Lots of 'woke' people are shitty people. I've had way too many experiences in the past few years with 'woke' people screaming at me about how I need to read more women authors or I'm a shitty awful human being. Or other equally absurd things, like I'm a bigot if I don't ask you what your pronoun is. If you have a pronoun preference, how about you tell me? Just like you tell someone how to pronounce your name if it's non-standard.
I know lots of progressive people, and I am progressive. But I would never say I am 'woke'. People who self-identify 'woke' tend to be mentally ill crazy people in my encounters, and use their politics as an excuse for abusive and hostile behavior just the way right-wing nazi nutbags do.
Hell I even had a transwoman assault me verbally one day while I was just reading a book in a cafe. Comes up to me and demands that I give her my table because I'm a white cis guy and I should give up my 'privileged' to her. My small business has been harassed by 'woke' activists who demand we give them money or they will say we are anti-black/lgbt+, etc. That's not woke, that's blackmail.
Most 'woke' people I meet are basically 20 sometime trust-fund types who need a cause to give her their miserable lives purpose, because god knows they can't get their shit together and do something positive with their lives. If they did maybe they'd stop being such awful abusive people who threaten and harass others.
IchNichtenLichten@lemmy.world 9 months ago
“Woke” started out as a simple acknowledgment that a person is conscious of the systemic oppression of various groups. Now the right wing has got its claws into the term it’s been effectively neutered. Now all it means is, “stuff that right wingers don’t like”
It’s like “defund the police” which quickly became “abolish all policing”.
It’s a useful strategy for them and it works to prevent honest discussion on how to solve societal problems by preventing people from having a shared understanding of the language needed for such discussion.
AlternatePersonMan@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Ugh, “defund the police” is a terrible phrase if you actually want the movement to succeed. I wish they would have gone with something along the lines of “police reform”. Immediately every conservative glommed onto “now they want to abolish all police!”
We do need a massive overhaul to police. Unfortunately that means better marketing of the idea of it’s going to happen.
DarkGamer@kbin.social 9 months ago
Unfortunately police reform doesn't necessarily imply taking police funds and diverting them to nonviolent responders instead. It's hard to make that into a catchy phrase that can't be misinterpreted. I could see cities implementing some rubber-stamp oversight board filled with ex-cops and saying, "see, we reformed the police! They have oversight now."
markr@lemmy.world 9 months ago
just about every police reform has failed to provide any independent oversight, failed to address the core problems, and generally just poured more money into the already bloated and militarized police force.
dragonflyteaparty@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I like “unburden the police”. Take away things that aren’t actual policing. Cops don’t need to be out there doing animal control for example.
IchNichtenLichten@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I could be wrong but “defund the police” was just a discussion point for activists talking amongst themselves. In that context it makes sense. What happened was that this inelegant phrase was seized as a weapon by the right and then every Dem politician had to answer if they supported the idea of abolishing the police.
I’d imagine that many people would be receptive to the idea of taking some money out of police budgets so social workers and people trained in deescalation can be hired. For example cops aren’t a good fit when dealing with people facing mental health crises because they mostly turn to use of force and make a bad situation worse.
If you twist this into, “are you in favor of abolishing all police?” then most people are going to say, “hell no, what a stupid idea, you moron”.
Now any discussion about the rotten state of policing in the US had been effectively hobbled. Discussion is shut down. The right wing wins.
fushuan@lemm.ee 9 months ago
I vividly remember tons of memes and posts on reddit, done in leftist grups by leftist people stating the sentence “defund the police”. The right did manipulate the meaning, but saying that they were the sole perpetrators of the popularity of the phrase is silly.
AlternatePersonMan@lemmy.world 9 months ago
That makes more sense.
I know the real idea behind it. I just never liked it being summarized as defund. It’s more like restructure. Personally, I would be much more aggressive with an overall. It’s rotten top to bottom.
LazaroFilm@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I still have a hard time how “woke” is bad. Woke means your not asleep, it means you are not guided by others. How can people turn this into a bad thing. I’m proud to be woke.
IchNichtenLichten@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Woke means that if you’re in a privileged position in a society, more equality is a threat to your status and should be suppressed.
LazaroFilm@lemmy.world 9 months ago
That’s the Bs meaning they’re giving. It’s like the way they change the definition of patriotism to match nationalism.
teft@startrek.website 9 months ago
Same happened to the terms “political correctness” and “social justice”. The meaning gets twisted into something grotesque by think tanks and then it’s shipped out to talking heads so Billy-Bob can regurgitate it at the water cooler.
IchNichtenLichten@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Critical Race Theory, school libraries full of porn, caravans of migrants heading to the southern border, activist judges legislating from the bench, and so on.
Maeve@kbin.social 9 months ago
Except activist judges legislating from the bench is real, and they seem to be the worst possible humans doing so. “Seem” being key.
Neato@kbin.social 9 months ago
theyre_the_same_picture.jpg
But yes. The right has polluted yet another word and tried to turn it into a pejorative.
Uranium3006@kbin.social 9 months ago
"It’s like “defund the police” which quickly became “abolish all policing”."
It's actually the other way around. The radical demand got watered down but it didn't slow the fearmongeringbl even a little bit
IchNichtenLichten@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Maybe? I don’t have a definite timeline and there were lots of groups talking to each other.