The Times today

[McDuffy]

I'd avoid if you don't want your blood pressure up. Fuckers

Why it’s time to join Generation Woke

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/2d3590de-8674-11eb-8b38-e2425c3b9f1b?shareToken=5889cbe612725ac152b5dd5a21c9b10d

The Woke Handbook for Boomers

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/c4908142-8678-11eb-8b38-e2425c3b9f1b?shareToken=60aa336ffad7823c3e12c640066e9917

I get that the Woke Handbook piece is satire, and some sentences are very funny, but the overall feeling (see what I did there) I'm left is with is distaste. It didn't quite hit the right mark.

Think I will stay in generation awake with eyes wide open

I don't usually read the supplemental bits of the times much and ignore bits which are clearly idiocies or irrelevant to me (most of the fashion and sleb stuff, silly 'surveys' reminiscent of teen mags.)
The mag starts ok today with Moran challenging men (yes I know about her daft tweets but she avoids that here).

Caitlin Moran

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/caitlin-moran-womens-safety-and-what-men-need-to-do-about-it-0n6g2rbbt?shareToken=b763a7ef3c920e6e8ba63549abf1eca8

I'm not remotely interested that navel gazing male journalists no longer think they can be down with their kids. Sententious shite.

Stuart Heritage can be very funny but is a lazy writer at heart. Have seen lots of his work that takes the easy route to a cheap laugh but isn't accurate and relies on cliche.

I agree. It's all a bit derivative by the numbers. Very Guardian. Like the Mash Report.

My parents never attempted to be ‘down with me’ and for that I am eternally grateful. The had the experience. I may have ‘known better’ but I was smart enough to know that they had... the experience.

Just to cheer everybody up a bit - here's Janice T talking about the Fair Play For Women success in the courts and calling out Stonewall's role in it. Share token:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/af930952-88fa-11eb-8b38-e2425c3b9f1b?shareToken=afaf64df495604b8b5c920f09f4000ab

Stuart Hertitage is a guardian writer maybe not on staff but he has been writing for them for years and years. He can be funny, I like his tv reviews for example but can also be a bit mash report too.

The times is also fairly balanced imo. I’ve moved from the guardian to the times just so I don’t have to read about gender queer all the time. Hope it’s not coming to the times now too

Thanks @persistentwoman

I found this conclusion heartening

Increasingly the political divide is not between left and right but between those who uphold objectivity, data, evidence and rule of law versus those who will jettison everything, even science and reason, for ideology.

If we cannot trust our gold-standard data body to defend facts against political interests, we are truly lost.

[quote persistentwoman]Just to cheer everybody up a bit - here's Janice T talking about the Fair Play For Women success in the courts and calling out Stonewall's role in it. Share token:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/af930952-88fa-11eb-8b38-e2425c3b9f1b?shareToken=afaf64df495604b8b5c920f09f4000ab[/quote]

Thanks for this. Reading Janice Turner always makes me calm and hopeful.

And I would agree with men of a certain age fearful of falling out with their 20 something daughters.
I have a teen daughter, I get it too. But I challenge her as that is ultimately in her best interests and that of her female friends. She gets my position too and agrees with me a lot. Some things we agree to disagree and it’s fine. But she is not privately educated, has never gone to an all girls school and has not yet gone to university.

I started the first article but the writer was so thick and boring I never made it to the end.

The problem now is that people jump on the bandwagon without actually looking at the implications of what it is that they are supporting.

It's not really about being unkind to trans people is it? And why couldn't he then explain that to a 13 year old? Fucking bonkers.

Andrew Billen is 63, with a 13 year old daughter. He's probably forgotten the sort of things he came out with as a teenager. And that was back in the days when colour TV was a novelty and your info came from books and newspapers written by well-educated adults with wide-ranging lived experience, not the 24/7, influencer-stuffed social media stew his daughter is growing up in.

Thanks for talking me down a bit. I was enraged by the laziness of it, and any talk of pronouns is likely to get my hackles up.

If I had a 13 year old daughter I’d be writing about why women can’t say ‘no’ in today’s society - why this is and how a girl is supposed to navigate her way though all this?

Relax, OP. The Times is almost certainly dangling this as click bait. Their usual default position is resolutely GC and anti woke. They know their readers, and I doubt more than 5% of us could be regarded as “woke”!
A quick scroll of the comments confirms the ratio - 50 to 100 “recommends” on anti woke posts, zero to five on pro.

Andrew Billen is 63, with a 13 year old daughter. He's probably forgotten the sort of things he came out with as a teenager.

When he was a teenager, homosexuality was still a long way off being accepted, girls did domestic science while boys did technical drawing, without it being questioned, etc etc. He probably falls into the trap of false equivalences.

I understand that "The Woke Handbook for Boomers" is supposed to be fun

Well it failed dismally.

Is Stuart Heritage the deeply irritating, smug bloke who wrote the deeply irritating, smug Man with a Pram column in The Guardian?

"It might surprise you to hear that it's possible to be a feminist and think JRK is a mediocre writer and very wrong on trans issues.

But you probably didn't spend a sizable chunk of your school life getting called "Cho Chang.""

Absolutely fine to call her a mediocre writer. Plenty of people don't understand the popularity of Harry Potter.

But what do you think she has said that is wrong on trans issues?

@Babdoc

Relax, OP. The Times is almost certainly dangling this as click bait. Their usual default position is resolutely GC and anti woke. They know their readers, and I doubt more than 5% of us could be regarded as “woke”! A quick scroll of the comments confirms the ratio - 50 to 100 “recommends” on anti woke posts, zero to five on pro.

Presumably also it's weekend readership - wider demographic perhaps, for some sat and sun are the only days they buy a paper. Different editorial team on the magazine. Likewise The Sunday Times publishes much more wile articles in the Style supplement compared to the main section.

Woke not wile

@Babdoc

Relax, OP. The Times is almost certainly dangling this as click bait. Their usual default position is resolutely GC and anti woke. They know their readers, and I doubt more than 5% of us could be regarded as “woke”! A quick scroll of the comments confirms the ratio - 50 to 100 “recommends” on anti woke posts, zero to five on pro.

I have been mollified by the readership's common sense (and you lot)

I'm crying fucking tears of authenticity right now. Daddio O.

Hilarious to see JKR called a mediocre writer. That's probably why she's so massively successful and her books have resonated with so many people.

And what's the point about her including an Asian character? The implication is she shouldn't have, so that racist bullies at school wouldn't have called you by that character's name? JKR is responsible for this?

On a separate note, I am very sorry you had to deal with racist bullies @hibari, I know too well how horrible that is myself.