AIBU to say that people who are "Anti Woke"

[AntiWoke]

are the people who would like free reign to be racist, sexist, mysogenistic, homophobic. In short, people who want to be able to say whatever they like, even if offensive to some groups of people?

Exactly.

You know damn well the exact same clueless people going along to those marches would be horrified at ANYONE who attended a march where it was known in advance that a ‘minority’ would be shouting:

’gas the blacks’

or

‘kill the trans’

or

‘murder muslims, rape their daughters’.

Their hypocrisy and blind hatred to anything deemed ‘not on the right side’ is shocking. Same with the trans stuff, they try to pretend ‘both sides are extremes’ when only one is calling for ACTUAL violence and hatred.

At one of the marches two young British women were interviewed and asked what they thought of the Hamas attacks on Israel on the 7th of October. The response was ‘they didn’t, did they?’

They didn’t even KNOW about it and quickly scooted off after googling.

The extreme is labelling anyone that disagrees with you with the most extreme positions of the opposing side.

Extreme GCs dehumanise anyone slightly understanding of TR, the extreme TRAs dehumanise anyone with even slightly GC views. Neither extreme of this debate wants compromise. Anyone in the middle ground, who see even a few valid points on both sides and/or are turned off by the dehumanising/demonising of the extreme positions, is labelled as the Other by both extremes.

You can see the same polarisation happening on multiple complex issues - Israel/Palestine, Brexit, immigration, etc. It's the reduction ad nauseum of complex issues into Us vs Them tribal warfare. It's dumbing down, because solving the complex issues of living together in modern society make your brain hurt, and might mean having to share your cake with others.

The extreme is labelling anyone that disagrees with you with the most extreme positions of the opposing side.

That's funny, because it appears to be exactly what you're doing when you pretend that calling someone an extremist is comparable to death threats, posting porn on threads about children's art and denying physical reality.

Agree with you @SurprisedWithAHorse

@DogInATent why is biological reality ‘extreme’ to you?

Also same question again related to women who understand their sex class matters more than gender

And how is that equivalent to death threats, punching 70 year old women in the face and male violence?

"people who want to be able to say whatever they like"

Yes those pesky people who think Free Speech matters.

Why can't we just ask you each time what opinions are allowed.

Speech that breaks the law (incitement to violence etc) is already covered so you're referring to speech that you personally don't like and want banned.

You have made the case for the growing numbers of anti-woke quite nicely, thank you.

This!

I get offended / hurt feelings all the time. That’s my problem. Doesn’t mean others should lose their careers over it or get arrested or whatever. (Women encounter misogyny every day.)

But the woke brigade want to police and suppress the speech of anyone who disagrees with them, and also destroy livelihoods. That is fanaticism. It’s sinister and threatens the entire basis of the Western way of life. Without civilised debate between groups who hold different opinions, there can be no civilisation. The woke brigade can’t comprehend that, they just think that they’re right and everyone else is wrong. 😂 They need to go back to primary school and learn how to talk politely to people they disagree with.

Fantastically well put. Thank you for articulating this so well.👏

Agree with this, absolutely.

The way that "Woke" deals in absolutes of I'm right, you're wrong and "no debate" feels to me like part of a wider decline in academia, philosophy and the ability of individuals to apply their own critical thought to issues.

For me (as a lifelong Labour voter, left-wing Guardian reading feminist) I started off thinking Woke must be a good thing (because it's kind and inclusive, right?) But what woke has become at the moment leaves no possibility for nuance, discussion or deep thought. It's become about creating binary tribes and thought-terminating slogans that discourage personal engagement at greater depth. I've come to find it lazy and dangerous that any voice sounded against any aspect of "Woke" is decried as a "right-wing bigot". Firstly, because so many of those voices are actually coming from those on the left or centre; dismissing them as "right-wing bigots" is simply an easy way of shutting them down instantly. And secondly, because although I've always hated the Tories, I do actually believe in democracy and people with right-wing political views are part of a healthy democracy and aren't in themselves evil. Woke seems to encourage people to lump everyone right of centre (and many on the left) directly into the Nazi camp, and thereby dismiss their voices.

As has been said a number of times up thread, with interesting examples from @Teatrayderby @DropDeadFreida @Justgotbackhome , some areas of "woke" ideology are regressing women's rights in significant and measurable ways and taking away women's ability to talk about it, without putting their safety or their jobs at risk.

I'd like to mention as well what I think is one of the other big problems, which is the lazy importing of theories wholesale without adapting them to the places they are being imported to. For example, I have Irish friends with children at an Irish school who are being taught critical race theory with no nuance to the country they are living in. They are being taught in school that as white people they are privileged and come from privilege - when, in fact, they are working-class Irish people with a family history and a nation history in the not-so-distant past of extreme poverty, abuse at the hands of the English ruling classes, death in the potato famine etc. Similarly, an elderly family member recalls teaching in Wales as a young woman and a child in her class dying (in the classroom) from malnutrition and starvation. No, they weren't slaves in chains, but we're talking about the fairly recent past and lives of severe hardship, suffering and lack of agency - importing critical race theory wholesale is overly simplistic and completely ignores class and the huge impact it has had on generations.

That is a difficult one. I respect people are different. However when a man with a penis identifys as a woman and believes they should share the womens sports/toilets/changing rooms, I disagree. You cannot expect people to agree with everything people want! What if a man identified as a female child and started a sexual relationship with another child?! Wrong on so many levels. You can want to be certain things, but it doesn't mean it's real.

Since woke brought us the gender cult which is inherently anti women and homophobic, I don't think you have a let to stand on with your silly, goady post, OP. Also critical race theory is currently retraining everyone to be obsessed with race and skin colour, and convincing non-Caucasians that hate and racism is lurking absolutely everywhere. It is deeply divisive, and inherently hypocritical.

Trying educating yourself on where all this originated, from critical theory studies in academia. Also, take a long, hard look at queer theory, and what it espouses, and you might be a bit shocked at all the 'love has no age' agenda.

Extreme GCs dehumanise anyone slightly understanding of TR, the extreme TRAs dehumanise anyone with even slightly GC views. Neither extreme of this debate wants compromise. Anyone in the middle ground, who see even a few valid points on both sides and/or are turned off by the dehumanising/demonising of the extreme positions, is labelled as the Other by both extremes.

How do you define compromise?

Do this mean we have to let nice TW into single sex spaces?

How do you suppose that will work?

There can be NO compromise that keeps women safe, safeguarding keeps all males out to keep all women safe, even the nice ones.

Decent males, including decent TW know this and respect women.

But not everyone who disagrees with you is doing/saying those things.
So why do you label the entire opposing argument with just the extremes?

Debates get pushed into these extreme positions because it's the easiest path to maintaining the argument and maintaining the identity of existence that individuals have attached to it.

Now I do agree with you that some debates have a greater degree of polarisation on one side than the other. The TRAs have been backed into a corner and lost the plot, the whole biological reality thing is going to bite them on the balls about a decade down the line when we start seeing sex-specific conditions under-detected in that section of the population. They might be joking this year about getting called for cervical smears, but when they realise they're not being called for prostate screening and there's a statistically significant rise vs. the male population in general we'll see what the attitude is then. But I am not going to demonise every TW as a porn-spamming, granny-punching rapist just because they're a TW.

I’m not ‘anti-woke’ but am vehemently against cancel culture. I’m a uni lecturer and we have to fight hard to keep certain literature on the reading lists because of the language and themes it contains. Bearing in mind a lot of it was written 100-200 years ago but it’s difficult within a university nowadays not to cause someone some minor offence.

Within one of the modules I teach, I make it clear that being offended isn’t an argument and the whole point of the module is to engage students in critical thought. If they don’t like one of the theorists, they need to tell us why and actually argue.

I don’t think anyone should be deleted because their views don’t match up with the so-called ‘woke generation’. Everyone’s view is valid and if we disagree, we need to critically evaluate why and come back with an actual response. Flailing around saying ‘I’m offended’ isn’t an argument.

Right but do you think that women should have single sex spaces & sports or don't you?

What is rather enlightening is asking people who they see as the ‘extreme’ end of that particular issue.

Because sometimes those who declare that they are in the middle are in reality agreeing with feminists campaigning for the prioritisation of sex where sex matters however they either don’t understand that they agree to such a large extent because people in media, politics or other places conveying the message have portrayed feminists as extreme. Or those declaring they are in the middle while agreeing with a group being relegated to the extreme end don’t like the way feminists talk. They don’t like the bluntness because they want to continue to feel they are kind and tolerant and view bluntness as being unkind and intolerant.

As with other posters asking for a definition of what the OP considers ‘woke’ is, it becomes just as important to ask people what they believe is the extremes they are talking about.

One of the most annoying things about woke is that I've found myself on the side of people I don't actually like and generally don't agree with because I think it's so vindictive that they've lost their livelihoods. I have to keep reminding myself that actually I don't share that person's views, otherwise I might end up becoming quite reactionary and unpleasant, which is not the person I want to be.

Of course there are extreme examples and indivudals who take things too far. But generally speaking the people who froth about “woke” strike me as just being angry about their lot full stop, and are looking for am easy scapegoat.

It’s the right wing equivalent of the socialist moaning that his life is crap because the system is rigged in favour of the rich. Rather than taking personal responsibility and trying to make the most of what you have, it’s more comforting to blame the system for ones’ failings. So instead of things being rigged in favour of the elite/rich, now everything’s rigged in favour of trans people/immigrants etc etc

The modern right cheered on by the victim mentality of the Daily Mail & co spend far more time whinging “it’s so unfair!” than the left ever did. 😅

Ministers to investigate ‘intimidation’ faced by women from trans-rights activists (archive.ph)

Food for thought.

Who said ‘every TW’ anyway?

I don’t think much at all about those who stand back up to them, as long as they recognise that ‘both sides are extreme’ is bollocks, can’t be evidenced and is an attempt to say women are behaving in extreme ways as men

All not true.

They’re the absolute same thing and the sooner people wake up to that and what the “woke” religion actually is, the better.

"Both extremes want to weaponise the issue into an absolute dividing line and reject the concept of a compromise outcome."

I think you mean appeasement not compromise.

Where women back down and retreat each time for fear of the consequences of disagreeing. Further and further back and down.

The whole ‘both sides’ thing needs to be put in the bin

It’s rolled out at every occasion, even when women are attacked by men

I think everyone who proudly proclaims they are woke should be asked this question: you're on the seventh floor of a burning building and the fire brigade has finally arrived. The stairs are alight, and the only way to save you is to be carried out of a window and down a long ladder. Do you want the person carrying you to be
a) a big burly bloke who got the job because he's a big burly bloke who can carry people out of burning buildings
b) a diversity hire who ticked all the boxes regarding gender, ethnicity, sexuality etc

It depends on your opinion of woke. But yes I do think some people throw the word around as they have no viable argument or point of view on a subject without being racist. Everytime I see it used, I do disregard that person opinion slightly.

I associate woke with being anti Jewish, anti-white, anti-women, anti-science, aggressive and homophobic, so yes I am anti-woke.