our attempts to shame them have insufficient power to change their behavior.
Evaluating what things have changed their behavior, and using that knowledge to strategize on how to systematically pull some of those levers to move our society towards a more comfortable place for ourselves, is a productive activity.
I'm not attempting to shame them nor in this post trying to change them. We will not change them by blaming other people for their actions.
They also don't have actual critical mass, they're loud but I firmly believe there's more of "us" than "them" but we keep telling "us" to stop being so demanding and just accommodate "them" more because it's "our fault" that they're this way.
The people doing the work of education and thus change, are already frequently the most marginalized. What I do for change is different than when I post on the internet about an article that contains an exhausting repetition of a blame-shifting narrative.
If someone is taking an action to spite or hurt someone else they're being an asshole. My typical solution to that is to individually, nicely, ask them why they're being an asshole, pointing out the impact of their actions and the motivation they're expressing. But I'm not the therapist or educator for the world. In my tiny realm, I do an excellent job.
Here, I'm going to say the very basic thing that "hurting others is bad behavior" and see if I can get told I'm not being nice enough a dozen more times. I don't see much analysis here and I'm not sure why I get graced with the tone policing of it all.
Fully agree they suck. I'm not trying to justify or defend that mindset, or say that SJW culture "made them" vote that way. I argued with that friend a LOT about wanting Trump to win for such a dumb and petty reason, especially because I would be the one who'd be dealing with the direct aftermath while they were safely in the UK. If they had been American and voted for him with that motivation, I likely would have ended the friendship then (though the friendship did ultimately fade around that time anyway for unrelated reasons).
Some people do vote for the pettiest of reasons and spite against some other group rather than policy issues. It's so damn frustrating because at that point the vote has barely anything to do with politics, it's just people being self-righteous assholes... At least with policy issues there's a chance of educating someone on an issue enough to open their minds. If they're voting based on pure pettiness, you'd need to change their whole personality.
No I get where you're coming from I'm just absolutely so over the rotating wheel of "which lefty thing pushed the right to destroy America" vs "hey these guys were plotting out Project 2025 for years and are now floating the loss of women's right to vote and birthright citizenship as if that's a normal and fine thing to do despite being against the constitution in every obvious way... What if they're the baddies."
It's right up there with "women are the reason men choose the worst role models" and "trans people demanded too much by wanting to exist in public and have rights."
And apologies for you being in front of me this time.
Hasn't it been proven at this point that much of the anti-SJW and Gamergate was a coordinated effort to bring angry young men into the alt-right fold?
Proven? No, that whole thing is a conspiracy theory at best
Huh, I might be mistaken. I thought I read a whole article on it. Let me see if I can find it and otherwise disregard.
Edit:
You're right, seems like it was more opportunistic than anything. I found the following that in Joshua Green's book Devil's Bargain, Bannon is quoted saying
He hired Milo Yiannopoulos specifically to cultivate the Gamergate demographic, with Breitbart Tech launching in October 2015 as a dedicated pipeline for converting gaming culture resentment into conservative political identity.
Yeah leave it to online spaces to take one off-hand comment about something and suddenly it turns into this, or that Epstein is the one that created microtransactions in video games (because he wasn't already bad enough) haha
Yeah, that is totally fair. It's weird how time it takes to separate signal from noise these day! Embarrassing on my front, thanks for calling it out!
I don't really disagree. But we if we know many people are like that, is it smart to just ignore that and insist on the most advanced ethical goals we can think of? Wouldn't it be smarter to reach for lower hanging fruit? The assholes aren't going to say: "Oh, I didn't know you guys were serious. I guess you are right. Let's ignore my feelings and have it your way." They will double down, and so will we, and it will end in violence.
We usually understand this instinctively in everyday life. If a customer is sort of a dick, maybe we tell them to seek business elsewhere, but we don't tell them they are literally worse than Hitler and should go die in a ditch with a cactus up their arse. But in political discussions, we forget that for some reason. We throw diplomacy overboard and anyone who suggests compromise is a traitor. I don't see how this is supposed to do more good than harm.
Well sure. I'm ranting on the internet, not talking to people standing in the same room as me. I'm just pissed about where we are because I had to hear these "conservative" people call normal non-sociopaths "snowflakes" and "woke" for the last 10 years and now they want sympathy when their leopards are eating the wrong faces.
I've always understood that there are many types of people. For example, if you leave a wallet full of money on the street:
I always thought the first group was the largest and third group was a tiny minority, but after the last few elections I think each of the three groups are about 1/3 of the population.
I think that's just the result of people giving up on getting economic or material improvements from their politicians. All you're left with is the culture war. The second Mamdani offered New York actual solutions to material problems, the culture war couldn't touch him.
No. The fascists left us worse off.
Another fucking installment in "the right has no agency". I'm so fucking sick of braindead legacy media takes blaming the (sometimes annoying) twitter-left for people embracing literal Nazi ideology like they have no control over their own goddamn actions and beliefs.
To be fair, a lot of these people basically have no agency in this and just believe what they're told. A lot of them think in pushing whackjob theories because the whackjobs have lied about their schlock and told them anyone who denies them is a stupid whackjob.
Yes, they have agency over being nice people, but they legitimately lack the skills to understand that they are being manipulated.
They are victims and a result of a broken system, even if their civil rights aren't being threatened as severely.
They're victims but they're also holding other people down and punching them. Much like with people and their generational trauma they do still have the ability to choose differently. It might be harder than without that manipulation, but people opposed slavery as long as it existed and other people freed their slaves and became abolitionists. People have been shaken out of their homophobia by a queer kid. Others have beaten the kid to death.
People can be victims and also still victimize and they're still responsible for that act, unless they're literal toddlers.
I would love to be able to comment on this website without being one-upped over something I briefly touched on but didn't expand on because it wasn't the point.
Yes, people who are pieces of fucking shit are pieces of fucking shit. This is understood. It doesn't accomplish anything to continue to bring it up. No one is disputing this.
But the point was that many of them are not mean, spiteful, or hateful people. They just don't understand the implications of what they are voting for or the lies they've been fed.
Insisting on returning to what we all understand does not add anything that we didn't already know.
Honestly, this is the stuff that people are referring to when they say things like the headline. The constant purity tests and the need to say everything explicitly and in-depth just to pre-empt the inevitable responses that actually agree with you but don't think you were progressive enough in your wording.
Yes, the right has agency. No, it's not the let's fault.
But come on. It's exhausting.
Hey, I wasn't trying to fucking "one up" you, I was responding to your words in a theme with my previous posts in the comment section. I also never described people as "pieces of fucking shit" or spiteful or hateful. "Nice" people still do shitty things. Also some people are less nice than they think.
Your whole post was about how people are victims of the whack jobs, I don't agree that this removes their agency because they just believe what they're told. I elaborated with a comparison to abolitionists during slavery. It's possible to overcome generational trauma.
If saying "people are responsible for their own actions and even when victims themselves also make choices" is now wokeness and an exemplar of why people hate conversations like this, like, I genuinely don't know what anyone is allowed to say. I have not laid out a purity test here. I have said that people have agency and responsibility for their actions.
But yeah sure I'm wokeness gone too far or whatever.
You may not have intended it to come off that way, and I apologize if you read my response as rude because that wasn't my intent, but I think the number of votes I got—while usually a pointless metric—shows that I was not alone in getting that feeling, when comparing it to the votes on my previous comment.
I think you week like a great, truly caring person, but since I've gotten back into actively commenting on discussions on Tildes, I really have actively avoided joining discussions like this where I see your name. NOT because I disagree with you particularly often, and almost certainly unfairly to you because your username sticks out to me more because you're from Illinois and we had so many nice discussions—particularly about the em dash—but because I've seen and received so many exhausting, combative comments on this site between people who were on the same side.
I know these issues are extremely stressful to you and impact you far more than they will ever affect me. I'm very sorry that the life you live is threatened more every day by this administration (and beyond).
I genuinely don't know how to read it as anything other than being rude and uncharitable but I acknowledge you saying that wasn't your intent. And maybe that's because I'm really deeply tired of being told I, personally, am the reason for people not wanting to engage on this site and in these sorts of threads and that I make their Tildes experience worse to the extent of people DMing me that they quit the site because of me and one doing it dramatically and publicly. And while you're very kind in this response that message still sort of continues here.
I genuinely just disagreed with your take, not because I think you suck, or you didn't live up to an imagined purity test, but because I disagreed with the thing you said. I don't care about internet votes one way or the other, it's not a relevant metric to me.
Thanks for the kindness here. I hear and appreciate it, genuinely, despite disagreeing with you and my other feelings on the matter.
Edit: upon reflection, and likely no one will read this but myself, I find the original comment rude and uncharitable and completely disregarding what I actually said. And while there was kindness offered, it was not an actual apology and contained a "but actually people agree with me". I genuinely think I feel worse about it than initially.
I am tired of being told I fuck up people's experiences on this site in one breath and told how helpful I am in another. It's incredibly uncharitable and if I spent nearly as much time telling people who I disagree with that they're the worst thing about this community I'd have been banned five times over.
I'm writing this mostly for myself so I can remember how I felt here and how many. Fucking. Times it happened.
If it's any consolation, yours is one of my favorite usernames to see on virtually any thread. Likely because I agree with you a lot, of course – many of the things I find you saying are things I felt really needed to be said – but also because you're a skilled writer coming from a kind place. In threads that were otherwise difficult or upsetting for me to read, a comment from you is a huge breath of fresh air.
Thank you. I promise I wasn't fishing for compliments, you're very very kind. Some days are just the wrong moments for things to happen.
Agreed completely! (Wanted to state my support in a way a little more explicit than vote)
This is a post that never, ever needed to be made.
Edit: by the way, apologies do not have conditionals in them.
That's not a conditional.
"I'm sorry if" is often explicitly called a conditional apology.
You also ended the apology with a "but" in a way that reiterated that since people agreed with your original post it was correct. And spent as much "ink" on that as the conditional apology.
And I'm only bringing it up here since you came back to argue with @Drewbahr about what you said to me.
I acknowledge that I forgot there was an "if." It was about intent, not dismissal: "I'm sorry if it read as rude to you because it was not my intent, and if you didn't find it rude, then I have nothing to be sorry for because I was writing in good faith." Perhaps it was a weak wording.
The "but" and the vote reference (comparing my own comments, and not yours) was about the shared perception, not a claim of objective truth.
I responded because they made a specific claim about the words I used. I made a four-word declarative statement to Drew. You chose to litigate it further.
You forgot what you wrote and bumped the thread 5 days later. That's not litigation, I don't care if no one sees this, including you. Since you likely will...
I will continue to take your statements as you have written them. As charitably as I can.
This tendency has made RF Kuang’s novels nigh unreadable because she’s trying to preempt booktok by having bad characters have to stop and monologue about how they’re bad. Babel has paragraph long footnotes in it elucidating why the wrong things characters are saying are wrong. It’s extremely tedious and I think basically EVERYONE—who doesn’t spend all their time mainlining a highlights reel of all the world’s horrors all day to the point where they need constant reassurance that everyone isn’t a secret masked Nazi in disguise—is fed up with it.
Reminds me of people talking about how bad The Last Jedi was because (among other things) the villain who was trying to get the protagonist to switch sides, and thus had every reason to lie if it suited him, said something that fans didn't want to hear (that Rey was nobody).
God, I wanted to hear this more than anything, lol. I was so excited for the possibility that the writers were setting up a hero that didn't have a lineage. So many of the themes in TLJ were so fresh in SW and it was so invigorating to me. The reaction was genuinely disheartening, and the (total lack of) follow up basically killed any interest I had in Star Wars for years.
Honestly I think people just lack the vocabulary to understand why they don’t like something and fixate on plot elements because it’s easy to deconstruct mechanically. The real issue with that is the general sense of having characters just assert things as fact and expecting the audience to roll with it because “trust me bro, the Force told me, it does paternity tests now too.” The OG Star Wars did this (“Search your feelings, you know it to be true”), and it was bad then too only landing because of the dramatic surprise with the reveal and the acting/reaction Mark Hamill does to sell it. And even then they have Yoda and Obi Wan’s ghosts confirm it later, people who we would have reason to trust.
It was a bad reveal that wasn’t delivered well, but since everyone is media illiterate now they confuse their disappointment with how it’s presented with the thing itself.
I disagree with your feelings about the scene, but I agree with your analysis of the fans.
Por qué no los dos?
Ok, agreed, fascists cause orders of magnitude more damage, and continue to do so. That's well established. But is not the topic being discussed here that there's also been some overswing towards the left that's caused issues too? Just because there's proper evil bastards on the one side doesn't mean there can't be a few dumbasses causing a ruckus on the other too. Again, different scales of damage, but still worth a think.
What actual harm is done by people stating their preferred pronouns, and asking for the modicum of respect by us using them?
I think that you may be misreading both the article and @tomorrow-never-knows ' comment. The article is primarily about anti-woeness rising within progressive and left circles, nowhere excusing hateful ideologies, and some possible excesses of the woke movement. It even goes so far to advocate for basic politeness and respect where pronouns are concerned. I don't mean to offend but your comments come off as a reaction to the title alone and not the actual content of the discussion in the opinion piece
They are a reaction to the title, and to the discussion here. I'm refusing to give the NY Times clicks on this subject.
The fact that the article, and you, are discussing "wokeness" in this manner tells me everything I need to know about where you stand on the matter, as it were. "Anti-wokeness" by that very framing is a hateful ideology, regardless of who it's coming from.
I also have to ask, where are you posting from? Your use of „quotation marks" suggests you're not from around the United States, which makes me wonder why you feel that a single newspaper, particularly one with a well known bias against non-binary folks, would be representative of "the whole discussion" going on within different groups.
I assure you, within the various groups I'm working with and within, pronouns and "wokeness" are alive and well. None of the language that implies is dead.
You could use an archive service to avoid giving them clicks. I think it's highly uncharitable to respond to another user's post who actually read the article and is trying to engage on that level field in the comments section of that posted article itself when you yourself haven't. Then there's the whole topic of introducing 'noise,' especially on a top level comment, on a site whose mission is to engender thoughtful discussion.
I'm going to try to be polite and genuine here because you making these assumptions about me is way out of line. I post links to content that made me think or because I found it interesting, not much of what I post is an endorsement of any viewpoint but when it is I will be vocal about defending that viewpoint in the comments. Nowhere here have I said a single thing about my thoughts on "wokeness," I've only commented on what the article and another is trying to say. You can feel free to read whatever you want into my comment but I think it warrants self reflection on someone else's part when they try to ascribe beliefs which are very hurtful to some people to me when I have never stated support for those beliefs. I posted this piece because I found the content thought provoking and judging by the comments section it has certainly generated discussion. Period.
My use of quotation marks is due to the keyboard I use on my phone. I'm not going to explain myself past that. I've freely commented on my nationality and current country of residence, find it if you're so interested.
I'm glad that your circles still use pronouns and "woke speech," that's anyone's prerogative but I don't think this is reflective of the gross national trend. There is always danger in isolating ourselves within echo chambers or ignoring what's happening in the wider world.
Asking people who've been exhausted (at best) by "anti-woke" attitudes to read an article like this, whose title immediately gives off the vibe of being a right-wing thinkpiece, is a big request. If their assumption is correct, you are asking them to read something from someone who hates them, and who's arguing against giving them basic respect. Imagine how you'd feel reading such a thing — functionally, it is self-harm. Incidentally, this is why I have also not read the article; nothing I've seen so far suggests it is healthy use of my time. It would very likely just upset me.
Within reason. As a reminder, this is not an automatic defense. Some discussions are not worth having. I don't necessarily consider this one of them, as I think self-evaluation is a useful thing to do in the right circumstance. But I'm not so sure that such a circumstance would involve starting off with a New York Times op-ed, as those have a bad track record.
I didn't ask them to read the article. I was responding helping to clarify the comment made by someone who did and whose comment was, completely out of context, portrayed as saying that there's a problem with pronouns when nobody in that thread or in the article itself ever said that. The same person then attacked me directly by insinuating I'm a bad person for things I never even said and based on their assumptions on an article they never even read. I'm getting heavy book buring vibes in here where people are reacting to a headline and completely dismissing what may be reasonable content within.
So then don't or at least explain in detail for those who may not be aware why that may be. The same commentor later goes on to say that they foresee this thread getting locked down or deleted but it certainly won't be because of the content of the piece, there's nothing hateful in it. These discussions get restricted because people start getting vitriolic in the comments section and so far the only people I've seen coming up to or crossing the line are the ones who haven't actually read the thing and are making huge assumptions and judgement calls based on a six word title alone.
Nobody deserves to be attacked or have their comment very uncharitably read because someone is not engaging in good faith. Myself and the other person read the article and are approaching the discussion based on that, someone else is acting with possible malice without even understanding what we're talking about.
Stating that not reading an article is "uncharitable" is a put-down directed towards those who've joined the discussion without doing so. I'm telling you why they made that choice, and why a put-down is unfair to them. You also seemed to use Tildes' purpose as a site that encourages discussion as a defense here:
...and so, just in case you were using it as a defense, I clarified why that doesn't work here. Incidentally, it is also unfair to suggest Drewbahr's original comment is noise. It has a point and something it is responding to; brevity and emotion do not make noise.
But above all, I'm trying to get you to understand the feelings of those who've had a harsh reaction to the article you've posted, and why they've had an equally harsh response to your repeated defense of it. Unfortunately, I feel that your response here is indicating a greater interest in defending yourself than in having that understanding. Don't get me wrong, I understand wanting to defend yourself, especially in a tense context. But it's still resulting in a lack of reception to what I'm trying to communicate. So I'm not sure I'm spending my time well.
I don't think that an opinion piece in the NY Times is indicative of anything other than the opinions of its authors. It's certainly not indicative of the political views of 300+ million people.
I'm being uncharitable here because again, the whole topic of "wokeness" has been so thoroughly poisoned by the American right that if someone presents it, particularly "anti-wokeness", as a casual topic, it gives me a very good idea of what their angle is.
I still don't understand why the conversation is always "has the left gone too far?" without any reckoning on just how extreme the right has become. The Overton Window is so far away from previous centers that it's truly shocking. I still don't understand why pronouns are something that is apparently an insurmountable obstacle for so many.
I'm going to guess that this topic will be closed and deleted within the next day, if only because this topic has been closed and deleted several times before.
For the sake of clarity, the article/op-ed in question is actually the transcript of a podcast that featured a range of progressive viewpoints, including one from a card-carrying DSA member.
Also...Betteridge's Law...
I did not know that was a thing! Thanks
Well i've watched communities dog pile and threaten the lives of people who don't get it right first try so maybe that?
This framing that everyone's being reasonable about this is more than half the problem.
There's another side of this which is basically:
Which is a mirror problem in that the issues mostly stem from the people who champion these positions and how they use it as an excuse to control or bully others.
If I tell an off color joke to my friends who find it funny, I shouldn't have to deal with supposed liberals claiming I deserve death. And I have. Frequently in some communities. Just for ADMITTING i've told such jokes. Not repeating them because yes I think respecting your group is important, just honestly answering a question.
I am tired of being told I'm a serial killer because I played violent videogames, a psycho path because I'm not religious, and a fascist because I find dark humor fine in the right setting.
I am an adult who can make their own moral decisions and see the line between fantasy/humor and reality, and am tired of the wannabe policy debater who's certain my casual use of a slur in a dumb joke is leading fascism and the biggest problem facing the world right now.
If enough people tell you that a joke is in bad taste, it might be time to take pause and consider that viewpoint.
That said, you've clearly indicated that you understand the difference between reality and "a joke", so I won't belabor that point.
Please don't take the following post as "blaming the victim", that's not my intention. But I felt that a response warranted me actually typing something out, rather than swiping on my phone.
If you've had your life threatened (I'm assuming online but I could be very wrong) for making a joke, that's not good! Not good at all. Communities dogpiling on people and threatening them for saying things is wrong.
Generally.
Many of the people that you're condemning in this post, whether intentionally or not, are the very same people that are being threatened by attitudes similar to that shared here - "don't take it personally, I didn't mean it that way!" or "I'm not really like this" or "it's just a joke". I've said it so many times in my life that it's become rote, but I'll say it again -
Ironic racism is still racism.
The note there is transferable between -isms. A joke at someone's expense is always at that person's, or those people's, expense.
If you're telling these jokes in private, with friends who all "get it", then there's no harm, is there? But if you're sharing those views online, you might as well be shouting them downtown in your city. It's a public space, and anyone - even the crazy people! - can chime in with their opinions.
For what it's worth, I've been a lifelong videogamer (since I was like ... 4), I'm an atheist, and I find dark humor fine in the right setting too! But I also wouldn't share all of my thoughts online, for the very reasons you've outlined here. Too many people can take them too many different ways.
I spent an inordinate amount of time for a couple of years on 4chan in the mid 2000s. I'm not sure what drew me there, and I'm not sure why I stayed, but there was a lot of what I perceived to be "ironic" hate there, and I thought it was very funny and edgy at the time. It wasn't until later that I really processed that: 1. It didn't actually seem to be ironic for an appreciable portion of the userbase. And 2. It was becoming less ironic in myself.
I got out of that space, mostly because I started dating seriously and rediscovered an irl social life, and it took years to unpack attitudes that I had picked up without realizing them, all from what I perceived as stuff that was purely "for the lulz".
I know it's a cliche, but I think that's because it's true, that you eventually "become the mask you wear" or whatever. I know that's not universal, but it's something I think about a lot. I've been trying over the years to just say the things I feel, and not try and wrap everything in layers of irony until nobody knows what I actually think or feel (including myself). I think it's just better if we can be earnest, and fuck it if that makes me cringe.
So to be clear your stance is I should listen to strangers on the internet who don’t care about context vs the opinions and feelings of those around me who are perfectly fine with it and will gladly voice when they are not?
Do you not see how leading with this completely undermines the entire point of the rest of your post?
Would it be fine if they didn’t threaten violence? Why does anyone else have a say in how I interact with consenting adults in private?
My stance is that we (you and I) wouldn't be having this conversation if you hadn't brought it up in a public place (tildes). You chose to discuss the fact that you drop "casual slurs" in "dumb jokes". I was simply commenting on that.
My stance is also that it's your call as to what voices you wish to listen to! You can even ignore me and any other topics I've raised. It's entirely within your power to opt in and out of any conversation, here and elsewhere.
Yes. And my question to you is do you have a problem with what consenting adults do in private. Be it jokes or otherwise. Because I frankly don’t see a difference in your arguments and methods to anyone else who has sought to control that space.
“If you do it keep it private and don’t dare discuss it or we have the right to shun and bully you” is an attitude I clocked as, at the very bare minimum , unproductive a long time ago and I dislike seeing people claim to champion causes I feel strongly about with methods I find gross, and that in my eyes is the standard you are dancing around.
I have no problem with what consenting adults do in private, but I reserve the right to have an opinion about it when it's brought up in public.
None whatsoever, that's just basic courtesy. Forgive me, but what had you thinking I was implying otherwise? To clarify, the linked discussion touches on several more points than pronouns. Personally, I disagreed with their particular stances more so than not, but I think the broader idea behind the conversation merits some discussion, and that there's a few nuggets in there that the community here could handle with a bit more nuance than they did.
Which points did you agree with? Where has "wokeness" gone too far?
When well-meaning folks get crucified for making honest mistakes in their language, or for simply not keeping lock-step pace with cultural developments. I'm referring to an overzealous militant wing here, and a rare exception I think, who aren't really helping the cause with their hostility. When does that ever change a persons mind? Compassion is the only way forward for real, long-term change.
On a larger level, I think woke encompasses a nice sentiment that works on more casual grounds, a simple way of signalling ones general social views, but lacks enough rigour or cohesiveness to hold up as any sort of robust philosophical movement. I feel the end result has been turned into a sort of 'political correctness 2.0.' If we want to discuss issues of discrimination and inequality then I think perhaps the likes of intersectionality would make for far more useful tools for examining the depth of issues we face in our societies today.
I would like to politely reiterate my earlier question though as I was genuinely curious in my asking: what was it in my initial comment that made you think I had an issue with any person choosing the pronouns that make them most comfortable? I see from your other comments that you don't want to engage with the article, and if it was just based off an assumption you made on that, then fair enough. But if there was something in what I said, then, yeah, that's someting I would like to know so as to avoid causing offense in the future.
I return to my question - where has "woke" gone too far?
Intersectionality is a great talking point, one that the American right has lumped in with critical race theory as being woke (pejorative). I'd love to talk intersectionality! With you or anyone. But that's not the topic here.
The topic is "did wokeness leave us worse off?" And my answer is no. Because we never had a chance to sincerely engage with it. We had a moment, in 2020, where it seemed like we might. Then the right wing adopted "woke" as a bad thing, and seemingly everyone in the USA forgot that maybe being racist isn't okay.
Look at where we are now, and tell me that it's because of "wokeness". Even a little bit. Because I say no, we're not where we are because some people wanted the world to be a Little more flexible with pronouns and tone it down with the racism.
We're where we are now because of white supremacy, in a country that has never actually had a reckoning with its foundational racism (and yes I know there was a whole Civil War).
Now, as for the offense taken - I'm not offended by you or anyone here. I asked a simple question - what harms has "woke" actually wrought? And I have yet to see an answer.
I personally do not agree that asking for a modicum of respect (in terms of pronouns, or bathroom access, personal rights, etc) is being "condescending", but I also admit that I'm on the side of the condescenders, so to speak.
I also don't agree that this condescention, so to speak, is what led to Trump's win in 2024. I have a much more negative view on that - it was this country doing what it does best, which is being racist and sexist in extreme ways. Just look at the history of the country, in my opinion, and see what I see, and I think you'd agree.
So maybe that's my blind spot. My family comes from "flyover country" and I grew up in a small, rural, farming town (admittedly, one with a university), so I don't speak to "those people" as the problem, because American culture is the problem. Ours is an incredibly white, and incredibly racist culture, and it has been for over 400 years. It still is. I mean, we're what - two generations out from when Black folks didn't have the right to vote. We're 50 years out from when women couldn't open a line of credit. All of these advancements are still very very new, and the underlying culture hasn't actually kept up with them - in large part because, IMO, it doesn't want to.
And I fail to see how that's a problem of "the left", personally.
Earlier while combing through this IED of a thread, I ended up thinking about the dreaded "Kamala is for they/them ad" and whether that would've worked against a candidate like Zohran Mamdani.
I have always been of the mind that the more impactful line of that ad was the second, and often forgotten line, "Trump is for you." The implication being that Kamala doesn't care about common/everyday people. I don't think that ad would be effective if voters genuinely thought Kamala was truly focused on advancing their interests. How could someone say Mamdani doesn't care about New Yorkers when all he ever talks about is how he plans to improve the lives of New Yorkers? Instead of having a simple, universal, and steady message about addressing the material needs of Americans a la Zohran, Kamala gave us a medley of means-tested Washington mumbo jumbo and tried to position herself as a tougher, more moderate candidate than the one she was in the 2020 primary. "What do you mean I'm not for you? I've got 50k for small businesses and I'll sign a border bill that I would have vehemently opposed at any other point in my career! What more could you want from me?"
Conversely, had Zohran applied the same tactics as the Harris campaign, he would've spent the early days of his campaign focused on crime, because that's what the number one issue was at the start of the primary. Had that been the case, he likely would've ended up being an also-ran whose political career would've been as memorable as his rap career, and "affordability" would be just another word instead of the word in American politics.
I think there's still plenty of room for wokeness in politics. Not enough for a candidate to be defined by their wokeness, but it's not a killer as long as the primary focus remains on the material needs of the majority. And as Zohran recently said, "There's only one majority in this country, and that's the working class."
Ah, I think I see where we are misaligned here. Is it right to say that in your question you mean to take the effect of 'woke' as an entire movement? The article title may imply as much, in fairness, but, again, things get more granular in the content, which is what I'm responding to. Overall, no, I don't think it has left us worse off, quite the opposite. And I agree with you, there was a window within the cultural moment to make some really great advancements. Back to my earlier comment, I don't think 'woke,' as it developed, was strong enough to push things as far as they should have gone and we ended up with, in effect, some patchwork fixes rather than the deeper changes necessitated. I'm not saying the idea behind woke has left us worse off, only that the implementation has been flawed.
So, in answering your question, I was speaking to the parts that have gone wrong, not the totality. I am coming from this whole topic from a position of: "okay, we missed some opportunites and right now things are getting worse, so, instead of always focusing on the other side let's take a moment here to look at where we might have gone wrong and ask how can we better hone our approach." This is what I've been trying to get at, and was hoping to see local Tilderinos providing better answers for than we got in the NYT piece.
Also, just to clarify, I'm in Europe and have only been to the U.S. once briefly, so I can't speak to the specifics there and am likely missing oceans of implied context here. There is a caveat in that when I am discussing terms and concepts of American origin, i.e., woke, it is going to be heavily coloured by how these ideas have landed within my own culture. But in saying 'us,' as I have above, please understand that I am searching for commonality in what I take to be shared ideals of egalitarianism and acceptance.
You're still not engaging with the question - where has "woke" gone too far? What parts have gone wrong?
I'm asking for your input because you've done the same here. I personally don't think any parts of "wokeness" were "wrong", because many of the left-wing movements since 2020 have focused on such simple ideas as "stop killing people" and "respect each other". I don't agree that "language policing" is that much of a problem, because - as stated in the article - so many people are becoming comfortable with throwing slurs around again. That's something that should be "policed" - we shouldn't be accepting that people will just throw the R word or N word around in public.
I genuinely thought I was engaging, and tried using two different readings of your question in the hopes of providing a satisfactory answer. Regarding the issue that was put forth relating to language policing, my point was that it has gone too far at times, not that it is wrong in and of itself, while you have said you don't agree and, as I read it, you believe that it can't so long as there are assholes out there still using slurs (please correct if I have stepped too far in my interpretation there). I think at this point we are starting to get stuck in the weeds a little so before going any further I would just like to confirm where we stand on one point: do you believe it is at all possible that those on the left could go too far in their methods, even though their intentions may still be sound?
Not the previous poster, I think there's a difference here in the question "have people on the left gone too far?" vs "has the left gone too far?"
Some individual always goes "too far", someone screams at people for not using their pronouns or someone chastises a colleague for not changing their profile picture to a black square or a company hires a bad trainer who advocates for things that the groups in question never wanted.
But that's a small number of people out of a very large population and exists across any number of axes - I've had bad trainings, controlling coworkers and random encounters with unreasonably angry people of all stripes. For example, I was chased through Costco while someone yelled "actually it's murder" to my Abortion is Healthcare T shirt for example. (Wait... actually maybe it's my fault that she yelled at me, I went too far! /j.) I also had a (pre-"woke" language) coworker who wouldn't document his "brown" employee, did try to write up his white employee, and pissed off almost every woman he worked with except his boss(es) by being a patronizing ass. The congressional Dems kneeling in kente cloth stoles was widely derided - and it was organized by the Congressional Black Caucus - but since those people had the literal power to do more, performative acts were much less well received.
Those are different than "can/has the left go/ne too far?" And asking if "wokeness" has gone too far is more similar to the latter. I don't think the "movement" has gone too far, rather not far enough, personally. I don't think performative or "cringe" acts "go too far" they're just missing the mark and that typically comes from thinking that any contribution from a majority (often white in the context of "woke") person will be welcomed with open arms, rather than listening to the people already doing the work and following them.
Like I'd be real dumb to have walked up to the people doing the hard work to maintain the bus boycott during the civil rights movement and suggest that we all stand in the street and protest by blocking the busses with our bodies as if they don't know exactly what will happen to Black bodies in that situation.
So if "wokeness" is only the completely performative stuff, yeah maybe it "goes too far." If it's respecting pronouns and working to ensure Black/Trans/Immigrant/etc. people have civil rights, then absolutely not. If it's murdering people for telling you they made a racist joke, then we're back to "too far."
But that's why not defining it in the discussion is the problem. Because the way that the right is defining "woke/ness" right now is like how they claim any Black pilot is a DEI hire or how the DOGE purges worked. It's just shoving anything they don't like that has any "ctrl-F" of the words "Woman, Black, Queer, Latino, etc." into the same pile and lighting it on fire. And it's why many of us are so critical of the very premise of the article/podcast and the headline attached. If you never define wokeness then it will simultaneously have gone way too far and never have gone far enough. And everyone gets to yell about how they're right.
It's why I highlighted a portion of the transcript and talked about it rather than the headline, but I'm still frustrated at the implications made there (and direct statements here too) that obviously the left has gone too far, that non-binary people are too big of an ask, that it's "our" fault that "they" are hurting us. And if we don't give up our values and throw some group - immigrants, queers, women, - under the bus, we'll never make the reactionaries who allegedly voted to spite us actually like us.
That isn't how stopping bullies works, it isn't how soothing abusers works, it's also not how you keep voters liking you. No one respects the person who sucks up to the bullies in hopes of ingratiating themselves, especially not the bullies. So the strategy just doesn't make sense unless you were already willing to pitch those groups under the bus because those weren't your values.
There are ways to persuade and convince people but they're entirely separate from these sorts of conversations and they will require people to accept responsibility for their own actions. Blaming the left will only impede that process, not improve it.
I think you've manage to pinpoint exactly where this conversation has gone out of phase, cheers! Yes, I did previously note that I share the sentiment that 'woke' as a movement hasn't gone far enough, so I thought that had made it clear that my thoughts are following the actions and attitudes of individuals working in the name of 'woke.' You've also highlighted one of the key issues with the article, and also a real bugbear of the comments here, in that the term 'woke' hasn't been fully defined. It goes back to my earlier comment about my issues with woke not being rigorous enough to stand as a formal movement, and I would consider this a direct consequence of (as I understand it) the loose spirit in which the term was coined, that is, in encouraging a general state of awareness towards the failings of social and institutional norms. That it has now, as a movement, come to encompass a largely ill-defined array of leftist ideologies is working to its detriment, and has made it easier for bad actors to toxify the term. Also worth bearing in mind, outside the US, woke as a term has only really caught on within the last ~10 years, so for many it is quite divorced from its long pre-BLM cultural origins, and arrived with many of its modern political attachments, often inferred from online discourse, and so was frequently received as being reminiscent, however incorrectly, of the political correctness of the '90s / '00s many were already familiar with.
Key to my own opinions here is that I don't see 'going too far' as a relative judgement, where extremist behaviour on one side winds up setting the bar at murder. For me, 'too far' can just mean being an insufferable dick to others, or else, more benignly, having fallen into absurdity. Yes, you can travel very, very far beyond that line, and, for sure, there's a lot more runway on one particular side of it, but that's where it sits for me. To say something has 'gone too far' isn't a scathing indictment of a whole concept or movement, it can just be pointing out where some of the edges have gotten too sharp or squirrelly.
It's a term that originated among the Black community in the 1960s and explicitly was intended to refer to staying alert to and aware of systemic racism and injustice. It's shifted overtime, but many folks would say that systemic racism is not a "failing" of norms, but that the norms were set up to enforce racism. I think that distinction is important. It was revitalized as a term in 2014, really gaining use more broadly as the BLM movement kicked up higher in 2020 iirc. Which means for most non-Black, especially non-Black non-activist Americans they're on the same time scale as you're describing outside the US. Woke being perceived as the same as "PC" is because they tricked you (everyone) into thinking PC was anything other than again, being polite and kind to each other. It's their one move.
As the language was adopted/co-opted by other Americans it has been diluted somewhat, and most people I know wouldn't use it to describe anyone. And thats the issue, there isn't really a "movement" with wokeness. There are leftist movements and activist movements but calling all that "woke" is buying into the right's framing of things. (Like when they called everything Critical Race Theory and banned it, or everything DEI and targeted it, or everything with any discussion of queerness as "grooming* and banned it... Seriously they have one move and everyone keeps falling for it.)
And my frustration with discussions of individual or relatively isolated "too far" moments is that they're usually only discussed by the media in two capacities
By this class of columnists who all would coincidentally call themselves "a liberal but..." And think that college kids have "gone too far" sometimes complaining the students wouldn't talk to them even though they just wanted to ask the students questions about why they hate free speech! ＼(°o°)／. Here they reiterate all the ways that the youth are out of line in their extremism. And they find annoying college students who do annoying college student stuff. (And some very reasonable young adults who they portray as annoying college students too.)
"Why the left's extremism is to blame for the right's behavior."
It's never the opposite, it's rarely any sort of pearl clutching at the literal rapists in charge of the country. The scandal of Noem disappeared in a poor when she was
firedoh wait she was just reassigned and is still theoretically employed. The Epstein files went away after people found plenty of concerning things including redactions of Trump's name. There's no discussion of how the right is saying slurs and that this caused the left to... Go further left?And that to me is why I don't think the "extremes" of the leftists matter as a group (individuals can still suck) because despite many times the provocation from the right, the left didn't vote to take away their rights just to spite them. The left actively works and advocates for things that would make those spiteful lives better. It's incredibly infantilizing to say that the left is responsible for the right's actions. Especially since if they had their way we'd live in a white nationalist theocracy where only certain men could vote at best. (The theocracy part is where the right splinters.)
I just don't get the idea that we can appease them with the blood of trans people and immigrants.
But I digress, there are assholes abounding, but I don't find discussion of individual assholes useful, especially when it's only ever about those on the left and not talking about the people sig heiling on the street as being responsible for the bad things. And I get that to you those individuals are included in the "too far" but that isnt how "has (group) gone too far" will ever be usefully interpreted for me and I suspect many folks here, especially when it's not a group in this case.
No one operationalizes their terms anymore and it really breaks down the conversation
I was searching for broad phrasing there but, yeah, 'failings' wasn't the most apt word for what I was trying to convey, rest assured no trivialisation intended! And thanks for the background information, I wasn't sure how active usage of the term was in America in those intervening years.
The political climate here is quite different and I have had no experience of anything of the severity of what has happened with the targeting of CRT, DEI, etc., but I do appreciate where you're coming from and your frustrations with this line of discussion are very understandable.
May be a digression but this did stand out to me. Are you referring to the Democrat party specifically here, have they taken to selling out trans and immigrant people to try grab more votes?
Yup, preaching to the choir there.
Since 2024 and to this day, folks have blamed the loss of the election on "too much identity politics" and "talking about trans people too much" despite the Dem candidate leaning Hard right to appeal to the middle. And in this thread you'll see folks say that non binary people were too much to "ask" America to accept. In other threads there's been the "trans people being banned from certain things might be ok." Gavin Newsom has waffles on trans rights and courted the right, and he's considered a serious nominee for president even if no one actually likes him.
Be tough on immigration, be tough on crime, don't talk about identity politics but appeal to poor white men, etc. so that the reactionary right might vote for you! And I say the blood of those groups because people die due to these policies, whether due to ICE agents, healthcare cuts or suicide rate increases.
So yes that's often the message both to the Dem party from pundits and articles like this, from the party as candidates weasel out of supporting these groups, and to the general public from the media. Kamala talked big about signing a tough on immigration bill, having conservatives speak at the convention, courting endorsements from the "never trumpers" on the right, etc.
I believe it is possible that folks on the left could go "too far" in their methods. What I have yet to see is an example of what that means, or any concrete example of the left actually "going too far".
An example could be The Weather Underground, which sought to overthrow the government (at least, according to Wikipedia) using such methods as bombings of government buildings. That is definitely "going too far" despite being a "leftist" organization with goals that I don't necessarily disagree with (the United States is, after all, extremely imperialistic).
Thus far, what I have seen "the woke left" do is ... what, talk down to people while advocating for justice? For centuries of murder?
People are going to bring up Charlie Kirk, to which I respond with Mark and Melissa Hortman (and their dog), or January 6th, or any other myriad examples of the political right murdering people without consequence.
What I am asking for are concrete examples of something that you feel a "woke" person has asked for, or done, that went too far. Was asking for pronoun recognition a step too far? Was asking for racial justice too much? What specific "demand" that has been made has been too much?
I'd argue that the reason you're coming up empty is for a number of reasons:
it's always fun to simply dismiss others' points of view, but this is also a poignant example of the condescension that many people in this thread have explained is the common thread that hooks people into a moral panic, should they not already agree with you
I mean Jesus Christ
Disagreement isn't dismissal, and engagement isn't dismissal either. I'm still confused as to the harms that are being claimed that have been done by "woke".
The claim is there that "well meaning folks have been crucified in the name of pronouns", which is simply not a thing I've seen really happen outside of, perhaps, some extremely online spaces. I've never seen it happen in-person, face-to-face, with or to anyone, apart from obvious bigots who misgender people on purpose. So I disagree with the assertion that "crucifixion in the name of pronouns" is a thing that happens on any statistically significant level.
In the meantime, people have been murdered for being members of the Democratic Party, have had their houses raided by the FBI for being Democrats - actual, real harms.
Then there's the idea that "woke left us worse off" because it didn't go far enough in the moment ... to which I say, is that an actual harm? It harmed us by not being adopted by people in this country? Or is the harm the pushback against that movement, that halted it before it got rolling?
Now, are there things worth examining in how certain movements succeeded or failed? Of course. But "woke" isn't a thing. "Wokeness" isn't a movement, it isn't an organization. It's a poorly-defined boogeyman being held up by the American right as a strawman that they can pin whatever evils they want onto, as a scapegoat to keep their supporters incensed and donating. And it's working!
So all of that is to say, I reject the premise of the article/podcast, and in explaining myself I'm now being called condescending and dismissive.
I mean, in the context of that exchange? it was dismissal of the person you replied to, and dismissal of other's points of view. Say disagreement is not dismissal all you want, but you don't get to play that card if
That is dismissal of opposing viewpoints as failing to engage, when plenty have.
You can rattle all that off. I don't really disagree. But I can read between the lines and grasp that people dislike being expected to change their language at the drop of a hat and that the hyperperformative side of progressivism is literally the subject at hand. Pretending that the pushback hasn't been continual, even within groups of relatively sympathetic individuals, because you agree with the end goals, is disingenuous and fucking insulting.
I would expect a top comments to be a ittle more substantial.
I'd go back and edit it to say more, but there's two things:
That said, I'm planning (now) to read the article and actually state my position on its content. TreeFiddyFiddy has (somewhat rightfully) pointed out that it's not fair of me to rake them, and the article, over the coals without having actually read it. So I figure I'll see if I can dig up an archived version of the article, so as to deny the NYT their click, and see what's what.
I don't pretend to be unbiased, though, and I fully expect my assumptions about the content to be found to be accurate.
So, I've decided to engage with and read the article - or rather, the transcript of a podcast. I feel I was initially unfair to TreeFiddyFiddy, and I feel like the discourse has gone on long enough that there may be some "value" in informing myself about this.
First off, my biggest question: do they define "wokeness"? I'll find out.
The first thing I will say is, the title of the "article" is clearly click- and engagement-bait. It's not asking the reader to engage honestly, but rather it's trying to incite the very conflict we're seeing throughout this thread. I will also say that by titling the article in this fashion, it informs me of what their intentions are. It's not to have an honest discussion about "wokeness" and its excesses; it's to take shots against the left.
My opinions, etc etc.
So, here's where I start reading.
First off, they say our culture is abandoning "political correctness", not "wokeness". They're inconsistent with their terms and topic.
The "game" of stating whether a word is "alive" or "dead" seems like a dumb gimmick, punching down (again) on the left.
People opining on "folx" and "latinx" without actually being a member of the people who use such terms feels like an issue. I understand latinx has baggage, and there's a lot of arguments for and against the term. I won't weigh in with my opinion, because I don't have one - I'm a cishet white man. It's not my word to use "towards" people. I won't assume someone's identity in that fashion.
Now they have "defined" woke as just "politically correct" in a new suit. Colyar here defines themselves as "anti-woke", which tells me everything I need to know about them. The fact that they unironically call being "the woke of five years ago" as "cringe" is also very telling. Five years ago, "woke" people were protesting in the streets because of the murders of George Floyd, Brianna Taylor, and so, so many others. I don't think that's "cringe". Now, I may be conflating the "wokeness" of ... well, not murdering people with the "wokeness" of pronoun choice, which is probably what Colyar is actually in opposition to - but they never define terms, so here we are.
To Spiegelman's point, if a white person says they're "woke", that is definitely a red flag - because of the conversation throughout this thread. "Woke" has taken on far too much baggage thanks to the American right for people to use it earnestly anymore. Furthermore, as I've seen throughout a variety of circles I run with, being "woke" isn't a label you apply to yourself. That misses the point of the original use of the term.
Now we're taking pot shots at the "pink pussyhats" and books on anti-racism. Again, what is the actual problem with those things? Many of the books on anti-racism predate 2020, they weren't written "for the moment". Now their issue seems to be more about how people chose to show their political affiliation and resistance against Trump and the "culture war", rather than the message itself. So is the problem "wokeness", or is the problem that people showed up in ways you don't like?
Again, they are continuing to attack the style of the message, but not the message. They don't like "black square day", they don't like people posting infographics, they don't like certain books, fine. But what do they think of "wokeness"? They aren't engaging with the premise of their article/podcast - which was "did wokeness leave us worse off?"
People rankling at the "anti-racist training in workplaces" now, saying it doesn't feel effective. My main issue with that workplace training has less to do with the fact that it exists, and more to do with the fact that people won't actually engage with it. I can understand pushing back against it because "work is telling me what to do/say/think", but honest to God if people actually took a step back and engaged with the content, they may see where it's coming from. At the very least they'll have an informed opinion about it - much like I'm doing with this article.
Shockingly, Colyar discovers that "the left" isn't a monolith. People have a diversity of opinions!
Sow speaks to her experience as an African later moving to the USA. It's good insight. I'd have been curious to have had the insight of a Black American born and raised in the racism from day one, too. I've sought out such voices, and ... well, I'll just say I don't think they would agree with this article at all.
Now we're taking a joke seriously (Marc Maron).
Sow and Colyar seem to feel that the past five years may have actually annoyed people into fascism, and not - y'know, the past 400+ years of institutionalized racism, or the fact that the Nazis were inspired by American racism, or the fact that concentration camps (as we know them) were created in the United States, or any other such thing. People, these article people included, seem to feel that American Fascism is a new construct, born of the modern era - without wrestling with sundown towns or the Asian Exclusion Acts or any of our actual history. For fuck's sake, the Oregon Territory was initially created to be a haven for white people!
I think Colyar's right, in the sense that "the right" talks like "normal people". I don't think they're right for the same reason they think, though. I think Colyar is right because there's a deep, deep undercurrent of racism and hatred in white American culture, so much so that using those offensive slurs is normal. And that's a problem, one that should be corrected! I don't want people running around throwing slurs at anyone.
Now Sow is talking about politeness and civility in terms, which seems to be in direct opposition to their stated opinions about the frivolity of "woke language". It's hard to circle that square - why is it now basic decency to refer to someone by their preferred pronouns or name, when earlier it was "cringe"?
Sow is a card-carrying member of the DSA, and we have fundamental disagreements about language! The left does contain multitudes.
I think Colyar and Sow have gotten far, far too internet focused on these interactions. I have never, ever in my life, met someone in meatspace/"the real world" that got brutally offended over the earnest misuse of a pronoun, or being personally offended when asked what their pronouns are. And even if they were, it costs no one anything to apologize and move on. They say "people do not give each other grace", and maybe that's true - on the internet. I could learn something from that, except for the fact that my friends can all vouch for the fact that I talk (and am confrontational) like this in the real world too. And maybe that's not a good thing. Regardless, I feel like they're making strawman arguments left and right - they're creating "militant students" that bite the heads off their professors as a target dummy for their misgivings about the way language is moving.
Again, Sow making statements about fragility that are in direct contrast to their stated opposition to the "cringe language" of yesteryears.
Colyar doesn't seem to think that people were taking steps against rising fascism while also fighting about pronoun use. I don't think they've been paying attention the past several years. People can walk and chew gum - or, alternatively, argue on the internet and take direct action - at the same time. It's not either/or. The fact that the Democratic Party (nation level) is wholly unprepared for the moment is a problem, and some would argue that they are PART of the problem, but that's another story. Suffice it to say, I can post on Tildes and attend rallies, and write letters to my representatives, and do many things at once.
Frat houses, "hotbeds of the R word"? Shocking. That's consistent with literally every frat I've ever known.
Colyar talking about a small school that had a small pro-Palestine protest, as if that is surprising.
Colyar feels that kids these days don't align with the left or the right. And that's true! It also has nothing to do with the topic of the article - which, to-date, they have only defined "wokeness" as "political correctness" again.
Now we're complaining about language drift. Language changes all the time and that should never be controversial. Polite words from yesteryear become offensive words over time, and vice versa. It happens, it has always happened, it will continue to happen.
The folks on the article continue to not discuss the topic of the article.
Sow continues to contradict herself on whether pronouns are a good thing or "cringe".
Colyar continues to confuse online discourse with the real world (which shouldn't have much of a divide, but there is one). They're also bemoaning the fact that people raked them over the coals for stating their use of bad humor, much like has been done in this thread. Again, I reiterate - when you make your private thoughts and actions public, you invite the public to comment on them. If you're making racist/sexist/-ist jokes in private (or, if you're a comedian and the expectation is that you are making jokes), that's one thing - but to tell the world that you use certain slurs in private invites discourse about it! That shouldn't be surprising, particularly to someone who writes for a major magazine.
"New leaders of the woke" is a phrase I never thought I'd read/hear. Once again, they've just said "woke" is "political correctness". Which I fundamentally disagree with. For my money, "woke" is opening your eyes to the injustices of the world, particularly of the United States, and seeing the inherent racism, sexism, and other -isms built into our society. But that's the thing, it's warped into a near-meaningless word because the American right has weaponized it against people and its intended meaning and use, much like they've done with "critical race theory". Fancy that - two terms that arose from "the left" (either from Black American use, or from academia) that have been weaponized against them by the right.
Language policing happens across all fronts, in all spaces - there's words I can say with friends but not at work, and certainly not in public, loudly, for all to hear. Language policing isn't unique to "the left" either, and I think I know why they're taking aim at the left - because the right is currently the flavor du jour and they don't want to write in opposition to the current state of things (IMO).
Colyar insists that "woke policies" have lost, despite people like Zohran Mamdani winning in resounding fashion on "woke policies". Colyar insists that "wokeness" shouldn't come back in the same way ... why? Again, other than being upset that certain words seem "cringe", they haven't actually stated what damage "wokeness" has done to the culture. They have stated what damage has been done by the response to wokeness, which is FAR more telling.
Now we're talking about conspiracy theorists (Candace Owen, Joe Rogan). Joe Rogan enjoys a large cultural following, but I don't think Candace Owen is nearly on the same level. Then again, I don't pay attention to right wing pundits, because I don't have space for that kind of hate in my life.
Now they're taking more pot shots at language. "Cados" and "ayos". Who the fuck cares what people say to each other when there's no harm done? Seriously.
Article over.
Now, having engaged fully with the article, here are my takeaways:
This comment displays signs that you went into it ready to disagree with it no matter what it said. Not only do I completely disagree with you when you say that the speakers are not addressing their stated topic, but some of these criticisms are snarky for no reason whatsoever.
That part was merely conveying a description that a college student told them. The description was about a change where more frat houses sprang up post-Trump and what it did to campus culture. To be mad at the speakers here makes no sense. If you choose to be snarky and come in with preconceived notions to respond play-by-play rather than listening to the message first, then you have merely wasted your own time in an attempt to appear to be "fair" to @TreeFiddyFiddy.
One offhand comment about frat houses is all it took for you to disagree with everything? Really?
I'm not "mad at the speakers" for this. I made an observation that "dudebro" culture has been ever-present at frat houses for as long as I can remember. Am I not allowed to make a snarky but otherwise unimportant observation?
Beyond that, you're entitled to your opinion, and I'll take your criticism as seriously as it's warranted.
EDIT TO ADD: I should note:
Absolutely. I went into reading the article ready to disagree with it, because I disagree with the premise, and title of the article: Did Wokeness Leave Us Worse Off?
I don't see how I could go into the article with an open mind, when I disagree with the title of the article itself.
Before I say anything else: I agree with you fully about the article. That said...
A problem I have with one part of your comment, put in a collapsible since I don't want you to have to view it unless you're feeling alright
...this is a knee-jerk reaction to a small part of gary's comment, and because it's knee-jerk it leads to a very bad interpretation of what they wrote. They never said nor implied that what they quoted was why they disagree with your comment, much less the sole reason why. Your later edit, by contrast, is doing a much better job.
As much as I agree with your feelings regarding the article, it's pretty clear this is causing you enough distress (very understandable!) to the point of making comments off-the-hip, as it were, which isn't very healthy for anyone. I mean only kindness here when I say: Maybe a break is due?
I was taking a break, right up until you replied to a days-old thread.
I'm not distressed. I'm sick of having the same conversation over and over again, for years. And this is the same conversation. Every part of it. And we'll keep having this conversation, for generations to come, until this country has an actual reckoning on its racism.
I'm a little worried the fact that I'm responding out of concern is not making it through in my comments, so I'm just gonna back off.
For what it's worth though, I hear you. This shit is exhausting.
Your concern is noted, if misplaced.
It takes at least two people to have a conversation. If the ones you’re in keep turning out the same way have you considered changing the variables that are under your control?
Many of us are sick of having the same conversation, but without our input it becomes a worse one, often leaning into the very things we're speaking against. It'd be like not countering racist or transphobic statements...
So yeah, I mean it'd be nice if everyone else knocked it off too. But here we are.
In my opinion, this is not a helpful response, and it’s insinuating a lot in a passive aggressive way.
Psst they were replying to someone else, not you!
Thanks. I'm having trouble figuring out who's replying to who here. When their comment was marked as "new" to me, it was shown as a reply to my comment here. But when I open this thread again, it's not even present. I'm confused as hell.
EDIT: Figured it out. Had to disable an extension.
Sorry! I should’ve been a little clearer in my statement!
Parsing the right chain is really tricky with all the various branches - I’ve done the same multiple times in the past!!
If people had listened to the people who are far more patient and eloquent than I, I wouldn't still be shouting about it.
And yet, here we are.
I'll never say I'm the most effective about this topic, and there's always room for improvement in messaging. But as you said, it takes two people, and if the people that shared stuff like this transcript would take a step back and consider whether it's adding to the discourse, or just noise intended to start a flight, we'd be in a better place still.
So, do you believe that the transcription answered the question posed by the title of the piece? If so, how? I didn't see any conclusive point throughout the entire piece.
Unfortunately, I don't have enough time to engage with your takeaway from the original post, but I want to give you props for acknowledging the issue with your previous comment and taking the time to not only read the material, but also add a long and thoughtful response. More of this, please.
One quick thing that your comment reminded me of and that I wanted to point out elsewhere is the lack of a clear definition of "woke" and how the current iteration of the word is completely different from what it was when it first crossed over into mainstream lingo in the late-2010s.
Initially, to be "woke" was (basically) to be aware of the historic and systemic injustices against marginalized people and to reject the sleepy, whitewashed, middle school version of history that we're spoonfed from birth. Woke was a way to describe a person's awareness or understanding, not the way that they interact with the world. Somewhere along the way, that got lost and now it's essentially a rebrand of the term SJW (or PC), but people still conflate the two all the time. Julian Casablancas calls out Zionists and American imperialism, or, your grandma recognizes the preferred pronouns of your non binary friend? Wow, they're so woke! Purple-haired woman chastises DSA-endorsed candidate for saying they support veterans, or a boy calls his dad a fascist for referring to the unhoused as "homeless"- ugh, they're so woke. I feel like I'm seeing a version of this play out in the comments. Some are quick to defend wokeness as the former, while others criticize it for being the latter.
It took over an hour to put that post together, and the OP is unlikely to read or engage with it. The story may have been different had I done so from the beginning, but nothing that I've seen in this thread suggests that that hour was spent well.
"Unfair" opinion incoming!
The podcast transcription suggests that it was 30 minutes of people saying "Man, aren't woke people exhausting?" That isn't worth anyone's time, IMO, and I called it out from the start. And instead of people reflecting on the obvious bad-faith framing of the article/podcast, they instead insist upon asking us to listen to this, without forming an opinion of the material themselves, other than to say "I don't agree with all of it, but some of it I found interesting or thought-provoking."
You'll see that throughout this thread, I ask a simple question - "where has wokeness gone too far?" "Where did wokeness leave us worse off?" And other than people describing "the left" as patronizing and condescending, leading to a shitty outcome in 2024 ... there's nothing.
And yes, 2024's election was a shitty outcome. Part of that may come down to messaging, sure. But at the end of the day, white Americans chose Trump again. They chose a man with decades of documented racism, who inspired a mob to try and overthrow the government, and some people here are claiming that it's because "the left" wasn't nice enough, or Kamala Harris bungled her messaging.
I would argue that Trump won because ours is a deeply racist country, and he reflects what we are. But that's getting a bit off-topic, so I'll stop that there (this time).
This conversation gets more and more tiring every time it happens. And it has happened many, many times, here and elsewhere. And it will happen again, here and elsewhere, with a new coat of paint and insistence that no actually it's a different conversation this time when it's just ... not. It's just not.
I get ya, but that's the burden one must accept when they become a tildo. But hey, even if no one responds, you never know who might read it and take something from it. If nothing else, it's a good exercise to write out your thoughts. I often feel like I get more out of writing the comment than posting it. For every effort post I make, I have two or three that I end up scrapping, maybe more. I actually have a Google drive file with dozens of unposted comments lol.
As for the rest of your post, I don't think your opinion is unfair, and I don't really disagree with the specific point you're making about 2024, I just think we're just looking at it differently.
We have both pointed out that there is something along the lines of a woke value system and a woke messaging system. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to be referring to woke the value system when you keep asking where woke went too far or failed. I wholeheartedly agree with what I think you're getting at there. I don't think that “woke” progressive policies are a problem, and I've disagreed with how Third Way centrist Dems made it out to be the defining issue of the 2024 election. But that doesn't seem to be the point that the original discussion or many of the comments here are focused on. They're focused on woke the messaging system, which is often perceived as performative, cringey, scolding, or just flat out annoying. That's a failure. Now, you can't control how people receive your message, but you can control how you deliver it. That, in my mind, is the purpose of the wider discussions around the failure of woke.
I don't know enough about the entire panel to say what their values are, but they certainly didn't strike me as having “anti-woke” beliefs. No one in that conversation was saying things like “they want men to compete in women's sports” or "they're demonizing white people in history class,” so I'm willing to give a little grace and assume that their criticisms of woke messaging were leveled with the hope that something more effective emerges. I've been around this site long enough to know that most people feel the same way to some extent. Or maybe I'm just projecting my own woke desires onto other people. I don't know.
Yeah, no need to go into all of that. You and I have had that conversation before
I am genuinely curious about the rest of your political identity though. I've seen you get passionate a number of times about bigotry and identity politics, and obviously we've discussed 2024 through that lens, but I can't recall seeing anything else about what type of world you want to live in, the type of candidates you support, or who/what your influences are.
The sort of effort that it takes to refute a “provocational” topic like this just isn’t sustainable.
In my personal experience, when I say that threads like this are exhausting, it’s because I’ve had to burn so much more of my time than the person that I’m explaining something to, and it isn’t the first time I’ve chosen to burn my time in such a way.
Eventually, I think I’ll choose to just not respond, and that deeply saddens me. I just don’t think there’s another option out there, when I’m just so tired of being punched.
The reason it took Drewbawr an hour to put the post together is because they insisted on writing the response as they read it. They could have instead read the thing in 20 minutes and then responded. In fact, I'm so disappointed by the response to Drewbawr's comments because it shows that few people actually read the damn article. The way Drewbawr's comment reads, it only makes sense if it disregards context which it constantly does since it's responding to sentences without regard for what came before/after. It's a reactionary piece that doesn't manage to first understand what the speakers are saying before responding. It's playing to the audience here at Tildes who like to imagine they're so educated but simultaneously intentionally choosing to not read.
What does the article boil down to? Some of the actions taken in the last decade were performative, not effective at bringing about progressive change, and became mainstream which drove a counter-culture. None of that should be controversial for anyone paying attention unless the reader believes that their black square profile picture was super duper effective.
The ongoing debate about how other people are writing their comments and whether they should or shouldn't is exhausting too. You didn't watch them write. You clearly disagree with them and replied directly so maybe just talk about them to them instead analyzing their actions to someone else. Similarly assuming other people didn't read the article - I did - and therefore are somehow being "duped" rather than broadly agreeing with someone is insulting.
Uh, I only brought it up because Drewbahr mentioned that they spent over an hour to write their comment. If they want to complain about the length of it, then I will point out that it was self-inflicted. Otherwise, I left the comment in peace until then.
I didn't mention you at all, so why are you assuming I meant you? For the part about Drewbahr, I mentioned their writing style in the thread that was started by them and I also then added a direct reply to them as well; I don't think it's considered talking behind their back if I do this, but opinions can differ here. Also, isn't this policing how comments are being written?
I didn't assume you meant me and never said so. I used myself as an example.
You're not the first post talking about who should write comments and how they wrote the comment and whether certain people should have commented at all and it's exhausting. As is the "this person writes slop for the idiots who didn't read the article"
And no it's not.
This is so incredibly passive aggressive and reminiscent of twitter subtweeting that it makes it practically impossible to engage with the rest of your post
I get that you're frustrated with the way conversation has happened but if you're going to accuse others of not leaving their emotions at the door the least you can do is lay out the behavior you wish to see
Anyhow to address what you did bring up in this reply
It seems to me that what you're missing is that basically no one is arguing against this? We're talking about something that is broadly categorized as 'politics'. Politics is like 90% performance. Pretty much everyone who came in here who took issue with the very premise were explicitly pointing out that this very article is performance and choosing to engage with it is yet another act of performance.
You can't simultaneously act like there's a serious issue to discuss here while also engaging with an act of performance - those two are at odds with each other.
Yes, I "insisted" upon writing a response as I read it - because I wanted to break down my thoughts and feelings as they came to me as I went through the piece. What's wrong with that?
What context am I disregarding? I constant refer back to where the speakers themselves change their opinions mid-podcast on the very topic they're discussing.
Did I write a reactionary piece? OF COURSE. It's a reaction to this topic/podcast! What else could it be?
Pot and kettle?
The stated headline of the article/podcast is "Did Wokeness Leave Us Worse Off?" Sure, some of what some people did was performative - there's extensive documentation out there that suggests even "performative" demonstrations can be effective in getting people on your side, and I would argue that rallies, protests, etc are also "performative". But I see the point there and I don't disagree with it. But what, in your paragraph there, addresses the question from the article - "Did Wokeness Leave Us Worse Off"?
Did it?
The word "woke" is hitting semantic satiation for me. "Did wokeness leave us worse off?" and "woke value system" and "woke messaging system" and, and, and ... do you see what the problem here is? "Woke" doesn't mean anything anymore, not just in this thread but in media generally.
What is a "woke value system"? What is a "woke messaging system"?
If people find "wokeness" as "performative, cringey, scolding, or just flat out annoying" ... then why? What part(s) of "wokeness" hit them that way?
If it's because they felt like they were being "hit over the head" with messaging about murders, police killings, etc, from a racial standpoint ... then they missed the point entirely. The fact that people are paying attention and talking about how bad things are shouldn't be "annoying", it should be infuriating! And if it isn't ... why is that?
If it's because they don't like being confronted with LGBTQ+ issues ... same question about, why is that annoying?
If people are getting irritated with the delivery and not the message, then maybe that's a conversation worth having - but it doesn't address the article! Did Wokeness Leave Us Worse Off? continues to go unanswered (in my opinion - because I suspect some people are going to accuse me, again, of "not engaging with peoples' responses).
One of the panelists specifically says they have "anti-woke sensibilities". Given that you and that panelist appear to disagree on what that means, we bump into the age-old problem, again, of what "woke" means.
I want to live in a world in which people stop murdering each other over race, sexual identity, religion, etc. I don't really want to go further than that, because as this thread has shown, there's people that will find ways to lambaste others over such statements (I've done it too, I admit).
Idk man, they just all seem like whiny assholes who make me learn what pronouns are so I can say that I don't use them.
/S
This is your contentious topic Rest Area. This is just a general self care reminder in case you need a pause. Fruit snacks and iced coffee are available for your convenience.
Sorry for the late reply, I've been touching a lot of grass lately, but I didn't want to leave you hanging. Or maybe I just want to get one more word in because the lack of progress we've made in this conversation is deeply frustrating.
I don't know where I go wrong every time I have these types of conversations with you, but I feel like when I try to explain one of the marginal disagreements I have with you, that explanation falls of deaf ears. But hey, I'm a masochistic loser with way too much time on my hands, so let's give it another go.
No, dude. I'm actually trying to rephrase and expand on what that panelist said. Here's the rest of the quote regarding the "anti-woke" sensibilities.
That's why I'm trying to make the distinction between values and messaging. Maybe there's a better way to differentiate the two, but I don't know how else to put it. They said it succinctly, I touched on it broadly and then expanded with examples. I don't know whats happening? Where is the disconnect?
I’d say neither of those very specific options apply, but what difference does it make? Politics is about persuasion, so it's not always what you say, but how you say it. You can have the right beliefs and the better policies, but it doesn't matter if your message doesn't resonate, or worse, turns people off. When that happens (which is all the time if you are on the left) you can do one or three things: you can adjust your message, you can keep it the same and tell people how stupid and wrong they are when they disagree, or you can go the third way and compromise your values.
Yay!
Oh.
Well, first of all, I wouldn't fret too much about NYT op-ed titles. It's just an attention getter and they change them all the time. In fact, I'd bet that this isn't the original title. As for the question itself, there are plenty of ways to interpret it. Given your original comment, you appear to be interpreting it as a reference to the state of the world? Maybe it's the state of American politics? Obviously, and for the third time, the answer to that question is no. But let's take another look at how they open the article and discussion:
Between that opener and the rest of the 30-minute conversation, here's how I interpret the question: "Is the return of off-color and offensive langue a backlash to the politics of language policing, and will the return of such language damage solidarity?" But again, I think it's very silly to get caught up on the title.
Fair enough. Not sure what kind of cards you're keeping close to your chest, but either way, I would encourage you to be a little more charitable in regards to the American electorate 's potential for growth. In this conversation and the previous one I linked to, there's this cynical and defeated vibe that all these racist people who have supported this fascist movement can't be reasoned with, or that their change must come solely from within. Maybe that's a misread on my part, but it's something that I fundamentally disagree with.
Before I end my participation in this conversation, I want to leave you with some food for thought. If you follow left-wing politics, then there are two names you might've seen pop up a few times over the past month, and that's Contrapoints and Hasan Piker. If you don't know who they are, they're both unabashedly left-wing and would qualify as having "woke" values. Contrapoints is a trans woman who makes these long, elegant, stylistic video essays that touch on philosophy, psychology, politics, and media criticism. Hasan Piker is a big, bro-type guy who streams on twitch and is known for using vulgar language, yelling at his audience, and going on bizarre and juvenile detours during his news coverage, like if the cars in Disney's Cars have vaginas. What I'm trying to say is that while there is some overlap in their politics, these two people couldn't be more different. However, there are two things they have in common. (1) They are both widely credited for deradicalizing right-wing men, and (2) they've both clashed with their audiences many times over the type of tone/language policing that would qualify as "woke." They might be on to something.
My belief that people have to choose to, and want to change before they do is not cynical nor defeatist, it's based on my understanding of human nature. To create that desire to change, individual conversations are the most effective, including everything from therapy to trusted peers redirecting them when they say something shitty. This is a group particularly inclined to ignore advice/influence/etc. they don't like out of spite, but who also are easily swayed by peers they look up to.
But that, IME, is just how people work. I'm not a sociologist so I may be biased by my professional perspective.
The first statement in the transcript is "did woke go too far?" So I don't think the title of the podcast is all that editorialized.
The disconnect is in what "woke" means. To you, to the authors, to me, to anyone. What does it mean? Why is some "wokeness" cringey, and some of it not-so? What makes the difference?
Why is being "earnest" a bad thing?
Politics is absolutely about persuasion, and if I were trying to be persuasive, I would be using different language. It just so happens that I'm not really trying to be persuasive here. I'm not trying to convince you, or anyone, about "wokeness" - because the topic is ridiculous on its face. It's a right wing bogeyman being trotted out at this point, and I'm not going to take it seriously, so to speak.
So now, if we're changing topics from "what the article says it's about" to "what I think the article is about" then we're having a different discussion. Maybe I got hung up on the title, but I'm also not impressed by the content of it either.
You don't need to tell me to be charitable about the American electorate. My family goes back hundreds of years in this country. So does my wife's family. But our familial experiences are vastly different. The fact that this country embraced Trump twice is informative. What the SCOTUS is doing, is informative. What Black and Asian and various other non-white people say about their experiences, their realities, is informative.
I listen to them.
And I agree with DefinitelyNotAFae - "real" change comes from within. You can be presented with every fact under the sun, in so many different ways, but ultimately it's up to you (the audience) to make that change yourself. I can't make anyone listen to me. Even if I phrase my thoughts in a completely different manner, there's zero guarantee that it works.
The rhetoric I'm using, is the rhetoric that worked on me.
This is a natural phenomenon for all kinds of labels, I think.
Shitty antisocial people have a tactic of attaching themselves to positive sounding labels, as a way of preemptively deflecting criticisms of their personality.
So like Christianity used to be held in high regard as a moral authority in society, and as a result lots of mean spirited people become really intensely religious in order to associate themselves with that moral authority and assert themselves as a representative of that authority.
But of course this is just a superficial ploy, and most people understand that these people still suck. Because of this, at a large scale people start to correlate being intensely passionate about "virtuous" movements with socially intelligent bullying and douchebaggery.
This in my opinion is not a "woke" problem in itself, but the natural cycle of social branding. Moralism needs to constantly distance itself from the people who would aspire to be seen as moral, and movements need to constantly reinvent themselves to avoid being corrupted by the people they are composed of.
No offense but why even share this article? Why give it clicks? Why even discuss it? This topic is so incredibly played out and boring. Free speech folks whine about speech being used freely. "Woke" people ruined my life for spreading hate- no, you are just finally facing consequences for being a jerk.
Legitimately, for what purpose are we engaging with this?
Because it’s highly relavent to the political and cultural discourse in the US. The premise of the discussion is that „wokeness“ is culture on the way out for both the left and the right. As impactful as the cultural moment was, it’s dying will be equally impactful. There is merit in examining cultural movements while they are happening and changing, especially along a large swath of society.
You claim it’s played out and boring but it’s a topic I haven’t seen come up very much on Tildes, the group I’ve shared it with. If you feel it’s too boring for you, you’re absolutely free to ignore the post. Or likewise share a more constructive argument that furthers the discussion instead of attempting to shut it down, for example.
I disagree that asking "for what purpose are we engaging with this", "why give this clicks", and "why share this article" are trying to shut down discussion. I'm explicitly inviting a discussion about why this is something we are focusing time and effort on. I think there's also a lot of merit in discussing why articles like this get created in the first place, considering who's pitching the discussion (I don't exactly see the NYT as unbiased on this issue for a dozen different reasons) and their biases/incentives, and ultimately whether this is even worth discussing given these contexts. For example, I agree that examining cultural movements is important, but I heavily disagree that this article is even attempting to do so in any critical manner. It's an opinion article in NYT seemingly designed to generate clicks and engagement- I mean hell, the very first quote literally starts with "Did woke go too far?"
I appreciate you sharing that this is something you haven't seen come up much on tildes. I've been here a long time and seen a lot of these kinds of articles, which is part of the reason I posed the question.
In an effort to further a discussion, I'd love to hear any thoughtful arguments on why this is a topic that doesn't warrant engagement. What biases and incentives do you see the NYT as having in posting this article? Why is the NYT, to you, a biased publication on this topic? You say you have a dozen reasons, I'd love to hear six, ten, or even all of them.
You seem passionate about this issue being brought up, at least in this context. I'd be very interested to hear the motivations behind that passion.
Keeping that discussion within the context of the piece, I'd love to hear responses other than attacking 'fascists' and 'nazis' for hate speech when the major premise is that woke speech is on the decline also within progressive circles.
Did woke go too far? What are your thoughts on that?
This topic doesn't warrant engagement precisely because the source material isn't critically engaging with it. This is a discussion between "a Times Opinion culture editor", a "writer and culture critic" and "the New York magazine writer". Explain to me how any of these folks can be considered experts on culture? Linguistics? Politics? They're writers and editors, not scientists. I don't see a single figure in their discussions, nor really any important nods to notable people studying culture or politics. I think it's equally noteworthy that this is an opinion piece, published in the NYT in their online platform that's heavily framed as clickbait for the reasons I already mentioned.
If you really want to have an engagement in good faith, I need to see good faith before I bother to take on any educational burden. Rather than asking me leading questions like "what biases and incentives do you see the NYT as having", show me that you're engaged by pointing out what biases the NYT has (a quick google search can reveal that to you), what biases an opinion piece by writers might have, and how those aren't of concern or might be addressed before asking for my thoughts - that would show me that you've actually done some research on the topic or actively engaged with it rather than hoping for others to educate you. In addition you talk about the "major premise" and yet it's just three writers and editors having a very non-scientific discussion. Is "woke speech" on the decline in progressive circles? I hardly see an academic definition on what wokeness might entail, let alone any papers studying linguistic drift, culture, or politics. I don't feel particularly interested in engaging with a hypothesis that doesn't come from a place of good faith in the first place. Who are these editors and writers and why should I care what they think when the incentives of this article are so clearly aligned on clickbait and emotional engagement?
It's literally a culture editor, culture critic, and writer for a cultural magazine. Even though they aren't academics or researchers, surely they are heavily exposed in their work, knowledge, and probably education to have informed discussions. Holding such a lofty post at a national newspaper are definitely bonafide credentials to discuss a topic, regardless of anyone's personal feelings towards that publication's supposed stance on the issue.
May I, respectfully, point out to you that you posed questions first to me. You have shown no good faith by your standards by giving salient examples and have instead posed leading questions to me. Why should I make effort to actually engage with those questions and your post when no effort or good faith was given to me in the first place?
This argument holds a lot more water when the discussion is of any substance. I see none. As I already stated, no facts, no figures, no definitions, no studies, no scientists mentioned- it's all just hand-waving and engagement bait. Hell, the very least they could do is at least point out arguments the other side might have and attempt to address them (basic debate principles) but they don't even do that, do they?
Yes, I asked why I should treat this with good faith. You can't then put the good faith burden back onto me because I don't want to engage with something that is bad faith in the first place. I've pointed out incentives present in online platforms and present in opinion pieces, I've pointed out explicit use of engagement language. I'm actively trying to engage with this in good faith, but without these issues being addressed I see no way in which I can engage with this in good faith.
If you want to have a discussion grounded in good faith then you need to present a source grounded in good faith in the first place. Or, if you'd prefer to start the discussion here, you need to address the potential sources of bad faith to show that you are actively engaged in the first place.
I was never actively engaged, you engaged me which brought me here. I posted a piece that inspired thought and self-reflection in myself. That does not always need to be backed up by facts, figures, and definitions, we do it all the time with art and writing and we can certainly find thoughtfulness by watching people having discussions and then talking about what they discussed. You directed questions to me and I addressed them, I don't think it's out of order for me to do the same. Again, you engaged me and not the other way around - I responded in good faith to that initial engagement and am now disengaging from it.
Because the starting point was this article, which I believe to be engagement bait. It's not treating the topic seriously.
They don't and it's possible to have a good faith discussion about something without it, but this is published article with supposed "experts". If we're operating from that start point, we need to assess whether that's true. It's my opinion that these are not experts, at all, and the 'discussion' is just smoke and mirrors. They don't care about having anything resembling an actual discussion because their goal is simply to bring in revenue via clicks. The content is functionally irrelevant to them.
In my case it's more that I'm exhausted about having bad faith discussions about it. But I guess that's always going to be true for someone who belongs to a group which is the target of weaponizing discussions like this.
Could you be a bit more precise in your definition of “wokeness” here? I think that may be contributing to the churn in deeper comments.
It's not my definition, it's the participants' in the discussion I've linked to. I'll defer to the article instead of potentially mangling something I didn't even write.
How did the participants define it, then?
You keep referring to a "wokeness movement" without ever defining terms.
I'm going to ask you not to engage with me further in this comment section. You have insinuated both that I am attempting to spread hateful ideology and questioned whether I have an agenda because of a quotation mark. Your behavior towards me is making me feel angry and I don't want that.
As I've stated to you before in another comment. I am referencing the discussion that is linked to, where they discuss "wokeness." It is never my word, I have never here discussed any of my views on it, if you want to understand how it is defined or what I'm referring to then I urge you to confront the source material.
Have a good day and please don't engage with me again in this topic.
Your comment is needlessly personal, inflammatory, accusatory and paranoid.
The first time you talked to me, years ago, you accused me of being a white American alt right. I'm an Afro Brazilian progressive left wing who never left the country. You were very aggressive.
Try to relax a bit with the implications. Not everyone is trying to get you.
Note, in this case, I believe the “you” being used is directed at the author of the article, (or maybe even the fictional person “harmed” in this scenario) rather than the person posting it.
I personally agree with the sentiment being expressed - when you have people taking a broad “this movement is good / this movement is bad” stance, it’s going to really difficult to get any meaningful discussion out of it.
It’s great at generating arguments though, I think, which seems to have been successful in this case!
I'm not going to ask if you read the article but you may have overlooked something.
That doesn't come up in the discussion linked to, in fact it gets pretty nuanced at times about what worked in the "woke" movement and what didn't. What was a stretch and what is just human decency.
Remember that the comment you're defending was posted without having read or watched the linked discussion and a complete unwillingness to engage with it.
I don't think that the transcription of the linked video has a lot of substance to it.
In the beginning of the article, it looks like they're defining "wokeism" as the specific use of a set of words, in a misguided attempt to be inclusive. It's a way of poking fun at the sillier parts of trying to be respectful and inclusive.
I think that comparing the usage of "Folx" (which I've never seen, but may exist) to the usage of various slurs is pretty wild.
My personal definition of "woke" is being aware that my experiences aren't the same as others' experiences, and wanting to listen to those that may know better. If someone wants me to use specific pronouns, I'm going to try my best to do so, and I'd like it if they told me about it!
In that case, I don't think that anything is "worse off", and I don't think they make a case for it.
They don't ever really define "wokeism" in the transcription, to the best of my knowledge. They suggest that it's just a rebranding of "political correctness", but I don't think they get any more definitive than that. I think it's worth pointing out that both "woke" and "politically correct" are right-wing-slanted terms.
In my opinion, the left-wing-slanted version of the same concept would be "open-mindedness", or "kindness-as-default".
It's a difficult thing to discuss in a productive way.
Can you please quote that part? I think I may have missed where they make that comparison.
I didn't feel that they were trying to make that case. Betteridge's Law and all, the answer to the headline question seemed to be a "no" to me. They definitely point out some excesses of the movement, and what social movement doesn't have its excesses, but I didn't walk away from the discussion feeling like they were trying prove the title. The title was probably chosen by an editor anyway.
I think you're right but I found the "definition," to use that term loosely, in the entire context of the conversation.
The term may have been coopted by right-wing groups but I think it definitely originated in progressive circles in the wake of George Floyd's murder, if I'm remembering correctly.
Agree and disagree. I think I've seen some productive discussions in the comment section already and even if it is difficult I don't think we shouldn't at least try.
I asked why it was being discussed. I then made a general statement about "free speech folks". Please, help me understand how this is "personal"?
Inflammatory is something designed to incite anger... unless you find yourself aligned with one of the groups I mentioned and reading into my comment and abstracting that I'm attacking you specifically, I don't see it. But maybe I'm blind to my own biases - help me understand?
Accusatory? Absolutely, towards the specific bad behavior I'm calling out (people being a jerk and facing consequences for it).
Paranoia? Who or what am I being paranoid about? Paranoia means distrusting someone without reason. I specifically called out a group of people exhibiting bad behavior and said I wasn't feeling sorry for them. I didn't exactly state they were distrustful but I suppose you could interpret that from my language. I'm certainly not exactly feeling anxious or fearful towards towards jerks who get what's coming to them. So help me understand where the paranoia is either.
I find it interesting that you assume I'm implicating... well, really anyone besides explicitly 'free speech folks' who are whining about speech being used freely or jerks facing the consequences of their actions. I don't think anyone is 'trying to get me'.
Why do you think I posted what I did? Help me understand how you read this comment, because I really have no idea where you're going with this. I'm genuinely flabbergasted as to how you're perceiving me and would love to understand it.
I'll just repost the long video essay on "Why the New York Times Loves Asking Stupid Questions".
Oh great. Not only are conservatives manufacturing outrage against things like wokeness... but now formerly liberal establishments are getting in on the act.
Thank you for sharing this. I have been hearing from those close to me that the NYT is not to be trusted, and this video reaffirms that with facts and evidence. Especially appreciative of the push towards the end towards independent media.
I agree with that Coylar person. Probably cause I’m closer in age than I am to the millennial person.
I think the millennial person’s framing about the pronoun conversation is the norm around here and was the norm around the internet for 10 years or so. To act like it’s not a big deal to just call someone Xe\Xim or something. That’s it’s just polite and blah blah blah. That’s part of the framing that I think unnerved people. It’s like you’re trying to one, inconvenience people by changing what they’ve been used to calling others for decades and then secondly pretending it’s not a big deal and that actually it’s such a minimal statement. The pronoun stuff requires a lot of active participation from everyone that it’s just not reasonable to be like “well actually it’s not even a big deal just call them what they want.”
I do think it’s interesting that it’s not brought up that the “left” was transgressive in the 00s and were pushing the boundaries of what we could say and do. And that there were people during the woke 1 era that were still doing that. Look at Nick Mullen with the CumTown podcast or ChapoTrapHouse. But they would get called fascists, racists, whatever by the more in line woke crowd.
Pronouns really don't require more active participation than remembering someone's name. You can even avoid using them if you're not sure about it.
And very few people use neopronouns to the point that much of the complaints about them are overblown hype by the media or coded "I don't respect binary trans people either."
But idk, even with neopronouns, it's the equivalent of telling someone from another country that you can't pronounce their name so you'll call them "Becky" instead. I have a Kyrgyz colleague and I'm not an ass to her because her last has functionally a pronoun at the end of it ("-kyzy" a patronymic but functions to gender her) because not only is it her name but it's also a big cultural deal for folks to have traditional surname spellings instead of Russian ones.
Is that "woke" (derogatory)? Or just respect given with a bonus of cultural learning? Singular "they" is old AF but is still a fight. Is that "wokeness" (derogatory) too?
I could probably count on one hand the number of times I've encountered a person who insisted on neopronouns and didn't also include they/them as an option, and every time I did it was in some very niche online space. And I'm not totally sure that at least one of those times wasn't someone doing an "attack helicopter" style troll, either. I'm not saying that people who only prefer neopronouns don't exist - and if I met someone who went by fae/faer of xe/xem I'd do my best to honor that, although I've always been a little iffy on how xe/xem is supposed to be pronounced so if it was irl I'd probably fumble it pretty hard - but it's got to be a vanishingly small percentage of the population as a whole for all the attention it gets.
It's more common among my college students to see multiple sets of neopronouns, but they also still mostly use they. (Bug pronouns were new to me) And like, I'm too gender apathetic to actually care, but I think if I were I'd be a fae/they. (Xe/xem is usually pronounced zee/zem but just like a name, someone will usually correct you or tell you if they pronounce it differently. Like Ajyah is Asia, or A-jai-ah or Andrea is An-dree-a or Ahn-dray-a.)
But also probably most of them will settle on either they or a binary pronoun they like long term out of cultural momentum. It's kind of sad but also practical. Like, eh. I'm she/they because I don't want to deal with it and my lack of gender attachment mean it isn't dysphoric.
I'm probably hyper-scrupulous about names and pronouns with my students in part because a) other staff aren't and b) we may be the only space a student can try things out.
Yeah college is definitely a space where people should be able to experiment with identity and figure out what works for them. I assume that means that sometimes you get people who are a little annoying with how they're putting that out into the world, but that's to be expected and honestly "a little annoying" isn't exactly the end of the world. Young people are frequently a little annoying, it goes with the territory. I'm glad your students have somebody safe they can try pronouns out with.
The only genuinely off-putting experience I've had surrounding pronouns was someone insisting that others should use capitalized pronouns because this individual identified as divine, and accusing people of transphobia when they balked at that (or just didn't clock that "They/Them" was different than "they/them" to this person). It blew over pretty quickly, though, and this was in a pretty obscure, very lefty online space so it's not like that's anybody's daily experience.
I guess in the long run, I don't think any of this should be that big of a deal to anybody. Sure there might be some friction with having to remember someone's pronouns or being corrected, but social friction and etiquette are a thing that people deal all the time, and have dealt with forever. In some modern societies, you need to be conscious of someone's age, gender, and social status to know how you need to address them, after all, but American's get SO mad about the singular they, of all things.
Yeah, that's the thing. My college students are frequently annoying, very rarely is that pronoun related. There are easily 20 other things I could come up with right now that irritate me about the youth of today as I shake my fist at a cloud. Most of them work through most of those things. It's developmentally appropriate annoyingness. But it's why the furor over having to use pronouns is bullshit.
There's a creator whose videos I see sometimes who debates (baits) conservatives and asks for name and pronouns. I have no idea what he actually talks about with them, because the videos I see are the ones where the (always a) guy responds "I don't use pronouns." To which the creator responds, ok I'll just buzz you every time you use a pronoun then and it turns into buzz buzz buzz buzz because the callers dont have a clue what a pronoun is and would rather die on the hill than say "he/him.
People would have you believe that's what meetings in higher ed are like. They're not. There's been a shift from everyone saying their pronouns to only trans people and particularly staunch allies saying them. And it's ok and also is sad IMO.
I have not met somebody with Divine pronouns, But I would probably have made the point that you can't force anyone to recognize your Divinity because that infringes on freedom of religion. I also would probably have tried to do what they asked in text, and if they were that annoying or aggressive about it, then not talked to them much. Because trans folks can be assholes
I looked up bug pronouns (bugself, "bug is going to the store") and...okay, whatever. Unusual but doesn't affect or bother me.
But divine pronouns? What are those?
The person above me reference someone who identified as "Divine" and insisted on having capitalized They/Them Pronouns (like being God vs god.) I've never heard of it before either. IMO the issue is it sounds like they were a jerk, not their pronouns.
I'm like, 75% sure it was an attack helicopter thing
This tracks but like, I LARP as a Fae on the internet, who am I to judge without knowing
The usual number that gets thrown around is that 0.5% of the population is in some way shape or form transgender. I feel like that's way too high but let's just say that that's the number. Probably less than 1% of those 0.5% want to use these neopronouns. So yeah, vanishingly small percentage - yet brought up over and over as a point by anti LGBT+ people. I have met exactly 1 person who used something out of the ordinary, "it" as a pronoun. Then maybe 2-3 people using "they". The rest dozens of trans people that I know and have met are all the usual binary he or she. It could definitely be an age thing too. People 30+ don't really hang out in those online spaces.
They exist, yes, but it's a minority of a minority of a minority. But it's so useful for the anti crowd, it's such a great feeling of outrage for them. Free speech right!? But yeah, it's just the same deal all over again that was (still is) a thing that racists like to do about criminals of a minority ethnicity or minority immigrants. It exists, yes, but they're blowing it up to be a big deal when it isn't at all.
It's a good point about it being not much different from non-English names because I feel like I've seen this same cynical energy about pronouns being redirected to Indigenous names here in Canada, where a lot of boomer types have been increasingly complaining about places and things being renamed back to their original Indigenous names. The complaints always have the same tenor as the ones about pronouns, from "How am I supposed to remember that?" and "If I can't easily assume what I can call it, it's too much".
It takes two seconds to learn how to address someone or something, as long as you don't go in wishing you didn't have to.
I’m going to push back on the indigenous naming of things. “šxʷməθkʷəy̓əmasəm Street” as well as Musqueamview is a stupid thing to do. Even if I could remember this, it’s not physically possible for me to communicate this without cut and paste. And that’s only about half the technical burden of this dual naming monstrosity.
Musqueamview is totally fine with me. I do not care about replacing Trutch Street. I am supportive of renaming things that were named after assholes.
https://vancouver.ca/news-calendar/musqueamview-street-signs-unveiled-today-at-community-celebration.aspx
Sorry, I'm going to push back on the push back. No one has caught fire and exploded because there's an alternate street name; you can type "Musqueamview" or "šxʷməθkʷəy̓əmasəm" into Google Maps and it works just fine. Similarly, you can type in "Île de Vancouver" (or, maybe you can't, and you need to physically communicate that only with copy/paste, despite French being an official language of the country) and get Vancouver Island just fine.
My personal opinion is that this is a powder keg that some virtue signalling politicians lit up in order to score points, then it predictably blew off their arms -- no one has ever accused politicians of being too intelligent. Naming the street using the Musqueam language's preferred orthography is not an inherently stupid thing to do; it's only stupid in this moment because people are reactionary and heavily influenced by our media's framing of their reality. As of 2026, a substantial amount of voting citizens that see anything vaguely related to the First Nations will instantly pee themselves screaming about rights, rolling and thrashing in the mud, begging for a conservative politician to make the scary indigenous people go away.
I don’t even know what point you are trying to make here.
Île de Vancouver is easy to type. I long press the letter I. This is a standard letter in one of the two official languages of Canada. Even without the accent, Ile de Vancouver is easily recognizable.
This isn’t about indigenous people. I would be as irritated if some politician decided to legally rename a street in Chinatown using hanzi or a street in little Japan in kanji.
My point is that this is a bad take:
It is in fact a fine thing to do in any sane country, with sane people. We do not live in sane times.
It is for the ravenous hordes of conservative voters that are screaming about repealing DRIPA, ending wokeness, etc. A true statement is that it isn't about indigenous people for you, but it absolutely is for others.
Vancouver is built on unceded First Nations land, as they note in every meeting run in the darned city. This land wasn't owned by the Chinese or Japanese. There are valid reasons for wanting First Nations names to be used here.
Just to clarify: are you aware of the state of politics in BC right now? Issues like this are important because they're galvanizing the public against First Nations, in a moment where the provincial Conservative party is well positioned to fan the flames and wreck havok in the next election. I'm aware that this whole kerfuffle has been broadcast across the nation (and potentially into other countries) in order to ruffle conservative feathers, so it's plausible that you're simply commenting on someone else's local politics without understanding the broader context they live in.
I was born in and live in Vancouver. I’m fully immersed in the local political situation.
Sick, same. So my point stands: I push back on the notion that this renaming is stupid. It should've been handled better, but it is literally less than the least that we could do w.r.t. reconciliation. Equally, in the current political climate, backlash against trivial matters -- such as adding a second name to a renamed street -- is being used as a cudgel to divide us, and cause harm to minorities.
Please feel free to disagree; I'm just restating here to clarify my point. Not trying to convince you of anything, I just don't want to see a statement which furthers our current divides go unaddressed in a public setting. I won't respond to this comment if you'd like to have the last word.
In my city there's a few street signs in Chinese - this is Odense, Denmark which has very few actual Chinese immigrants, it's solely to cater to tourists.
The signs are also in Danish right next to them. So it seems very easy to ignore. Why does it irritate you?
I don't have an issue with information being presented in multiple languages.
Then we're talking past each other. I thought we were talking about the article you linked above? With the picture of the sign that is in both the native language and the English language?
I would actually have no issue if it were just a sign and not the legal name of the street. I am in favour of multilingual signage. I also support the road side display of place names in native languages, eg “Siyám Smánit” for the Chief.
If there's a way to spell it with standard English keyboard, and there's also a sign right next to it in those characters, what's the issue? It's the same street name, just in a different language's alphabet.
Is it also stupid and a monstrosity that they printed signs for Spadina Ave. in Mandarin Chinese in Toronto to celebrate the fact that it's Chinatown? Greek signs on the Danforth? Urdu and Punjabi in some other areas? People can still refer to those streets with their Latin alphabet characters.
And also, this is a pretty unique case. As far as I can tell, it's the only time a renaming to Indigenous names used the Indigenous alphabet. From what I can tell, it's to try to acknowledge a language killed by colonialism there. Otherwise all other Indigenous renaming is using the Latin alphabet. To use this exceptional situation to suggest all Indigenous renaming should be pushed back on is quite the ethos.
Not a single one of those is the legal name of the street, so it’s completely irrelevant to me. As I mentioned further down in the thread, I would not care in the slightest if “šxʷməθkʷəy̓əmasəm” were simply printed on the sign and I am in fact in favour of informational place name signage in non-English/French languages, including indigenous languages.
What does it matter if it's the legal name when you can still use the Latin alphabet to refer to it everywhere? The legal spelling of a street has never been important.
Interestingly enough, at my work place which is decently diverse the immigrants who came here with difficult to pronounce names have all taken it upon themselves to 'create' themselves an easily pronounceable western name to go by. In fact I actually don't even know their birth names at all and they are just now known by the western name they chose when they immigrated. Sometimes it's a shortened 'easier' version of their birth name (closer to a nickname) and sometimes it's a completely new name which has nothing to do with their birth name. The important part is that they chose to do this automatically so they could integrate into society here more successfully.
This is very common, and sometimes it's voluntary integration, sometimes it's cultural expectations, and sometimes it's "I do not want to hear 35 different mispronunciations of my name; call me Dorothy."
But similarly, that's also falling into my point about respecting what people choose to be called. I always check with a student if that's what they prefer vs feeling expected to do it and call them what they want. But my coworker wanted to be called the full, correct version of her name instead of the more easy diminutive version she'd used previously and so we did.
Yes, an effort should absolutely be made to call people what they want, anything else is really being an asshole. But there is something to say about trying to make things easier for those around you. If someone chooses to go with their difficult to pronounce name or use irregular gender pronouns they should accept that people are going to screw it up and as long as it isn't coming from a hateful place they should just accept that is how it is going to be. My real first name has 2 very common spellings and when in a situation where it doesn't matter and someone asks which spelling I use I usually tell them to spell it anyway they want because it doesn't matter to me (this actually gets me weird looks sometimes).
I don't agree that using your name, chosen or given, or non-binary pronouns means you should just accept it. It's perfectly fine to set a boundary of being addressed correctly even if the failure is apathy.
And people are used to it. Most people do just take it. You usually only hear otherwise if someone's had a really bad day. But the misgendering happens even when it's a binary pronoun. It's not about it being too hard. It's usually about not respecting the person's identity even if not "out of malice."
Yeah usually uninitiated people just call it as they see it. I sure as hell wouldn't expect anyone (except those close to me) to ever get it right ever when I'm a stranger to them. And I think 99% of us don't either. Yeah, it really sucks, and it would be nice if things were the other way, but people don't usually go out of their way for random people.
Thankfully I now pass as what I feel and so I can hardly recall the last time I got called wrongly by a stranger. I got sad, upset, annoyed, etc. in the past when it happened but that was my lot in life and the world isn't a safe space. It sucks, but that's the way that it is, and the vast majority of us do accept it (and really, really, really dislike those videos like the it's ma'am one which no matter how you slice it only serves to give the hateful ones more ammunition).
My Son-in-law (mid 20's) is dating someone who identifies as 'non-binary' and goes by 'they-them'. No problem, I support people's choice to present and call themselves what they want and I will respect that as much as possible. The problem my brain has is his partner physically presents as what my brain considers to be fully 'female'. So I screw it up sometimes, I find I have to consciously pre-think out my sentences to make sure I am using they/them because my brain sees a 'female' and says 'she/her' automatically. They have never make a big deal out of it and I never make a big show of apologizing when I do screw it up, I hope they respect that I am trying my best and I fully support their right to be non-binary and present however they wish.
For what it's worth as someone else who is non-binary, even a quick check in with them (text message, 1:1, whatever) just stating this goes a long way. They almost certainly notice the effort, but it never hurts to hear direct support.
Ah, cool. Polish works that way too. I have a -ski name (of which people are frequently rude about pronunciation), which traditionally would be altered to -ska for a woman. e.g. Marie Curie's maiden name was Skłodowska, and her father would have been Skłodowski.
Ah that's cool, I'm aware of the Russian versions of that too, but the "kyzy" was new to me and the fact that due to their history it used to be disallowed.
I think it's awful how many folks want to flatten cultural nuances like this. The world is so much richer for "weird" (to us) names and different traditions.
How many millennials do you know and where is here? This is just so far from anything I’ve ever experienced as an sjw/snowflake millennial.
I agree that it's a big deal, and I'm not sure why people pass it off as not being a big deal. But it depends on the relationship you have to the person in question.
It definitely should not be minimized that it's a pretty big change if it's someone you've known for years and decades that's transitioning. If you are close to that person, you make an effort and it will become second nature after a while.
If you are not close to that person.. well who cares? If people expect you to remember pronouns of some far removed cousin or acquaintance who you never really talk to, then the problem is with them. But if you get reminded of their pronouns, you just say: oh right my bad. And then you move on with your day. It's not a big deal to forget it when they aren't really in your social circle.
Eh, I don't know... Is it? I transitioned relatively recently, and the only people for whom it didn't just "click immediately" were my grandparents, who are very old and thus their brains are not functioning that well anymore. Everyone else - my mom and dad, my partner, my friends, etc. pretty much just got used to it within 1-2 days.
Social constructs are artificial and made by people and are also very real. National borders are social constructs, so is money, and time and etiquette. They're meaningful to many people and to others they're stupid fabrications.
Gender roles, gender expression and gender identity aren't unique in being both meaningful and meaningless in turn. They're just the target of a campaign of hatred. There were women living in Boston Marriages, "confirmed bachelors", sworn virgins who lived as men, children born with both "spirits" in them throughout history and most of the time people just went "yeah that's Steve, he wasn't born Steve but he's been Steve for a decade. He and his wife always bring her famous spinach puffs." and moved on.
Of course it is!!!! The person they've known and loved for decades suddenly made a huge change in their life. That's a huge deal, especially the parents. They probably nurtured and loved someone in a certain way, always thought of their child that way, bought gendered toys, had gendered expectations of the future.
I'm happy for you that it seems to have clicked so fast with most of your family and friends. 1-2 days is definitely not the norm in my experience + friends' experience.
What I'm saying is that, at least in my culture and "extended circle", that "huge" part was just not really a thing. It was never an integral part of my identity for people because there was a distinction between the person themselves as an "entity" vs their gender. My parents specifically said, among other things, "why were you even thinking this is a big deal lmao", so I just genuinely can't comprehend why it's a big deal for some people.
It's pretty damn hard to re-teach yourself a not-too-close inlaw changing their name to something nonsensical (Think like changing name to "usb-c").
But that doesn't make it OK to just give up and make the decision to deadname them intentionally.
I've never encountered a single person in my entire (real) life that used neopronouns. It's a phenomenon that's so vanishingly rare in the real world that it really isn't even worth considering.
The other thing is that discussions around pronoun usage in general is usually theoretical. There's a practical reason for that.
In English, virtually the only time gendered pronouns are ever used is when talking about a person, not to them. Usually, when you talk about someone, that person isn't there, so they're not really in a position to be upset about your pronoun usage anyway.
If someone tells me their pronouns are xe/xey/xeyself, they're not going to be around when I use them. If I saw them, I'd say "hey what's up <xeyname>" or "how are you doing?". Because I don't go up to men and say "Hello, he!".
Because of that fact, all of these confrontations and arguments that people talk about are purely theoretical. They don't happen in real life, because that's just not how the English language works.
We waste a lot of energy talking about something that doesn't even really exist for the most part.
I mean, there are plenty of situations where you might be in a group setting, talking about something that someone present did or said. Like, a work meeting where you say something like, "I asked Brenda to research x topic, and she will be reporting on her findings in a moment" or whatever. It's not that far fetched. I agree that people's problems with pronouns are way overblown, but it's not that hard to imagine lots of scenarios where you might use a pronoun for someone in a casual setting where there are more than 2 people involved.
From looking at the discussion on this thread, it kind of seems like everyone's perception of this whole topic has been primarily shaped by online "discourse" to the point where the whole thing seems incredibly warped. And you can't just say "online isn't real life" because of course it is - an increasingly significant proportion of our time is spent in online spaces, which is something that I am coming to believe may be much more of a negative than a positive.
But I think Twitter in particular probably had an outsized effect on shaping people's thinking about this subject, and Twitter is such a distortion of reality. It functioned to amplify the loudest, most strident voices in every discussion, and was prone to forming mobs about every topic, not just this one. There are a lot of comments about progressives "crucifying" people for getting pronouns wrong, and I don't doubt that happened, but I suspect it was primarily driven by Twitter and similar online spaces. I think a huge component of our current political/social disfunction is mainly due all of us being subjected to a social experiment where me move all of our collective discourse onto a set of platforms that seem to have been the worst possible places for those discussions to take place in any meaningful, substantive way.
It seems like this article is really dialing up the friction here and it kind of feels like that's the whole point of the article. "Wokeness" is this undefined, untethered thing that we can all define by our own standards. For some it might be near to it's origin of being aware of structural violence. To others it seems like it's online bullying and purity tests. To the rest it seems like it comes down to pronouns.
Maybe we can agree that we would like to talk about one of those topics: liberal purity tests, treatment of trans people in the USA, a rise in fascist ideology; and that it might be help us to understand more about our current moment. But it feels like lumping it into one article with a clickbait headline and a poorly defined subject has only had the intended effect of driving lots of engagement. Mostly in the form of rage at each other.
As long as civil rights and human decency and mutual respect etc. are not equal, then woke still has not gone far enough.
However as pertains to real world politics, actually changing things, at all possible of getting things done? Way too far.
It is realpolitik in a nutshell. Or rather, isn't.
You have to meet your opponents where they are. Like it or not, the US as a whole was not ready for non-binary people. Talking LGBT+ rights, it has for decades been warming up to, and increasingly accepting, gay people. Maybe transgender people. But non-binary people for some reason was too much and so the opponent lashed out and dragged the rope way to the other end into regressive politics. Society and politics will always be a back and forth between the wings, sometimes towards the center and unfortunately now going to the extremes.
I disagree. I think that this was an intentional targeted politicization of the trans umbrella when they lost their moral argument about same sex marriage and by proxy gay people in general. Much like how post Civil Rights the "moral majority" of evangelicals pivoted from being neutral on abortion (or even ok with it up til a much later ensoulment moment) to starkly anti-abortion was to keep their tax exempt status that segregated schools were going to lose.
The same thing is happening with trans folks now. It's not "too much" it's politicized, fomented hate. Even the NYT managed to figure it out.
It's no different than any other moral panic. They are doing this on purpose. Not because my using they/them pronouns is overwhelming and scary.
I'm with you on all of that. They don't think pronouns are scary, but they do think it's dumb and they don't want others to police how they speak. Be it how they (to them, out of nowhere and suddenly) can't use the r-word anymore, the fa-word, and in the past the n-word. It's uncomfortable more than dangerous or scary I guess.
But we won't win a culture clash by yoinking at the rope and making them fall over. It's won in many small tugs over a long period of time so that everyone gets used to their new footings and come to meet somewhere in the middle. Like it or not, being non-binary is not really something you see anywhere else than the far left. Not going to ever convince the far right of anything but maybe the center and center right can be.
They can say the words. They just don't want people to judge them for it, while they judge others for dozens of things.
This is no different than the right stirring up hatred of immigrants in the US and outright lying to create support for violence. Its ridiculous to say that the left went too far expecting people to be ok with Haitian or Somali refugees because people are scared of them.
If it wouldn't have been trans people it would have been someone else, it already is other people. And I cannot help that the people who are educated about other options for gender identities and around people open to it are the most likely to come out publicly as nonbinary. There are conservative trans people, there are definitely conservative non-binary people who are shamed into the closet by "my pronouns are fuck you".
Yes and I am agreeing with you. I explicitly said above that woke has not gone far enough. So I tried to say: so what? Where do we go from here? How do we make progress now?
This is not pragmatic politics. This will not create societal, cultural, wide, progress. This will create camp A and camp B and each will dig into trenches instead of finding common ground. That is not realpolitik. It is ideology which 90% of the planet will not agree on in any foreseeable future.
Realpolitik is to deal with what you have. Sticking to our ground not moving an inch is very much what I want to do as well. But it is not how we convince everyone to come along with us.
I just disagree with standing ground being a losing strategy or that being non binary is a bridge too far When folks respond to this overblown rage with very simple but popular statements like how everyone deserves to be allowed to work, rent or own a home, feed their families, or that everyone deserves equal protection under the law, even people we may not know well, not understand or disagree with, voters seem to go for it. When people get wishy washy about trans people or human rights in general, the left bails and the liberals are stunned to find the right winning.
You don't beat them by buying into the bullshit you beat them by having values and better marketing while pointing out how "they" want to end women's right to vote.
I mean even the Pope is standing his ground on the matter more than some pundits think Dems should.
Yeah I 100% get that.
A couple years ago we actually got a new spokesperson for the socialist party and he has been really good about dropping the identity politics stuff. Not because he or the party doesn't still believe it, but because they know it's a losing issue. Their focus or in your words marketing is great because he never bites when the right try to talk up and import American culture war stuff like what we have been discussing here today. And it seems to have won him and the party some ground.
I (not smoontjes) just feel like language is more personal for the user than this line of thinking credits. Sure, slurs are slurs, pronouns are pronouns, and gender is in the eye of the performer, but we spend years training to "use language properly", at penalty of failure in school, people build their worldviews through that language, and not only are we asking people to give up their (pathetic) guilty pleasures, not only to challenge how they interpret their own position in society by centering gender discomformity, but also to loudly proclaim that referring to someone in the third person is something that is now Deeply Personal and Very Simple and if you don't understand you should simply accept this and educate yourself, in the span of like one or two election cycles. I'll never not be woke in every sense of the term, but strategically, the language policing seems to have generated more victimization than it ever could have prevented.
Like you said elsewhere, this isn't a conversation that should be centered on the left going too far, or how wokism triggered the fascist hammer. That's been building for half a century, at least. But if we want to peel away at the people who simply vote for their wallet, we don't need to throw nonbinary people in the trash to say "we need to be strong in the face of strongmen, and that includes not letting their petty words set the bounds of discussion." Because that's what this is: taking the brute fact of misgendering and dismissal and mockery as an issue in itself, when it's only ever been growing pains. And no, that won't be fair to marginalized people. We can't make that transition without doing the hard work of revolution. But just because we can learn to respect neopronouns and sit with our uncertainty does not make it a ballotable issue. It means we (those of us who are less marginalized, not necessarily speaking for you) need to make private space for those more marginalized, and erode the gender binary through dissolving language, not put the vulnerable on a billboard and use confrontational public discourse that simply reifies a baggy temporary concept of gender which nobody in particular cares for (ie transmedicalism).
I assume you mean using "they" because we do refer to people in the third person all the time. I find it simple in part because it was for me, long before it was relevant to my identity. But this same case can be made for immigrants or Black people. You just want people to accept them as equals and not assume they're eating your cats? Without any effort?
No but I expect people to work through their shit when they have it. If a black person getting a job sends them into a froth about affirmative action (old) or DEI (new) sociologists can study why but that's still the frother being racist.
Kamala didn't talk about trans people hardly at all and there's still post mortems about how trans people lost the election. The fear of language policing, like the fear of trans people, is way larger than the either - because the right made it an intentional tactic to foment that fear to turn elections.
What you're describing already happens. Black folks are still called on to educate white colleagues about a black student's hair, but kindly and gently, not too mean; queer people still have to speak as often the only ones ensuring a student's name is respected at graduation, the Spanish speaking employee makes sure the name tag gets printed with the right accents, and people are pushing those basic policy platforms that would help everyone without ever mentioning minorities. That work is happening every single day. And then the right screams "YOUR GIRLS ARE AT RISK FROM MEN IN SPORTS AND CAT EATING HAITIANS" for six hours a night on Fox and none of it matters.
When it's an intentional strategy, and sure a manipulation of some of their co-opted victimizers, it's not because of anything "we" did, it's their choice.
No, I meant specifically neopronouns there, but also, that you get to choose how people refer to you in general. That's a fundamental paradigm shift. Previously people thought "there is man, there is woman, I use he for man, and she for woman", and 'they' floats as kind of a loose alternative in the mix without real value. Grammar, utilized by the speaker. Neopronouns are not generic, in how they've been discussed. They are not based on public information. While few people may actually utilize them, and fewer still throw fits about them being dismissed, it's not small potatoes. It's a foundational shift.
The difference between progressivism in gender and antiracism is that we have been working on antiracism for a long time. Abolishing the gender binary as a political project is, realistically, about thirty or forty years old. Not to mention that Race was established in the past four hundred years, meanwhile most linguistic genders have been either irrelevant to social gender or broadly aligned with the patriarchal binary for like twice as long, at least. One traces a real phenomenon, in the form of sexual dimorphism in ways that were central to society for as long as human history, even if it's always been more nuanced on the ground, and the other is European culture coping with being materially rooted in pure evil. We can throw away race entirely, and we lose nothing. Gender must be continually deconstructed to prevent the social reification of a binary, though.
The only reason that the right wing is able to muster these methods is because people are playing around on the level of representation instead of refusing to be legible to the dominant powers. Language is how they win, if we don't keep confounding their rhetoric. But no, let's keep insisting that the incidental reference to a person is necessarily correlated to their access to medical care.
I think this is spot on and an insight woefully missed by many LGBT+ advocates. The gay rights movement took decades after stonewall to win pluralistic acceptance, I saw many progressives take that win and run with it hoping to win equal acceptance for Trans and non-binary folks right after. Commendable, for the record I do support acceptance of those people, but they were blinded by their victory and (sometimes smugly) pushed too far on a topic that America just wasn't there on yet. Not to excuse inhumane treatment of minority groups in any way - we don't need to accept or condone their mistreatment - but it would have behooved advocates to recognize that gay rights took decades and that it would also take time to bring the same level of understanding to a largely naive and therefore resistant audience. It is sad but, as you said, it's realpolitik.
This frames the public as undeserving victims of aggressive progressives pushing LGBTQ issues, which is a right-wing canard.
In the US, right-wing politicians and commentators have been heavy on anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and policy since the rise of the alt-right, and it's accelerating drastically. Take a look at the graph on this page.
They attempt to hide this injustice by making it sound like they're defending the average person against a terrible enemy, but it's simply not true. They are the aggressors. The entire policy platform and social milieu of the political right in the US revolves around the idea of creating a sense of aggrieved victimhood in the dominant population by framing them as victims of minorities so that resulting perceived victimhood can be leveraged for political power.
Here's an excerpt from How Fascism Works by Jason F. Stanley that summarizes the concept:
Yes exactly. And I wrote a paper on Stonewall actually! And on gay rights. It's a few years ago now so my facts and stats are a bit muddy but my conclusion more or less was that trans rights/trans acceptance is where gay rights/gay acceptance was 30 years ago. I still think that's true and I still think that that's the pace of change.
People not usually engaged in LGBT+ circles need to get used to us because we are, by the very definition of the word, not normal. That's the way it was, the way it is, and the way it always will be. And progress is extremely slow but it will get there eventually as more conservative folk realize we aren't for some reason dangerous or anything.
(not aiming this comment at you, ~TreeFiddyFiddy, fwiw :3 just responding to the article)
^ I have never in my real life heard a single person -- white or otherwise -- describe themselves as "woke". This is an article targeting a cultural milieu that I don't exist in.
So instead I'll share something I learned the other day! The out-group homogeneity effect.
Probably something to keep in mind while thinking through these sorts of topics? A lot of the topics that the linked podcast transcript glazed over touch on the safety and rights of vulnerable populations, which is ... emotionally jarring for me, at least. But it seems important to avoid reading too much into others' reactions to all this, if only to avoid expanding the blast radius of those podcasters' poor takes into this community, too.
I'm sure there has been some small number of folks who have said "I'm woke" just like the black squares on Facebook and the safety pins and the blue bracelets and all the other "let me signal I'm ok" things which mostly pop up because some folks are super earnest and naive and others are just hopping what they think the next train is. It speaks to the fragility described in the article if when those gestures are read as functionally meaningless and not met with warm embraces, certain people's responses are "fuck you I won't support you anymore." It's very reminiscent of the dating app experience of "hey girl what's up" and when no response is forthcoming "fuck you fat bitch."
Personally I never see anyone say "you're literally worse than hitler" for some sort of "unwoke" admission but I'm sure a jackass has somewhere.
Someone said "oh it's not about pronouns it's about white women doing DEI trainings" in which case I say then the article/discussion could have been about "white women doing DEI trainings" and not "wokeness". I talked about a quote from the transcript about pronouns and it seemed directly relevant to the conversation both as it is and as a stand-in for having to bother to do any effort to get along with people.
I mention this because let's distill it down, like is the problem really someone who says I'm woke? No that's just awkward. Is the problem pronouns? Nope that's just polite. Is the problem you can't say slurs? No, you can say them, society just judges you for it. So is the problem that society disapproves of your slurs? Yeah. That's part of it.
But the articles never get there. They insist on circling around "who made them this way" with any answer other than "they chose it" and certainly without any "well it's been an intentional courting of and support for these alt-right pipelines for years, you know the way the gang in the first TMNT movie had a skateboard park and video games but were actually a secret ninja villain org? It's that.
I'm genuinely trying not to make a monolith out of "them" in any sense because "they're" not. I just want people to own their own actions and be honest about their motivations - and if they're not honest that "we" or at least "I" don't believe the bullshit.
I'm certainly not aiming this comment at you, either, fwiw. If anything, I'm aiming it at myself: I probably burned my morning + a chunk of the afternoon fuming about this podcast transcript, and I needed to pen a reminder to myself to "remember the human", then check out. Hitting enter was intended to share that sentiment with anyone else in a similar predicament.
No I understand, I was just speaking on it, broadly because I do very much appreciate your post in general and this one in particular. I think it's an important reminder.
I also think when you're talking about people in an aggregate you're inevitably making some assumptions and generalizations and that's different than the instinct to say every single one of these people is a horrible, evil person who would kick a puppy.
When Sensationalism intermingles with Journalism, you're gonna have a bad time.
From the article: The right is known for using provocative language. But lately there’s been a push to be transgressive, even on the left — from the return of certain slurs to the removal of pronouns from bios. Nadja Spiegelman, a Times Opinion culture editor, is joined by the writer and culture critic Aminatou Sow and the New York magazine writer Brock Colyar to debate whether our culture is abandoning political correctness — and if so, why? Plus, stick around to hear what words Aminatou and Brock would like to ban.
This is why I hate the NYT.
"Provocative" is a really weird way of phrasing "saying obviously bigoted shit to piss people off intentionally."
In it's best light, provocative implies encouraging deeper thought. That's not what's happening. Ever.
"The right is known for being assholes to people who ask for a modicum of respect." is a much more accurate statement given the context.
I‘m not going to claim that the NYT is at the pinnacle of news organizations but I find their reporting relatively balanced in the scheme of things and a good source of reporting when also ingested alongside other news across a wider spectrum.
But this isn’t Vox. NYT writing is a little less streetwise and at least pretends to aim at a more sophisticated audience.
That’s literally the definition of provocative speech. I don’t know what you’re looking for exactly
I agree, though "provocative" literally means "tending to provoke" (i.e., piss people off intentionally) so maybe it's not a weird phrasing as much as a technical one. And it's used in an informal context that's inconsistent with that level of technicality, creating dissonance.
I feel the same way about "transgressive" as it's used here. The word literally means "exceeding a limit or boundary" which is... technically correct. But it doesn't tell the whole story. Some transgressions challenge people to broaden their conceptions of the world, to reconsider dogma, to wrestle with moral ambiguity. Other transgressions have no purpose other than to bully, shame, and marginalize. The former is expansive; the latter constricts. When the NYT lumps fascist transgressions and progressive transgressions into the same group, they're creating a false equivalence.
It's kind of like saying 'Halloween costume of questionable taste' to refer to blackface. The technical definition masks the profanity of the situation.
CBS recently reported '60% of Americans have trouble making ends meet.' Which is a really weird way of saying "Most people." It's not that it's wrong, but using percentages yanks the soul out of the headline and gives it the same tone as a stock ticker.
I wouldn’t say 60% of people counts as “most”. 60% of people is the majority of people. But I think you have to get above ~80% for it to start counting as most
Did they do that though? I think they pretty clearly indicate there's a difference between being transgressive for good reasons and for bad reasons.
At the end of the day, transgression is a neutral term. Its not necessarily good or bad. If you're transgressing against immoral norms, its good. If you're transgressing against moral ones, it's bad. It's transgression either way though.
I‘ll respectfully disagree with the framing here. The article is about the diminishing of woke speech and some of the missteps that may have come along with it. I don’t really see much equivocating going on other than to say it’s a phenomenon happening across political lines
It was 30 minutes of anecdotes and “feels” that concluded with the cancellation of “cados.” I appreciate you posting it but I also recognize I wasted 30 minutes.
This transcript made me feel like I’m falling behind again in language. I’ve never seen “folx” before and don’t see the point. Is “folks” not neutral enough? What is the r word? Republican? Racist? This bothered me enough that I wasn’t able to finish the transcript, I was mad they didn’t define anything despite complaining that word definitions are confusing.
"folx" comes from queer spaces
The "r-word" is the slur for people with intellectual disabilities.
Not defining things was one of the foundational issues of this piece
Appreciate the clarification.