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Woke
Aug 28, 2022 13:13:23 GMT
Post by politician2 on Aug 28, 2022 13:13:23 GMT
The word Woke has recently become politicised Right wing commentators and outlets (eg Daily Mail) use it as part of their ongoing culture wars This trope has become popular in the left-wing media of late. It is not the right-wing media that has started culture wars. It is the "woke" left, by redefining language in deliberately perverse and provocative ways. A case in point is the constantly shifting definitions applied to transgender people. Back in the day, transgender people had operations to become the gender of their choice. Nowadays it's all about self-definition: you can be a hairy-arsed bloke with a huge penis and call yourself a woman. That's all very well – people can live their lives any way they want as far as I'm concerned – except that you can report somebody to the police for calling you a man when you patently are a man. An example of this lunacy occurred on a recent episode of Naked Attraction in which a heterosexual man who insisted he was a woman was constantly referred to as a "girl" throughout the show, despite proudly displaying his penis to the naked heterosexual women he was intending to shag. This is a grotesque distortion of language in which terms become meaningless: the correct term for the bloke is a transvestite, and I wish him the very best if putting on a bra and knickers makes him happy. As such, "woke" isn't about empathy or inclusiveness or equality. It's about wielding power over other people's thinking and use of language, including legal sanctions if they refuse to acknowledge that something that is patently black is actually white. George Orwell understood the mindset of the far-left perfectly: in Nineteen Eighty-Four, his character Winston Smith states that "freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two equals four". He is subsequently tortured by a Party official when he refuses to admit that the man is holding up four fingers rather than three just because he says he is. This has just about become reality, with people now facing arrest for refusing to admit that a man (potentially not even a transgender man, possibly not even gay) is a woman just because he says he is. I think history will not judge this lunacy – which is starting to take on the atmosphere of a witch-hunt – kindly.
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Deleted
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Woke
Aug 28, 2022 13:22:50 GMT
Post by Deleted on Aug 28, 2022 13:22:50 GMT
It's right wing liberalism and not left wing in any way.
Mind you depends what you consider 'left wing'. You would consider the Guardian left wing whereas I wouldn't.
Pursuing an equality agenda in an oppressive society like Britain isn't 'woke'. It's a fundamental human right.
You seem to focus on transgenderism. This has nothing to do with an equality agenda. It's right wing liberals with mental health problems going literally 'mad'.
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Woke
Aug 28, 2022 13:28:08 GMT
Post by politician2 on Aug 28, 2022 13:28:08 GMT
You seem to focus on transgenderism. I'm focusing on it because it's the current "hot button" issue in the "culture wars" initiated by the "woke" left. (And with that, I think I've probably used up TP's entire stock of quotation marks in a single sentence.) It's also the perfect example of how fringe thinking and deliberate distortion of language have become mainstream and even legally enforceable – which is the dark side of "wokeness".
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Woke
Aug 28, 2022 13:45:44 GMT
Post by Deleted on Aug 28, 2022 13:45:44 GMT
Unless you consider the likes of the Guardian communist or socialist I would say your description is a bit vague.
After all the Guardian supports the Labour Party who aren't a socialist party.
These right wing liberals who you consider 'woke' aren't really that different from yourself Politician who call themselves libertarian far right insofar it's just identity politics.
It has nothing to do with class politics.
Transgenderism encompasses all political persuasions just as homosexuality does.
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Woke
Aug 28, 2022 13:53:22 GMT
Post by politician2 on Aug 28, 2022 13:53:22 GMT
I'd describe The Guardian as social democratic rather than socialist. Today's Labour Party is essentially a coalition of centrists, social democrats and socialists. However, The Guardian strongly identifies itself with "wokeness" and, more broadly, identity politics, so it is firmly left-wing on cultural issues. The Independent is even more so, though its readers aren't so keen on identity politics judging from their comments: as I've said before, I think the Independent has largely become an agglomeration of clickbait articles and perversely seems to delight in trolling its readers.
But more broadly, this isn't a debate about transgenderism: I doubt you'd find many people of any political persuasion who don't believe that transgender folk should be able to transition if they wish to do so. The debate is about the use of language and what can and cannot be said to and about transgender people.
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Woke
Aug 28, 2022 14:13:17 GMT
Post by doug61 on Aug 28, 2022 14:13:17 GMT
It's a pity that when people or media outlets want to disparage the "idea" of equality and fairness they always lurch to the cliches of "woke" going on about huge blokes with "huge penis" (why it needs to be huge is beyond me, Politician2) masquerading as women as if a tiny minority of people should or do make the 99% of the ideas that get routinely disparaged, somehow incorrect or worth ignoring. If an argument were made that all Conservative thought and opinion should be discarded and ignored because 1% of Tories are repugnant Neo Nazis, that would no doubt be regarded as ridiculous and offensive yet those same people and media sources routinely do the same based on a "Tweet" or two, which they then spin into a "outrage" or some such headline or message board rant. Lazy ideas, lazy minds and lazy journalism.
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Woke
Aug 28, 2022 14:24:59 GMT
Post by doug61 on Aug 28, 2022 14:24:59 GMT
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Post by Lord Emsworth on Aug 28, 2022 14:26:29 GMT
It’s fair to say the left (predominantly) have tied themselves up in knots over the trans issue but equally the Tories have also enabled the bonkers trans agenda which Doug eloquently highlights through recent policy decisions and legislation.
That women are losing safe spaces for this insanity beggars belief. As does feminists being doxed and sacked and bullied for highlighting the inconvenient truth about gender.
All that said, it does not change the fact that the right wing press and their acolytes across social media have tried to weaponise the word Woke as part of their ongoing culture wars
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Woke
Aug 28, 2022 14:31:41 GMT
Post by politician2 on Aug 28, 2022 14:31:41 GMT
It's a pity that when people or media outlets want to disparage the "idea" of equality and fairness they always lurch to the cliches of "woke" going on about huge blokes with "huge penis" (why it needs to be huge is beyond me, Politician2) masquerading as women as if a tiny minority of people should or do make the 99% of the ideas that get routinely disparaged, somehow incorrect or worth ignoring. If an argument were made that all Conservative thought and opinion should be discarded and ignored because 1% of Tories are repugnant Neo Nazis, that would no doubt be regarded as ridiculous and offensive yet those same people and media sources routinely do the same based on a "Tweet" or two, which they then spin into a "outrage" or some such headline or message board rant. Lazy ideas, lazy minds and lazy journalism. You're conflating two different things here, Doug: equality and wokeness. Equality means the cishet man from Naked Attraction being able to go out plastered in make-up and wearing a minidress whilst calling himself a girl without anybody punching his lights out or being abusive to him. Wokeness means everybody else having to agree that he's a girl when he patently isn't or getting their collars felt. Finally, with regard to his penis: it didn't have to be huge, but I can assure you it was. All the penises on that programme are huge. Either it's a requirement to appear or they're "fluffing" themselves before they go on. Most likely both.
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Woke
Aug 28, 2022 14:35:01 GMT
Post by politician2 on Aug 28, 2022 14:35:01 GMT
That women are losing safe spaces for this insanity beggars belief. As does feminists being doxed and sacked and bullied for highlighting the inconvenient truth about gender. All that said, it does not change the fact that the right wing press and their acolytes across social media have tried to weaponise the word Woke as part of their ongoing culture wars Correct. I have nothing specifically against gender-neutral lavatories (J Walter Thompson had them when I worked there in 2003) but the "safe space" issue is concerning when gender becomes a matter of self-certification. However, I repeat my earlier point: it is the left, not the right, who have created the present culture wars through advancing perverse arguments and deliberately distorting the use of everyday English words. There is no point in blaming the right for reacting.
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Post by Lord Emsworth on Aug 28, 2022 14:47:24 GMT
Er...
Penny Mordaunt: 'transmen are men'
These were not off-the cuff remarks from the back benches. Mordaunt was speaking from the despatch box in her role as paymaster general. These were the words of the government itself, and recorded in Hansard as she referred to the changes made by the Lords:
'The amendments we are accepting today are legitimate and understandable, and critically they are also legally sound, but let me say in supporting them from this Dispatch Box that trans men are men and trans women are women, and great care has been taken in the drafting and accepting of these amendments to ensure that that message has got across.'
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Woke
Aug 28, 2022 14:55:44 GMT
Post by politician2 on Aug 28, 2022 14:55:44 GMT
These were not off-the cuff remarks from the back benches. Mordaunt was speaking from the despatch box in her role as paymaster general. These were the words of the government itself, and recorded in Hansard as she referred to the changes made by the Lords: 'The amendments we are accepting today are legitimate and understandable, and critically they are also legally sound, but let me say in supporting them from this Dispatch Box that trans men are men and trans women are women, and great care has been taken in the drafting and accepting of these amendments to ensure that that message has got across.' You're missing the point here. What is changing is the definition of what constitutes a transman or transwoman. Back in the day, you were considered to be the gender of your birth until you had gender reassignment surgery, at which point you were quite correctly reclassified as the opposite sex. Under woke doctrine, you can be a cishet man and yet insist you're a woman, including demanding the rights of a woman (to enter single-sex spaces such as lavatories). That's what we're debating here.
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Woke
Aug 28, 2022 14:59:21 GMT
Post by Lord Emsworth on Aug 28, 2022 14:59:21 GMT
Exactly. Mourdant was perpetuating that madness
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Woke
Aug 28, 2022 15:04:20 GMT
Post by politician2 on Aug 28, 2022 15:04:20 GMT
Exactly. Mourdant was perpetuating that madness I disagree with her on this particular issue, but I still think that she and Kemi Badenoch were the two best candidates to lead the Conservative party. Sunak and Truss are the two worst, and the worse of them is almost certain to win. On Thursday I had dinner with two friends who are quite senior in the party (one of them is among the longest-serving council leaders in the UK) and they are furious about the choice they've been given. One of them told me that she thought Truss would be such a liability that she expected to lose her (über-safe) council seat next year.
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Woke
Aug 28, 2022 15:17:59 GMT
Post by Lord Emsworth on Aug 28, 2022 15:17:59 GMT
Time to roll back on giving members the final say?
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