Why is woke a dirty word now?

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Like Idk I think I am pretty woke, and I see that as a good thing...


So why is it something right wingers fling around as an insult, like isn't a good thing to be 'woke' to the issues going on....like its slang for wake up so why do some people get so offended about it.

language is becoming more and more dynamic all the time - meaning changes to the match the connotation that gets used most frequently or yelled the loudest these days. Sometimes its a good thing, but not always.

Think of who treats it like a dirty word and it all starts to make sense. Being aware of social justice concerns is deeply offensive to the social injustice warrior set.

Some element of the right wing have managed to capture the term and turn it into a pejorative that gets past the weak critical faculty of the sector of the public that swallows these things.

It's because so much of it isn't. Too often it's racist and sexist and generally self-serving. It's also become a way of pitting one group against another so that the elites can avoid having to let the people benefit from government policies.

And, it's hardly just right-wingers. Those on the progressive left aren't necessarily terribly keen on it either, as it is a wedge issue intended to distract from real efforts to address any major issue.

The left's primary belief is in equality. "Woke" = Awareness of inequalities and believing they are unjust.
The right's primary belief is hierachry. Hierachry = Awareness of inequalities and believing they are just.
If you are right wing, you will naturally question the absolute equality of wokeism because you dpn't believe in absolute equality.

I think 'woke' is used as a quick way to shut people up who are pointing out uncomfortable truths, like people being racist/ sexist/ misogynistic/ homophobic etc. 'You're too woke' is meant to embarrass people into shutting up and letting the racist/ sexist/ misogynistic/ homophobic people keep going.

Depends on how inequality is measured and whether they're unjust.

A lot of people think being "woke" is not properly analysing societal problems and coming up with a questionable solution that's often ironically unjust.

A good example here was an attempt to ban white candidates for the largest political group in Wales. They "seen" a problem, wrongly analyzed it as minorities being excluded from politics when in reality it's because there just isn't many minorities in Wales overall and came up with a racist solution of banning white candidates in the next election.

That's the type of crap that people don't want to see and will result in being called the "woke" slur.

Last edited by Nades on 30 Apr 2023, 3:00 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I'd add to the commentary above:

SpikedTV exists.
Brendan O'Neill exists.
James Lindsay, Peter Boghossian, and Helen Pluckrose exist.
Bret and Eric Weinstein exist.
Sam Harris exists.
Ricky Jervaise exists.
Bill Maher exists.
Coleman Hughes exists.
Konstantin and Francis of Triggernometry exist.

Last but far from least:

Noam Chomsky exists.

You won't hear the above discussed very often in this context because they don't fit the inarticulate / incoherent toothless Republican hillbilly meme.

That said - the content above this line for people who actually care about the question. My answer for people who don't know or care and just want to show how supportive they are is completely different:

I have no idea why toothless donkey-smashing hillbilly conservatives and toothless donkey-smashing hillbilly conservatives alone don't like woke, must be one of those American Beauty repressed sexual fetish things.

Because it describes a ridiculous set of believes and practices. It's the left equivalent of puritans.

It seems that to the chattering element of the right, "woke" is a word they try to avoid defining, because that would spoil their game:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... vatives-us

Looking at this example of an anti-woke rant:

https://nypost.com/2021/01/31/10-ways-t ... e-culture/

yep, they don't define it. There are plenty of vague insinuations in their 10-point fightback plan, but no clear definition of what this "face-eating leopard" is supposed to be.

Largely because people who oppose the illiberal, identity politics on steroids wing of the left needed a simple word to describe them. Since that part of the left already was using that word and it’s easy to say they hijacked it. MAGA’s then hijacked the word from the hijackers to mean everybody who holds liberal or progressive views.

There was one chap who tried to resolve the issue by creating two different words with definitions - "wokenness" as the acceptable form of woke, and "wokeism" as the extreme, dangerous form. He makes a certain amount of sense, and at least tries to define what he's talking about before he wades in with his opinions, but I doubt his definitions will ever be universally accepted. For one thing, the last thing the more extreme wing of the American right want is to be prevented from throwing out the baby with the bathwater, and that extreme wing is somewhat mainstream.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog ... gy-wokeism

Woke became a dirty word when a political factor uses race or gender as a tool to push marxism. If an openly marxist party stood to promote marxism as a means of governing and was democratically elected by the majority vote of the people then it would not be an issue. Is the decieving way that a marxist agenda is being pushed by using gay rights and black lives matter etc where things go wrong. It pushes those who otherwize would have supported the BLM or other causes that the marxists used as their tools, to turn against the cause who would have otherwize supported them, and unfortunately those who were directly involved in rallies and protests could not see how they were being used by the press who were trying to divide blacks and whites and divide straight and gay etc for the purpose of weakening democracy rather than the press trying to reconcile and unite the different sides together as one so that we can have some genuine democratic progress.

The way the press handled the various issues to push their agenda on top was absolutley discusting. We had it here in the UK where they were encouraging our black communities to openly hate whites in order to divide the past coming together of peoples from the different racial.backgrounds. Suddenly where one used to welcome those who were friends who happened to be from a different race where after all the stiring by the press our friends became very suspicious of our motives to befriend them and divide was taking place. The government has been doing thsir best to amplify these racial divides and use them as tools to bring in marxist laws. They don't care who they use to do this but they are doing it because they are directly scared of people power when people of various races, religions and genders stand together ad one and say "No!" to any government proposals which we may not otherwize accept. By dividing us, and making a big thing in our press about it by stiring one faction aginst another they can then push in new laws that the people collectively would not in normal circumstances accept.

Last edited by Mountain Goat on 01 May 2023, 3:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Just embrace the word. Woke isn't a bad thing. It just means being aware of human right issues and civil right issues.

I do not understand how the right wing can use it as an insult. Like how is it a bad thing lmao? I am at lost at how is it supposed to be insulting.