Important article by Lionel Shriver

[FarriersGirl]

Leading article in the Times today by Lionel Shriver. She has long been a critic of woke but really doesn't pull any punches. In particular she highlights the fact that far from being progressive the era of woke has been the opposite.

www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/ditching-woke-brain-rot-transgender-pronouns-58g8dpxnp

" think a lot of the issue of wokism is the obsession with inoffensive vocabulary as opposed to meaning and intent, almost like knowing the correct words gets you into the club. So ‘coloured’ is grossly offensive but ‘of colour’ is great, when they are synonymous!"

💯

The quality of debate diminishes when focus is directed to scrutinizing vocabulary or synonyms rather than addressing the underlying constructs and phenomena. Productive discourse easily becomes mired in semantic arguments.

So much time is wasted on superficial discussions about the terms “woman," "trans woman," "transwoman," rather than how we understand and apply concepts of sex and gender, rather than getting caught up in the terminology. It is true that words matter only because the underlying concepts matter.

I believe in gravity as an article of faith. I don't understand anything in Principia Mathematica tbh. But I accept the scientific consensus. Same with climate change. And sexual dimorphism.

Thanks for the share token! It's a good piece.

" think a lot of the issue of wokism is the obsession with inoffensive vocabulary as opposed to meaning and intent, almost like knowing the correct words gets you into the club. So ‘coloured’ is grossly offensive but ‘of colour’ is great, when they are synonymous!"

I think that's definitely part of it. Janice Turner had an article about "semantic gentrification" whereby only certain words are termed acceptable, but as soon as everyone gets used to them, they are suddenly verboten and have to be replaced by something else. Over my lifetime, I've seen the "correct" words for ethnic minority change numerous times. For a while "minority ethnic" was in fashion. "BAME" was big for a time, but now that is considered offensive and I think "people from racialised communities" is the correct term, though I also see "global majority" a lot.

The reason it's called "semantic gentrification" is it allows one group of people who are in the know to feel superior to everyone else who isn't in the know - by constantly changing the rules, they are able to exclude people from the elite club of right-minded people.

It also allows those in the know to reprimand the ignorant and to feel superior. The bonus is that you also cause the ignorant to be cowed as they get worried of saying the wrong thing.

As there now seems to be momentum gathering with regard to sex realism, I plan to spend 2025 noting who is trying to lift women and other people with protected characteristics up, and who is punching down for cheap laughs.

LS is in the second category.

Pol Pot's killing fields?
She's really comparing Twitter spats with wokesters to the Cambodian genocide?
Poor little rich girl.

I have learnt a different lesson. Don't group people into 'good people' and 'bad people' using arbitrary rules.

Yes, this!

This works both ways. One of the streams of unconsciousness that led into "wokery" was the much maligned "political correctness". Saying the wrong thing, using the wrong word perhaps, is something I seem to have done for my entire life. I remember when the term "brainstorming" was deemed unacceptable, due to the possibility that somebody might be upset by it. But the "you can't say that" posse of speech police encourages people who have more extreme views to gleefully spout them in an effort to offend everybody. Ultimately it isn't really about language, it's about power games.

Yes, that is a good point inky. Intent is an important factor to consider. It appears to have been thrown by the wayside unfortunately.

The whole of wokery is based on the return of phenomenology (lived experience) vs Cartesianism (scientific reality).

So, a geneticist becomes less qualified to opine on what makes a woman than someone who ‘feels’ that they are a woman but are XY hormonally.

Of course, this is a bit of a return to the old days of religion where our feeling that the sun rotated around us trumped telescopic observations and mathematical logic (although it is possible to make some very obscure maths fit with a geocentric solar system).

But wokery is ultimately scary as anyone can appoint themselves the guardians of lived experience and it is very divisive as society becomes split depending on our variable lived experiences.

Some good has come of wokery, but it has gone way too far!

Agree. And generally, ironically enough, those who are in the know tend to be white, middle-class, university-educated, while it's usually the poor, uneducated and disadvantaged who are not in the know.

And it's so hard to stand up against this stuff. I wrote something recently where I used the term "ethnic minority" and someone commented "we prefer the term 'racialised minorities' to indicate that these groups are racialised by the wider white society'."

I really wanted to point out that not all ethnic minority groups feel "racialised" by white society - indeed some are actively proud of being a racial or ethnic minority. All the Jews I know, for example, feel that being Jewish is an important badge of identity - they are not Jewish because the rest of society has "racialised" them but because it's how they see themselves. I'm sure the same is true of other minority groups such as Sikhs.

I couldn't be bothered to have the argument though - too exhausting.

Yes, but accepting the science does not make someone a climate activist. Climate activists, like all activists, tend to invest a lot of emotional energy in their activism. Fighting climate change becomes an important part of their identity; rather than simply being someone who makes an effort to change certain lifestyle habits for the greater good.

That's true @Shortshriftandlethal .Though I wouldn't be surprised if Shriver was emotionally invested on the other side. Anti vax and thinks God is in charge of the weather. Or perhaps she's a Randroid and thinks epidemics are nature's way of thinning out the herd. None of that woke medicine crap....

You don't just believe in gravity, you experience it. You know it exists. You don't need to understand the maths to know that if you drop something it will fall to the floor.

I am not encouraged by this at all. I love Shriver’s literature and agree that she usually has incredible insight and ability to express herself. But this article reads like she has had too much wine and is spewing bile. Her comment here about the John Lewis advert is unforgivable and like something Trump would say. I will not be buying any more of her books.

She's really said all the things there, wow.

I disagree that she "just happens" to be right about GI and the other stuff is nasty - they are all a package. Identity politics Is one set of ideas - the other ideas she is talking about aren't more sensible. They are just as bad, and just as full of contradictions and injustices. And will fail due to those things.

She's right too that the identarians are neither non-conformist nor original thinkers, but are very invested in believing they are both.

She had a back surgery go wrong, has been in a lot of pain and is not yet recovered. Perhaps she seems a bit off for this reason?

But I've no idea how it works. There's no such thing as matter apparently. Just a bunch of whirling electrons and empty space. I'm not jumping out of any windows though!

I will not be buying any more of her books.

If she were to write a brilliant book again, I would buy it, despite her idiotic stream of cuntishness in many columns. I don't really care about her as an individual, except in a passive-aggressive "You ok hun?" kind of a way. I'm just worried about how her casual racism etc might taint perfectly unexceptional critiques of gender ideology.

It is bizarre, though, that she should have become so crass. We Need To Talk About Kevin was remarkable for at least two reasons: the way in which she was able to hold uncertainty (about who was 'in the wrong', which interpretations bore scrutiny, etc ), and the way in which she was able simultaneously to critique and permit her central character's harsh and withholding nature.
I fully travelled with her in both of these sets of nuance. It is completely disorientating that she has so comprehensively rejected nuance and reflection now.

But the investors are doing that, and it does show a change in how people are behaving.

Apart from that, ultimately the management needs to make the case to share folders and their representatives that these kinds of initiatives are more than virtue signalling, that there is long term benefit, and they haven't really. To the point where they've clearly lost the confidence of the shareholders.

Yes, I can actually remember when it was a normal term where I live, the same as saying something like "developmentally delayed". Now we have people saying that you can't talk about using retardant in your concrete, and it also has made a comeback in schools as an insult. I think these things are related.

It's worth remembering that in the UK there is not nearly so much problematic stuff going on with what you are calling "racial inclusion" as there is in the US and Canada. Where, for example, it's completely legal for employers to overtly choose or dismiss employees on the basis of race, or to require higher test results for people of certain races, or to only give grants to scientists who have lab assistance of certain races., or where it's seen as ok to talk to elementary school children about the problem of whiteness.

I think this is what is discombobulating me. I have always turned to Lionel Shriver to have hugely insightful, nuanced thoughts on any given matter. Reading this article makes me feel like one of my heroes has just been revealed to be one big joke 😓