MN needs a closer watch of FWR

[BodegaSushi]

There is a concerning growth of posts with racist undertones cropping up on these boards, all under the guise of being proudly 'anti-woke'.

Apparently diversity is 'woke' and worthy of derision.

This is the thread I'm referring to here.

Disney went woke now they're going broke www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4836570-disney-went-woke-now-theyre-going-broke

Mumsnet needs to looks at why that board draws such types of posts, and why posters feel so comfortable openly airing their racism.

I’d be interested to see an example, too.

IIRC, "woke" was not taken directly from Black people in order to be used as a term of ridicule.

After decades of use among Black Americans which AFAIK went unnoticed by most white people (and certainly within the UK), there was then a short period where some white people began using "woke" in an attempt to show solidarity towards Black people struggling against prejudice and discrimination.

It was then, to use your term, "co-opted" by (probably largely white) self-identified progressives to refer to themselves, using it to signify the adoption of a whole suite of ideas, positions and assumptions around politics/race/gender/sexuality/reproductive rights/the climate/the economy etc, some pretty mainstream (at least in the UK) but a few quite extreme. It was only after these people adopted the term for themselves that it started appearing much more frequently and prominently in places where other people, unfamiliar with the original context, would be exposed to it.

The general public, and inflammatory newspaper columnists of course, observed these (probably largely white) self-identified progressives describing themselves as "woke" in a way that, when shorn of its original cultural context, seemed mockably arrogant, naive and ridiculous (a bit like the "wake up, sheeple!" types). It came across as yet another bunch of what looked like young, idealistic people who wanted to tell everyone else how to behave, and this time using a short, snappy term to describe themselves which makes them sound like they think they're better than everyone else. It must have seemed almost irresistible to use that word to poke fun. Many of those mocking will have had no idea at all that the word had been taken and repurposed from an AAVE term meant to signify awareness of racial injustice.

If you want to blame a group for what's happened to "woke", blame the people who decided to borrow, dilute and repurpose it for their broad programme of social and political stances, not the people who saw a load of their political opponents suddenly using an unfamiliar word to describe themselves, and took the mick with it.

Well said, this is exactly what happened. Most people would have had no clue that it originated in black (American) culture.
It was already co-opted by mostly young white people who spread it across the internet, and then others started mocking those people by using the word that they used to describe themselves.

"MN needs a closer watch of FWR." - That's your thread title? Can you hear yourself?

There should be a word for this particularly ugly fusion of embarrassing and sinister. It's becoming quite the leitmotif of the little authoritarians who think they've the right to police thought by policing language.

This

its not a word I use myself but the other posters have described its current usage very well

Exactly this. If you are put off by FWR OP, report posts or mute the thread.

Stop policing speech and thoughts. "Closer watch" indeed.

But the forcible redefinition of words to include things they are not supposed to include (because they are the literal opposite) is not the organic evolution of language, it is the forcible colonisation of language.

That's excellently put

On forcible redefinition of words, I just saw this, going down the same path as Johns Hopkins with their “non-men” bollocks the other week.

A University of Cincinnati women’s gender studies professor has been ordered to complete free speech training after she failed a student for referring to non-trans female athletes as “biological women,” according to a report.

https://nypost.com/2023/07/01/university-of-cincinnati-professor-formally-reprimanded-over-biological-women-remark/

Yup, not only are we non-men now, we are also “non-trans females”.

Trebles all round!

Wow. OP wanted a thread on racism on FWR.

But I read the thread and my goodness a lot of people must be so uncomfortable with discussing racism on FWR that the thread has been hijacked into a whinge about ‘TRAs’ and ‘gender ideology’ not to mention a wild digression into if you’re not straight and not GC, then you’re apparently homophobic and a misogynist. Plus a dash of paranoia that everyone not GC on FWR are ‘men pretending to be women’ that ‘moderate the site 24/7 pet’ or were all trolls because ‘troll farms’ have recently been shut down to spice things up.

It’s a sad state of affairs when we can’t even discuss the racism on FWR.

We looked and couldn’t find any, so started yakking about something else, you know how it is.

Yeah exactly. I've never seen "woke" used with any apparent intent to mock Black people, or to use the word's origin in Black American culture as a way of associatively denigrating the target. Not because those using it aren't racist, because I'm sure some of them probably are, but because they'll generally have started using it long before being told its origins, if at all. The use of the word as a jibe may have unintentional racist implications, but IMO that's less the fault of those using it to ridicule than it is the fault of those who decided to co-opt it for themselves and take it mainstream with a new meaning.

I don't really use "woke" myself (don't have much need to, and don't want to make people feel uncomfortable given the word's background), but for me, knowing the history behind it gives it another layer of meaning — a reminder that the person being referred to as "woke" might be the kind of person who'll superficially act like they're supporting your movement, but is actually perfectly comfortable taking what you've worked for, using it for their own ends, and ruining it in the process.

Daft thing is, I actually agree with the vast majority of the social and political opinions of those who get called "woke"

The main areas I differ are in free speech (and no, not freezepeach bollocks, just the old-fashioned kind that our democracies are founded upon, imperfect though it is), and the value of trying to recognise, in thought and language, reality as it is. @Terryer's "When you start trying to stick up for Nigel Farage having his bank account rescinded you know you are on the wrong side." is a perfect example of the kind of authoritarian, anti-free speech, chilling kind of argument we hear from those who get called "woke". It's not clear yet, from what I've seen (though I haven't been following the story), whether there have been genuine reasons behind his account closure, but yes, I would stick up for Nigel Farage if he hadn't done anything to genuinely merit his account being closed, even though I despise the conniving, manipulative, hypocritical, self-serving little arsehole.

Is this a joke?

Yes

I’d like to hear that from @MavisMcMinty if you don’t mind.

🤷🏻

Interesting set of comments on this ‘site stuff’ thread wrt framing of FWR board as racist (or homophobic or islamophobic), which is certainly not one I recognise.

In fact, I’ve been impressed with how the vast bulk of the comments and commentators on FWR are thoughtful, erudite, intelligent, and informative in their explanations of concerns about the loss of women’s rights and SSS’s along with safeguarding and erasure of the word ’woman’. And remain remarkably calm under extreme provocation.

It’s a puzzle how posters don’t just ignore it, if it aggrieves them so, but instead can’t seem to stay away. But in this specific case, there seems to be woeful misrepresentation of what the OP was saying in relation to the Disney thread who clarified that their point was nothing to do with race and everything to do with GI, which is fair enough on a Feminism: Sex and Gender board, no?

A lot of the FWR posters have studied feminism and have campaigned or/and worked on women's issues for a long time. FWR posters are also known for being diverse. There's a wide range of different races, disabilities, ages and classes.
It's almost as though the posters saying they don't visit FWR often - just enough to want to complain about it - don't know anything about it.

Has the person who complained about Islamophobia on FWR given an example yet?

Admittedly I only dip in from time to time and I don't read most of the threads, but I haven't seen any Islamophobia.

Agree. I looked up the meaning of 'woke' and the first that came up was:

alert to and concerned about social injustice and discrimination.
"he's an activist and very woke" 

No mention of racial issues at all.

It isn't racist to be 'anti-woke' when using woke in its pejorative sense. Anti-woke doesn't mean for social injustice and discrimination, to me it means something like being anti people jumping on any bandwagon going past without critically examining whether it is sound or not.

Yes, this.

Or doing it because the cause in question is currently fashionable and you want to look good to the right people.

I'm sure that a lot of people who insist that TWAW don't believe that they are for a second, or even that trans people are genuinely oppressed in the UK on 2023. But it's a trendy position to take, or a compulsory position to take if you want to stay in with a certain crowd.

So I tend to think of "woke" in a pejorative sense as being associated with either a lack of critical thinking or active insincerity.

I agree the comments to a lesbian woman who had a child with a partner were hateful.
There is so much homophobia and racism on that board. It attracts people who just see LGBT as all weird deviants.

@lifeturnsonadime those who called it out were called transactivists.
Why would you assume two lesbian women having a child used a surrogate? I have never heard of that happening ever.

As I said in an earlier post, this is what happens when you banish all talk of this subject to the naughty corner.

People who don't feel very strongly about the topic are absent from the discussion, so you are left with people who don't have a problem with trans people per se but are passionate about women's rights and child safeguarding, people who do have a problem with trans people (and most likely with other minority groups) because they see them as deviants, and the odd trans activist.

If discussion of this topic wasn't effectively banned elsewhere (and I don't mean just elsewhere on Mumsnet but on mainstream social media in general) places like FWR would be less like a boiling pot that inevitably bubbles over from time to time.

It was about two lesbians demanding the right to a man's sperm wasn't it?

Nobody has a right to extract sperm from a man to use to create a child. Or an egg and womb from a woman to gestate it in. No matter someone's sexual orientation.

I would add that I had a post deleted recently and got a warning from MNHQ for transphobia. The post in question was one where I expressed the view that unisex spaces wouldn't be the preferred outcome for someone who specifically wants to be welcomed into women's spaces as evidence that they are accepted as a woman.

I believe that this is a valid point to make but I accept that I said it in a way that was not very nice. But this is what happens when you designate a corner of the internet as a place for people to express views that they are not allowed to express anywhere else. People tend to go there to let off steam when they are feeling annoyed.