Woke is Just Another Word for Manners
Again, another not really tech driven post (although given how some of our tech overlords seem invested in the idea of anti-Wokeness, maybe it is), but something that has been irritating me for a while. All my life there has been some version of anti-wokeness — worrying about political correctness, or cancel culture, or some other buzzword. In every case, it has been tied to an explicit desire to be racists and sexist without consequences. To be, in other words, an ill-mannered ass.
Woke and associated attitudes are, at their core, about treating people fairly, about being kind and polite. Ensuring that people are treated fairly, that people get the help that they need to achieve to the limits of their luck and talents, ensuring that people are addressed as they wish — these are just basic decent, common courtesy, polite things to do. When I was a kid, manners mattered to how I was raised. We were taught that treating everyone politely was the right thing to do, and that lesson sank in.
I do not wish to paint an overly rosy picture of the past. We are generally a less racist, sexist, and homophobic society than we were when I was a kid. Most people didn’t approve of interracial marriage until I was out of high school, for example, and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell — a policy by which you could be gay and in the military if no one ever found out — was considered progressive. As kids, we used homophobic slurs casually, the way my kids call their friends “jerk”, in a manner my kids never even seem to contemplate, much less do. But part of the process of getting to a better place was the simple recognition that people should be treated with respect. And that meant all people. Manners, for lack of a better word, mattered.
And I don’t want to downplay that there are sometimes tensions in what defines fairly in all circumstances or that there are edge cases around some issues that are genuinely hard. Shelters for women who have experienced domestic abuse, for example, may have a hard time dealing with the tension between woman who need a safe space sheltered from men and trans women who are abuse victims but still can be seen as male presenting. But those are edge cases that can be solved and mitigated if everyone works from a place of respect and kindness. Which is the point of being anti-woke for a lot of people. If they let people operate under the impression that everyone matters, it is much harder to punish people from being different than them, much harder to focus people on hate rather than on actual problems. Manners, for lack of a better word, give people the space to be their best selves.
I am solidly middle aged, with a worldview shaped by the world as it was when I was growing up. On the one hand, that means that seeing Eddie Izzard (the world’s best comedian) identify as transgender rather than transvestite is likely always going to feel a little bit weird to me. On the other hand, because I was raised with manner, with the idea that common decency was expected, with the notion that kindness was the default position, I am able to shrug off that tiny bit of weirdness for the sake of the comfort of the other person. Because my parents, a military man and a first-generation immigrant, were woke — by which I mean they taught us common decency — I at least try to treat people with the kindness they deserve. I may not always succeed, but I recognize that the effort matters.
Keep that in mind when some people start going off about woke or DEI or any of the other code-words. Some people may just be having a hard time adjusting to rapid change and are letting their fear get the best of them. But some people, usually the ones who are the loudest about the subject, just don’t want to live in a world where common decency applies to everyone. Some people, it seems, just weren’t raised with any manners. I don’t see why we should pay them any mind.
I wish your core thesis was true. While it all may have originally been about fairness, alas, the current core of policies and attitudes that are lumped together and referred to as 'woke' are no longer about that. Rather, they've become mostly illiberal attempts by some to diminish the effectiveness of our current institutions.
The most obvious of these is the example you use. So-called "trans rights" activists who viciously attack (and try to dox, de-platform, attack the jobs of) anyone who sanely states that biological sex is, in fact, binary (eg—sorry kids—your body either produces eggs or sperm, not both...and that is down to the cellular level, some medicines affect each kind of body differently. So, this difference between transvestite and transgender isn't just a surface label, or social convention). Now, some are doing it for the right reasons, as innocent dupes, because they truly believe that it's better to burn our current system down than to try and reform it. Other are doing it for political gain (or temporary career status, following the money and the zeitgeist in our left-leaning universities). But, it ultimately only helps the far right, undermining all of the traditional social justice gains that we've already achieved.
"American fascism depends on stoking fear of others by attacking the far left of the Democratic Party. This is why Trump routinely attacks the small number of elected far-left extremists who have contributed to the decline in the...safety of some of America’s greatest cities.* The fascists’ best political friend has been the movement that demands conformity around speech, pronouns, and slogans, consequences be dammed."
—Steve Schmidt
*Me: false rhetoric
Schmidt correctly notes that the far left activists in these spaces are absolutely no less virulent, hateful, and intolerant of good faith debate than their far right de facto allies. I have to say: it's quite remarkable to be called "cis" or "hateful" or a "terf" for simply not being a science-denier. The most visible example? I've read or heard just about everything JK Rowling has ever said about the topic—and I challenge anyone to show me anywhere where any of it has been 'hateful'.
Yascha Mounk's book "The Identity Trap" does a thorough and respectful analysis of the phenomenon. The Far Left has settled on four distinct foundational ideas in order to stifle dissent:
√ “a neutral, aspirational goal (ME: like free speech) is inherently political (ME: just because the idea is from dead white guys)",
√ “the law is subjective,”
√ “racism is permanent.” and, the key one,
√ “words are actions."
While some of these ideas have some merit in some circumstances (as an attorney, I can speak to #2 being a real factor, at times, and wrt #4 nazi rhetoric, history has shown, is inherently violent), I find a reflexive reliance on any of these to be problematic in most circumstances.
Gender identities are social constructs (like being "middle class" or "intelligent"). And no one should be discriminated against because of how what they want to live their private lives. But trans rights is nothing less than a broadside attack on feminism. Feminism believes that, a woman is no less a woman, regardless of how they think, dress, act, or feel about themselves. But now we're to believe that a woman is a woman *because* of how they think/dress/act/feel about themselves. Surely, you can see the problem, there.
This discussion spells it out quite well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scYnh_e4cwE
And this is just one topic. This basic dynamic is repeated on any number of topics. But, I think your heart is in the right place.
We just have to be careful not to ignore real wolves just because some folks have cried "wolf" in the past.