Jimmy the Greek, well-deserved but also well before social media, in 1988. Linky.
I don’t know that you are attempting to discredit the movement, but you are going along with those who are, even bringing into the conversation the claims of a climate science denier to claim that those who follow any movement do so out of religious fervor rather than rationality.
The difference between science and religion is not based on what those in the pews think. To be honest, most people know as much about relativity or about evolution or orbital mechanics as most religious folks know about God.
So, if you ask someone on their way out of Interstellar about relativity, or after watching Jurassic Park about evolution, or having endured Gravity about orbital mechanics, you are probably going to get some pretty wonky answers.
They probably don’t actually know what they are talking about, and are going to give you some poor renditions from fictional material that they didn’t really understand.
That doesn’t mean that there are not those who do not understand these subjects. Pointing to these moviegoers should not invalidate the science.
It would be absurd to look at a movie review of Gravity, point to the errors in both the movie and in the reviewer for not pointing them out, and then using that as evidence for Flat Earth.
But that is exactly what happens with social sciences. Those who are less informed, those who give bad answers, those who don’t really understand they movement that they follow are being held up as the example, the rule, rather than the exception, to try to prove that no one understands these things, that these ideas are wrong.
Sometimes, even in the hard sciences, we find that we have made errors. That things we thought in the past were wrong. That happens more regularly than you may think. Relatively recently Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs found out that we had changed out estimate of how many galaxies there were in the early universe. He cornered a couple of astronomers, and essentially claimed that if we didn’t know that, if we were off by an order of magnitude on how many galaxies were out there, then we really didn’t know anything at all.
Same with social sciences. Sometimes we find that information is wrong, conclusions are wrong, or even just that things change. Unlike the universe, the laws that govern human behavior and interaction are not immutable, and do in fact change. That there have been things that have been found to be wrong or outdated should not discredit the ongoing research in those areas.
And that is why it is not dogma, it is not zealotry. If you ask a Christian theologian a question about god, they will have a stock answer that is not to be questioned. If you have follow up questions, they will tell you to stop asking questions. If you ask a scientist, even a social scientist about their field, they will give you answers and answers and answers. The only limits will be in your capacity to grok, and to some extent, the limit of knowledge that is currently available. But, unlike religion, you can learn more, and learn to understand more. Unlike religion, more is learned, more conclusions are made, and some are found to be outdated or wrong.
So, that was a bit longer than I intended it to be. The TL;DR, don’t listen to the people in the pews, but those in the pulpit, as to what the position of a group is and what their beliefs are.
Yeah, being “woke” isn’t a defense against being an asshole. The person who filed the complaint verged on being an asshole.
ON THE OTHER HAND: I hear from a lot of folk involved in anti-racist work (and to be clear, I’m talking about people of color involved in this work) that white folk need to step up when they see other white folk messing up, and they need to speak up without waiting for marching orders from people of color. And I hear repeatedly, in an educational context, that it’s super-important not to spotlight the Black kids in the class when you’re having a discussion of racial justice issues, that that can be really unpleasant. And if this dude filed a complaint, maybe it was less on behalf of you, and more on behalf of whoever she might single out in the next class: the thing that didn’t so much bother you is something I’ve heard other black people say really does bother them.
You say “They can get worked up about stuff and not have to worry about being perceived as a walking stereotype.” Is that a privilege they can leverage?
What would you advise a white person in this situation to do, then? Is it appropriate to speak up, but to do so in a less “flipping the fuck out” way? Should they go to the lone black person in the room and seek their approval before speaking up? Is there a course of action that’s self-evidently better than the other possibilities?
I mean, it’s tricky. Part of why microaggressions are sucky is always having to explain why they suck to non-understanding, non-sympathetic audiences. So it is good for POC to not always be responsible for pointing them out.
But microaggressions are a very individualized thing. What upsets one person might not upset someone else. I think if I were giving a training on microaggressions, I would advice allies to only intervene on something they know has bothered their friend since their friend has complained about it.
FWIW, I’m pretty sure I know how I’d respond: I’d roll my eyes and keep my mouth shut and gossip meanly about it afterwards with my wife. I’m not great at in-person confrontation.
But if someone talked to her on a break and said, “Hey, trainer, I’m not sure it’s a great idea to single out the one Black person in the room like that, for some folks that’d put them in an uncomfortable place,” that would strike me as a measured and thoughtful response.
What would you advise a white person in this situation to do, then? Is it appropriate to speak up, but to do so in a less “flipping the fuck out” way? Should they go to the lone black person in the room and seek their approval before speaking up? Is there a course of action that’s self-evidently better than the other possibilities?
I think I would have liked the woke folks to let me speak before they decided I was wounded. Because I would not have flipped out on the instructor. I would have said something like, “I think I get what you are saying, but I actually think your statement itself is laden with some bias.” I wouldn’t have personalized it or made it made it about my feelings, which is what the woke folks did. I think we could have had a constructive dialogue if I had chimed in first. But because I was slow to speak, recreational outrage filled the moment.
The guy who did the flipping out is an arrogant asshole (he has since moved to a satellite office, and i’m so happy about this). He would be an asshole even if he wasn’t woke, so I’m not saying wokeness is responsible for how he acted. It was just a vehicle. But how he acted is not that uncommon, in my experience. Righteous indignation is a hell of a drug. Even though he was the only one who filed a complaint, there were others who applauded him.
I don’t know what the solution is because it is tough. I don’t want white folks to be silent observers to racist bullshit, but I don’t want them kneejerk on every single awkward thing that happens. That isn’t helpful either. My general advice is to speak out against stuff if it truly bothers you or you know for a fact it would bother your friends. But if it just strikes you as weird or mildly insensitive, maybe sit on it a minute before intervening. That’s all I have.
My position on the trans topic has been dramatically informed due to a long running thread on the subject by a handful of people who made arguments that are very much in contrast to the prevailing group’s (trans activists) position on the subject. I honestly didn’t even care about the subject except to hold the very unnuanced position of, ‘what’s the big deal if trans people want to share your bathroom?’. I bet that is still the position 90% of rank and file “woke” people hold. Now I feel I’m better informed and see things differently. For you to suggest that the group “leadership-think” on the subject has it all right and that the opinions of the individual members can be safely ignored seems quite wrongheaded in this case, at least.
Support of an idea is not simply agreement with the larger principle. Sometimes, challenging the wrongheaded ideas of its members (and sometimes leadership) improves the movement. Better that it be challenged and improved from within than destroyed from without.
Me too. That’s why I was slow to say something. However inartful her phrasing was, I thought her meaning was clear enough and we could just move on without making it into a thing.
I would have actually been with a wokester saying what you said in front of the class. We could have had a great dialogue–since we were there to talk about diversity. But the guy who flipped out on her was all, “I’m so offended ! OMG! How are you going to do that to Monstro? OUTRAGE!” The instructor handed it well (IMHO) and profusely apologized, but he kept on and on. It felt so bad for the instructor that I didn’t want to say anything other than “Let’s move on from this topic, please!”
I mean, I totally get the irony of someone who is supposed to be an expert in tactfulness and diplomacy doing something tone-deaf. But irony shouldn’t make anyone flip out. I guess that’s why it felt more like a performance than anything else.
On an unrelated thread, @damuriajashi said the real purpose of diversity training is to make POC or whatever group more confident in recognising discrimination, and in speaking up when it happens, rather than teaching the dominant group not to discriminate. An interesting idea which I’d never considered before.
It’s a fine line between getting offended on someone else’s behalf, and standing up for someone that cannot stand up for themselves.
Certainly seems that some of your co-workers crossed that line. It’s hard to say, perhaps their heart was in the right place, and they simply went to far, or maybe they just want to get people in trouble, and found someone that they could throw under the bus.
But, anti-racism does say that we should do more than just not commit racist acts ourselves, but that we should also call out those around us who do. This is where I think that diversity training should focus, not on teaching people not to want to be bigots, I think that most people already are on that page, but on how not to create offense, and when and how to react to a perceived offense of another.
People who want to be bigots, or people who believe themselves too pure to have any sort of unconscious bias will not generally benefit from the training. It is only those who actually want to learn to be better people that will.
This–especially the “sit on it a minute”–idea make a lot of sense to me. I’m still a little uncomfortable with the idea of white people waiting until black people speak up before they speak up, in cases like this. I hear a lot, don’t leave objecting to microaggressions to the victims of the microaggressions. But maybe I’m being a little absolutist here. A pause before responding–“sitting on it a minute”–is a real good idea.
And definitely people can be OTT in their reactions. I’m trying to extend grace and patience to people, especially people who are trying their best not to be assholes. (I’m better at it in person than on the Straight Dope, I promise). Treating someone who pulls a dumb move like this as Teh Enemy is a terrible idea.
I dunno. I don’t ever feel like I have calibrated exactly right.
The far left who push this nonsense and who see Mao and such as role models and not monsters are absolutely dangerous. For one, they coat their poison with the sugar of free this and free that, equality of outcome, replacing meritocracy with mediocracy and collective concepts of justice and punishment. Wearing a skirt like this as a mayoral candidate is no accident. Portland mayoral candidate spotted with skirt featuring photos of communist leaders | Washington Examiner.
They actively work to destroy classical liberal concepts such as freedom of speech and thought. The woke also actively work using violence, indoctrination, and infiltration to undermine intellectual and legal foundations of western civilization. So, yes, wokeness is a real danger.
It’s funny you think you know my ideology even when I clearly write it. It’s been my experience around these parts that quite often what is clearly written is very creatively interpreted to further an agenda.
From your article: “The picture in question was taken with Reverend Billy, whose spectacle of the absurd is a treat whenever it comes to town. I dressed flamboyantly that day in a skirt that features pop art - art that is meant to satirize the subjects.”
So your contention is that a woman who wears a silly skirt to a performance art piece is morally equivalent to someone who tears heretics’ thumbnails out?
Like I say, I look forward to your career writing derivative fantasy.
Do tell…
Who on the left is touting the glories of Mao?
The answer, obviously, is someone who wears a pop art skirt. GLORY OF MAO YALL.
Contrast that with the people on the right who carry long guns to surround monuments to enslavers. It’s pretty clear who the real threats to freedom are.
I have to admit that I left that thread, as it was full of toxicity and accusations, so I don’t know how it was resolved.
From what I gathered on that thread, the fear is that allowing trans people the right to use the bathroom of their preference would open up everything to sexual abusers, and that there was no way to stop them other than genderchecking everyone at the door. That not allowing someone to call themselves a woman unless they had been born with or surgically altered female parts was to be misogynistic and enabling of sexual violence against women.
I disagreed with that premise, and was made to be very unwelcome, with many implications and accusations given about my motives for merely participating in that thread.
I left the thread. Sounds like you stuck around to be convinced that this was the case. That the only way to protect women from sexual predators is to deny the existence of transwomen.
You are the outlier here, as you say, as 90% of those who support the transmovement think that allowing someone to use the bathroom that more closely matches their gender is preferable in nearly every way to forcing people to use the bathroom of their birth gender.
And I did not invoke leadership think, I said that asking random members of a movement nuanced questions and expecting articulate and informed answers is unreasonable.
It’s not that the opinions of the individual members can be safely ignored, it’s to you should not take the opinion of an individual member, and claim that that represents the entire movement.
But, if your point is that we should take the people who are just following along as examples of where things are leading, and ignore where things are actually being led, then I have to disagree. That’s the definition of nutpicking.
I’m going to skip the argument about the trans thread. It’s too long and too involved and my take-away is far more nuanced than your assumption about my position. Not worth rehashing here.
I’m getting pretty sick of this game, you know. The one where people insist on using plausible deniability about who said what and in what context and whether or not they are the “true” representative of the group or its actual positions. I’m not chasing that line of argument around the playground anymore.
Head. Nail. Wall. WHAM! 
I happen to agree with @damuriajashi. I think most workplace diversity trainings are about empowering people to report problems and putting folks on notice that they need to watch what they say. Personally I don’t want it to go any further than that. I don’t want folks to feel like their job security hinges on them not only being well-behaved, but also on them being a SJW.
Take sexual harassment training. What is and isn’t sexual harassment is frequently contextual. The training is intended to let staff know that sexual harassment is a huge no-no and the employer will take accusations seriously, so if someone is doing something that makes you uncomfortable, let your supervisor know. Even if you aren’t the target of the harassment but you’re still feel uncomfortable about something, let your supervisor know . I don’t know if I’d want to sit through training that went much more beyond that. “How To Correct Your Coworker When They Tell An Off-Color Joke At the Water Cooler” has major cringe to it.
If I’m swapping playful banter with someone in the breakroom that is borderline unprofessional, I’m gonna be quite peeved if someone misreads the dynamic and plays White Knight for me. I wouldn’t appreciate someone thinking I can’t laugh at an off-color joke just like the rest of the guys in the breakroom. Since I’m frequently the only woman in the room, it is important to me that I not been seen as fragile and helpless.
If I experience something that is blatantly homophobic/racist/ sexist/xenophobic/whatever in the workplace, I’m always going to report it to my supervisor. Not just because I’m nonconfrontational, but because I’m not being paid to take people to school. I’m not a finger-wagger. I’m being paid to do my job. I can fight ideas I disagree with from the safety of my living room. I don’t need to fight in real life too. So I wouldn’t want to sign up for a training class that would encourage that.
I think if I were raising kids, I would try to teach them the value of being disagreeable. Agreeable people tend not to speak out on stuff because they want everyone to like them. Disagreeable people will tell a bigot they are a bigot and not worry so much about their feelings. But there is a time and place for disagreeableness. I don’t know if that can be easily taught.
The problem with that is that, when opinions are shown to be both wrong and hurtful, certain people seem to want to keep those debunked ideas on life support. Even though society in general has rejected ideas as hateful and hurtful, we’re supposed to feel sorry for those who continue pushing it. Empathy goes one way–towards those who say hateful things, and not towards those who are the targets of that hate.
It’s the same thing with crying out “Freedom of speech,” outside of government. Those who say hateful things being silenced by society? Bad. Those minorities who are silenced because of the hate, who can’t participate? Their freedom of speech doesn’t matter.
It’s also the dismissal of the idea that minorities are the experts on the bigotries they face, and that the majority can’t dictated to them what is and isn’t bigoted. It’s about listening to these people, rather than part of the majority who make up all this nonsense about how they are being hurt–when other people of that same majority are not being hurt.
Whenever I see someone who is part of the majority saying that people are wrong to care about the rights of a particular minority, that said minority is dangerous to them somehow, I know that idea is thoroughly bonkers. I prove it wrong rationally. Does it stop that idea? Of course not.
Despite the idea of bigotry–the idea that a minority is dangerous for being different–is a discredited idea, it keeps on being pushed, and no matter of explaining the flaws changes that. Instead, you get people misrepresenting what other people say, and doing anything to keep the disproven idea afloat.
So of course I have no idea with wokeness, and what it means today. What it used to mean was people who thought they were woke but weren’t really–they didn’t know their own blindspots. But now it generally means people who actually try to do the right thing.
Like those other terms, political correctness, virtue signaling, social justice warrior–it may not have been coined to go against those who try to not be bigoted, but that is how the word is used today.