My War on Woke

My phone rang recently. It was one of my many gentlemen-friends (don’t tell Hubby) to whom I shall refer as ‘G’.

I really enjoy our phone conversations. They follow a familiar pattern. G asks if I have anything to add to the agenda of a forthcoming meeting, or if I can help him with the minutes of the previous meeting because he can’t read his handwriting, that sort of thing. After these committee-niceties, he changes the dynamic with a searching question, along the lines of:
• Can you see a way out of the cladding crisis?
• Do you think we should have another lockdown?
• Sunak or Truss?

Regarding the last one (yes, I know it was more topical a while ago but my blog-brain works in mysterious ways) I explained that I wasn’t wild about either of them but at least Truss was loyal to our democratically elected PM to the end, while Fishy Rishi Sunak was busy planning his own coronation (Ha!) when he should have been steering the economy through choppy waters.

G had difficulty with these two candidates as well. He was particularly incensed by Fishy, who he said had joined the ranks of other “right-wing” politicians by “hijacking and misusing the term ‘woke’”. Apparently Fishy had referred to “lefty woke nonsense”, which G said was “so disrespectful, infantile and undignified – and indeed un-Conservative – for people to use the term as a crude insult for anyone regarded as left-of-centre.”

Hmmm. That’s a strange thing to say, thought I and parked it to think about it later. 

And think I did. Long and hard. It’s no secret that I’m down on the woke-brigade and am not a fan of left-wing politics either, but I never thought of them as synonymous – if you’re left, you’re not necessarily woke, although I’d wager that if you’re woke, you’re more likely to be left than right. Had G misunderstood what woke means, or had I?

Woke meaning

I went back to basics, i.e. Google, and searched “woke meaning”. Apparently, woke originally only meant being alert to racial prejudice. I’ve no problem with that. The term broadened in the last ten years or thereabouts to encompass a broader awareness of social inequalities and injustices. Okey dokey as well. The number of ‘causes’ kept flourishing to embrace such things as identity politics and cultural appropriation, environmentalism and anti-capitalism, basically anything that can be considered to be anti-establishment, anti-traditional, anti-nuclear family, anti-British, and anti-conservative (small and large ‘c’). At some stage, the term ‘woke’ became less a description and more a badge of honour worn with (gay?) pride, then it morphed into a badge of superciliousness (or should that be super silliness).

But it’s not the issues alone – some of which are laudable – that define woke; it’s a combination of three other overlapping factors. 

First, woke views can be ridiculous to the point of being incomprehensible. One example is a man claiming to be a woman and demanding to be allowed into women’s safe spaces such as prisons and rape-counselling sessions. A perverts’ charter. Another is the concept of white privilege, i.e. if you’re white, then you’re automatically privileged. Really? Try telling that to the thousands of white girls sexually abused by men of Pakistani heritage.

Second, is the absolute intolerance of others' views. For example, I don’t consider someone to be woke just because they’re vegan. However, if they foam at the mouth at the thought of any animal products at all and demand a totally plant-based diet for everyone, then that’s woke.

Third, ‘lived experiences’ now trump facts. This means that if I believe something happened and feel as if it happened, then it happened and nothing else matters. D-list actress Meghan Markle’s infamous interview with that Winfrey fawner was a master class in lived experiences that led to the glorious one-liner from our late, great QE2, “Recollections may vary”.

Fourth (sorry, can’t count): most often, ‘snowflakes’ are considered to be woke. It’s another derogatory term for a person who appears to have (per Wiki) an inflated sense of uniqueness, an unwarranted sense of entitlement, or are overly emotional, easily offended, and unable to deal with opposing opinions. They need safe spaces (although some of them would deny these to vulnerable women), and are mollycoddled with ‘Trigger Warnings’, which are red flags assigned to a book, film or lecture, say, that might trigger a post-traumatic stress reaction. What on earth would do that? How about Winnie the Pooh (fat-shaming), or Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, about an ex-student who plans to kill a pawnbroker and steal her money. Here’s a thought: if you’re a bit nervous about crimes and punishments, don’t read a book called Crime and Punishment. The ultimate solution to calm such snowflakey nerves is to ‘cancel’ anything and everything that might trigger any stress, but then no one else can read, watch, listen to or learn anything. 

Fifth (5 is the new 3), a woke agenda is pursued as a priority above all other outcomes. One example is positive discrimination in favour of ‘minorities’, and the consequent negative discrimination against any permutation or combination of white, middle-class, privately educated, Oxbridge, straight males, to the detriment of really really really important organisational and societal outcomes. The RAF recently pausing job offers for white men to meet diversity targets is a case in point. Bugger security of the realm. Let’s fly those rainbow flags to show Putin how enlightened we are!

Woke parody

Not surprisingly the term woke, having been appropriated by the intolerant minority, is now used negatively by the rest of us. No one takes the mick better than the fictional, satirical Titania Gethsemane McGrath, a supposed 24-year-old radical intersectionalist poet committed to feminism, social justice and armed peaceful protest, who identifies as non-binary, polyracial and ecosexual. 

Titania says, “To be woke is a blessing. We are the first human beings who have ever existed who are right about absolutely everything. It’s such a relief to know that our views will never be criticised or ridiculed by future generations.”

Her creator Andrew Doyle, a comedian and writer, said that he created Titania to mock contemporary woke culture, because “the majority of people are desperate for this culture to be mocked.”

Insulting the woke

The term appears to have been hijacked again, this time by some on the political right (or at least not-left) such as Fishy, to mean anything they don’t agree with, including socialism. This has put me in a bit of a bind. I subscribe to the Doyle / Titania interpretation of woke, not the Fishy version. If some on the left have the same interpretation of woke as Fishy, then they might think my anti-woke tirades have been directed at them and I’ve insulted them. To be honest, I probably have insulted them at some time, but not during the anti-woke tirades.

So how can I continue venting at the woke without inadvertently insulting those who aren’t actually woke? 

• I could always not vent. Yeah, right. That’s like asking the Pope not to be a Catholic. Glory be, have I just insulted the Pope?

• I could explain in detail each and every stance I’m castigating and each and every stance I’m not each and every time, but that would be too long-winded and clumsy and ruin the spontaneity of my blogs. (You didn’t think they were carefully crafted, did you?) Or …

• I could issue a Trigger Warning but only one, or we’d be back to long-winded and clumsy.

The sole trigger warning would therefore have to cover any and all content that might trigger a post-traumatic stress reaction. How about:

Warts and All. Topical. Thought-provoking. In your face. 

Sound familiar?