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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Wokeness? Meaning?

225 replies

grassisjeweled · 04/11/2020 18:37

Can someone explain in simple English what 'wokeness' means?

OP posts:
Blueberries0112 · 06/11/2020 00:42

BLM is their moment to speak . They know all lives matter.

When a women is killed by a man, and some say her life matters, do you go around saying All lives matter or are you going to let her speak why this is becoming a problem for women?

Goosefoot · 06/11/2020 01:16

@PhilSwagielka

In other words, class is the only thing that matters. But where does feminism fit in? Surely there’s an intersection between class and sex?
I'm not sure there is, as such. People have class, and sex, but it's not clear to me that they operate in some kind of hitched together way. The realities f life for women of different classes can be totally different. Look at how a lot of the advantages and freedoms that came to middle class women - which have also been a real benefit for middle class men - have come at the expense of working class women and men. In fact I would say that some of the supposed wins of feminism were really about middle class solidarity rather than anything to do with feminine solidarity.
Flaxmeadow · 06/11/2020 02:47

Goosefoot-Adolph Reed argues that identity politics is really a kind of neoliberalsm, not of the left at all.

Yes I like him. He has some great debates uploaded on Youtube

Smileyaxolotl1
I think you’re absolutely right about woke people not being interested in class

Especially in the USA, where woke started. Its not in the interests of the woke narrative to push class perspective. it's too unifying. Too collective.

This is why I get confused when wokes are accused of being "Marxists" or call themselves Marxists or left wing.

Identity politics is the opposite of Marxism/left wing. It's wishy washy fringe activism, naval gazing. Me me me and my struggle, me me me and my ancestors struggle, LGBT history, womens history and me me me.....its not OUR struggle.

Flaxmeadow · 06/11/2020 02:57

In fact I would say that some of the supposed wins of feminism were really about middle class solidarity rather than anything to do with feminine solidarity.

For example the Suffragettes.

At the time there was huge trade union activity. Coal miners, mill labourers, the industrial districts. Millions of men and women on the march, strikes. A real struggle for much needed better working conditions, wages and housing, employment laws. This is overlooked now in favour of a handful of London middle class Edwardian Vannessa Redgrave types, throwing things at (working class) police officers or tying themselves to railings because they wanted the vote for middle class women. Unsurprsingly, they had very little working class support at the time

HoneysuckIejasmine · 06/11/2020 05:14

@Flaxmeadow

In fact I would say that some of the supposed wins of feminism were really about middle class solidarity rather than anything to do with feminine solidarity.

For example the Suffragettes.

At the time there was huge trade union activity. Coal miners, mill labourers, the industrial districts. Millions of men and women on the march, strikes. A real struggle for much needed better working conditions, wages and housing, employment laws. This is overlooked now in favour of a handful of London middle class Edwardian Vannessa Redgrave types, throwing things at (working class) police officers or tying themselves to railings because they wanted the vote for middle class women. Unsurprsingly, they had very little working class support at the time

Aye, they shouldn't have bothered. More important things going on, they should have just kept quiet and waited their turn. That would definitely have ended better.

In much the same way as the vote was not awarded to lower class men immediately, it was better to get a foot in the door before shoving it open, rather than trying to emancipate every woman from a standing start. There were plenty of working class suffragettes but they get overlooked, or assumed to have been middle or upper class in a retrospective rewrite of history.

Much as we like to think our society was benevolent, we must remember that slavery was outlawed in this country originally by dirty tricks and sneaking, because it was the only way to do it.

Sometimes you have to use the thin end of the wedge.

BrumBoo · 06/11/2020 07:11

@Quaagars

The sort of people (usually white, usually heterosexual) who have BLM in their handles, but do not see that they're 'All Lives Matter' when it comes to women's rights.

Ooooh
See, I take umbrage at this (aware this probably earns me another woke cookie lol)
I'm white, I'm heterosexual, I'm female, doesn't mean I can't care about people who are non of those things?
What's All Lives Matter got to do with women's rights?
Are we not allowed to be bothered about both?
Is one more worthy of a biscuit than an other?!
If we care about women's rights, does that mean we have to stop giving a fuck about trans people too?!
As I said earlier, all a big mess lol

This is exactly the issue with women's rights. People refuse to discuss women's rights without going 'but trans people! We must care about them as well!'. Hence the 'all lives matter' comparison.

There is no reason to bring in trans people to female rights debates. They simply do not correlate. Womens rights are about oppression based on our sex, our biology. Trans people have their struggles, but they are trans peoples struggles. If non-Trans people choose to champion their cause, good for them, very caring and open of you. It's when the two 'fight for rights' get mixed in together, that's when the Woke brigade gets involved and essentially tells women any of the following:

Fighting for biological rights is transphobic
Fighting to keep spaces/certain jobs/sports sex segregated is trans exclusionary.
Women have privilege, trans people don't .
Women have won their battle, its time to 'get out of your trenches'.

That is a 'big mess, lol'. That is what happens when 'woke' people not only champion the rights one group but appropriate another group to do so.

Smileyaxolotl1 · 06/11/2020 07:29

yyBrumboo
As seen in the current trend to erase the word women in favour of more ‘inclusive’ language. Yesterday it was ‘vulva people’ in a sexual health campaign.

PhilSwagielka · 06/11/2020 09:16

I hate being called shit like that. Nobody calls men people with penises, it’s always women who have to concede. It’s tiring.

@Flaxmeadow so basically class is all that matters and we should just ignore everything else? Even stuff like repro rights?

Joisanofthedales · 06/11/2020 11:13

Thank you Honeysuckle for reminding people that there were many working class suffragettes like my own great grandmother who lived in Stepney and worked in one of those horrendous factories that blighted the health of the workers. I haven't, as a second wave feminist, forgotten her and her sacrifices and nor should those who just want to score woke points.

Flaxmeadow · 06/11/2020 11:32

Aye, they shouldn't have bothered. More important things going on, they should have just kept quiet and waited their turn. That would definitely have ended better.

I didnt say they shouldn't have bothered. My point was the trade union movements at the time are ignored

In much the same way as the vote was not awarded to lower class men immediately, it was better to get a foot in the door before shoving it open, rather than trying to emancipate every woman from a standing start. There were plenty of working class suffragettes but they get overlooked, or assumed to have been middle or upper class in a retrospective rewrite of history.

Not sure what you mean by working class men getting the vote immediately

There really wasn't any working class support for the Suffragettes. If there had been we would have seen huge marches and protests in the industrial districts. There wasn't any.

Trade unionism improved women and childrens lives. Women and children working in industry. Housing conditions. Bread on the table. The Suffragettes were not fighting for these things

Much as we like to think our society was benevolent, we must remember that slavery was outlawed in this country originally by dirty tricks and sneaking, because it was the only way to do it

Not sure what you mean.

PhilSwagielka · 06/11/2020 12:05

@Joisanofthedales

Thank you Honeysuckle for reminding people that there were many working class suffragettes like my own great grandmother who lived in Stepney and worked in one of those horrendous factories that blighted the health of the workers. I haven't, as a second wave feminist, forgotten her and her sacrifices and nor should those who just want to score woke points.
Women today owe a lot to people like her. A lot of people seem to forget why unions exist in the first place - there were women in the USA getting cancer from painting watches with radium, and women in match factories getting the dreaded 'phossy jaw'. Not to mention the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory disaster.
BolloxtoGender · 06/11/2020 12:19

Andrew Doyle/Titania McGrath are brilliant at encapsulating 'woke'.

Helen Pluckrose did a brilliant clear analysis of the academic roots.....

BolloxtoGender · 06/11/2020 12:20
HoneysuckIejasmine · 06/11/2020 12:59

I said working class men didn't get the vote immediately. Voting was for land owners, not manual labourers. I mean, step by step by step, things improve. Nothing changes with a flash of lightning, it's always a gradual process.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_Trade_Act_1807 for information on just how many tweaks and attempts and changes it took to convince parliament to abolish the slave trade. Once again, it was a gradual thin end of the wedge approach. Get in slowly, then change one thing, then another then another and your goal will be accomplished.

HoneysuckIejasmine · 06/11/2020 13:00

@Joisanofthedales

Thank you Honeysuckle for reminding people that there were many working class suffragettes like my own great grandmother who lived in Stepney and worked in one of those horrendous factories that blighted the health of the workers. I haven't, as a second wave feminist, forgotten her and her sacrifices and nor should those who just want to score woke points.
I thank her for her trials! Without women like her, we'd be nowhere.
Flaxmeadow · 06/11/2020 13:19

Thank you Honeysuckle for reminding people that there were many working class suffragettes like my own great grandmother who lived in Stepney and worked in one of those horrendous factories that blighted the health of the workers. I haven't, as a second wave feminist, forgotten her and her sacrifices and nor should those who just want to score woke points.

You have the trade unions to thank for better conditions in factories, not the Suffragettes, who were not fighting for your working class Grt Grandmothers right to vote anyway.

Was the Suffragette movement important, yes it was. Should it be taught about and remembered yes. But the trade union movement was even more important to the working class at the time, who were 90% of the population. But how often did we see someone say "my Grt Grandmother was an active believer in trade unionism during the strikes of the 1910's...she was on strike and it caused great hardship but she persevered"

The over emphasis now on the Suffragette issues clouds more important issues happening at the time

DioneTheDiabolist · 06/11/2020 13:35

My great granny was very active in the trade union movement at the beginning of the 20th century. She was lynched and hanged from a lamppost on her way home one night. She suffered permanent blindness in one eye and lost much of the sight in another. And of course she lost her job.

Despite all this, if she were alive now I have no doubt that some fuckwits would call her "woke".

Goosefoot · 06/11/2020 13:58

@Flaxmeadow

In fact I would say that some of the supposed wins of feminism were really about middle class solidarity rather than anything to do with feminine solidarity.

For example the Suffragettes.

At the time there was huge trade union activity. Coal miners, mill labourers, the industrial districts. Millions of men and women on the march, strikes. A real struggle for much needed better working conditions, wages and housing, employment laws. This is overlooked now in favour of a handful of London middle class Edwardian Vannessa Redgrave types, throwing things at (working class) police officers or tying themselves to railings because they wanted the vote for middle class women. Unsurprsingly, they had very little working class support at the time

I would say much more recently than that, for example with the entrance of middle class women into all kinds of jobs in the workforce, partiularly professional jobs. This has generally been seen as a win for feminism, and to some extent I suppose it changed how people thought about women in work.

But looking at the effects - that's important to understanding the basic story. In a family where the husband was, say, a lawyer, and now the wife could become a doctor, they are hugely increasing their economic power as a family. Even with childcare costs included.

For a working class family, it's entirely different. For one thing, often wives were already in the workforce. It helped to balance out the economic disparity compared to the middle classes, just a little. That's no longer the case once the middle class women are also in work, so the economic gap is wider.
If those women wanted to go into work where they needed to pay for childcare, the cost of the care wouldn't necessarily make it worthwhile. In fact many would be working in childcare for others (the middle class women who now needed carers for young kids.)
So those women were doing more of what they were doing before, rather than having a lot of new and fulfilling types of work. Factory work or secretarial work, cleaning, and factory work were probably the main options. All of which is good dignified work but you have to ask how many really felt more fulfilled doing those things rather than being able to stay home, even part time, to take care of their own kids and home.

They also were much less likely to b able to do similar kinds of work to their husbands, with better py than what they had been getting in what were considered women's types of jobs. No matter how you cut it, for women who are becoming pregnant, certain types of heavy work are not going to be plausible - they are not going to be on the fishing boat or down the mine, or going off to war.

So lots of advantages, economically and in terms of personal enjoyment, for middle class women and their husbands. But little, or even negative, economic implications for working class families, and the omen possibly losing the option of not working as they try to gain a little more buying power. So is that feminine, or class solidarity?

Joisanofthedales · 06/11/2020 14:11

I love the way Flaxmeadow thinks that just because my ancestor was a working class suffragettes she wasn't involved in trying to better conditions for the other women who worked in the same factory as she did. My greatgran was awesome by family accounts.
So narrow of thinking and denigrating of you.
And let's not forget the trade unions are now busily selling women's rights down the river.

Notjustanymum · 06/11/2020 14:15

It means that our abuse of our own language has reached an all-time low.

Raceless · 06/11/2020 14:25

@Notjustanymum

It means that our abuse of our own language has reached an all-time low.
The last few posts have sort of derailed from the OP so much in my mind that when I read this post, i thought "What is she talking about?"...then it dawned on me in seconds that you're only answering the OP. Grin

@DioneTheDiabolist I'm really sorry to read of your great granny. She's a hero. Flowers

BolloxtoGender · 06/11/2020 14:45

Also agree that abuse and corruption of language to obfuscate and distort truth, is at an all time low. Some will even argue that 2+2=5 (in some non decimal base..), because 'all ways of knowing are valid', there is no such thing as 'objective reality' or 'truth', and 2+2=4 is only valid in Western ideas (usually said sneeringly) and language, which is inherently oppressive etc..

Flaxmeadow · 06/11/2020 15:22

I love the way Flaxmeadow thinks that just because my ancestor was a working class suffragettes she wasn't involved in trying to better conditions for the other women who worked in the same factory as she did. My greatgran was awesome by family accounts.

I love the way you assume to you know what I "think"

And I didn't say she wasn't involved in trade union activity

So narrow of thinking and denigrating of you.

Sorry you feel that way

And let's not forget the trade unions are now busily selling women's rights down the river

In what way?

PhilSwagielka · 06/11/2020 18:27

Probably something to do with trans women. This is what the MN obsession with wokeness is about at the end of the day. It’s moved away from race and onto trans stuff.

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