REVIEW
O tempora, O mores! Lone Veiler on the trials and tribulations of being ‘woke’
W
hat it is to be woke. It’s exhausting. It’s never ending work. It can also be hilarious. Being woke, no, not by the alarm clock, but alert to all the perceived injustices about you, social or otherwise, is a full-time job. It takes a huge amount of energy to be constantly railing against everything in full on social justice warrior (SJW) mode. Being a woke SJW means you are exceedingly attentive to that which particularly irks you, and what is and what is not socially relevant to you, and this takes serious effort. There are some fabulous parodies of the state of wokeness, one going on Twitter for some time is particularly hilarious because it’s so good people have taken it seriously. So, what have I got against social justice and its warriors as they appear on social media? Not much actually, apart from real justice and truth have been somewhat hijacked and warped by an often utterly banal, yet monstrously loud group of virtue signallers. The warriors value their personal feelings over fact or anybody else’s feelings, and regularly show signs of cognitive dissonance, more of that below. The Wikipedia definition says SJW is a derogatory term used by those who are against multiculturalism, feminism, socially progressive views, civil rights and identity politics. Where does one begin? Multiculturalism, well I’ve got a limited word count and that topic would be a PhD thesis and some, so moving on. Being XX chromosomed, and unashamed, I shall take feminism first. Feminism, equal pay for equal work, voting rights, no glass ceilings, that sort of thing. No problem with any of that. That’s right and proper. But biologically, having XX chromosomes as a woman means I am not biologically the same -equal to- a man because they have XY chromosomes. I am different to a man, not the same. Doesn’t make me against equal pay though. When feminism means the right to murder your un-born daughter because she’s inconvenient, if not for the mother the person/s pressurising
AUTUMN 2019
her, then I am resoundingly not a feminist. Feminism (more likely today to be equated with a perception of female superiority) is for the born, but not the unborn. Just look at cigarette packets that inform the smoker that their smoking harms the baby, yet that child is just clump of cells if the mother is at the abortion clinic. That’s cognitive dissonance with knobs on.
‘The Little Sisters of the Poor. Where are their civil rights?’ Civil rights and identity politics kind of run together in my head. Identity politics, that catch-all for any group with similar worldviews, is one of those irritating things that in our Orwellian world really only makes sense if you are one of those minority identifiers who demand their civil rights above everyone else’s, and Jimmy Choo stilettos in a men’s size 12. What do I mean? Well, I’m mainly thinking about cake here. Yes, lovely cake, not shoes. There have been some high-profile court cases where bakers,
yes, bakers, have been targeted for politely declining to make customers cakes that are contrary to their beliefs. That means not icing particular messages on the top of them, not being able to provide hers and hers cake toppers, that sort of thing. So here we have one set of ‘identifiers’, the customers, deliberately asking another set of ‘identifiers’, the bakers, to do something they know will be against their code, in order to make some kind of civil rights-y/social justice-y point. One lost her shop and livelihood, another is at the moment preparing for his third law suit – not that either of them were the only bakers in town you understand, there were plenty of others to choose from who ‘identified’ correctly. So not much social justice or acceptance to be found when the louder you shout ‘discrimination’ as the currently fashionable minority, the better you will be heard by the media who fall over themselves to push their brand of socially progressive agenda. But the non-bakers in this scenario are convinced that they are acting in a socially progressive manner. They allegedly haven’t deliberately targeted anyone specifically, they are not just being bullies, they are showing up prejudice by highlighting their hurt and the perceived injustice of not having their cake and eating it. Except that’s not quite true, is it. Did I mention the bakers are Christians? So are the Little Sisters of the Poor, back in court again to try and force them to provide contraceptive services for employees when they won the first-time round. California vs The Little Sisters of the Poor. Where are their civil rights? O tempora, o mores! It’s not even just the secular world that has it in for us. This week the Order of Malta banned all things Latin, and in so doing sounded just like middle aged singer Bobby Gillespie of Primal Scream, who said recently that rock music is dead, like Latin. Can’t comment on the rock, but Latin? Dead? They are so not woke.
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