Delphinium20 …woke was term created by Black people to be used by other Black peoples in the US to describe their unique situation of being conscious of the continued legacy of slavery. To be "awoke" to the reality that racism still exists.
Now it's been taken over…
DogsAkimbo ...The word ‘woke’ has been appropriated, and also the word ‘woman.’
Metabigot ...Has any other minority group in history changed the language of the majority group against their will?
nilsmousehammer ...If one group of people can change reality by changing words, then any group of people can change it to something else by changing the words.
When authoritarian systems were challenged and exposed in the 60’s and 70’s, those in power made an instinctive move to regain their social and legal power. One tactic used was to stop hiding their actions behind polite fictions since these were being ripped away by progressives. Liberals exposed the self-serving reasons dictators were propped up to benefit oil companies. The reaction was not to stop but to continue doing the same thing, just out in the open. Feminists exposed the cultural lies and performances forced upon women. Men stopped pretending to put (certain types of) women on pedestals. They behave openly contemptuous instead of hiding their opinion behind a facade of chivalry.
Authoritarians do not admit any brakes on their power. Because men are reductive thinkers, it is all or nothing. Another tactic to regain power was to take the progressive position and turn it about in a demonstration of their absolutist way of thinking. Liberals pointed out negative assumptions behind certain common terms and asserted their power to ‘call people out’ for hurtful phrases. Reactionaries took this notion to its absurd extreme and have thrown it back in our faces that you cannot now name things as you see them. They saw people of color as lesser, and now they can’t say that without pushback. So they found a way to forbid us from saying something we see clearly. Feminists in particular challenged the notion that sex determines public roles; women could be teachers and engineers, mothers and managers. Naturally men have taken the absurdist position that equality means mathematical equality. Remember they are not naturally pragmatic. Therefore the subset of sexual fetishists who push for TWAW are fully supported by the male power structure as a means of clawing back the few gains made by women over the last 40 years.
Any system that faces a threat will react. A successful coping strategy is to adopt some of the DNA of the threat and encapsulate it or include some of its informational content to develop a response, just like some vaccines work. Men in the western world have taken the language of liberalism and feminism and have weaponized it against us. Because women are much more thoughtful and far-sighted thinkers than men, we give some consideration to their position that they do not actually deserve. So by the time women come to a collective realization of the idiocy or harm of what men are doing, the rug has been pulled out from under us.
Men are less thoughtful but much more feral, and have the predator’s ability to react more quickly. Although these immediate issues such as ‘transphobia’ are both crazy and dangerous, at their base they are a distraction. Without collective and forceful action that targets the power structure we will never win. The only thing men in power (and all men hold some power over women) will acknowledge is a reduction in their power. The only way to get to this is to withhold our labor, in all its senses. If we can come to a consensus on making the world stop or at least stumble, without harming children since men do not care about children’s welfare, we should do it.
P.S.: I have benefitted tremendously from this and similar MN boards. Although I mostly just lurk, I hope my contribution is not unwelcome.