Sorry for the late reply, I have a lot going on generally at the moment.
I was going to say "but you hadn't actually apologised at the time of me posting that", but I realise my language was unnecessarily predictive; i.e. it could be read as claiming I don't see you doing that, period. Which isn't what I meant it as, but that's my mistake. I saw your post in the other thread not long after you made it, and I accept it
This, I'm going to admit, is a challenge to wrap my head into that "everything is racist/problematic" is a strawman of the wokeist's positions. I don't know but I'm going to admit that I have a bias from bad experience (as previously demonstrated on being unnecessarily on guard all the time in lefty or left-wing spaces) and assuming the worst outcome. I still need to dig for your post as, I admit, tend to be on the wordy side.
It's challenging because,
structurally, there is a lot of racism, and sexism, and so on that emerges from Western society (especially when founded upon Abrahamic religious principles). And other societies, sure. But I don't live in them, nor am I necessarily informed about them, so it's not really relevant to what I talk about, or about "woke" or progressive stuff in Western countries generally. And this is what makes these threads on an international web forum tricky. Because while a lot of people are from Western countries (and those that don't still tend to have good English), not everyone is.
The whole structural stuff is a whole topic of its own, and it tends to get peoples' backs up to assert that we live in a particular kind of society, with good and bad connotations. Because we live in it. And by living in it, we have to figure out how complicit we are in it. And people
don't like that. The "complicit" word especially. It's an easy position to make straw out of. Which is why it can be a challenge to get at the nuance behind it. Especially on the Internet. "just trust me bro" doesn't really ever work out, because anybody can say it, and everybody at some point tries to.
I get it. I'm a straight white dude, I
get it. I've been there. But it's not about self-flagellation. It's not about going "shame, shame" while ringing a bell about town. It's about recognising where we are, how we got there, and most importantly what we do going forwards about it. But like I said, it's a whole other thread. I don't want to bang on about it (anymore than that).
Who said you should tolerate getting your head stamped and does that qualify as a straw man if no one did?
You're the one asserting that just because "wokists" preach tolerance that assigning labels is intolerance. If the labels are accurate, then it isn't intolerant at all. The problem is (and this is core to Akka's arguments as well, and probably more people besides) that you disagree that the label is accurate, and you think "wokists" are just throwing labels of "-ist" at people to shut them up first and foremost.
Tolerance is not universal. Calling people out for sexism, racism, you name it
can be done because it is genuinely perceived to be those things. It can also be weaponised. The problem you have is you see it all as weaponisation and none of it as genuine. Which leads you to make silly gotchas like "tolerant people call other people racist, meaning they're not actually tolerant of other opinions".
That it's successful or not is pretty irrelevant, what's important is that the woke subgroup tend generally to use it a lot.
My point is more that most people use it a lot. The stereotyping of "woke" behaviour
is a stereotype. Nobody here can provide a statistical analysis that demonstrates "woke" people use language like "racist" anymore than a hardcore culturally right-wing Republican-voting conservative. And indeed, the alt-and-far-right groups most people are familiar with
do call people sexist, racist, etc. So how do we quantify who uses it "a lot"? Genuinely. How do we work out what demographic is exhibiting this behaviour more or less than other demographics?
I understand what you're talking about, but that's a point where I think it'll be extremely hard to see eye to eye, because I think that the reason is a fundamental difference in the core perception about what's happening.
I agree. It's about how we see these accusations as accurate or not. On the whole, I believe they are. If you don't mind me assuming so, when it comes to these discussions, us posters, and even what we see of behaviour elsewhere online . . . you probably don't. Right? I'm not saying you don't see them (sexism, racism, and so on) as problems at all, just to be clear.
Am I wrong saying that it doesn't sound like sharing an experience, but making a strong factual affirmation ?
My question would be: what's the difference? Life experience shapes our understanding and bias towards factual evidence. This is what I meant about delusion vs. reality. Angst's OP was purely a conclusion he had arrived at himself. He is presenting it as an explanation for how the word is used. To him, it is factual, or at the very least it makes sense as a way to explain the phenomenon.
Right? He believes in it (otherwise why else post the OP he did). Does that make it a fundamental axiom of reality? No. It doesn't
make anyone who uses the word "woke" ignorant of the general subject, but it is useful as a short litmus test. As per the paragraph you quoted. A litmus test is, figuratively, just a test of character on a specific topic. Like how people use belief in one thing to assume beliefs in other things. It's not "and therefore these things are always correlated", it's "generally we can more safely assume than not". And a lot of people seem to be taking issue with the OP on the basis of some kind of declared "and therefore everybody who uses this word is an ignorant right-winger". Which isn't declared. Because it explicitly says "litmus test" (among other things).