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?

But not everyone who disagrees with you is doing/saying those things.

And nobody is claiming that they are.

But you're trying to equate the "extremists" on both sides as being somehow as bad as each other. And calling someone an extremist isn't actually comparable with threatening to murder someone, trying to hijack a children's art threat with pornography or denying biological reality.

And now you're just trying to shift and deflect from the really rather dishonest false equivalence you're peddling. The point isn't that NATAALT, the point is that you're trying to paint two types of people as "just as bad as each other" when they clearly aren't. It's not even extremist to call someone an extremist, much as you clearly wish it were.

Do you think people are actually fooled by this intellectual dishonesty of yours?

I'm just tired of all of it.

Can't we just try to be decent, reasonable, and kind? And know everyone gets it wrong a lot because we are all busy and tired and flawed? Most people are ok really. Some people are bonkers or horrible. But we outnumber them. I have friends who are trans and friends who are radical feminists. I have carefully and reasonably discussed these issues - even at work - with people with opposing views and agreed compromise positions that respects people. This is possible! In academia I understand it's very risky to have political or intellectual debates, that's a different matter : I have friends who have lost their jobs for doing this.

But for most people, in real life it's fine. It's really ok. Get off Twitter and speak to people. Most people are ok.

I think the example by @DorsetandBeyond is really important. We need nuance above all else when teaching and discussing these issues. This ridiculous tribalism is so damaging, and the world is not black and white.

On a personal level, attempting to discuss this issue with some people of my acquaintance has been so upsetting for me in the past, because on the few occasions I tried to relate my own experiences I was shut down because my viewpoint of tolerance and debate did not fit their mould of what a person like me 'should' be saying.

My family came to this country to escape actual fascism. Not this contemporary form of 'I don't like what you say so you're a fascist' but actual attempts at genocide, gassing people, raping women and burning down homes kind of fascism. So hearing white, English, middle class people who have never even travelled beyond Western Europe and the US try and explain oppression to me and tell me I am wrong has been nothing short of galling.

It's one of the reasons I started coming on to Mumsnet in the first place-it's one of the only places (outside of my close friendship group) where these topics can be discussed freely.

These people are not interested in truth, justice and equality, they are looking for a tribe, and the performative nature of social media is the perfect breeding ground for this.

I say this as someone who would always vote Labour, even canvassed for Labour, was a member of a union and very political. I am not anymore. Speak to anyone who grew up in a home country like mine and you will soon realise that we have seen this type of discourse many times: people pitting themselves against each other, suppressing debate, threatening abuse and violence towards dissenters, forcing marginalised groups to go underground. What does that sound like? It doesn't end well.

@firstpasttheposter

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

You're correct to call out this cancel culture/shutting down of free speech stuff. But you ought to recognise that right wing factions also use these methods nearly as much as those on the left and have also done so historically.

So the authoritarian mindset transcends left-right. But when it’s employed on the right to shut down, say, voices on the climate debate, the Israel-Palestine conflict, or just giving a fair airing to socialist views in general without labelling their proponents as “terrorists supporting” or “Anti American/British” etc etc - that sort of stuff doesn’t cause any uproar, because the authoritarians concerned have no problem shutting down that sort of free speech and these authoritarians hold far more power and influence than the Woke Brigade on X.

But MN has never (well very, very rarely) given a thought to teenage boys sharing a changing room with a fully intact gay male.

Now is that woke, anti-woke or just plain bigoted.

Women can say no to males in their spaces and be ‘kind’ (or not as they wish)

It is entirely reasonable for women not to consent.

This post was in regard to the poster who said that it’s cancel culture they have a problem with. They’re two cheeks of the same arse.

I am not sure whether you think MN should be discussing this as you see this as a safeguarding fail or whether you don’t think we should be discussing this ? Can you clarify please?

And one other point I would like to make is that certainly in the context of women's rights, it has been interesting to see just how racist and colonial the rhetoric is.

A perfect example of this comes from WHO: they published a report not that long ago that basically called for the importance of having single-sex toilets and facilities, and gave examples of countries like Nepal where according to their research, VAWG is rife and they need these spaces to be safe.

Is this not the same organisation that was pushing the TWAW agenda and championing same-sex facilities in the West?

So is it that Western men are less likely to rape and abuse women? Are Western men more evolved, kinder and egalitarian than men elsewhere? Why are these organisations recommending same-sex facilities in the West and single-sex facilities in the rest of the world?

“But I am not going to demonise every TW as a porn-spamming, granny-punching rapist just because they're a TW.”

Is anyone on MN doing this? Or are you talking about elsewhere? Who do you believe is doing this, who are these extreme people?

Why are these organisations recommending same-sex facilities in the West and single-sex facilities in the rest of the world?

Because they're virtue-signalling, self-serving hypocrites who are just plain dumb.

Nah, I'm just fucked off with those who get "triggered" by absolutely everything.

"Oooh I worked really hard today"
"I couldn't work hard today because I'm ill, are you saying I'm a lazy workshy twat? Are you saying people who can't work don't have a tough life? You really should think about what you say"
"OK goodbye"

🙄

To elaborate further on the above, I’d say a good 80%+ of right wing politicians & commentators are massive hypocrites when it comes to the cancel culture/free speech debate. When the shoes on the other foot, and a left winger speaker is investigated by police for an innocuous comment, or banned for criticising the Israeli government, or held for years without trial by the US government, or branded a traitor/terrorist stmoathiser for not cheerleading the latest war for oil , etc etc - they don’t blink an eyelid. So it’s not about a free speech at all - it’s just a power struggle. An authoritarian is an authoritarian.

That should say unisex rather than same-sex!

Using your analogy I would add:
Laying on the operating table would you want your surgeon to be privileged Oxbridge educated white male who is the best at his job or a person that ticks all the boxes.

I didn't write the quote you put up. But, yes, I agree with you. One of the most frustrating thing about woke is that they say 'cancel culture is a right-wing myth'. I try to tell them, 'this will come and get you too' and they don't believe me. Perhaps they will believe me now? Look at all those young people in America who've been fired before they even started their jobs. A number of actors have lost parts in films or been dropped by their agencies. Sure, some of the things they've said are awful, but this is how conflicts work, people see horrific violence and loss and they get upset. Diane Abbott is still suspended. I can't stand the woman, but she's a democratically elected MP.

Nah!

Wokeness as it is now has diluted every serious cause I’ve seen people fight for.

Now everyone is so distracted by all the reasons they feel slighted, we’re making far less progress in equality- be that race, sex, sexual orientation, disability etc.

I've even heard my teenagers complaining that everyone is so busy being offended, no one has any rights anymore 🤷🏽‍♀️. All a bloody distraction.

@firstpasttheposter

Agree. It’s the same forces and mindset that came for Donald Trump that came Jeremy Corbyn. It’s nothing to do with free speech or where the limits of free speech should be. They are power plays, pure and simple. “I don’t like what you say or stand for and I hate how popular you are. Unfortunately my arguments aren’t working so I’ll just get you cancelled”.

I’m disabled (wheelchair user and chronically ill), ND, and I’m a dyke- over all I agree with you.

People will always have views and opinions about my ‘lifestyle’, marriage, body, presence in the world, parenting ability, sex life, salvation and intellect- which I consider to be on a spectrum from bullshit- downright abhorrent.

They are allowed to hold those opinions and to express them in appropriate spaces (to their mates down the pub, on line, in their church or worship group, over dinner with their mum or whatever)- I’m allowed to think they are colossal wankers. This is how it’s always been and should be- I don’t like ablist homophobes but I don’t have to like everyone.

Where I would disagree with you is on the job front- if I pitch up at the doctor for a smear test or an sti test and she refuses to do it because ‘lesbians can’t get those things because they don’t have real sex’ (this has actually happened to me, it’s not an invented scenario), then I have no issue complaining and making a big fuss- it’s her job to do it, the fact she doesn’t believe lesbian sex is real sex is irrelevant.

The same goes for teachers at school- they can think what they want, but if they stand in front of a class and tell them they will go to hell if they are gay (another thing that has happened to me) then they don’t deserve to have that job.

Yes, I think you are right, OP.

It's just the same as people saying Political Correctness Gorn Mad ten years ago.

Yes, the culture of appropriating movements is the newest ‘trend’, sadly.

The debate on free speech is hampered by many issues, a couple come to mind,

1. Hypocrisy and self-interest.
   If some lecturer says that MLK was “nothing but a wife beating sociopath” or Mandela “a no good terrorist sympathiser” or whatever and is subsequently fired, the right wing tabloids will be calling this a disgrace of freedom of expression and Woke out of control in universities across the land. The next day another professor calls Churchill a “disgusting mysoginist racist” and those same papers will be CALLING for that lecturer to be fired and saying Woke is out of control at universities across the land (same villain you see!)

2. No universally agreed definition of hate speech (or certainly not one that is culturally agreed upon). Is or offensive language? Dehumanising language? Language that encourages violence against a group? Etc.

Sorry I'm probably derailing the thread, but I see it as a safeguarding fail that is never considered. We seem to spend a lot of time protecting our daughters from men but not enough protecting our sons.

Gay men as a class are not a statistical and demonstrable threat as far as I'm aware. Obviously some of them are violent or sex offenders but not enough to justify segregating them from straight men for changing facilities.

The same can't be said for the level of threat men as a class pose to women. As TRAs so often refuse to acknowledge, the threat of wholly untransitioned (with the understanding that no human can change sex whatever they do) males in female spaces is not related to their being trans, it's related to their being male.

I agree that the meaning of the term 'woke' seems to have changed, I don’t think it’s just down to virtue-signalling white people though.
I‘ve seen people of different ethnicities use it as a tool to create division unfortunately.