Julie Burchill: "Why I loathe the woke"

The fact that those 'woke jeans' looked like big nappies did not go unnoticed.

This Saturday Night Live sketch is at least 4 year's old. It's not using "woke" in quite the same pejorative sense it might be used in the UK but it's very far from the ringing endorsement as a useful term some posters are suggesting. Quite the opposite.

Nobody has to give a shiny shit about whether black GC women feel alienated here. Hazel and others are trying to explain why some do.

If your right to lionise racists because they happen to be on the same side for one issue, your right to use appropriated language is more important to you than the impact of that language on another group of women well so be it.

If you can't comprehend the point trying thinking in these more familiar terms. You are passionate about an issue but the price of participation is collaboration and shared spaces with men who persist in sexist "banter", talk about the girlies, who lionise well known misogynists. Its their right to use whatever language they want after all. You question it - they reassert their male rights, reframe your points to a different meaning and tell you either you are deluded and stupid or you are trying to control them. Anything else is critical theory gawn mad after all.

Do you stay and smile for the mythical greater good or think "fuck this, I'll organise with women instead" which fragments the cause but protecs the right of men to go unchallenged in their sexism.

There are large areas of "progressive" politics which have always operated like this. Its used to keep people in their place and protect the rights of those with privilege.

As for JB - Ides isn't a million miles off, anyone who watched her volte face from "Wolfie" Burchill, champion of the proletariat to devoted Thatcherite in the 80s for the red top dollar could tell you that. I may find myself on the same side as her in one issue but I also remember she hasn't always been the great champion of women either and is just as likely to change her mind in the future.

Everyone who's arguing for the evolution of the word woke are the same people arguing to keep the word mother as an example, with it's original meaning.

Zipless Fuck is definitely Jong, and describes something entirely other than joyless sex.

Problem with Burchill is that she has been slowly Going Gammon - like her old mucker Tony Parsons did.

I think JB is fab - although she coined the phrase “zipless fuck” which still gives me the boak.

No, that was Erica Jong in her novel "Fear of Flying".

@beastlyslumber I’m going to have to investigate Erica - that’s a new name for me. My mum was a JB fan in the 80s and I remember reading a JB novel about all this joyless sex - much more exciting to read about on the cusp of teenage years than being a jaded 50 year old!

Nobody's getting '' angry? "

my point was only initially that using woke so broadly is tired, lazy, non-specific and actually often troubling to Black people
I will take your point on board. I wasn't aware of the history of the term until I read your first post.

Why are we all getting so angry about this? Metropolitan Canada is not the same as the UK - I’d like to think that (meeting in 2015 at UoT) shit wouldn’t fly in any UK university.

There are differences in language even amongst primarily English-speaking nations - and in the UK “woke” is very much a term used to describe those following dogma, without questioning the (any) logic behind it. A word used to describe the frustration we feel at those who refuse to think - and I very much hope, not with any conscious intent to appropriate a word meaning to combat racism.

I think JB is fab - although she coined the phrase “zipless fuck” which still gives me the boak.

I do take on the point about universities or any other place having policies.

It should be a requirement the policy is actually adhered to, instead of simply existing.

The irony is, I initially shared that story just to say that the rhetoric around “woke campuses” wasn’t always the full story, and that I knew of a couple of examples where what was reported didn’t match what people actually experienced. My point was to be careful buying in to the idea that universities are so woke these days that Black people or whoever control everything and “no-one can say anything without being called racist.” The story was just to say that sometimes this is a case of reversing victim hood - men silence and mock Black women then say white men are the most oppressed on campus, or yell “free speech” while not allowing women to speak. My point was just to be careful of stories about “wokeness” running the world, because that’s not always the case or the true story.

The entire thread has now derailed into something else, but the original point was in line with the discussion about whether rhetoric around wokeness is useful or descriptive. For example, the article I shared, more than one Black person clearly makes the point that so-called progressive spaces still maintain inequality. People talked about universities having policies that pretend to take racism and sexism seriously, but actually do nothing. They talked about how rhetoric around inclusion of sexuality is used but then racism is ignored. They talked about how there’s no monolith of “POC” and non-Black people can be racist. I think these are all points people in this thread would heartily agree with - that performative progressive discourse often masks actual inequality - and everyone did it without resorting to calling things “woke!” It actually demonstrates that we can raise these serious issues without resorting to lazy slurs that aren’t even descriptive of the issue. That article demonstrates the very concerns people have with empty progressiveness that is actually frequently regressive - and is something Black people also understand. We are actually on the same page - my point was only initially that using woke so broadly is tired, lazy, non-specific and actually often troubling to Black people so is not necessary.

Reports, not reliefs.

And as I said multiple times, the meeting I am talking about happened in 2015, 2 years before that article. I posted that article to refute posts expressing disbelief this could happen, showing this kind of behaviour in fact happens regularly and repeatedly. It was shared on social media but I’m hardly going to point you to the profiles of Black women talking about racism in 2015 so you can do this to them too. My university had swastika graffiti in the stairways and racist graffiti in the library so I’m really not sure why people don’t think white men would be gross at a meeting. Men are frequently abusive and get away with it. This is news on a feminist board? Wait until I tell you about how men rape women on campus with impunity!

Cross posted with Hazel there

Oh and why the fuck should hazels experiences of racism as a black person be automatically disbelieved?
Why are people taking the side of aggressive, racist men and trying to find excuses/justify them in the feminism forum instead of a black woman and her experiences?

I meant it’s telling of the hypocrisy of this discussion and the inconsistent reasoning and values being applied. Women’s stories matter unless it’s Black women. Racism matters when it can be used to critique the Trans movement but not if it asks you - not even to critique yourself, but simply to acknowledge its weight and impact. Believe women about abuse unless it’s racial abuse, then it doesn’t add up.

Perhaps I should have said a bunch of people with pronoun badges took up the chairs. I bet nobody would question that. Then you’d love that it happened. Sorry that it was men, though.

I’m actually baffled that you actually believe this idea that Black people have so much power that when we experience racism the whole world falls at our feet to amplify it. As this thread shows, talking about racism is exhausting, people disbelieve you, you face attacks and questions about your integrity, you get bullied, you get gaslighted, it wastes your time and energy - you think Black people want that in our lives? That we don’t often post about it privately, tell each other, try to deal with it in private so we don’t get flamed and harassed? In the story I linked, the woman wouldn’t give her name because she was so scared of the consequences, and you doubt that students in a racist meeting might not run to the papers at a time when “cancel culture on campus” stories were at an all time high? You think they wouldn’t fear rightly that it would be reported as them being fragile snowflakes? That what has happened here with people saying they’re lying wouldn’t happen?

Again, this entire board basically exists because women felt the media never reliefs threats on women, that the media is captured, that stories are ignored and buried, that women are scared to come forward except in places with fellow women. You know that, but then are surprised that Black women - among the most powerless people in society - don’t get platforms to speak?

I'm not the one being disingenuous, you are
Yep, gaslighting in action here - you're being clear as day yet others are making out they didn't say what they blatantly did!

That article doesn't really say anything about the meeting mentioned?

No one has disagreed that racist stuff happens on campus. The description however of that meeting was pretty vague, so it's very unclear what actually happened. Social media is the kind of place it's quite easy to imagine some really unpleasant interactions happening. But what supposedly happened at this meeting? Was it really, as described, a whole meeting of people taunting black students? And no one said anything? And what does it have to do with students who are pushing race essentialism as the only anti-racism, which was the topic? The fact that the former exist doesn't make the latter ok.

Beastly is right, it's very difficult to engage when any comment is interpreted as some kind of personal attack. I asked earlier if a repeating sterotypes about black people was ok if it was to describe said negative stereotype as the post had - the point being that is what was being complained about in the first place. That's not a personal attack or a reprimand, the point is that obviously, no, it shouldn't be reprimanded.

And how is this different from if a woman says “I was assaulted and harassed by a man at work” and people respond by saying it wouldn’t happen, nobody would do that, they’ve worked in an office and HR wouldn’t allow it, details seem sketchy, men wouldn’t do it in a public place, he has a wife, she’s not even pretty, etc.?

I mean, sure, no one can force you to believe anything, but when people recount abusive situations and your response is to come up with all the reasons it couldn’t have happened, then yes, you seem invested in denying it.

And again, isn’t this what you decry TRAs doing? Saying women aren’t actually getting threats, that there’s no way the story of a Trans woman in a therapy group is true, the details don’t add up, it’s not real profiles sending the rape threats, etc.?