"Wokeist" - When people talk about progressivism without acquaintance

[sophie]

How convenient that everyone who disagrees with you disagrees not because of it being a legitimate difference of opinion and perspective, but because they are actually bigots so you have no need to engage with their points when raised.

In this case, the person is a bigot opining on a subject matter whose form consists primarily of ridiculing or belittling the perspectives of the very target of the person's bigotry. I think it's probably worthwhile pointing that out.

I have no idea who this deBoer guy is, Greenwald's gone firmly into loony-land, and we've been over and over on Singal (who I only know from their Atlantic article, because I don't follow Twitter drama) and I have no wish to dive into that again.
But if I am in a discussion thread and someone raises an article from Greenwald on Biden, it is only fair that if I call Greenwald a nutcase I provide reasons for why I don't take Greenwald seriously on that topic. (Such as the fact he was fired from the news organization he started, screwed up the handled of almost all serious stories he was given, and hasn't done any serious investigative journalism in years.)

I mean, cool I guess. I'd probably just say Greenwald is a windbag who isn't to be taken seriously on any matter of theoretical significance and leave it at that.

Jesse Singal has actually done a lot of research and reporting on the issues he’s talking about so I don’t think he can so easily be dismissed as a transphobe.

lmao, you would say that.

Schlaufuchs

shlaufuchs

Slaufuchs

Just call me sophie

 

[El_Machinae]

Okay, what do you guys call the people who think they're woke, but have actually harmful ideas?

 

[Synobun]

Okay, what do you guys call the people who think they're woke, but have actually harmful ideas?

Like what? Usually there's a name or descriptor already associated with the specific idea.

 

[NovaKart]

I mean, speaking for myself my opinion of the poster probably plays into it, but I try not to let it do too much...in most cases, sometimes it's a struggle. It feels like an extension of the basic principle of respecting fellow posters. That principle I do not extend to third parties who are not on CFC.

(I mean, they're still entitled to basic human respect, but that's a much lower requirement than what I feel the people I engage with here on CFC to be entitled to.

And in that same vein, I can understand leaving a note in the thread of why you feel the source of the quote is worthy of dismissal, if you have particular reasons to do so.

NovaKart - Singal's research has largely involved interviewing and talking to opponents of trans identity, the rare detransitioner (a real phenomenon that's worthy of study and support, but a very slim minority of transitioners) and discredited therapists. I don't presume to know his motives, but his methodology in and of itself invalidates his conclusions.

Not really, he’s pretty fair on the issue and talks to trans people as well. And he’s done a lot of research on the studies that are out there and argued we don’t know enough about detransitioners.

 

[El_Machinae]

Like what? Usually there's a name or descriptor already associated with the specific idea.

There's not much in common, though, other than they think they're woke and they're quite happy to enforce policy based on their beliefs.

 

[Gorbles]

Going a few pages back, sorry folks.

No, he's not explaining the dissonance, he's inserting it in. He starts from the principle there is a dissonance, he describes it as it being ignorance, and as such consider anyone using such word is ignorant.

There is dissonance. It's demonstrable by the fact that we're eight pages in and once again it's a very circular discussion on what everybody accepts "woke" to even mean, nevermind how shallow and / or reductive it could be.

If there wasn't dissonance, people would agree a lot faster. This is something I do agree with El_Mac on, as much as I may disagree on other particulars with him.

I know we've discussed this before, but just to restate for the record in-thread - "woke" is now a culture war thing. Regardless of what it was before, regardless of where it come from (though, funnily, both you and I have referenced the Wikipedia article that aggregates a decades-long history that I'm not sure many are actually aware of). By default, that suggests ignorance. Anything co-opted by "culture war" rhetoric is often boiled down to the lowest common denominator, because that's how that kind of stuff works.

Your objection to ignorance is rooted in your belief that "woke" is a harmful thing (regardless of the actual word people agree on, you believe in the underlying phenomenon regardless of what part of the political spectrum engages in it - right? Just so I'm not misinterpreting history here). But Angst saying something different isn't inserting anything anymore than your disagreement is inserting anything.

No, that's not dismissal, that's an answer to dismissal :

I wasn't dismissing El_Mac. You were quoting me repling to him there, and nothing about Angst, for the record.

THAT is a dismissal. He notices that simply naming will lead to being ignored, and as such there is little point trying to keep a conversation going as it's being shut down from the get-go.
(at least that's what I interpret)

That was your characterisation of what Angst said, and not actually what Angst said. That said, this was three pages ago and I'm pretty certain he argued for himself in the meantime, so I don't really want to keep on trying to make his arguments for him.

I can try, if you want me to, it's just a lot more rewinding that I'm capable of at the second (near midnight here at the mo).

----------------------------------------------------

And back to the present:

Okay, what do you guys call the people who think they're woke, but have actually harmful ideas?

Harmful?

Like, Angst's entire point is that "woke" is a shallow signifier that betrays a lack of knowledge on specifics. If I have an understanding of the specifics, I call the harmful ideas out with that level of specifity. There's some online slang to refer to fake progressives, and people masquerading as progressive, and so on, but they're very insular terms that I don't even know extend beyond online circles, nevermind beyond leftist spaces. So it doesn't necessarily translate to language that even makes sense here, for example.

In those scenarios, though, "woke", or even something like "fake woke", is almost never used. It's rejected generally on the grounds of its inaccuracy and it's uptake in the whole "culture war" mess, in that accusations of it tend to be leveraged from the right-of-centre, and / or in bad faith.

 

[Evie]

See what I called "puriteens" upthread, El Mac.

It's a mentality that takes social progressive concepts and use them as something halfway in between unwritten schoolyard pecking order rules and religious dogma. Often associated with communities where a lot of people were first exposed to social justice concept and ideas in their high school years or when they were beginning to escape from conservative religious (often evangelical) households or both.

And of course any individual ideology within the social justice spectrum is liable to have its own extremists, as all ideologies do.

 

[Gorbles]

See what I called "puriteens" upthread, El Mac.

It's a mentality that takes social progressive concepts and use them as something halfway in between unwritten schoolyard pecking order rules and religious dogma. Often associated with communities where a lot of people were first exposed to social justice concept and ideas in their high school years or when they were beginning to escape from conservative religious (often evangelical) households or both.

And of course any individual ideology within the social justice spectrum is liable to have its own extremists, as all ideologies do.

To expand on what I said above, this is a great example. I've never heard of the word "puriteen" before. I'm not saying it doesn't have a place, but the thing about social justice being fragmented into communities across the Internet is that it actually generates individual idiolect(s), as well as somelike like dialectal forms within (larger) groups (regardless of people categorising "woke" as some vast, nefarious Thing™ where all proponents share some kind of hive mind - and before someone says strawman, go back to the beginning of the thread, where somebody used and defended "hivemind" ).

 

[Evie]

Yes indeed, there's no real broadly agreed upon name for the phenomenon. I've seen puriteens in my social circle and it covers well both the schoolyard and religious puritanical double roots of the movement, so I'm using it, but it's by no mean a widespread useage.

Note that none of the tendencies underlying puriteens are unique to social justice - the tendency of former evangelicals to fit their new beliefs in the old frame (eg, as beliefs that must be evangelized at others, where all must be judged for their "sinful" adherence to the new beliefs, and their acceptance of its dogma, adherence to preacher-like authority figures, etc) is a phenomenon that's got deep links to some of the less respectable forms of atheism (ie, much of the antitheism bend among atheism) as well, while the teen tendency to form harsh social structure based on adherence to a strict social code is...well, really, does anyone here not know this one?

 

[Angst]

Okay, what do you guys call the people who think they're woke, but have actually harmful ideas?

What they describe their own ideology as is usually sufficient, it's rare that it doesn't largely align with the strand of thought they identify as. Anarchist, feminist of whatever subgrouping, classical Marxist, socialist, etc.

Sometimes it's fair using an exonym; like someone saying they're a classical Marxist but believe in no socialized property and are pro-monarchy etc. are fair to say they're at least not what they identify as. They can also lie callously sometimes, some extreme right movements have misappropriation of positive sounding left terminology into their very backbone. But speaking from experience, a self-identifying anarchist is usually just that.

A note on this. I remember a talk with a friend where I described a quite horrid disposition of a feminist I knew, and my friend said "well, with <horrid things>, the person can't be a feminist". I noted that I don't believe ideology vindicates, that No True Scotsman isn't a good approach to ideology, and that the vast majority of ideologies have specifics flexible enough beyond core tenets that the ideology can be used in ways I believe is nasty, counterprodutive or cruel. I believe that feminists that fight against trans rights are still feminists, myself being a feminist that find such transphobic practices abhorrent. Anarchists that identify with a more violent punk revolution hedonist anarchism than classical peaceful anarchists are still anarchists, etc.

For feminism, I believe it's a healthy overall movement that seeks to better the world according to principles I agree with. Doesn't mean there aren't some feminists that actively want me dead. I see no real reason defaulting to woke for strands of thought just because I don't like them.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

But then even amongst the feminists, etc. there are disagreements and then even in this category of feminists there are sub-categories and so on and so forth.

There are many degrees and nuances of feminism. For instance, on this forum, MaryKB and I are both feminists. But we have opposite views on some issues.

Point is more, when talking points against Marx, don't title your article "countering wokeness in education".

Ohboy. The premier of my province keeps yapping about putting a stop to the "woke ideology/woke curriculum" being taught in public schools now, and he and the Minister of Gutting Public Education are hell-bent on ramming through their own curriculum that's intended to produce good little right-wing-voting people whose curriculum was literally plagiarized from a couple of sources in the U.S. The idiots who did this didn't even try to make some parts relevant to Canada. So the kids won't learn about the Charter of Rights (can't let them know how the government isn't allowed to discriminate against them and violate a significant number of rights) but they are supposed to learn the KKK slogan.

...yet another reason it brings religion to mind is how i recall right wing arguments against video game violence, games like dungeons and dragons being a gateway to the devil or some such, or other religious right nonsense from 1980-2005. i'm sure it was around earlier too, but i'm not old enough to remember it.

The thing about D&D is that the story and game is up to the DM. If the DM doesn't want witchcraft or undead or evil gods in the game, they don't have to. They are free to design any adventure they want, as long as it's balanced and fair.

I do recall my grandmother freaking out over my displaying my D&D books in the living room and kept insisting I'd lose all my typing clients over them because they were "evil" (the movie "Mazes and Monsters" told her so). I actually had to do a demonstration of the sleep spell from the Dragonlance books to convince her that magic doesn't work (the novel Dragons of Autumn Twilight describes the components, words, and physical movements needed to cast it). I told her that if magic was real, she'd be asleep. And since she was wide awake, it obviously hadn't worked.

Oh, and as for my clients? How can college students look at a roomful of science fiction and fantasy books and videos and disapprove? I actually got a few new clients because their friends told them, "You should get _____ to type your papers. You have to see all the science fiction stuff she has in her house!" (one guy was impressed that I had a globe in the living room; he said that was something he'd only seen on TV or in movies and hadn't realized that people really had them... though I do need to admit that it wasn't one of those huge ones that sits on the floor).

That's okay. I think there is always room for different opinions. Just express yourself courtesly and hopefully you will be okay. For example I think this forum tends to skew towards being anti religion / anti Christian, but I am still able to make pro Christian posts without being dogpiled (so far).

It does help that a certain someone who knew exactly how to push my buttons isn't here anymore. Just don't refer to atheism or evolution as faiths or religions, and we'll get along fine.


Anyway, I'm posting this despite not having read the last 3 pages. I'm still confused about this whole thing, since some parts of the conversation seem to be wandering in circles and the topic just reminds me of how much I loathe the current provincial government here (constantly carping on "woke teachers" - whatever that means).

 

[Narz]

What they describe their own ideology as is usually sufficient, it's rare that it doesn't largely align with the strand of thought they identify as. Anarchist, feminist of whatever subgrouping, classical Marxist, socialist, etc.

Sometimes it's fair using an exonym; like someone saying they're a classical Marxist but believe in no socialized property and are pro-monarchy etc. are fair to say they're at least not what they identify as. They can also lie callously sometimes, some extreme right movements have misappropriation of positive sounding left terminology into their very backbone. But speaking from experience, a self-identifying anarchist is usually just that.

A note on this. I remember a talk with a friend where I described a quite horrid disposition of a feminist I knew, and my friend said "well, with <horrid things>, the person can't be a feminist". I noted that I don't believe ideology vindicates, that No True Scotsman isn't a good approach to ideology, and that the vast majority of ideologies have specifics flexible enough beyond core tenets that the ideology can be used in ways I believe is nasty, counterprodutive or cruel. I believe that feminists that fight against trans rights are still feminists, myself being a feminist that find such transphobic practices abhorrent. Anarchists that identify with a more violent punk revolution hedonist anarchism than classical peaceful anarchists are still anarchists, etc.

For feminism, I believe it's a healthy overall movement that seeks to better the world according to principles I agree with. Doesn't mean there aren't some feminists that actively want me dead. I see no real reason defaulting to woke for strands of thought just because I don't like them.

The more fundy a person is (the stronger their ists and isms) the less nuanced & also less agreeable they tend to be (imo of course). Someday they'll probably do brain scan studies on this type of thing.

Also fundy folks often swing wildly from one side of the fence to another w no chance in confidence. It's impressive in a way. Had a buddy who went from a weird yoga/Hindu influenced guy to a fundy Christian to who knows what now. He also went from hard-core vegan to carnivore diet (and again who knows what now). He was actually a pretty chill guy as long as you didn't engage w his kool-aid of the month w him.

Internet is funny tho. On here people mostly engage on the stuff that winds them up the most whereas irl it's usually the opposite until you really get to know someone (well you can get a read on core values fairly quickly but you have to pay attention to more subtle cues compared to online where people tend to beat you over the head w their ideas/identities)

 

[miaasma]

i've never actually heard someone with remotely leftist views use the words "woke" or "wokeism". i actually haven't heard a person under the age of 40 use either term to describe either themselves or someone else in earnest (without using it as some bizarre pejorative) in maybe 6 or 7 years, if i had to guess

i've sort of taken to stepping back and just being in awe of this recent revival of this terminology being ascribed to a group that hasn't used it in forever like it's representative of some immiment torrent of social authoritarianism, most frequently by someone in the midst of pearl clutching about how the millennials with feelings are ruining everything

 

[Akka]

I think I understand what you're getting at. But maybe it's just because I've dealt with philosophy, and a priori cannot have caveats from experience or be based on experience. It's literally propositions about knowledge based on things independent of/before experience. And my whole deal here is as to how wokeness is used. A priori is literally contrary to my whole shpiel, that words as used shows no acquaintance with the subject matter as practiced. Maybe there's another terminology for it, but I'm unsure. I'd love to help you out here btw, I don't mind disagreeing and it's good having clear distinctions of what one is talking about (again, the whole point of the thread), but I'm just unsure as to what to call my position's roots. It's just categorically not a priori. The dismissal is an appeal to practicality as to how it's used by the users in the current environment.

I'm sorry, but I'm simply quite lost here.
As said before, what I got from your point is basically that "on the whole, people who use the expression 'woke' (or 'SJW') have little to no knowledge of the politics falling under this umbrella-term, and it's most of the time pointless to discuss with them". Your answers seem to me to just confirm this, with some caveat about it not being an absolute. So from here, two things.

1) I find pretty difficult to unpack your answer(s) here. It might be due to verbosity (I really do work better with brevity) or english not being my native language or something else, but I'd appreciate some straight-to-the-point version ^^

2) If I didn't miss the main point, then I'm simply wondering what is there really to discuss. So your experience was that a lot of people who used these terms didn't really understand the politics behind. Okay. What are we supposed to do with this ?
I don't doubt that you have a honest desire to discuss something here, but I don't really get what.

Going a few pages back, sorry folks.

Sorry I can't really answer this post, but as written above, I'm by now just blinking and wondering what is even the overarching point of the discussion. So I'm not really in position to develop anything because I don't even know what we're talking about anymore.

 

[Zardnaar]

I'm sorry, but I'm simply quite lost here.
As said before, what I got from your point is basically that "on the whole, people who use the expression 'woke' (or 'SJW') have little to no knowledge of the politics falling under this umbrella-term, and it's most of the time pointless to discuss with them". Your answers seem to me to just confirm this, with some caveat about it not being an absolute. So from here, two things.

1) I find pretty difficult to unpack your answer(s) here. It might be due to verbosity (I really do work better with brevity) or english not being my native language or something else, but I'd appreciate some straight-to-the-point version ^^

2) If I didn't miss the main point, then I'm simply wondering what is there really to discuss. So your experience was that a lot of people who used these terms didn't really understand the politics behind. Okay. What are we supposed to do with this ?
I don't doubt that you have a honest desire to discuss something here, but I don't really get what.

Sorry I can't really answer this post, but as written above, I'm by now just blinking and wondering what is even the overarching point of the discussion. So I'm not really in position to develop anything because I don't even know what we're talking about anymore.

I just use woke/sjw for shorthand. People will know what you mean and that's all you really need.

The goals if being woke are commenable the cancel culture, preening, accusations etc side of things not so much.

Every country has laws as to what's acceptable. The reasons for that is because people are going to disagree over what's acceptable so XYZ group can't oppress ABC group.

In entertainment if a shows offensive for example don't watch it's fairly simple.

 

[Angst]

I'm sorry, but I'm simply quite lost here.
As said before, what I got from your point is basically that "on the whole, people who use the expression 'woke' (or 'SJW') have little to no knowledge of the politics falling under this umbrella-term, and it's most of the time pointless to discuss with them". Your answers seem to me to just confirm this, with some caveat about it not being an absolute. So from here, two things.

1) I find pretty difficult to unpack your answer(s) here. It might be due to verbosity (I really do work better with brevity) or english not being my native language or something else, but I'd appreciate some straight-to-the-point version ^^

2) If I didn't miss the main point, then I'm simply wondering what is there really to discuss. So your experience was that a lot of people who used these terms didn't really understand the politics behind. Okay. What are we supposed to do with this ?
I don't doubt that you have a honest desire to discuss something here, but I don't really get what.

Sorry I can't really answer this post, but as written above, I'm by now just blinking and wondering what is even the overarching point of the discussion. So I'm not really in position to develop anything because I don't even know what we're talking about anymore.

I have a fever and English is also a second language to me and even in Danish I'm verbose (more in the overcomplicated way than smooth way, and not becoming more accurate). I totally get I'm hard to understand.

The point of the thread is:
- People that use woke are usually not acquainted with the position they're trying to debunk. (Except for Narz and El_Machinae, I guess. They're vaguely left tho afaik so maybe there's a point there. Anyways)
- The lack of acquaintance among right wingers comes from dealing primarily with right wing media that also uses it poorly, and has no interest in actually digging up what the person thinks.
- This leads to poor attribution of position where disjunct ideologies are grouped together, and you think you can argue against classical Marxists by debunking Derrida or Butler.
- But can I solve this environment? No. Can I organize in such a way that the environment can be solved? Not with any probability. This is an appeal to pragmatism.
- And then another appeal to pragmatism; most of the time, when someone uses woke, they're not acquainted with the literature, I said "it's time to stop listening to that person". Now you read this quite aggressively and I understand, but the point is more... When it happens to me offline I can gage the situation and if the disposition is friendly enough, the disengagement is not "you lost, I win, I'm gonna leave now" but rather "ok do you even know what you hate?" And a suggestion to become more acquainted with left-wing positions. Not because I want to proselytize, but because hating someone for something they don't believe helps noone.

Now you can disagree with the premises and that's fine. But understand the point is not to give an eternal out/win button. The point is that the current environment is entangled in some really awful terminology. Someone else noted to me that I'm not gonna change that. This is sadly true. So my appeal from then on is practicality, and actually to clear things up if the environment is friendly enough.

EDIT I missed you asking for a straight to the point version. Stupid fever.

Maybe this helps.

The appeal to stop the conversation was not to give an eternal out; depending on the conversation's disposition, if it's friendly enough, it's preferable to outline that it's an exonym, ask what the "woke" actually believes and suggest some literature. Most people understand it's fruitless to despise an "ideology" for what it isn't (or to despise an ideology that doesn't exist); one can disagree with a dirty leftist, but it's fruitless to disagree with something the leftist doesn't believe. Hate the leftist for the right reasons.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I have a fever

Chicken soup and rest. Sleep. The thread will still be here.

 

[Angst]

Chicken soup and rest. Sleep. The thread will still be here.

Yea I know. It's just hard not to engage when fascinated, lol. (This is a really sweet post btw.)

 

[Traitorfish]

Freddie deBoer sucks, dude. Might as well cite some Singal and Greenwald while you're at it, complete the trifecta of ****** left-punching "journalists" that can't seem to go more than 2 or so articles without letting their raging transphobia shine through.

I think this is actually a useful illustration of my point, that because the Thing-Called-Wokeness is unprepared to acknowledge itself as a Thing, that its adherents are unwilling to recognise it as a set of norms and assumptions within a particular group but instead assert it to be a universal common sense, it follows that people who are outside of that group, who challenge those norms and assumptions, are in fact wilfully setting themselves against universal common sense.

DeBoer isn't a person with whom the speaker might disagree in concrete ways. He just "sucks, dude", and to quote even a couple of paragraphs is to be complicit in his sucks, dude-ness.

 

[João III]

In entertainment if a shows offensive for example don't watch it's fairly simple.

It seems that's not enough anymore. Nowadays if a show or movie's "offensive", then it needs to be cancelled or sponsors boycotted so no one else can watch it either. Doesn't help that media literacy is abysmal

DeBoer isn't a person with whom the speaker might disagree in concrete ways. He just "sucks, dude", and to quote even a couple of paragraphs is to be complicit in his sucks, dude-ness.

Sounds similar to poisoning the well