The "Black Hole" of woke....

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I will respect it if somebody says I should call them they.

But I insist on being treated in a civil manner if I make a mistake.

If somebody thought I was a woman, I would just correct the person gently; I wouldn’t make assumptions about the person.

That's what I'd keep in mind, there's people who want to play on those fears because they oppose those sorts of changes and the easiest way they can sell their opposition is to present it as skepticism about where things will lead.

Framing it as a slippery slope allows them to argue against how they insist things will end up instead of arguing against how things actually are or what changes are actually being advocated for.

Yes maybe they should change the word again. Maybe something that doesn't stick in the mind so easily or maybe even to a word that makes sense. I mean "woke"as a word is past tense anyway.

If you feel comfortable telling us about the unfortunate situation in your own personal life, please do so. We might then be better able to understand and respond more appropriately to your concerns. (But feel free to ignore this post if you don't feel comfortable discussing it.)

It's borrowed from AAVE, it used to approximately mean 'socially aware' or 'possessing a social conscious'.

The point of hijacking the term is to redefine it and change how people perceive it, so I wouldn't anticipate them abandoning it until they discover the next term the people they wish to discredit have adopted.

I was called "he" or "him" until I was well into my 20's. I even worked at a place and one of my colleagues used to call me a "good lad" because I used to help him sometimes. I don't know if he was trying to be amusing or if he really thought I was a boy.

I never corrected him because he was a nice guy and I did look like a boy to be fair as well.

I'm at peace with my gender these days but I suppose if I was 25 years younger I might have gone for one of these new gender neutral names. Not sure I'd like "they" though. It's a plural of "that" and I'm not sure if like to be addressed in that way but I can't think of an alternative so I'll leave it to those who it matters to most.

I believe that the proponents of things like identity politics, which is often associated with concepts like 'wokeism' and 'political correctness', tend to emphasize the 'diversity' aspects, while playing down or sometimes turning a blind eye to some of its very illiberal, authoritarian tendencies. I'm thinking of, among other things, the way numerous academics and writers have had their career blighted or even ended by threats from this direction.

The idea of 'hate speech' has been a key factor in this. Few people would object to opposing actual threats towards minority groups or insulting language, but there's more than a suspicion that its scope is being extended in an attempt to stifle the expression of views that the identity politics people simply disagree with.

One of the groups in the forefront of the 'hate speech' industry came up with the notion of 'climate change hate speech' a couple of years ago, for example.

Last year, a fierce campaign was waged by another 'anti-hate speech' group to try to prevent a new UK TV channel called 'GB News' from launching. One of their main objections was apparently that the channel would be favourably disposed to Brexit, unlike the rest of the 'liberal' media. They were putting pressure on potential advertisers several months before the channel even made its first broadcast. I've watched GB News, and it's the only TV channel with the bottle to tackle issues that the rest of the broadcasting media shy away from or pretend don't exist.

They're also scrupulously fair in their even-handed treatment of interviewees. I've seen interviews on GB News with the likes of Ken Livingstone, Peter Tatchell and Roger Hallam (of Extinction Rebellion), all of whom were treated with the utmost courtesy. The right-wing counterparts of these people would never be interviewed on mainstream TV, where even middle-of-the-road Conservative politicians are routinely insulted and interrupted during interviews.

People who make racist comments also have had their careers destroyed. I think that the issue of gender identity is similar to racism. If people are expected to avoid making racist comments (even “mild” ones), they should also be able to avoid displaying other forms of prejudice.

It’s not that difficult IMO. There are lots of other ways that people can display their ignorance.

I don’t think this is about “identity politics.” It’s about prejudice.

I'm not sure it was actually an unfortunate situation of woke in action that happened against me. I think it was more to do with a mixture of pack mentally and wannabe woke-ists.

It was at a former place of employment. I'm quite a friendly person and I like a laugh and I find it easy to make friends. Usually this isn't an issue and it's never caused a problem anywhere else but at this particular place it did.

Things that I was saying to people were being twisted and pulled out of all proportion. So for example there was a homosexual male there. Now he was quite stereotypically gay but he was also quite "hands on" with the women too. I happened to point this out to a colleague and I said (jokingly) that maybe he's actually pretending to be gay because you just can't always be sure these days. Now I can't see how that can make me homophobic but apparently it did. That's just one example.

From my point of view it should have been him called into question for his "hands on" approach to both men and women in the workplace (one man did complain about him and eventually had to leave) but instead it was my joke about him that got me into trouble and eventually ostracized. I can only put this down to the way some people's minds have been distorted by woke culture. I would like to think that I'm OK wilith homosexuality but in this case I believe that him being homosexual made it ok for him to sexually harass people but me making a joke about him maybe pretending to be gay so he could touch up women wasn't OK.

I mean I can see how my comment may have been a tad offensive but it still doesn't make me a homophobe.

So are identity politics and wokism two separate issues?

People grow and transform over time. I think if you are confident that the space between the time you were bought up and now has been sufficient to let you bloom as a individual who knows what is "not right" then you have nothing to worry about.

According to conservatives, “identity politics” fall under the wokeism umbrella.

I, personally, think this generally has more to do with prejudice and regressive values, though. I’m referring to the biggest opponents to “wokeness,” not you specifically.

Some irony in that conservatives are the biggest propagators of identity politics

I think it’s the word “politics” that especially gets to me here because it seems to suggest that a person’s gender identity is not a real, valid issue; it’s just “politics.”

The more woke the world gets, the more confused I am.

The Eat With Pride commercial was pretty special this year. I identify as LGBTQ and even I think this commercial goes too far.