Can anyone who uses the word *Woke* ...

[TooBigForMyBoots]

...tell me what it means to them? Because I haven't a clue.

I've seen it to mean feminism and men's right activists.. Anti-racism, anti free speech, people with colourful hair, climate scientists, parenting styles, breastfeeding, people who like the BBC vaccines and more. Surely it can't mean all of these things?

If you use woke in a non ironic way, what do you mean by it?

'socially aware' is the phrase I'd use.

Goad post - it’s called google

It originally started as an American term to mean awake to racism and issues relating specifically to the black American experience - Stay woke. It then developed into a term that encompassed a broader awareness of social inequality.

It's now used as a pejorative term to refer to identity politics.

Sounds like you are using it in its original sense. According to most of those who use it on Mumsnet, it has changed to mean something else. Something negative.

I just ask people if they mean 'socially aware' if they use the word woke. Their response tells me how they will treat the rest of the conversation.

Have never heard anyone use it who wasn’t a card-carrying arsehole.

It’s a massive red flag that the person using it a racist sexist homophobe.

(1) Identity politics which is aligned with the particular social consensus of "virtue" positions which peaked in popularity in 2020 (including but not limited to BLM, trans rights, disability justice etc) - often characterised by setting up "marginalised" and "oppressor" groups along various axes

(2) Strong social enforcement of these norms and active, coordinated pushback against people who express disagreement with them ("cancel culture")

(3) Embedding of these norms into institutions, laws, employer HR guidebooks etc, to the point that they are weaponised against the "oppressor" groups beyond the point of common sense

Of your list, I would agree with most but MRAs shouldn't be there and I wouldn't include breastfeeding either unless it was something niche.

It means division.

What do you mean you would agree with most? What do you mean when you use "woke" @OneAmberFinch?

Feel free to use my list and add other stuff of your own.

I mean that I agree that those items on your list are "woke" (except MRAs and breastfeeding, and I assume you mean "gentle parenting" for parenting styles).

Furthermore I believe that every wide-eyed person on this thread would give the same classification as I did.

Currently it’s used to describe things that are purposely checking boxes to appease minorities and/or the trans movement. For example, Hollywood film makers are said to have “gone woke”.

It means ‘lefty nonsense’.

I’ve seen a poster call vaccines woke, so lefty nonsense does cover a wide berth 🥴

From what I can gather it went through a complete change of meaning as the political landscape changed. It used to refer to people largely on the right who had started to grow critical of progressive social engineering and identity politics etc in that they had ‘woken up’ to what they felt was government deception. They then moved to calling themselves Red Pilled from the matrix movie.
The term Woke then became mainstream and somehow got adopted by the left who I don’t think understood what it meant but felt it had positive associations meaning something like enlightened. That unfortunately backfired for them, so now its used ironically to mean any supposed clueless misguided left wing agenda.
This is just vaguely what i remember, but it explains how the term has been used by the left and right at different times and can be confusing

It does seem very much like that.

It's a condescending and pathetic term to ridicule people who are politically correct.

I'm not someone who goes around calling random things woke.

But I don't pretend I don't immediately know what is meant by the term, and it's a bit boring when people pretend they have no idea.

There's a set of beliefs which everyone knows are part of the same social movement which has embedded itself into countless institutions, but we're not meant to name it? We're just meant to call it "basic decency" and pretend that the average person 30 years ago would hold all these beliefs?

Freddie de Boer is often annoying but he was bang on the money with

I have never heard that explanation before. I thought it was originally AAV.

If you look at my list you will see things that are pretty much opposites. For example Feminism, is it woke? Do you see GC feminists,women's rights campaigners and TRAs as part of the same social movement?

I'm not entirely sure what you're getting out of the thread. Right wingers tend to apply the term 'woke' to anything they don't like. There's no particular rhyme or reason.

It's another way of saying political correctness gone maaaad!

It used to be called “right on”. Or “political correctness gone mad”. AKA the oppressed lot are getting a big too big for their boots wanting to be liberated from their oppressors so we should mock them for being “too progressive”.

Socially aware means what woke used to mean. The only time woke is used now is as shorthand for lack of resilience combined with wanky virtual signalling. It has become complete dog whistle.

todays way of saying ‘political correctness gone mad’

Do you think feminism isn't woke?

Are there no aspects of popular feminism that you think would annoy your typical anti-woke pub patron?