This is what I feel as well. But I would never describe myself as “anti-woke.” It just sounds so dumb. And I don’t want to associate myself with the first camp.
Aah, “it’s bigoted to hate bigots”, my old friend…
…are you sure they are on the same side?
For example:
Do you believe that these are the words of someone believes and understands and is listening to what the trans community is going through now and that stands in solidarity with them? Do you not think that JK Rowling is using her power, her money, her influence to help take away rights from transgender people?
Because she is. She is undeniably the most prominent anti-trans voices in the UK. She is doing more than just “spewing ignorance.” She is an active part of the fight to make trans people second-class citizens.
And if you don’t believe that, or if you think I’m exaggerating, and if you don’t understand how dangerous her voice is in this conversation, then no, you aren’t on the same side.
And if that makes me woke in your eyes, then damn right I’m woke.
If its valid then I’ll listen and change my mind. Why wouldn’t I?
So what sort of things do you think aren’t valid in your eyes? Rather than these generalities, can you get a bit more specific?
What innocuous things?
Lucky you! We are in Great Debates. If you think a fair argument can be made, then here’s your chance! You can make it.
Lets start with providing some examples of people who are claiming to be woke that are partaking heavily in bigotry.
I think you need to begin by defining exactly what you mean by “bigotry” first.
So your position is that “punching” is unacceptable in any circumstances? Can you clarify this?
Where?
And there are a ton of people who don’t actually want people to live a life of dignity and respect. There are people who don’t want basic needs taken care of. They want to hate the marginalized.
These people exist. And these people have power, politically, financially, in the education system, in the police, at the lowest and the highest levels of government. And they are taking away peoples rights. The right to an abortion. The right to be loud and proud and queer. The right to gender-affirming care.
And that’s just fine. If you don’t want to be part of the fight, then that’s a perfectly valid position to have. Just don’t stand in the way of those who probably don’t have a choice.
Some solid prominent examples of people “arguing all the time” exacerbating things would help your case.
Just curious, do you view arguing with people on the Internet as advancing the cause of social justice?
Because I don’t think it does. I think it’s an easy way for helpless-feeling people to feel less helpless about the horrible shit that goes on in the world, but I’m not sure it really does any good for anyone. It’s just the halo effect. “I yelled at this guy, ergo I did something to move the needle,” but really the needle is not being moved because the actual work that it takes to change things requires knocking on doors and talking diplomatically to people who are on the fence, and writing letters to congresspeople, and forming community alliances, and generally things that are much more onerous than arguing with people on the Internet.
That’s my takeaway after twelve years of community-based advocacy and having to feel my way through the emotional landmines that come with that kind of work. It was a long process. I guess I’ll spare you all the details. But I do understand the compulsion to be Always On because I ran myself ragged that way for years.
So while I believe anger at injustice is valid and necessary to create social justice movements, I’m tired of this idea that if you aren’t screaming at someone online, you’re not doing anything. Like I don’t care enough because I try to meet people where they are? I dedicated my entire career to this stuff. It’s not an accident I take this approach, I take this approach because it has been historically demonstrated to work. If people would climb down off of their Twitter soapboxes and do some volunteer work or something, they might get a sense of how change really happens.
…can you be a bit more specific? What sort of arguing are you talking about?
Arguing on social media with individuals who have different beliefs. And I don’t mean discussing a subject, I mean really letting people have it.
…it depends entirely on the context. Can you be a bit more specific?
I mean: sometimes people really deserve it. But it really depends on what “letting people have it” means.
I can’t answer to generalities. What you consider “letting people have it” and what I consider “letting people have it” I suspect are two different things.
Honestly, whenever I’m at the point of “let them have it”, I’m rarely thinking about greater goals. There are issues which simply trigger my disgust/outrage. I’m not a slave to these issues, but I can get triggered by them.
I always try to be optimistic, informative, and productive (if nothing else, be productive), but when I’m also outraged (particularly by bigotry) I don’t pretend that I’m not. Certain behaviour really disgusts me.
…yeah, its like that’s why we’ve got the pit. I can be a social justice warrior here in Great Debates and then jump over to the pit to “really let them have it.” Does ranting in the pit advance the cause of social justice? Probably not. But that isn’t the point.
And if a trans person on Twitter wants to yell at M$tt Walsh because yesterday he said this about them:
Then who am I to hold them back?
Many take it as any form of criticism. If you disagree with them, you are “screaming” at them.
And apparently, if you spend time online in a forum called great debates debating a topic about social issues, that’s all you are doing towards that issue.
For some reason, people like Walsh and Rowling are never told that screaming at people online hurts their cause. It’s only one side that is told to shut up if they offer even the slightest pushback towards that sort of hate speech.
That’s not what I said. But I didn’t realize we were in Great Debates. So I probably won’t hang out here long; I just don’t have the stamina.
I’m tired of the lie that trying to meet people where they are rather than throwing them into the dumpster means you’re on the wrong side. I categorically reject it. Meeting people where they are and using genuine human connection to persuade them to see your point of view is a fundamental part of achieving social justice.
Certain factions of the left cannot tolerate this fact. They won’t even acknowledge it. Either you hate everyone they hate or you’re hated too. That is exactly the attitude that drives away many who could have been allies.
Since trans rights have been the focus of this conversation, there have been a lot of people in the middle or laboring under misunderstandings because they have not ever known a trans person. They were not born into the world with all the correct views. But our political climate is such that they were immediately labeled nasty bigots for any confusions or reservations they might have had. And the Right knew just what to do with those people, what to say to them, how to meet them where they were to gain the political will to pass all these horrific laws. These were people who could have been educated and instead they were shamed. Now they are supporting bigoted policies out of fear.
This is why many progressives have had it with a certain faction of the far left. It’s not getting us anywhere. It’s not working. It’s undermining progress. We are losing. We need a new playbook.
…but that’s the problem that we have here.
I’ve asked that you and others be specific. But the closest we are getting is "this thing that happened to me twenty five years ago. Or “I know it when I see it.” Or in your case, its not “trying to meet people where they are.”
What does that even mean?
Where even is this sort of thing happening?
It was just a couple of years ago we were casually debating if trans people should be allowed to play sports. Now there are over 300 anti-trans bills trying to get passed that include everything from banning trans affirming care for kids, banning insurance for trans affirming care for everyone, allowing teacher and fellow students to use the incorrect pronouns without sanction. Some of those bills have already passed.
What middle is it that you are wanting us to meet? Because the middle was left behind a couple of years ago. We had that “polite debate” already. They didn’t listen. And now they are accelerating.
This simply isn’t correct.
Where is this happening?
It isn’t just “the Right” that are passing these laws. It isn’t just “the Right” that are allowing these laws to happen.
And it certainly isn’t the fault of trans people, or people who are “angry online” that these bills continue to get passed.
And that isn’t my fault.
Its remarkable that apparently people fighting for their right to simply live in this world are to blame for everything that is happening to them.
That we are losing is not the fault of trans people, it isn’t the fault of the “woke.” It isn’t the “far left” who don’t even really have a voice in the dystopian nightmare AKA the United States of America. No universal healthcare. You pay twice as much as everyone else in the modern world. Billion-dollar-budget police force. The most people in prison per capita than anywhere else in the world. You’ve had decades to address all of these things. But they continue to just get worse. Abortion bans. Transgender bans. Marco Rubio today explicitly stating he will bring back the military trangender ban.
And if you speak out on any of this, if you so much as raise your voice in anger, well gosh, this is all your fault.
Good grief.
If you want to actually appeal to the “certain faction of the far left” that you think “aren’t getting you anywhere”, you need to be able to for starter be able to clearly articulate what it is they are doing that you think isn’t working, how exactly is undermining progress, and is causing you to lose. Because this whole thread is simply an exercise in hand-waving.
Well you find that playbook then. Take your time. I’ll be over there with the woke far left social justice warriors politically correct antifa that are just trying to find a way to simply live in this world.
Well said. You learn after some years of living what’s effective and what’s a waste of time. Getting shitty on social media is not activism. Effective activism is boring, tedious, and involves chipping away tirelessly at red tape and obfuscation. There’s no glamour or public showiness to it.
Well said?
Nothing specific has been said yet.
…the kind of thing that you think is effective had the house and the senate and the presidency and they stood by and did nothing while Woe vs Wade fell. And they’ve done practically nothing about it ever since.
We’ve learnt after some years that what you think is effective isn’t very effective at all. There is no “meeting of the minds” when the other minds want you to stop existing.
It isn’t any wonder why the “far left” get exasperated with the attitude exhibited in this thread. You don’t listen. You bring no facts to the table. You are unable to in any way articulate or point to any examples of all these things the “people on the far left” are actually doing.
Its just that…you know it when you see it.
Maybe WalterBishop had it right from the start.
About JK Rowling.
To borrow your line: can you be a bit more specific? How is JKR changing affecting policy changes that affect trans people?
I ask because I just read an article titled “Here’s What JK Rowling Has Really Said About Trans People” in response to an opinion piece in the NYT (“In Defense of JK Rowling”) and it seemed to be less about Rowling wanting to oppress trans people and more about her having opinions trans people don’t like.
I’m not talking about the House, Senate, or President. I’m talking about people whose names are not in the public discourse because they’re not in front of cameras and they’re not wasting their time on social media. The people who work tirelessly behind the scenes who were instrumental in getting things on the table in the first place. Without them we wouldn’t have marriage equality, wouldn’t have got HIV research happening, and they were the ones who got Roe v Wade on the table in the first place. They have to navigate oceans of obfuscation to make things happen. They have to make positive changes more appealing than lobbyist money, which is no easy feat.
Of course, when Trump got into office, he basically destroyed any sense of reason in politics, but now that’s being slowly mended, though Biden is sadly more interested in holding office than progress itself. It’s the House, Congress, and President that the heroes behind the scenes have to incessantly push to get anything worthwhile done.
Change takes time and is often much slower than we want, however, that snails pace is still far more than all the online bickering in the world will ever accomplish.
…looking at The Cut article, its a direct refutation of the claims that were made in the New York Times article, the claim that “Nothing Rowling has said qualifies as transphobic.”
Here’s the Cut article.
It makes the case that what Pamela Paul argued in the NYT simply isn’t true and it backs that claim up by directly refuting all of Pamela Pauls points in her article.
JK Rowling is transphobic. The Cut article makes that clear. That is much, MUCH more than having opinions trans people don’t like.
To be clear, that wasn’t what I said. I said:
And yeah, I stand by all of that. She uses her money to fund trans-exclusionary places like Beira’s Place. She uses her influence to shift the political debate on things like GRC. She uses her power to shut down critics.
And her views on transgender people are quite clear:
Jessie Gender’s entire article is excellent. You can read it here.
…but these things aren’t static. Roe vs Wade is off the table now and there isn’t a plan to do anything about it.
AIDS killed 40 million people. And marriage equality can be taken away as quickly as it was introduced.
The world doesn’t stand still. And while I applaud the good things that people have done, there are 300 anti-trans bills on the books in America at the moment, Black people are still disproportionately getting jailed and killed by the police, indigenous communities are still disproportionately affected by Covid-19. There are people that have been fighting all of their lives that don’t have the luxury of patting themselves on the back and saying “job well done.”
This isn’t Trumps fault. This didn’t magically come out of nowhere in 2016. And things aren’t getting better now. If anything we are increasingly seeing Balkanization. Some of the state are going off on their own. Everything from abortion bans to transgender persecution will become entrenched.
Change in your favour isn’t inevitable. So just accepting that “change will be slow” is a dangerous game that if you play your cards wrong will lead to disaster.
Because at the moment change isn’t happening at a snails pace. The mask mandate? It was removed in an instant by a random judge making a random judgement. That’s how quickly things move now. From debate over “women in sports” to banning trans affirming care in less than a year.
Arguing that “change takes time” is just an excuse.
As for “bickering”: I’m not convinced that this means anything more than the kind of spirited debate we are seeing here. And that’s perfectly fine.
But even if you mean something else (and it would be nice if someone could show us some examples) then guess what? There isn’t anything you can do about it. What’s your plan? Appoint anti-woke moderators to police Facebook, TikTok and Twitter and shut down any “bickering” they see on sight?
The cat’s out of the bag. Everybody has a platform. A sixteen year old can go on TikTok and get hundreds-of-thousands of followers. A random man in Albuquerque can get into a heated debate with a celebrity.
The world has changed. You ain’t gonna be able to stop the “bickering” (whatever it is that bickering means). Its here to stay.
Its you that needs to adapt. You either accept that this is how it works now, or else everything about the world is just going to annoy you for the rest of your life.
I clarified my meaning, that’s all. Not looking to address moved goalposts.