Prof Stock in The Times today

[JoyousAsOtters]

Share Token:
Turn of the woke tide will leave many stranded

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/5e1c3d76-e78d-44de-8305-422e04192356?shareToken=b54e3055ae593d8b7887aa1ad9beca8c

It's a really good article. Thanks for sharing. Definitely lots of organisations and institutions will take a while to catch up to sanity. Lots of cushy jobs and roles will have to go.

IMO Kathleen Stock is the only contemporary writer/commentator who is comparable to Orwell in he understanding and analysis. A brilliant article.

As ever, I hope she’s right.

I wish that self-ID hadn’t been brought in in two important countries and title IX hadn’t been fucked over, just as we made the huge breakthrough with Cass.

I’m always glad to hear from Dr Stock, but I wish we had more proof that the tide really is turning. I’ve heard that too many times now.

Her not he! Didn’t proofread my edit properly.

Excellent,

“The most obvious difference between wokeness and other passing fashions is that nobody working in HR ever decreed that moustache-wearers or indie folk-listeners be considered uniquely oppressed minority groups. In contrast, thanks to wild and unevidenced claims made at the height of wokemania by lobbying groups, thousands of organisations have been left with unfair, illiberal and sometimes even illegal policies that blatantly cater to the special interests of a few: rules about how social spaces can be accessed and by whom; what data can and cannot be collected; what conversations are allowed and which are not. Policies tend to dictate organisational behaviour long after those who first championed them move on ideologically; and especially when propped up by a raft of specially created career positions, whose occupants have a financial interest in maintaining the momentum.”

Oi, stop it right there, there is nothing wrong with Indie folk!

“superficially moralised gestures have become embedded in many workplaces”

“In effect, the storm-surge of wokeness throughout British institutions from 2020 onwards was what the political scientist Cass Sunstein has called a “reputational cascade”: a relatively small number of people started acting in a certain way, each for roughly independent reasons; then at a certain point, a wider group of people started observing the behaviour of the smaller group and copying them, each privately assuming their reputations would be damaged if they did not. Before long, this pattern expanded exponentially, helped by the odd bit of public witch-burning.”

“the existence of a reputational cascade doesn’t require sincere belief in the rectitude or wisdom of whatever behaviours you are copying, only the sincere belief that nearly everybody else thinks such behaviours are good ones.”

😄

Oh she’s good. I love how she simultaneously derides attitudes as fads, whilst pointing out they are still dangerous:

”None of this happened with the craze for platform shoes or Agas”

Thanks for sharing @JoyousAsOtters

I think she’s so sharp in her dissection of the detail. And still manages to keep wit and humour in her points - it’s great writing.

’The most obvious difference between wokeness and other passing fashions is that nobody working in HR ever decreed that moustache-wearers or indie folk-listeners be considered uniquely oppressed minority groups. In contrast, thanks to wild and unevidenced claims made at the height of wokemania by lobbying groups, thousands of organisations have been left with unfair, illiberal and sometimes even illegal policies that blatantly cater to the special interests of a few: rules about how social spaces can be accessed and by whom; what data can and cannot be collected; what conversations are allowed and which are not. Policies tend to dictate organisational behaviour long after those who first championed them move on ideologically; and especially when propped up by a raft of specially created career positions, whose occupants have a financial interest in maintaining the momentum.’

Followed by:

‘And alongside such policies, superficially moralised gestures have become embedded in many workplaces, embraced by senior figures for no better reason than they think everyone else is doing it too and by junior figures because the boss is doing it. Students at liberal arts colleges may no longer be listing their pronouns but the head of MI6 currently has his in his Twitter/X bio. Activist-sanctioned holy weeks and days are carefully observed by blue-chip managers. Hospitals, construction sites, police stations, council buildings, banks and hotels are festooned with the visual monstrosity that is the Progress flag. None of this happened with the craze for platform shoes or Agas.’

Brilliant article

I think I might actually love Professor Stock. Sharp and brilliant article, thank you so much for the share token @JoyousAsOtters .
I know what you mean @PriOn1 , but I do now feel optimistic that the tide is turning for real.

One of the many aspects of this whole saga that is so tragic is the fact that someone with a mind this sharp and clear was forced to leave her post. A whole cohort of students at Sussex will now have missed the opportunity to learn from her.

"I wish that self-ID hadn’t been brought in in two important countries "

At least I can now quote articles from the Times in online discussions of the issue at my favourite weekly (DIE ZEIT, Germany) . Reports in the Mail and other GC publications were roundly removed until very recently.
They seem to have relaxed their rules (or the monitors of the comment section have been given some rules).

Interesting that she mentions MI6 are proudly displaying their pronouns. I've been thinking for a while now that MI5 should really be investigating how this ideology has infested the UK - it's a massive gap in safeguarding and security and is detrimental to the majority of the population - but they don't seem to have noticed!

'Of course I love thee, Doctor Stock..' sorry I can't find four suitable rhymes to complete that, BUT

Part of my critical faculties go Ouch when the word 'woke' is used, though at least Dr Stock offers a definition. It ranks somewhere alongside 'eye-roll' in the list of overused and predictable words in this area of discussion.

And I'm not sure about bringing in Black Lives Matter or footballers 'taking the knee' into a critique of the excesses of gender politics. Opposing racism, even in ways that might be identified as 'woke', is very a different thing altogether from campaigning against beliefs that are WORIAD in ways that are definintely 'woke'.

The actual BLM organisation has its issues, and some of the wokerati undoubtedly embraced it to excess, but the movement itself grew out of what I believe was a genuine revulsion at the sight of the brutal, casual and prolonged murder of a Black man by 'law enforcers' that just happened to be recorded and broadcast around the world, unlike most murders.
Footballers 'taking the knee' eventually became an imposed virtue-signal, and at the time it bothered me that they were not 'taking the knee' week after week for all the women murdered within earshot of their stadia. However, I believe it started out as a genuine if clunky expression of that wave of revulsion against racist killings that spread across the world. That wave broke, and died away, and as far as I know no un-woke footballers were driven out of their jobs.

I'm not sure that BLM and taking the knee belong in the same league with ideological capture of major institutions, the tribunals, the police harassment, the nonsensical legislation, and the threats of, as well as actual violence that gender extremism has wrought on this side of the Atlantic.

So while I fully expect all the Doc Stock supporters to be on their feet in the stands, pointing at me, from relegation places of the Vanarama National League, and mockingly chanting 'Who are you? Who are you?', I assert that I think this great article - does she ever write anything that isn't Premier League?[smile]@would have been better if it hadn't introduced race politics into a critique of gender politics. There are crossovers, but they are very different.

I still love thee Doctor Stock, honest, and I'm going away to hide under a table now...

@MarieDeGournay I couldn’t agree more. I think Stock has said some important and brave things about women in a culture where trans rights discourses have become increasingly problematic and contradictory.

I get that she’s bringing in BLM because she’s talking about the wider issue of “identity politics”, some of which have become increasingly restrictive, exclusionary and divisive.

But it’s regressive to throw out all discourse associated with non-normative identities/sexualities, or frame them all as categorically useless/empty. Their foundations are gay rights and women’s rights, and intersectional feminism.

While today’s identity politics needs challenging because it’s become more about re-drawing boundaries (sometimes illogically, like saying men can say they are women) instead of opening them out (and saying e.g. it’s fine for men to wear dresses, so what), we’d kick ourselves if discourses regressed back to the point of being told, for example, women are only fit for child rearing because of their biology. We’d do well to remember that feminists once argued women didn’t have to be limited to their biological function, and that today’s discourses have grown out of that. Sure it’s gone wrong, but why and how is an important question!

…and we won’t get to the answers by deriding and dismissing whole, quite different movements. Which I think she comes close to doing in this article, but I appreciate it’s a shorty.

I do think there is a parallel to be drawn in the way these social justice movements can cynically exploit the goodwill of those who follow them - - Stonewall gained enormous power from trans rights and the BLM founders got rich from it.

I imagine the majority of people agree with the general ideas that trans people shouldn't be assaulted on the street or discriminated against in the job market, and that black people's safety is important. The issue is when these movements gain too much ideological power at the expense of telling the truth and making meaningful changes. When trans rights / BLM becomes your moneyspinner, it's no longer in your interest to solve the issue you're claiming to solve. This vapid, superficial adherence to doctrine helps nobody but harms everybody.

I love the idea of stone roses fans being a protected group. They’d all be middle age men now and exactly the group in 2024 that no one wants to protect!😁

There as an attempt to make goths a protected sub group after a horrible murder but nothing came of that ( rightfully imo)

Part of my critical faculties go Ouch when the word 'woke' is used, though at least Dr Stock offers a definition.

I'm with you on this, it's usually used as a lazy catch-all and is to be avoided. I don't think a lot of the things people class as 'woke' are bad or eye-rolly.... anyway that won't let me not enjoy the rest of it!

It's a great article but I agree with the concerns about the analogies.

I'd also like to preserve the progress we have made in race, sex and sexual orientation discrimination. The extremism of TRAs will prompt a backlash (yes I still want to protect our kids and women's rights) and I don't want that backlash to push us back to the times of no EDI. (They'll probably blame the women again)

I'm concerned about the Aga-phobia on display here, it troubles me

MI5 gave Suzie Green of Mermaids an ‘outstanding contribution to LBGT+ life’ award. Suggests to me they are part of the problem.