Is this the most 'woke' headline ever? "How climate change is hitting vulnerable Indonesian trans sex workers"

Yes, but the minority group is trans people, woke refers to racial prejudice/discrimination.

Going off topic a bit here, but surely homeless people are moat affected by climate change as they are out in all weathers, or farmers. Sex workers must spend at least half their time inside unless Indonesian sex workers all perform outside.
I guess 'homeless/farmers most affected by climate change....' isn't quite as eye catching a headline though.

It goes back to point I've made several times already in this thread.
I'll cut and paste them so you don't have to read the rest of my posts.

That's fair, but you have to take into context how the stuff gets reported.

That an obervation might be true doesn't mean that the way it's dealt with is necessarily in good faith.

Does it mean the UK landmass was deliberately placed on the Earth where there is less sunlight by racists to try and keep black people away?
No, that's clearly an absurdly silly idea, but my point is some of these articles read just as insanely.

To directly answer your question. "Do you think it is "woke" to point out when things disproportionately effect women? Or is that OK in your opinion?"

No I don't think it's woke to point things disproportionately effect women. It is OK. How something is presented, the manner of the presentation, is where "woke" arises in my opinion. Not the actual facts being reported.

Give you an example - The VAT on women's sanitary products before Brexit. This was reported in my opinion very responsibly. The facts were laid out without hyperbole in a very clear way.
VAT charged at 5% on women's sanitary products.
EU rules prevented this tax being any lower.
Essential day to day hygene products needed by women are not a "luxury" item.
VAT was originally meant to be a tax on luxury items.
Some other essential items were 0% taxed.
It's incredibly unfair that's women's basic hygene essentials are taxed as a luxury item. Would men put up with this if the situation affected them?
The argument against the tampon tax was very strong, and very well presented. I would class the topic as a basic injustice and as far from woke as it's possible to be. I'm really glad it stopped the day we left the EU.

But I'm sure that topic could be presented in a hyperbolic way that would make it look woke and a few words into the headline people would start rolling their eyes. The point I'm trying to hammer home is that for me woke is about hyperbolic presentation of a particular form of leftism and not the underlying subject.

I think more than ever things are disproportionately negatively affecting women. I think it's going up not down. The idea that a woman in prison should daily face the danger of male rapists is abhorrant, and yet it's the needs of the rapists being put above the needs of the women. Shove him in a men's prison, if something happens to him maybe he'll understand how his victims felt. Women's sports, changing rooms, toilets, free speech, being utterly ignored by politicians as if women are invisible.

Phwoarr!

The case study had a happy ending

Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase " go F yourself"

Certainly the issue was framed that way:

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/is-covid-racist

This was a documentary exploring why certain demographics were more affected than others.

See also the framing of climate change:

https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/news/watch-is-climate-change-racist/

And capitalism:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/25/is-capitalism-racist

And the fact that hikers are mostly white is also framed as a racist outcome:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/10/07/is-the-countryside-racist/

See also skiing:

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20240301-can-skiing-solve-its-diversity-problem

Ultimately, when you view the world through the prism of oppressed vs oppressor classes, the only possible cause of disparities is discrimination.

Actually the people most at risk from Covid were people with risk factors for cardiovascular disease, not respiratory disease. Most young people who died were obese.

The effect on different races was probably related to differing rates of obesity, and higher rates of type 2 diabetes/metabolic disease, and hence higher cardiovascular risk, at lower body mass indices.

The article says the sex workers are vulnerable as they work outside, on the streets, are more likely to feel the side-effects of extreme weather and so lose their primary income. They don't fall into the usual safety coverage other workers might receive due to the nature of their work.

Also due to the fact that one of the triage questions when deciding to send out an ambulance was are their lips blue. Dark skinned black people's lips don't go blue.

Black people are also less likely to be in nice middle-class office jobs where they could work from home which had an impact.

It takes a global problem that affects everyone, and then looks for a minority group to paint as especially effected more than everyone else.

@lechiffre55 Do you think it is "woke" to point out when things disproportionately effect women? Or is that OK in your opinion?

@Allthegoodnamesarechosen
It's probably a myriad of different factors each having a different weight towards the outcome. Trying to pin it down to a single factor might be counter productive.
Just to extend my guesses, cities tend to be major centres of air pollution. Covid is a disease of the respiratory system which I'm guessing is strongly affected by air polution. What if there was a genetic disposition in black people linked to the respiratory system or to air pollution? If there was they'd be at a disadvantage in mulitple simultaneous ways.

To go back to your vitamin D, it's my understanding that it's produced in a person's skin from exposure to sunlight. Perhaps the UK with it's Northern lattitude puts people with darker skin at a disadvantage becuase the UK gets less sunlight than equatorial lattitudes, and darker skin blocks sunlight more than lighter skin. If that were true should we make sure people with darker skin can get easy access to vitamin D? Yes.
Does it mean the UK landmass was deliberately placed on the Earth where there is less sunlight by racists to try and keep black people away?
No, that's clearly an absurdly silly idea, but my point is some of these articles read just as insanely.

lechiffre55 - of course you're right to say that there is a need to look at the possible explanations of why Black people were disproportionately affected by Covid, but all the articles I read at the time did exactly that. I don't think I saw a single article simply stating that "Covid is racist". Perhaps you did?

@lechiffre55

The consensus seems to be that it was probably something to do with lower vitamin D levels.

It's a basic fact about climate change that it worsens pre-existing inequalities. Because people who have less to start with have fewer resources to draw on. For example if there's a hurricane coming, it's harder to evacuate if you are disabled, a carer, fear losing your job if you leave the city, don't have transport. Then afterwards you don't have insurance, can't rebuild. Poor farmers in droughts can't afford to lose crops, have to sell livestock which then means they have less capital. Girls selling sex to survive. Outdoor labourers who have to keep working in heatwaves, whether that's Greece or India. No air conditioning.
I think it's interesting (if depressing and scary) to read about how it affects different people around the world.

I was just about to post that story, Mrs Overton

Great analysis.

But of an odd article - some interesting stories mixed in with TRA propaganda.

There was a problem with skin tones and light in photography.

https://www.npr.org/2014/11/13/363517842/for-decades-kodak-s-shirley-cards-set-photography-s-skin-tone-standard

https://petapixel.com/2015/09/19/heres-a-look-at-how-color-film-was-originally-biased-toward-white-people/

Isn't it a bit SWERFY to imply sex workers are vulnerable though? Doesn't citing a vulnerability suggest something needs fixing: climate change is an obvious example; a more spurious one might be everyone needs to be less transphobic. But if being a sex worker makes a person vulnerable, well gosh someone needs to have a word with the demographic overwhelmingly responsible for the demand for sex work.

That's fair, but you have to take into context how the stuff gets reported.
For instance an article that looked into why black people suffered higher mortality rates would be interesting.
e.g. Are tranmission rates of covid higher between black people? Is that a biological thing related to genes, or a societal thing because black people tend to live in higher population density areas like cites and diseases always spread faster where people are packed in closer together. Could diet be in influencing factor? How about general health outisde of covid? How much strain are hospitals that serve cities under compared to hospitals that serve more rural demographics?
Each of these things could be looked into and will probably generate more questions. Digging into it could be useful for expanding our understanding.
But often it gets reduced down to "covid is racist" which is just knee jerk click bait political activism.
Another example would be "The countryside is racist" because there doesn't seem to be as many black ramblers/hikers as white. My best guess is because rural areas are more demographically white. Is it a problem? Do black ramblers feel unwelcome when they go for a hike, or are they just doing more city orientated things?
That an obervation might be true doesn't mean that the way it's dealt with is necessarily in good faith.

Racist COVID is ridiculous.

"Neutral" settings for light are too dark for dark skin because I assume they were tested on light skinned people, so indirectly discriminatory and not a ridiculous story.

But black people did experience higher mortality rates from Covid than white people. So that's a serious point, not a frivolous one.

Climate change also tends to have a disproportionate impact on poor people, though I agree that the "trans sex worker" angle is a bit of a stretch.

If we're talking about headlines, this one was a bit of a surprise this morning:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/04/02/non-binary-patient-who-wants-a-vagina-and-a-penis-sues-heal/

@RandySavage

It reminds me of some of those old Vice headlines

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia7fUQXskvA&feature=youtu.be