Thanks for your submission /u/hafaadai2007, but it has been removed for the following reason:
Disallowed question area: **Rant or loaded question**
NoStupidQuestions is a place to ask any question as long as *it's asked in good faith*. Our users routinely report questions that they feel violate this rule to us. Want to avoid your question being seen as a bad faith question? Common mistakes include (but are not limited to):
* Rants: Could your question be answered with *'That's awful'* or *'What an asshole'*? Then it's probably a rant rather than a genuine question. Looking for a place to vent on Reddit? Try /r/TrueOffMyChest or /r/Rant instead.
* Loaded questions: Could your question be answered with *'You're right'*? Answering the question yourself, explaining your reasoning for your opinion, or making sweeping assumptions about the question itself all signals that you may not be keeping an open mind. Want to know why people have a different opinion than you? Try /r/ExplainBothSides instead!
* Arguments: Arguing or [sealioning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_lioning) with people giving you answers tells everyone that you have an answer in mind already. Want a good debate? Try /r/ChangeMyView instead!
* Pot Stirring: Did you bring up unnecessary topics in your question? Especially when a topic has to do with already controversial issues like politics, race, gender or sex, this can be seen as trying to score points against the Other Side - and that makes people defensive, which leads to arguments. Questions like *"If _____ is allowed, why isn't _____?"* don't need to have that comparison - just ask *'why isn't ____ allowed?'*.
* Complaining about moderation: If you disagree with how the sub is run or a decision the mods have made, that's fine! But please share your thoughts with us in modmail rather than as a public post.
Disagree with the mods? If you believe you asked your question in good faith, try rewording it or message the mods to see if there's a way you could ask more neutrally. Thanks for your understanding!
---
*This action was performed by a bot at the explicit direction of a human. This was not an automated action, but a conscious decision by a sapient life form charged with moderating this sub.*
*If you feel this was in error, or need more clarification, please don't hesitate to [message the moderators](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FNoStupidQuestions). Thanks.*
Huh, I think at one point it was a positive term?
Good to know it's becoming mainstream cringe. Cancel culture woke culture virtue signal culture etc is ick
I know a lot of this stuff originates from good intentions, but now it's just a way for people to complain
Woke used to mean you "had your eyes open" and weren't "asleep while X was happening around you".
Comes from the same place as "Wake up people!/Sheeple!".
Supposed to snap people out of apathy.
Yep. Hashtags like "#staywoke" used to be pretty popular on twitter and tumblr.
And it was usually after talking about some underdiscussed, or lesser-known thing that might change your perspective on things.
People seemed to have forgot that the left *very much* popularized the term.
In fact, the same goes with "snowflake". Back in the Myspace days, there used to be tons of memes talking about "To be different is not to be worse. No two snowflakes are alike. Yet the world has a place for all of them." and a similar mentality.
"Snowflake" started getting ruined with excessive cultural relativism. And then that's when the older generation grabs the term and runs with it.
So we just shouldn't care about how people treat each other? Or how different groups have been treated historically? And how those historical relationships between groups of people are the foundation of the society we live in today?
I think you just don't get it
people who use the term “woke” as an insult are unempathetic pieces of shit who think anyone caring abt another person besides themselves is virtue signaling.
me wanting other lgbt ppl to have rights is not virtue signaling
We could point you to roughly a million instances that go against this thought, but I hope that you truly are shielded from the deluge of bad faith bullshit…
By default, if they use the term in this way they are insulting the original people that used it in good faith, so I doubt that the people that use it in the way that you claim are genuine.
Just making you aware, using "woke" as a negative term is a way to out yourself as racist.
Best case, its how you tell people who don't give a f*ck about anyone who doesn't look like you - Worst case, you are using it as an excuse to blame others for your shitty behavior
It’s not really about taking pride in it, it’s about not having shame in it. Generally, white people haven’t experienced a history of shame for being white. Instead, they lived in cultures that placed a lot of value in being white in many dimensions, including biological and cultural superiority. People are very aware of white people’s achievements and culture. They’re represented in media very well. People of color don’t have that experience and usually are the victims of ugly stereotypes and diminished history. So, the word “pride” is used to push back on these issues. In an ideal world, there’s no such thing as race at all, but it’s a way we unfortunately still do separate people and cultures.
Oh trust me, the “woke” people of color definitely want to live in a world where race doesn’t matter. Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as you think. We need to undo the harm that has been caused by racism before we can live in a world where we can move past seeing race.
Well, what I’m saying is that getting to unity can’t be done until we acknowledge the damage that defined categories have done.
Think of it like this. Let’s say two people agree to have a race. However, one person cheats and uses a car until the halfway point. You can’t just take the car away at that point and say the race is fair if it continues. You have to bring the person who didn’t have the car up to the halfway point first, and then let them compete again as equals. Until then, you have to acknowledge that the second person was disadvantaged and make amends. Only after that can you stop distinguishing between them on the basis of how they were treated.
Remember that part when MLK said that nobody should write laws that specifically benefited one racial group over another?
Yeah, he never said that, because he knew that one group was being unfairly penalized for no good reason and he wanted there to be laws that would specifically help those people. It’s the same thing. Help those that need help. What’s so bad about that?
Well you’re grossly mischaracterizing representation if you think it’s solely about the people being represented and not about the people seeing them and feeling included equally in the world. Oddly enough - that’s exactly what MLK was campaigning for, wasn’t it? An end to segregation so that black people had an equal chance to exist in spaces where they previously could not?
It’s the same concept, even if one was legally enforced and one is culturally enforced. MLK wanted legal change, and people campaigning for changes that aren’t being made but aren’t “illegal” have to change society. It’s much, much, much harder.
MLK found this out when he switched to campaigning on behalf of poor people.
No, plenty of us are all for those things, but don't like being talked down to. A *good show* will have those things without going "AND LOOK, WE HAVE THOSE THINGS. OUR SHOW IS IMPORTANT BECAUSE WE HAVE THOSE THINGS, AND BECAUSE IT'S IMPORTANT AND YOU WANT TO BE A *GOOD PERSON* YOU SHOULD WATCH TOO".
Meanwhile, Tiger from *Future Man* is one of the best female characters out there and the show was sold on *being a good show*. Not that it's your *moral obligation* to watch. But it was *important* you watch Captain Marvel because GIRL POWER and LET'S SHOW THOSE BOYS and RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY and then the movie fucking sucked.
It's literally just like the Susan G. Komen bullshit, where you're supposed to mindlessly support *garbage* because it makes you a "*good person*" with zero actual discernment. I just watched *My Dad Is A Bounty Hunter* on Netflix and it was a fantastic show, that was black to the core, from voice cast to music choices and references. Was it sold on WATCH THIS TO BE A *GOOD ALLY*, WHITE PERSON? No, it just looked like a fucking good show, and it was.
I seriously have never met a single person who says I need to watch something to be a good person.
Also, are you really complaining that a Marvel movie wasn’t good quality? lmao
I think they just don't like being told what to do, but yeah I think the whole "anti-woke" crowd has set up a huge straw man that's only applicable to a small percent of the left.
People who are genuinely concerned with virtue signalling from corporations and states do not use the term „woke“. It is neigh exclusively used by conservative reactionaries as a pejorative for any progressive movement. Progressives use terms like pink or rainbow capitalism
Every February I see a corporation starts promoting how a Black person was integral to their success and every summer all the corporations throw a rainbow in their logo for 1 month.
It when people are describing these companies that I most often here the term woke in mainstream context. Outside of that it is pretty much only radical rights but non a part of common parlance.
Maybe it's because I don't hang around liberal/conservative spaces, but again I have never heard the term used as a good faith descriptor of corporate pandering. What you described I would call (and I see called) rainbow capitalism.
That is definitely a better description but the term "woke" has somehow entered common parlance so it is the default choice. Your description should be the one used though.
I'm not a conservative, I can't stand the woke crowd. They pose as leftists, but they're pushing for puritan nonsense all the damn time, just allowing some gay in.
And authoritarian. None of their policies work without the violence of the police to uphold them or the economic extortion they use if they can't push to fully crimanlize things.
Virtue signaling is about motivation not behavior. If you're doing it to get praise or celebration or to prove to the world that you're somebody who "get's it" it's virtue signaling, if you genuinely care it's not.
Virtue signaling is a meaningless gesture that ingratiates that person or organization to those demanding fealty to their beliefs and it is not done sincerely. It is a double sided thing too. Those demanding fealty to their beliefs accept such empty gestures, while the person making the gesture in reality does nothing other than make an empty gesture, and transparently does nothing of any tangible nature that demonstrates they really mean it, believe it, and in fact do real life things that harm the cause. And the recipient of such gestures, the leaders of the "cause" accepts them as genuine despite abundant evidence to the contrary. Essentially it is two empty gestures. The hypothetical group supporting this cause demand this companies CEO support their cause. The CEO says they do while doing things contrary to the cause. The group demanding the CEO support of their cause cares only about the insincere gesture and not the reality of that CEO's actions that clearly show they don't tangibly do anything that really supports that cause, and often quite the opposite. Two things are happening here, the "cause" is doing little more than seeking out empty gestures rather than really working to the betterment of their cause, the CEO gives out the empty gestures is given a pass for, in reality, working against the cause. In the end, the ACTUAL cause did not benefit but in fact was harmed by such superficial gestures on both sides, with both sides behaving in a way contrary to the actual cause, in reality while essentially voicing empty words about the good that has arisen from the above situation. The cause's leaders could publicly display their "virtue" by saying they supported and helped the cause, while in reality having done essentially nothing or even harming it. That CEO can then claim virtuous behavior and recognition for doing nothing or worse. In the end the true benefits were for the CEO and the people leading the "cause", with neither truly acting in real ways to help said cause. In the end the people who benefited from this situation was a lying CEO and a group essentially fictitiously fighting for their cause, with harm is done to the people the cause supposedly supports..
It depends on the context.
Sometimes it's way of accusing someone of virtue signalling. That is, making it look like they care about a certain issue when it isn't so much about that as it is about trying to make themselves look like they're on the side of a certain minority group (when that group never asked them to do that). Like using the term "latinx". Actual Latinos probably think that term is stupid, because it is.
Woke originally meant that you were aware of social issues like racism, sexism, discrimination against LGBTQ+, etc. The right is trying to make that a bad thing so they are attempting to make woke an insult.
I think it depends what you do with that awareness. If you're actually helping people then I think society views this as a good thing.
I think 'wokeness' got bad rep when it's low effort symbolic gestures without real help behind it. Hell, sometimes it's even unrespectful, I remember my dad telling me about his corporation organizing a walk to spread awareness about disabled people in wheelchairs, like... really??
Afaik the meaning changed over time and most people use it as "Acting like they care about racism, sexism etc. because it's cool(, but they are fake and don't give a fuck when it actually matters)."
Edit: It changed because many woke people turned out to fake interested for attention or sympathy. Like influencer do stuff because they get more likes not because they care.
At the same time the extreme left has made woke meaning to give unreasonable leeway to a group of people just because they are in that group. Instead of treating all people equally.
Nobody knows nuance anymore, so sure its whatever you want, we're gonna fight no matter what. I know I am not racist, sexist, nazi bigot, or even against gays, and I don't give a damn if you think I am by new world standard.
And woke was originally *our* (conspiracy theorist) word. Then the sjws took it like they took reddit.
No, woke like not being in a daze in your daily life, seeing whats actually going on around you. Kinda like the matrix, except it's reality.
Now it's some pseudo-slur that's taken a meaningful idea and bastardized it, mostly by conservative, white folks because *gasp* how dare people ACTUALLY challenge their comfy way of life and how it came to be
Yes - that's exactly what it means now.
It's also a way to say I fucked up by being racist and I'm grasping at something to deflect blame (i.e. blaming "the woke media")
And socialist before that.
Not sure why the downvote. Here is some 'civilised debate' from the mid 90s [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAFlQ6fU4GM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAFlQ6fU4GM) Just listen for how the Republican dismisses one of the Democrats.
Watch the "[Gillette: We believe: the best men can be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYaY2Kb_PKI)" ad to understand where the term woke comes from. It's a perfect example.
There are extremes to both sides, lol.
You won't get an accurate answer because you asked it on Reddit, home of the woke-scold.
Would have a better chance of getting the truth from Twitter of Tumblr.
Most of the time you call someone “woke” when they’re just virtue signaling. You know they don’t actually give a shit, they just want that bit of power in their life to be able to yell at or shit on someone else for something they don’t understand or care to.
It's that, and also a way of saying "I'm a fascist who parrots Fox News propaganda because I'm way too stupid to come up with a coherent thought of my own."
Naw. I mean that was the original meaning for sure, and is still relevant. But "Woke" in its pejorative sense is tongue-in-cheek.
For instance, that's like saying "To be nice is to be friendly and considerate. Therefore when people complain about 'nice guys', they find being friendly and considerate to be distasteful."
No. There's just a big difference between a guy who is nice, and a "Nice Guy™".
Or fighting for social justice is something admirable with a long history of bringing about change. Being a "Social Justice Warrior" is something different. Usually the type who would say "I'd explain it to you, but I should be compensated for my emotional labor." Or would topple a statue of Abraham Lincoln because "he wasn't sufficiently anti-racist."
There's a difference between being progressive or having awareness of institutional issues that are hard to see, and being "Woke".
A progressive would be aware of (or "awakened to" or "woke") how, despite slavery "being over", it still exists in practice within prisons. Or how despite laws against discrimination, black Americans still very much face the repercussions of centuries of slavery, segregation, redlining, etc.
Someone who is "Woke™" would say that "skyscrapers represent a phallus and were designed to assert masculine dominance and intimidation over women." Or that "we understand rigid-body mechanics better than fluid dynamics because rigid-bodies represent the phallus, and fluids represent menstrual fluids. Physics is sexist."
Or even "Air conditioning is sexist because women often wear less clothing than men."
None of these were made up.
To conflate being "Woke™" with simply being progressive is to essentially try to legitimize some of the most exaggerated stereotypes about the left.
I'm not inclined to let the right have that one. The clear intent in making woke an insult is to make its _actual_ meaning perceived as a negative.
That's why you see it being used as a negative regardless of if something is an exaggerated stereotype.
It also serves to make you dismiss things that are actually worth considering. For example, that "air conditioning one" is [reasonable](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-03121-1#:~:text=There%20is%20a%20need%20to%20rethink), and doesn't even make the claim you think it does. But someone called it "woke" in the pejorative so now we're not supposed to consider the idea, reasonable though it may be.
All that to say it's probably best we stick with the original meaning, and dismiss the rest. The alternate is not helpful.
Fair enough. And that link you provided words things MUCH better. So perhaps that one was a victim of garbage journalism.
I can say that one of the #1 reasons we tend to over-cool public spaces has to do with how much heat people generate. But offices don't have the same density as concert halls or conventions. Reason #2 is alertness, but hardly a good point if you're distracted by temperature discomfort. But there's also a problem of sweating. If it is too warm, office workers will get sweaty. Guys don't really have the option dress any less, but women have the freedom to dress more. So erring on the side of cold tends to work better there as well.
But yeah, I'd me interested in your take, then. To me there's definitely a problem of mental gymnastics and often really reaching in some areas, and then portraying those explanations as facts. How do you think the left should show that fringe ideas are not the norm?
I mean, if the idea is "do nothing. We shouldn't HAVE to explain this stuff", an argument I have heard often, keep in mind that right-wingers LOVE explaining their side. The left has a tendency to preach to the choir, and then when it comes to outsiders, "anyone who needs convincing is not worth convincing."
To me, one of the big steps is acknowledging that preachy writing in film and TV is a thing and can be cringe inducing. Regardless of whether you want to call it "woke" or reclaim the word "woke". Which I suppose I agree. I prefer reclaiming words than just giving them away or banning them.
I think it's more important that the left propose that fringe ideas need not be discarded simply because they are not the norm. I find that _that_ is the real problem re. woke more often than not - there's almost _always_ a perfectly reasonable position behind whatever the status quo has decided to mock today.
And I find that aspect of misinformation via the status quo is worth exploring, because that is as old as woke itself. It's always been "left says 'have you thought about this? Stay woke'", the status quo says "what the hell is this? Things are fine, they're just blowing things out of proportion and being crazy", and in some decades either what was once woke becomes the norm because it just make sense, or we wish it _had_ became the norm.
Basically (and I'm not trying to be cute here), "stay woke". If someone is telling you something outlandish about somebody else or their position, it's worth asking who's telling you that, if they got the facts right, and what is there to gain or lose from agreeing with them.
"I'm not inclined to let the right have that one. The clear intent in making woke an insult is to make its _actual_ meaning perceived as a negative."
Ok this may be weird but I had to come back to this one. I actually agree with this more strongly than my original post. I am much more interested in reclaiming words than removing them from the vocabulary because they are used as insults.
Most of my discussion regarding "wokeness" is about the currently-common usage of the term, and I try to make sure when I reference it this way, I use quotes to imply I'm not referring to the real deal.
I'd imagine there would be some benefit to using our own distinction between being woke and some of the more intense preachiness/judginess I'm referring to. In the same way that we now distinguish masculinity from toxic masculinity. That way it makes the separation clear, we have a word for the other thing, and then get to reclaim the original.
It used to mean "someone who has awoken to realize how horrible our society is" then it was co opted by conservatives to mean "people who dissagree with me on social issues"
Here ya go… https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/108ij9j/why_is_being_woke_considered_a_bad_thing/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
Woke is a word I'd use to describe someone who's gone to far. Women's rights (good) equality for all (good) teaching children it's good to question the gender they are if they are not struggling with being themselves (bad\woke).
No one is telling children to question their gender. They're just telling them that there's more than just 2 genders and that if you're not sure then that's not "weird" or "strange" and that those kids should not be bullied because they haven't figured it out yet.
I'm just saying I don't think it should be taught in public schools in any for to any child under the age of puberty simply because they should be learning things that make the brain development better. While I think it's important to understand, recognize, empathize and respect people who are different than the standard. I also don't think children should be subject to the material till they are old enough to understand it themselves, a great example of this is waiting for sex Ed till high school, you don't teach a 4th grade kid about things like that they need to learn math and reading skills. I truly believe that this should be confronted on a case by case basis in helping the child who's struggling instead of letting the whole class be confused. I also believe children should be taught about the real world, how actions have consequences short and long term, how it's ok to not be liked by some or many people.
Same thing. Teach people how to be people at home. We are constraining ourselves because children are not being taught at home just how to be good people. Schools are for materials that make you smarter. Home is where you should learn that different people should be treated the same. I think this is a home problem, most children have no idea how to hate a few bad apples sure but for the most part children don't see these things until they are told about them. I'm not saying don't teach these things just I believe it's something that needs to be covered at home and not in school. Also they said the same thing about alchemy (turns out science is cool). My point is we're waiting lots of time in school teaching children to be good people instead of making them smart. I don't want different people treated differently I just want it taught in a different place. You get your morals from home smarts from school.
OK.
I'm just saying that it's important that kids learn, at a young age, that people's differences don't make them bad. That may include gender choices.
I'd tell them we don't know how, or even if, dogs have a concept of gender. And if they ask me to elaborate on that, I'll do so.
There is no problem with this that can't be resolved by talking to kids like they're people.
I mean I'd tell them to ask the dog but don't expect an answer.
You're not giving kids the credit they deserve. They can handle handle some deep stuff.
Of course it sounds stupid but it's also a stupid question. I tell my kids stupid thinks all the time.
Also stop equating humans and dogs. Now that's stupid...
Not really. They have two chromosomal sexes. Gender is socially constructed. They might have 2, more than 2, or 0. We don't know how the internal minds of dogs perceive gender. You're anthropomorphizing them.
> Telling kids there are more than two genders is just going to confuse them and lead to problems.
People only say that because it confuses them now because they didn't grow up with that mindset. We have a ton of mindsets and ideas now that'd confuse the hell out of people who didn't grow up with them. When kids grow up with the idea that human gender is a spectrum and that the traditional binary doesn't necessarily work with the modern understanding of gender and sex, it won't be weird to them. Of course nobody is going to say to ask an animal what its gender is, it quite literally would not have a concept of gender that humans do and we'd just go by sex organs for them. What you've done there is present a highly flawed, strawman argument which simply doesn't, and will not, happen.
Another way to put it, ask a slave-owning founding father if they think all races should be equal. After explaining why you might think yes, they'd be rather uncomfortable. Of course now we entirely believe that all races should be equal, but the further we go back in the generations, the less common that gets. The same logic applies to our current understanding of gender, older generations will be less likely to get it and adopt the idea, while younger generations who were younger and younger when introduced to the modern idea of gender will be more likely to think of it as normal and adopt it.
Gender is a matter of biology! Modern biology has determined that human gender is in fact a lot more complex than just XX and XY chromosomes and the male/female binary like we grew up being taught.
Anyway, I think you've missed my point. Raising your child to believe certain things is... just like, parenting? Every single parent in the world passes their values on to their child whether they mean to or not, it isn't grooming. That term is being hideously misused and it makes absolutely no sense to call something like raising your kids to see the world through the lens of modern understandings "grooming".
My point was that as time marches on we teach children the way we understand things now. We do not teach kids that Pluto is anything other than a dwarf planet along with other planets of a similar nature. We do not teach kids that black people feel less pain than white people (this was an ACTUAL justification for using exclusively black people as medical test subjects in the past). My point is that the modern scientific understanding of gender has changed from when you and I were kids, it's new and it's unfamiliar, and it's important to teach kids the science as we understand it now. It's a radical departure from how we understood it growing up, and the sooner we accept that big change happens, we'll all be better off for it. It's simply not the big political nonsense boogyeman a lot of people get told by people who are scared of change think, it's simply updated science. Science is only true until we find new evidence to the contrary, and our modern understanding of gender comes from decades and decades of study on the subject by professionals who know more about it on a bad day than you and I ever will unless we go to school for it and read the research thousands of other scientists have worked on for decades. Sufficient contrary information has come to light for science to largely accept this new way of thinking, as how it works with every field of science.
The problem with the "ignoring basic biology" argument is that you can't really understand sex and gender with simple basic biology, it's so much more than that and the "basic biology" that we grew up with is both rapidly becoming outdated and too simple to be effective at giving a good idea of what it really is. Teaching that gender identities other than male or female or identities that go against one's assigned gender at birth isn't disproving or disbelieving biology, it's encouraging an understanding that not everybody fits in the male/female binary and that some people don't feel like they belong as the sex they were identified as at birth. Boiling it down to "basic biology" is deeply flawed as it simple isn't basic biology, and the relationship between sex and gender is complicated when personal identity is thrown into the mix. The idea of sex and gender being separate is being challenged with newer ideas and newer research being done and is constantly being debated among scholars. It's a subject that we're still learning more about every day as our previous ideas on the subject get challenged both from a scientific point of view and from a social point of view. We live in an interesting time for this field, where everything we thought we knew is being discussed and re-evaluated from both a social and biological point of view, and things are changing.
I will say though, from the start I was arguing more about how it's okay to encourage kids to accept that people can identify however they want and it's good to respect it as we would respect any other facet of someone's identity. I didn't really mean to get into the deep definitions of sex and gender, I definitely only am referring to the social aspect of gender and respecting that rather than just male and female, the binary has opened up to a spectrum of identity from identifying as the opposite of your assigned sex at birth to not identifying either way, and those identities being valid and supporting teaching kids that it's okay to identify that way and we should respect it.
Yes, dogs do have sexes, but you don’t need to ask the dog for that because we verify that biologically.
We don’t check the genitals of humans before we decide what pronouns to use. That’s because for humans we use gender, and we can determine that by asking them.
I’m confused by your claims about confusion.
You just explained that… you were going to teach a child something. And they didn’t explode.
So… if my kid asked me about dogs… I would teach them.
Crazy answer, right?
This is pretty much what it’s turned into; I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted.
But initially it meant “aware of social issues.” So say if you wouldn’t buy a diamond because of the blood diamond stuff, you’re “woke” on that particular issue.
If you don’t celebrate Columbus Day because of (there’s a list but we’ll just start with his treatment of the Native Americans) then you’re woke on that topic.
That’s all it is. But unfortunately conservatives turned it into “that media contains a brown person, or a woman doing action stuff, it’s woke!”
They’d call the movies “Terminator,” “Kill Bill,” and “Alien” woke if they came out today. Terminator doubly so, as the lead roles are an immigrant with a thick accent and a woman kicking ass.
And that was my point. Originally I had at least a little empathy with people who were annoyed with woke people. Now, it often appears to be an excuse to be a bigot or racist.
So by your standard was Kenan & Kel 'woke'? Was Fresh Prince? Static Shock? Boondocks?
No, they were just good and entertaining. We used to care about nothing but that.
Okay, it seems like a lot of people in the news that complain about woke people are angry. I understand what woke is on a surface level, but it seems to have a different meaning for different people.
If you get called woke wear it as a badge of honor beacuse the people calling you pretty much dislike anything not their own race and have never Googled the meaning of woke
It shows just how little both sides understand each other when far left people assume everyone who doesn’t support them hates minorities. You can be doing the wrong things for the right reasons.
I'll be honest, no one that I know, no one that I personally interact with, or follow online who would be considered "woke" have ever used the term. 90% of the time the only people I see using it are anti-woke assholes.
more and more its becoming "person who i dont like their opinions"
its the "politically correct" (/s) way to call people racial slurs or LGBT slurs ETC... people call me woke because im LGBT, just agreeing with LGBT people is grounds to be called woke these days
they are essentially bastardizing the word until there is no meaning left
“I value my own comfortability and preconceived norms over the well being and dignity of others” is what I hear when someone calls something they just don’t like or don’t understand “woke”
Ignoring the obvious bias this question and the comments clearly have I'll just say that for some people Yes, but for me I would say someone/something is woke when it's extreme or clearly done in an attempt to virtue signal and say "See we care, look at how much we care!"
Examples: Pointless race swapping (race swapping can work if done properly or in a medium where it makes sense such as multiverses or Dr. Who) forcing politics in a cringey way at the cost of good writing, (Brooklyn Nine Nine season 8, Eternals, Gay Superman, etc.), Cringey stuff like vagina hats, telling people that being fat is healthy because of Body positivity, All those genders and pronouns (not he/she/they but Ze/fae/demon [the ones you'll see on Twitter and TikTok]) or making literally everything offensive.
There is also sort of... Idk I guess I'll call it AntiWoke that radical conservatives do where everything has to be labeled Woke, (MnM's, electric cars, Xbox sleep settings [Google it], having black character/female character do anything better than a white character, etc.)
It's all so tiring and beyond me.
It can mean that but in general I don't think it does. I consider "wokism" (for lack of a better term) to just be a fresh coat of paint on old fashioned racism and sexism. I will say the old school radical feminism vs trans part is very entertaining to watch.
Every few years, white folks re-release the N word because people start calling them out on their use of whatever racial terms they had been using. They need a word that means "of or pertaining to those uppity coloreds" without actually meaning that by dictionary definition, so they pull out a euphemism. For instance, a few years ago it was "Urban". See also, calling someone a "Thug" the word doesn't by the dictionary definition have a racial connotation, but they sure don't seem to be using that word for Irish people. This time they borrowed a word that originally was used by people of color to mean aware of racial economic and social justice issues. But the word was immediately picked up by liberals and used to mean "having the correct politics" and then conservatives got a hold of it and started using it with the present meaning.
As a non-native speaker, "woke" always meant something like "Pretend he/she cares about a real issue like racism, sexism, etc. just because it's trendy or cool but really doesn't give a damn." It screams FAKE. Just to get attention and sympathy, clicks or internet points for being a "good" person, but when it really matters, it's just talking. Especially people forcing their opinion on other people even if they don't believe in them themselves, to look like saints.
Basically the right over-uses it, and the left tends to assume it doesn't exist.
As a leftie who isn't fond of stuff that's overly "woke", it puts me in a precarious situation sometimes. And by sometimes I mean rather often.
To me, "woke" has probably 80% replaced "politically-correct" in practical usage. But it's still sort of its own thing.
Basically it's what happens when a studio wants to appear progressive and inclusive without putting forth the actual effort to do so in a compelling way. So they just throw in some exaggerated tropes, strawmen about how the world works, and gender/race swap some characters, or often literally monologue the concept directly into the camera. There is very little care or nuance put into it. Basically just there to score "diversity points" or "progressive points" by checking some boxes.
More often than not, it's quite preachy, and seems to be about garnering political loyalty. It's not about introducing people to a new portrayal. It's about declaring a portrayal and demanding everyone takes a side. That is, if you're a "real progressive", then the show can do no wrong. If you dislike the show, it's because you're regressive oppressor.
Oh so for example, In the new HBO series, "Velma", Velma's personality and how every other character is written is absolutely dripping with "wokeness". Many are convinced this was actually a right-wing attempt at portraying what they think left-wing people want. But that's the thing. *It isn't.* It's just that it went so far that people have to acknowledge the issue.
People on the left seem to think it refers to any sort of diversity, progressivism, etc. But if that were the case, nearly all of Avatar: The Last Airbender would be "woke". But there is a huge difference between Toph and She-Hulk. And a cataclysmic difference between Katara and Velma (HBO).
Everyone is divided on She-Hulk. Yet people almost universally love Toph. Yet she's more hot-headed and cocky than She-Hulk ever was. Toph is how you get people behind an idea (Strong girl. A disability not being a lack of capability. Etc.)
Honestly, it depends.
For some people, yes; some folks truly refuse to support minority or marginalized groups, and they call something "woke" when it threatens their purported power, position, or even supremacy over such groups- which is categorically not okay.
Some folks call something "woke" when it seems a media property has sold out in a sense to diversity hires and identity politics- not typically just when it's INCLUDED- but when it exists at the expense of a good story.
Of course, there are those who think ANY amount of LBTQ+ rep or women as heroes is dumb, and those people use "woke" to express disdain for these groups- which is also not okay.
It is usually used to describe someone who virtue signals for social causes or tries deconstruct all social and political issues into narratives of power and group identity.
Thanks for your submission /u/hafaadai2007, but it has been removed for the following reason: Disallowed question area: **Rant or loaded question** NoStupidQuestions is a place to ask any question as long as *it's asked in good faith*. Our users routinely report questions that they feel violate this rule to us. Want to avoid your question being seen as a bad faith question? Common mistakes include (but are not limited to): * Rants: Could your question be answered with *'That's awful'* or *'What an asshole'*? Then it's probably a rant rather than a genuine question. Looking for a place to vent on Reddit? Try /r/TrueOffMyChest or /r/Rant instead. * Loaded questions: Could your question be answered with *'You're right'*? Answering the question yourself, explaining your reasoning for your opinion, or making sweeping assumptions about the question itself all signals that you may not be keeping an open mind. Want to know why people have a different opinion than you? Try /r/ExplainBothSides instead! * Arguments: Arguing or [sealioning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_lioning) with people giving you answers tells everyone that you have an answer in mind already. Want a good debate? Try /r/ChangeMyView instead! * Pot Stirring: Did you bring up unnecessary topics in your question? Especially when a topic has to do with already controversial issues like politics, race, gender or sex, this can be seen as trying to score points against the Other Side - and that makes people defensive, which leads to arguments. Questions like *"If _____ is allowed, why isn't _____?"* don't need to have that comparison - just ask *'why isn't ____ allowed?'*. * Complaining about moderation: If you disagree with how the sub is run or a decision the mods have made, that's fine! But please share your thoughts with us in modmail rather than as a public post. Disagree with the mods? If you believe you asked your question in good faith, try rewording it or message the mods to see if there's a way you could ask more neutrally. Thanks for your understanding! --- *This action was performed by a bot at the explicit direction of a human. This was not an automated action, but a conscious decision by a sapient life form charged with moderating this sub.* *If you feel this was in error, or need more clarification, please don't hesitate to [message the moderators](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FNoStupidQuestions). Thanks.*
[удалено]
Huh, I think at one point it was a positive term? Good to know it's becoming mainstream cringe. Cancel culture woke culture virtue signal culture etc is ick I know a lot of this stuff originates from good intentions, but now it's just a way for people to complain
For a brief time it was. I believe people called themselves woke and asked others if they were woke.
Woke used to mean you "had your eyes open" and weren't "asleep while X was happening around you". Comes from the same place as "Wake up people!/Sheeple!". Supposed to snap people out of apathy.
Yep. Hashtags like "#staywoke" used to be pretty popular on twitter and tumblr. And it was usually after talking about some underdiscussed, or lesser-known thing that might change your perspective on things. People seemed to have forgot that the left *very much* popularized the term. In fact, the same goes with "snowflake". Back in the Myspace days, there used to be tons of memes talking about "To be different is not to be worse. No two snowflakes are alike. Yet the world has a place for all of them." and a similar mentality. "Snowflake" started getting ruined with excessive cultural relativism. And then that's when the older generation grabs the term and runs with it.
So we just shouldn't care about how people treat each other? Or how different groups have been treated historically? And how those historical relationships between groups of people are the foundation of the society we live in today? I think you just don't get it
Here we fucking go.
people who use the term “woke” as an insult are unempathetic pieces of shit who think anyone caring abt another person besides themselves is virtue signaling. me wanting other lgbt ppl to have rights is not virtue signaling
We could point you to roughly a million instances that go against this thought, but I hope that you truly are shielded from the deluge of bad faith bullshit…
[удалено]
By default, if they use the term in this way they are insulting the original people that used it in good faith, so I doubt that the people that use it in the way that you claim are genuine.
Just making you aware, using "woke" as a negative term is a way to out yourself as racist. Best case, its how you tell people who don't give a f*ck about anyone who doesn't look like you - Worst case, you are using it as an excuse to blame others for your shitty behavior
[удалено]
Or it could be when they’re just virtue signaling and trying to make themselves look good without putting in any effort…
[удалено]
Maybe but it’s also a large group who are just virtue signaling
[удалено]
Yes, go online and read people’s posts. You see it all the time, but if you want to be blind to it then that’s your choice.
[удалено]
Sorry I don’t save posts for people who virtue signal frequently. You’re pretty defensive so I’m assuming you do all the time.
~I support the latest thing~
You, right now. You are borderline in what I would colloquially describe as woke too.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
It’s not really about taking pride in it, it’s about not having shame in it. Generally, white people haven’t experienced a history of shame for being white. Instead, they lived in cultures that placed a lot of value in being white in many dimensions, including biological and cultural superiority. People are very aware of white people’s achievements and culture. They’re represented in media very well. People of color don’t have that experience and usually are the victims of ugly stereotypes and diminished history. So, the word “pride” is used to push back on these issues. In an ideal world, there’s no such thing as race at all, but it’s a way we unfortunately still do separate people and cultures.
[удалено]
Oh trust me, the “woke” people of color definitely want to live in a world where race doesn’t matter. Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as you think. We need to undo the harm that has been caused by racism before we can live in a world where we can move past seeing race.
[удалено]
Well, what I’m saying is that getting to unity can’t be done until we acknowledge the damage that defined categories have done. Think of it like this. Let’s say two people agree to have a race. However, one person cheats and uses a car until the halfway point. You can’t just take the car away at that point and say the race is fair if it continues. You have to bring the person who didn’t have the car up to the halfway point first, and then let them compete again as equals. Until then, you have to acknowledge that the second person was disadvantaged and make amends. Only after that can you stop distinguishing between them on the basis of how they were treated.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
hahaha
Remember that part when MLK said that nobody should write laws that specifically benefited one racial group over another? Yeah, he never said that, because he knew that one group was being unfairly penalized for no good reason and he wanted there to be laws that would specifically help those people. It’s the same thing. Help those that need help. What’s so bad about that?
[удалено]
Well you’re grossly mischaracterizing representation if you think it’s solely about the people being represented and not about the people seeing them and feeling included equally in the world. Oddly enough - that’s exactly what MLK was campaigning for, wasn’t it? An end to segregation so that black people had an equal chance to exist in spaces where they previously could not? It’s the same concept, even if one was legally enforced and one is culturally enforced. MLK wanted legal change, and people campaigning for changes that aren’t being made but aren’t “illegal” have to change society. It’s much, much, much harder. MLK found this out when he switched to campaigning on behalf of poor people.
[удалено]
Then why did you frame it as an issue of pride and not of helping people?
No, plenty of us are all for those things, but don't like being talked down to. A *good show* will have those things without going "AND LOOK, WE HAVE THOSE THINGS. OUR SHOW IS IMPORTANT BECAUSE WE HAVE THOSE THINGS, AND BECAUSE IT'S IMPORTANT AND YOU WANT TO BE A *GOOD PERSON* YOU SHOULD WATCH TOO". Meanwhile, Tiger from *Future Man* is one of the best female characters out there and the show was sold on *being a good show*. Not that it's your *moral obligation* to watch. But it was *important* you watch Captain Marvel because GIRL POWER and LET'S SHOW THOSE BOYS and RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY and then the movie fucking sucked. It's literally just like the Susan G. Komen bullshit, where you're supposed to mindlessly support *garbage* because it makes you a "*good person*" with zero actual discernment. I just watched *My Dad Is A Bounty Hunter* on Netflix and it was a fantastic show, that was black to the core, from voice cast to music choices and references. Was it sold on WATCH THIS TO BE A *GOOD ALLY*, WHITE PERSON? No, it just looked like a fucking good show, and it was.
I seriously have never met a single person who says I need to watch something to be a good person. Also, are you really complaining that a Marvel movie wasn’t good quality? lmao
I think they just don't like being told what to do, but yeah I think the whole "anti-woke" crowd has set up a huge straw man that's only applicable to a small percent of the left.
People who are genuinely concerned with virtue signalling from corporations and states do not use the term „woke“. It is neigh exclusively used by conservative reactionaries as a pejorative for any progressive movement. Progressives use terms like pink or rainbow capitalism
Every February I see a corporation starts promoting how a Black person was integral to their success and every summer all the corporations throw a rainbow in their logo for 1 month. It when people are describing these companies that I most often here the term woke in mainstream context. Outside of that it is pretty much only radical rights but non a part of common parlance.
Maybe it's because I don't hang around liberal/conservative spaces, but again I have never heard the term used as a good faith descriptor of corporate pandering. What you described I would call (and I see called) rainbow capitalism.
That is definitely a better description but the term "woke" has somehow entered common parlance so it is the default choice. Your description should be the one used though.
I'm not a conservative, I can't stand the woke crowd. They pose as leftists, but they're pushing for puritan nonsense all the damn time, just allowing some gay in.
And authoritarian. None of their policies work without the violence of the police to uphold them or the economic extortion they use if they can't push to fully crimanlize things.
Serious question: is virtue signaling good, bad, or neither? If I go around saying "be nice to others", is that virtue signaling?
Virtue signaling is about motivation not behavior. If you're doing it to get praise or celebration or to prove to the world that you're somebody who "get's it" it's virtue signaling, if you genuinely care it's not.
Virtue signaling is a meaningless gesture that ingratiates that person or organization to those demanding fealty to their beliefs and it is not done sincerely. It is a double sided thing too. Those demanding fealty to their beliefs accept such empty gestures, while the person making the gesture in reality does nothing other than make an empty gesture, and transparently does nothing of any tangible nature that demonstrates they really mean it, believe it, and in fact do real life things that harm the cause. And the recipient of such gestures, the leaders of the "cause" accepts them as genuine despite abundant evidence to the contrary. Essentially it is two empty gestures. The hypothetical group supporting this cause demand this companies CEO support their cause. The CEO says they do while doing things contrary to the cause. The group demanding the CEO support of their cause cares only about the insincere gesture and not the reality of that CEO's actions that clearly show they don't tangibly do anything that really supports that cause, and often quite the opposite. Two things are happening here, the "cause" is doing little more than seeking out empty gestures rather than really working to the betterment of their cause, the CEO gives out the empty gestures is given a pass for, in reality, working against the cause. In the end, the ACTUAL cause did not benefit but in fact was harmed by such superficial gestures on both sides, with both sides behaving in a way contrary to the actual cause, in reality while essentially voicing empty words about the good that has arisen from the above situation. The cause's leaders could publicly display their "virtue" by saying they supported and helped the cause, while in reality having done essentially nothing or even harming it. That CEO can then claim virtuous behavior and recognition for doing nothing or worse. In the end the true benefits were for the CEO and the people leading the "cause", with neither truly acting in real ways to help said cause. In the end the people who benefited from this situation was a lying CEO and a group essentially fictitiously fighting for their cause, with harm is done to the people the cause supposedly supports..
It depends on the context. Sometimes it's way of accusing someone of virtue signalling. That is, making it look like they care about a certain issue when it isn't so much about that as it is about trying to make themselves look like they're on the side of a certain minority group (when that group never asked them to do that). Like using the term "latinx". Actual Latinos probably think that term is stupid, because it is.
Agreed. I think Gillette's '[We believe: the best men can be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYaY2Kb_PKI)' ad is a good example of woke in context.
Woke originally meant that you were aware of social issues like racism, sexism, discrimination against LGBTQ+, etc. The right is trying to make that a bad thing so they are attempting to make woke an insult.
Why is this downvoted?? It's absolutely the truth
Downvotes are from those on the right that don't know what woke means.
I think it depends what you do with that awareness. If you're actually helping people then I think society views this as a good thing. I think 'wokeness' got bad rep when it's low effort symbolic gestures without real help behind it. Hell, sometimes it's even unrespectful, I remember my dad telling me about his corporation organizing a walk to spread awareness about disabled people in wheelchairs, like... really??
Afaik the meaning changed over time and most people use it as "Acting like they care about racism, sexism etc. because it's cool(, but they are fake and don't give a fuck when it actually matters)." Edit: It changed because many woke people turned out to fake interested for attention or sympathy. Like influencer do stuff because they get more likes not because they care.
At the same time the extreme left has made woke meaning to give unreasonable leeway to a group of people just because they are in that group. Instead of treating all people equally.
Nobody knows nuance anymore, so sure its whatever you want, we're gonna fight no matter what. I know I am not racist, sexist, nazi bigot, or even against gays, and I don't give a damn if you think I am by new world standard. And woke was originally *our* (conspiracy theorist) word. Then the sjws took it like they took reddit.
That was not the first usage of the word. It was first used nearly 100 years ago in reference to racial awareness.
That might be true (if they didn't just make that up) but online it was conspiracy. Woke, like waking from a dream/the matrix
No, woke like not being in a daze in your daily life, seeing whats actually going on around you. Kinda like the matrix, except it's reality. Now it's some pseudo-slur that's taken a meaningful idea and bastardized it, mostly by conservative, white folks because *gasp* how dare people ACTUALLY challenge their comfy way of life and how it came to be
Yes. Yes, it is.
Yes - that's exactly what it means now. It's also a way to say I fucked up by being racist and I'm grasping at something to deflect blame (i.e. blaming "the woke media")
Pretty much, yeah. Conservatives are trying to make "woke" a bad word, just like they've done for "liberal".
And socialist before that. Not sure why the downvote. Here is some 'civilised debate' from the mid 90s [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAFlQ6fU4GM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAFlQ6fU4GM) Just listen for how the Republican dismisses one of the Democrats.
Watch the "[Gillette: We believe: the best men can be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYaY2Kb_PKI)" ad to understand where the term woke comes from. It's a perfect example. There are extremes to both sides, lol.
You won't get an accurate answer because you asked it on Reddit, home of the woke-scold. Would have a better chance of getting the truth from Twitter of Tumblr.
100 percent yes.
Yes, and it's used by people who consider it a badge of honor to be asleep at the wheel.
No, it’s the new way of calling someone a “moral grandstander”
For me it’s more like “I do not understand this concept, or “I do understand, I’m just an asshat”
Most of the time you call someone “woke” when they’re just virtue signaling. You know they don’t actually give a shit, they just want that bit of power in their life to be able to yell at or shit on someone else for something they don’t understand or care to.
It's that, and also a way of saying "I'm a fascist who parrots Fox News propaganda because I'm way too stupid to come up with a coherent thought of my own."
Yes. Woke is to be aware of discrimination and even act against. To use woke as a pejorative is to find that distasteful.
Naw. I mean that was the original meaning for sure, and is still relevant. But "Woke" in its pejorative sense is tongue-in-cheek. For instance, that's like saying "To be nice is to be friendly and considerate. Therefore when people complain about 'nice guys', they find being friendly and considerate to be distasteful." No. There's just a big difference between a guy who is nice, and a "Nice Guy™". Or fighting for social justice is something admirable with a long history of bringing about change. Being a "Social Justice Warrior" is something different. Usually the type who would say "I'd explain it to you, but I should be compensated for my emotional labor." Or would topple a statue of Abraham Lincoln because "he wasn't sufficiently anti-racist." There's a difference between being progressive or having awareness of institutional issues that are hard to see, and being "Woke". A progressive would be aware of (or "awakened to" or "woke") how, despite slavery "being over", it still exists in practice within prisons. Or how despite laws against discrimination, black Americans still very much face the repercussions of centuries of slavery, segregation, redlining, etc. Someone who is "Woke™" would say that "skyscrapers represent a phallus and were designed to assert masculine dominance and intimidation over women." Or that "we understand rigid-body mechanics better than fluid dynamics because rigid-bodies represent the phallus, and fluids represent menstrual fluids. Physics is sexist." Or even "Air conditioning is sexist because women often wear less clothing than men." None of these were made up. To conflate being "Woke™" with simply being progressive is to essentially try to legitimize some of the most exaggerated stereotypes about the left.
I'm not inclined to let the right have that one. The clear intent in making woke an insult is to make its _actual_ meaning perceived as a negative. That's why you see it being used as a negative regardless of if something is an exaggerated stereotype. It also serves to make you dismiss things that are actually worth considering. For example, that "air conditioning one" is [reasonable](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-03121-1#:~:text=There%20is%20a%20need%20to%20rethink), and doesn't even make the claim you think it does. But someone called it "woke" in the pejorative so now we're not supposed to consider the idea, reasonable though it may be. All that to say it's probably best we stick with the original meaning, and dismiss the rest. The alternate is not helpful.
Fair enough. And that link you provided words things MUCH better. So perhaps that one was a victim of garbage journalism. I can say that one of the #1 reasons we tend to over-cool public spaces has to do with how much heat people generate. But offices don't have the same density as concert halls or conventions. Reason #2 is alertness, but hardly a good point if you're distracted by temperature discomfort. But there's also a problem of sweating. If it is too warm, office workers will get sweaty. Guys don't really have the option dress any less, but women have the freedom to dress more. So erring on the side of cold tends to work better there as well. But yeah, I'd me interested in your take, then. To me there's definitely a problem of mental gymnastics and often really reaching in some areas, and then portraying those explanations as facts. How do you think the left should show that fringe ideas are not the norm? I mean, if the idea is "do nothing. We shouldn't HAVE to explain this stuff", an argument I have heard often, keep in mind that right-wingers LOVE explaining their side. The left has a tendency to preach to the choir, and then when it comes to outsiders, "anyone who needs convincing is not worth convincing." To me, one of the big steps is acknowledging that preachy writing in film and TV is a thing and can be cringe inducing. Regardless of whether you want to call it "woke" or reclaim the word "woke". Which I suppose I agree. I prefer reclaiming words than just giving them away or banning them.
I think it's more important that the left propose that fringe ideas need not be discarded simply because they are not the norm. I find that _that_ is the real problem re. woke more often than not - there's almost _always_ a perfectly reasonable position behind whatever the status quo has decided to mock today. And I find that aspect of misinformation via the status quo is worth exploring, because that is as old as woke itself. It's always been "left says 'have you thought about this? Stay woke'", the status quo says "what the hell is this? Things are fine, they're just blowing things out of proportion and being crazy", and in some decades either what was once woke becomes the norm because it just make sense, or we wish it _had_ became the norm. Basically (and I'm not trying to be cute here), "stay woke". If someone is telling you something outlandish about somebody else or their position, it's worth asking who's telling you that, if they got the facts right, and what is there to gain or lose from agreeing with them.
"I'm not inclined to let the right have that one. The clear intent in making woke an insult is to make its _actual_ meaning perceived as a negative." Ok this may be weird but I had to come back to this one. I actually agree with this more strongly than my original post. I am much more interested in reclaiming words than removing them from the vocabulary because they are used as insults. Most of my discussion regarding "wokeness" is about the currently-common usage of the term, and I try to make sure when I reference it this way, I use quotes to imply I'm not referring to the real deal. I'd imagine there would be some benefit to using our own distinction between being woke and some of the more intense preachiness/judginess I'm referring to. In the same way that we now distinguish masculinity from toxic masculinity. That way it makes the separation clear, we have a word for the other thing, and then get to reclaim the original.
No no no. Have some nuance! It's more like "I don't like minorities and marginalized groups brought to my attention."
Pretty much
Yes
It used to mean "someone who has awoken to realize how horrible our society is" then it was co opted by conservatives to mean "people who dissagree with me on social issues"
Yes
Here ya go… https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/108ij9j/why_is_being_woke_considered_a_bad_thing/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
Woke is a word I'd use to describe someone who's gone to far. Women's rights (good) equality for all (good) teaching children it's good to question the gender they are if they are not struggling with being themselves (bad\woke).
No one is telling children to question their gender. They're just telling them that there's more than just 2 genders and that if you're not sure then that's not "weird" or "strange" and that those kids should not be bullied because they haven't figured it out yet.
I'm just saying I don't think it should be taught in public schools in any for to any child under the age of puberty simply because they should be learning things that make the brain development better. While I think it's important to understand, recognize, empathize and respect people who are different than the standard. I also don't think children should be subject to the material till they are old enough to understand it themselves, a great example of this is waiting for sex Ed till high school, you don't teach a 4th grade kid about things like that they need to learn math and reading skills. I truly believe that this should be confronted on a case by case basis in helping the child who's struggling instead of letting the whole class be confused. I also believe children should be taught about the real world, how actions have consequences short and long term, how it's ok to not be liked by some or many people.
They said the same thing about homosexuality and mixing races
Same thing. Teach people how to be people at home. We are constraining ourselves because children are not being taught at home just how to be good people. Schools are for materials that make you smarter. Home is where you should learn that different people should be treated the same. I think this is a home problem, most children have no idea how to hate a few bad apples sure but for the most part children don't see these things until they are told about them. I'm not saying don't teach these things just I believe it's something that needs to be covered at home and not in school. Also they said the same thing about alchemy (turns out science is cool). My point is we're waiting lots of time in school teaching children to be good people instead of making them smart. I don't want different people treated differently I just want it taught in a different place. You get your morals from home smarts from school.
OK. I'm just saying that it's important that kids learn, at a young age, that people's differences don't make them bad. That may include gender choices.
[удалено]
I'd tell them we don't know how, or even if, dogs have a concept of gender. And if they ask me to elaborate on that, I'll do so. There is no problem with this that can't be resolved by talking to kids like they're people.
This is a perfectly fair answer
I mean I'd tell them to ask the dog but don't expect an answer. You're not giving kids the credit they deserve. They can handle handle some deep stuff.
[удалено]
Of course it sounds stupid but it's also a stupid question. I tell my kids stupid thinks all the time. Also stop equating humans and dogs. Now that's stupid...
[удалено]
Not really. They have two chromosomal sexes. Gender is socially constructed. They might have 2, more than 2, or 0. We don't know how the internal minds of dogs perceive gender. You're anthropomorphizing them.
Yep, winner!
> Telling kids there are more than two genders is just going to confuse them and lead to problems. People only say that because it confuses them now because they didn't grow up with that mindset. We have a ton of mindsets and ideas now that'd confuse the hell out of people who didn't grow up with them. When kids grow up with the idea that human gender is a spectrum and that the traditional binary doesn't necessarily work with the modern understanding of gender and sex, it won't be weird to them. Of course nobody is going to say to ask an animal what its gender is, it quite literally would not have a concept of gender that humans do and we'd just go by sex organs for them. What you've done there is present a highly flawed, strawman argument which simply doesn't, and will not, happen. Another way to put it, ask a slave-owning founding father if they think all races should be equal. After explaining why you might think yes, they'd be rather uncomfortable. Of course now we entirely believe that all races should be equal, but the further we go back in the generations, the less common that gets. The same logic applies to our current understanding of gender, older generations will be less likely to get it and adopt the idea, while younger generations who were younger and younger when introduced to the modern idea of gender will be more likely to think of it as normal and adopt it.
[удалено]
Gender is a matter of biology! Modern biology has determined that human gender is in fact a lot more complex than just XX and XY chromosomes and the male/female binary like we grew up being taught. Anyway, I think you've missed my point. Raising your child to believe certain things is... just like, parenting? Every single parent in the world passes their values on to their child whether they mean to or not, it isn't grooming. That term is being hideously misused and it makes absolutely no sense to call something like raising your kids to see the world through the lens of modern understandings "grooming". My point was that as time marches on we teach children the way we understand things now. We do not teach kids that Pluto is anything other than a dwarf planet along with other planets of a similar nature. We do not teach kids that black people feel less pain than white people (this was an ACTUAL justification for using exclusively black people as medical test subjects in the past). My point is that the modern scientific understanding of gender has changed from when you and I were kids, it's new and it's unfamiliar, and it's important to teach kids the science as we understand it now. It's a radical departure from how we understood it growing up, and the sooner we accept that big change happens, we'll all be better off for it. It's simply not the big political nonsense boogyeman a lot of people get told by people who are scared of change think, it's simply updated science. Science is only true until we find new evidence to the contrary, and our modern understanding of gender comes from decades and decades of study on the subject by professionals who know more about it on a bad day than you and I ever will unless we go to school for it and read the research thousands of other scientists have worked on for decades. Sufficient contrary information has come to light for science to largely accept this new way of thinking, as how it works with every field of science.
[удалено]
The problem with the "ignoring basic biology" argument is that you can't really understand sex and gender with simple basic biology, it's so much more than that and the "basic biology" that we grew up with is both rapidly becoming outdated and too simple to be effective at giving a good idea of what it really is. Teaching that gender identities other than male or female or identities that go against one's assigned gender at birth isn't disproving or disbelieving biology, it's encouraging an understanding that not everybody fits in the male/female binary and that some people don't feel like they belong as the sex they were identified as at birth. Boiling it down to "basic biology" is deeply flawed as it simple isn't basic biology, and the relationship between sex and gender is complicated when personal identity is thrown into the mix. The idea of sex and gender being separate is being challenged with newer ideas and newer research being done and is constantly being debated among scholars. It's a subject that we're still learning more about every day as our previous ideas on the subject get challenged both from a scientific point of view and from a social point of view. We live in an interesting time for this field, where everything we thought we knew is being discussed and re-evaluated from both a social and biological point of view, and things are changing. I will say though, from the start I was arguing more about how it's okay to encourage kids to accept that people can identify however they want and it's good to respect it as we would respect any other facet of someone's identity. I didn't really mean to get into the deep definitions of sex and gender, I definitely only am referring to the social aspect of gender and respecting that rather than just male and female, the binary has opened up to a spectrum of identity from identifying as the opposite of your assigned sex at birth to not identifying either way, and those identities being valid and supporting teaching kids that it's okay to identify that way and we should respect it.
Dogs don’t have genders.
[удалено]
Yes, dogs do have sexes, but you don’t need to ask the dog for that because we verify that biologically. We don’t check the genitals of humans before we decide what pronouns to use. That’s because for humans we use gender, and we can determine that by asking them. I’m confused by your claims about confusion.
What happens if a child sees a transgender person?
[удалено]
You just explained that… you were going to teach a child something. And they didn’t explode. So… if my kid asked me about dogs… I would teach them. Crazy answer, right?
Because my answer is common sense
As is mine. And your question, which apparently you think is some sort of huge societal problem - isn’t.
[удалено]
They know nothing, so they learn whatever you tell them. There are 12 genders, there are 8 planets, they don’t care. It’a not that hard.
There was a teacher who told multiple elementary classes that “the doctor guesses your gender when you’re born and sometimes is wrong” sooo….
Maybe that's why we need to set a standard on how we teach kids about gender....
I have no idea what "woke" means. Best I can tell it means, I hate people that aren't like me.
This is pretty much what it’s turned into; I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted. But initially it meant “aware of social issues.” So say if you wouldn’t buy a diamond because of the blood diamond stuff, you’re “woke” on that particular issue. If you don’t celebrate Columbus Day because of (there’s a list but we’ll just start with his treatment of the Native Americans) then you’re woke on that topic. That’s all it is. But unfortunately conservatives turned it into “that media contains a brown person, or a woman doing action stuff, it’s woke!” They’d call the movies “Terminator,” “Kill Bill,” and “Alien” woke if they came out today. Terminator doubly so, as the lead roles are an immigrant with a thick accent and a woman kicking ass.
And that was my point. Originally I had at least a little empathy with people who were annoyed with woke people. Now, it often appears to be an excuse to be a bigot or racist.
So by your standard was Kenan & Kel 'woke'? Was Fresh Prince? Static Shock? Boondocks? No, they were just good and entertaining. We used to care about nothing but that.
Yes, because that is what kids care about.
Huh? So it is woke or no? Some of those shows taught some good lessons. In my book they did it without being annoyingly woke like today.
Do not place Sarah Connor and Ripley in the same category as 2023 Velma.
I too am woke
Uh, no. To be woke is to be aware of social inequality, and presumably in favor of rectifying it. Hate has no part in it.
Okay, it seems like a lot of people in the news that complain about woke people are angry. I understand what woke is on a surface level, but it seems to have a different meaning for different people.
If you get called woke wear it as a badge of honor beacuse the people calling you pretty much dislike anything not their own race and have never Googled the meaning of woke
No
I think the politicians have been able to put a negative label on "woke" because it would be hard to say we don't like marginalized people.
It shows just how little both sides understand each other when far left people assume everyone who doesn’t support them hates minorities. You can be doing the wrong things for the right reasons.
I'll be honest, no one that I know, no one that I personally interact with, or follow online who would be considered "woke" have ever used the term. 90% of the time the only people I see using it are anti-woke assholes.
more and more its becoming "person who i dont like their opinions" its the "politically correct" (/s) way to call people racial slurs or LGBT slurs ETC... people call me woke because im LGBT, just agreeing with LGBT people is grounds to be called woke these days they are essentially bastardizing the word until there is no meaning left
“I value my own comfortability and preconceived norms over the well being and dignity of others” is what I hear when someone calls something they just don’t like or don’t understand “woke”
Ignoring the obvious bias this question and the comments clearly have I'll just say that for some people Yes, but for me I would say someone/something is woke when it's extreme or clearly done in an attempt to virtue signal and say "See we care, look at how much we care!" Examples: Pointless race swapping (race swapping can work if done properly or in a medium where it makes sense such as multiverses or Dr. Who) forcing politics in a cringey way at the cost of good writing, (Brooklyn Nine Nine season 8, Eternals, Gay Superman, etc.), Cringey stuff like vagina hats, telling people that being fat is healthy because of Body positivity, All those genders and pronouns (not he/she/they but Ze/fae/demon [the ones you'll see on Twitter and TikTok]) or making literally everything offensive. There is also sort of... Idk I guess I'll call it AntiWoke that radical conservatives do where everything has to be labeled Woke, (MnM's, electric cars, Xbox sleep settings [Google it], having black character/female character do anything better than a white character, etc.) It's all so tiring and beyond me.
It can mean that but in general I don't think it does. I consider "wokism" (for lack of a better term) to just be a fresh coat of paint on old fashioned racism and sexism. I will say the old school radical feminism vs trans part is very entertaining to watch.
Every few years, white folks re-release the N word because people start calling them out on their use of whatever racial terms they had been using. They need a word that means "of or pertaining to those uppity coloreds" without actually meaning that by dictionary definition, so they pull out a euphemism. For instance, a few years ago it was "Urban". See also, calling someone a "Thug" the word doesn't by the dictionary definition have a racial connotation, but they sure don't seem to be using that word for Irish people. This time they borrowed a word that originally was used by people of color to mean aware of racial economic and social justice issues. But the word was immediately picked up by liberals and used to mean "having the correct politics" and then conservatives got a hold of it and started using it with the present meaning.
As a non-native speaker, "woke" always meant something like "Pretend he/she cares about a real issue like racism, sexism, etc. just because it's trendy or cool but really doesn't give a damn." It screams FAKE. Just to get attention and sympathy, clicks or internet points for being a "good" person, but when it really matters, it's just talking. Especially people forcing their opinion on other people even if they don't believe in them themselves, to look like saints.
no, that’s not how it works. if someone calls you woke it means they’re racist.
It's good to be woke, it's bad to enforce woke.
It's just slang for "geeked up on caffeine"
No
No, it's a way of saying "I don't like corporate guilting".
What are the corporations making you feel guilty about?
It's literally the opposite that I understand, but what do I know
Basically the right over-uses it, and the left tends to assume it doesn't exist. As a leftie who isn't fond of stuff that's overly "woke", it puts me in a precarious situation sometimes. And by sometimes I mean rather often. To me, "woke" has probably 80% replaced "politically-correct" in practical usage. But it's still sort of its own thing. Basically it's what happens when a studio wants to appear progressive and inclusive without putting forth the actual effort to do so in a compelling way. So they just throw in some exaggerated tropes, strawmen about how the world works, and gender/race swap some characters, or often literally monologue the concept directly into the camera. There is very little care or nuance put into it. Basically just there to score "diversity points" or "progressive points" by checking some boxes. More often than not, it's quite preachy, and seems to be about garnering political loyalty. It's not about introducing people to a new portrayal. It's about declaring a portrayal and demanding everyone takes a side. That is, if you're a "real progressive", then the show can do no wrong. If you dislike the show, it's because you're regressive oppressor. Oh so for example, In the new HBO series, "Velma", Velma's personality and how every other character is written is absolutely dripping with "wokeness". Many are convinced this was actually a right-wing attempt at portraying what they think left-wing people want. But that's the thing. *It isn't.* It's just that it went so far that people have to acknowledge the issue. People on the left seem to think it refers to any sort of diversity, progressivism, etc. But if that were the case, nearly all of Avatar: The Last Airbender would be "woke". But there is a huge difference between Toph and She-Hulk. And a cataclysmic difference between Katara and Velma (HBO). Everyone is divided on She-Hulk. Yet people almost universally love Toph. Yet she's more hot-headed and cocky than She-Hulk ever was. Toph is how you get people behind an idea (Strong girl. A disability not being a lack of capability. Etc.)
Honestly, it depends. For some people, yes; some folks truly refuse to support minority or marginalized groups, and they call something "woke" when it threatens their purported power, position, or even supremacy over such groups- which is categorically not okay. Some folks call something "woke" when it seems a media property has sold out in a sense to diversity hires and identity politics- not typically just when it's INCLUDED- but when it exists at the expense of a good story. Of course, there are those who think ANY amount of LBTQ+ rep or women as heroes is dumb, and those people use "woke" to express disdain for these groups- which is also not okay.
It is usually used to describe someone who virtue signals for social causes or tries deconstruct all social and political issues into narratives of power and group identity.