Important article by Lionel Shriver

I am not encouraged by this at all. I love Shriver’s literature and agree that she usually has incredible insight and ability to express herself. But this article reads like she has had too much wine and is spewing bile. Her comment here about the John Lewis advert is unforgivable and like something Trump would say. I will not be buying any more of her books.

You don't just believe in gravity, you experience it. You know it exists. You don't need to understand the maths to know that if you drop something it will fall to the floor.

That's true @Shortshriftandlethal .Though I wouldn't be surprised if Shriver was emotionally invested on the other side. Anti vax and thinks God is in charge of the weather. Or perhaps she's a Randroid and thinks epidemics are nature's way of thinning out the herd. None of that woke medicine crap....

Yes, but accepting the science does not make someone a climate activist. Climate activists, like all activists, tend to invest a lot of emotional energy in their activism. Fighting climate change becomes an important part of their identity; rather than simply being someone who makes an effort to change certain lifestyle habits for the greater good.

Agree. And generally, ironically enough, those who are in the know tend to be white, middle-class, university-educated, while it's usually the poor, uneducated and disadvantaged who are not in the know.

And it's so hard to stand up against this stuff. I wrote something recently where I used the term "ethnic minority" and someone commented "we prefer the term 'racialised minorities' to indicate that these groups are racialised by the wider white society'."

I really wanted to point out that not all ethnic minority groups feel "racialised" by white society - indeed some are actively proud of being a racial or ethnic minority. All the Jews I know, for example, feel that being Jewish is an important badge of identity - they are not Jewish because the rest of society has "racialised" them but because it's how they see themselves. I'm sure the same is true of other minority groups such as Sikhs.

I couldn't be bothered to have the argument though - too exhausting.

The whole of wokery is based on the return of phenomenology (lived experience) vs Cartesianism (scientific reality).

So, a geneticist becomes less qualified to opine on what makes a woman than someone who ‘feels’ that they are a woman but are XY hormonally.

Of course, this is a bit of a return to the old days of religion where our feeling that the sun rotated around us trumped telescopic observations and mathematical logic (although it is possible to make some very obscure maths fit with a geocentric solar system).

But wokery is ultimately scary as anyone can appoint themselves the guardians of lived experience and it is very divisive as society becomes split depending on our variable lived experiences.

Some good has come of wokery, but it has gone way too far!

Yes, that is a good point inky. Intent is an important factor to consider. It appears to have been thrown by the wayside unfortunately.

This works both ways. One of the streams of unconsciousness that led into "wokery" was the much maligned "political correctness". Saying the wrong thing, using the wrong word perhaps, is something I seem to have done for my entire life. I remember when the term "brainstorming" was deemed unacceptable, due to the possibility that somebody might be upset by it. But the "you can't say that" posse of speech police encourages people who have more extreme views to gleefully spout them in an effort to offend everybody. Ultimately it isn't really about language, it's about power games.

Yes, this!

I have learnt a different lesson. Don't group people into 'good people' and 'bad people' using arbitrary rules.

Pol Pot's killing fields?
She's really comparing Twitter spats with wokesters to the Cambodian genocide?
Poor little rich girl.

As there now seems to be momentum gathering with regard to sex realism, I plan to spend 2025 noting who is trying to lift women and other people with protected characteristics up, and who is punching down for cheap laughs.

LS is in the second category.

It also allows those in the know to reprimand the ignorant and to feel superior. The bonus is that you also cause the ignorant to be cowed as they get worried of saying the wrong thing.

" think a lot of the issue of wokism is the obsession with inoffensive vocabulary as opposed to meaning and intent, almost like knowing the correct words gets you into the club. So ‘coloured’ is grossly offensive but ‘of colour’ is great, when they are synonymous!"

I think that's definitely part of it. Janice Turner had an article about "semantic gentrification" whereby only certain words are termed acceptable, but as soon as everyone gets used to them, they are suddenly verboten and have to be replaced by something else. Over my lifetime, I've seen the "correct" words for ethnic minority change numerous times. For a while "minority ethnic" was in fashion. "BAME" was big for a time, but now that is considered offensive and I think "people from racialised communities" is the correct term, though I also see "global majority" a lot.

The reason it's called "semantic gentrification" is it allows one group of people who are in the know to feel superior to everyone else who isn't in the know - by constantly changing the rules, they are able to exclude people from the elite club of right-minded people.

Thanks for the share token! It's a good piece.

I believe in gravity as an article of faith. I don't understand anything in Principia Mathematica tbh. But I accept the scientific consensus. Same with climate change. And sexual dimorphism.

" think a lot of the issue of wokism is the obsession with inoffensive vocabulary as opposed to meaning and intent, almost like knowing the correct words gets you into the club. So ‘coloured’ is grossly offensive but ‘of colour’ is great, when they are synonymous!"

💯

The quality of debate diminishes when focus is directed to scrutinizing vocabulary or synonyms rather than addressing the underlying constructs and phenomena. Productive discourse easily becomes mired in semantic arguments.

So much time is wasted on superficial discussions about the terms “woman," "trans woman," "transwoman," rather than how we understand and apply concepts of sex and gender, rather than getting caught up in the terminology. It is true that words matter only because the underlying concepts matter.

She seems to have a particular disdain for black women, much more likely to have been over promoted than black men on account of their sex apparently.

Good to know we can go back to using retarded as well. And I won't turn on the television and forget which country I'm in on account of the skin colour of the actors any more. What a time to be alive!

💯. A dangerous person to have on your side. I know I'm probably a bit biased because of her anti Irish comments. Apparently we are ' a scummy potato residue' who are trying to impede Brexit. So I googled her and her dad was a Protestant minister in North Carolina. Whether this explains or excuses her bigotry I don't know. Maybe she's just a racist crank off her own bat.

I'm not sure why you are being so hostile?

Fat 'phobia' makes no sense to me....A phobia is a fear. Are you suggesting that commenting on obesity is an affront to identity? Does noticing that many people are now obese count as fat phobia? Do you think obesity is something to celebrate?

It seems to me that making an identity out of every conceivable personal characteristic simply creates mental fragility.

Oh you don't know what it means 🥺? Oh no - maybe you can use this thing called Google and find out for yourself instead of posting faux ignorant comments on here.

Won't respond to you again

I'm uncertain what fat phobia is supposed to mean, and why it may be linked with racism and 'ableism'.

Being seriously overweight is a real health issue and a societal one too. Being obese is not an identity, surely?

Good point!

Yes

Fat phobia?