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Comment by jrm4 | Hacker News Reader

I need everyone, EVERYONE, who chooses to use this word to be very careful about how you define it, because most of you are NOT DOING THAT.

And in the process, you end up fueling right-wing idiocy. Because there are presently two working definitions of "woke."

Reasonable people have defined it as "a modern extreme naive liberalism" and that's fine.

But the right basically uses it as "whatever we disagree with," and often pretty much feels like the n-word.

And conflating these two is causing LOTS of problems.

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Yup. The right is fuelling the moral panic about trans people while going against abortion rights and contraceptives: https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/jul/21/house-passes-...

> Yup. The right is fuelling the moral panic about trans people

I wouldn't call opposition to performing irreversible gender transition procedures on children "moral panic".

Maybe true. But then that concern about irreversible medical procedures somehow results in a complete ban on educating children on gender identity or sexuality at all: https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/nati...

When you conjure a national crisis out of a few very rare examples, that puts members of a vulnerable minority group at risk, with the express purpose to frighten your supporters while dividing your adversaries, so that your side can seize power, that's more than just a "moral panic", it's textbook fascist politics.

In the W Bush era it was gays getting married. Terrorists are taking over and gays are gonna shack up and destroy America. Gotta have a foreign and domestic set of enemies to get people riled up about.

But the Overton Window shifted and no one really cares if the gays marry.

Trans people are even fewer than gay people and there may be a number of real, or kinda real, arguments to be had there, such as the wisdom of giving younger kids hormones, or if trans athletes should be allowed to participate in gendered sports leagues. They make a fantastic wedge issue, with the benefit that they're 0.3% of the population -- political footballs, with no chance of actually burning a voting block.

As a (Black) leftie, I really wish the political-internet-left understood this better.

"They want to destroy us!"

No, fam, that's not quite what's happening here. None of them (with power) wake up thinking "trans people are a menace that must be stopped." Now, it may be just as bad - but to them you're just a useful pawn, which requires different tactics from "this is exactly like Nazi Germany."

This is one of those unfortunately effective wedge points that the right exploits. I personally do think that MEDICALLY altering children's growth is an extremely dangerous idea that has to be handled very carefully, and perhaps more carefully than it is now..

..but again, the Right will happily use this tiny point to drive the wedge to say "TRANS IS BAD ALL THE TIME."

> ..but again, the Right will happily use this tiny point to drive the wedge to say "TRANS IS BAD ALL THE TIME."

I have no doubt that folks on the right will exploit that, but I'd also argue that supporting irreversible transition procedures on children, often against the wishes of the parents, is not a tiny point as you callously put it. It's THE point.

Against the wishes of the parents? While I'm not deep into it like that, I'm pretty darn certain that's very much NOT a thing.

(However, I do have therapists in my family, and they do have serious concerns that too many parents are encouraging their kids in this direction)

The liberality of "abortion" and of "gender identity" fundamentally follow from the same misconceptions about sex, so the equivocation is quite warranted.

We all would do better to live as if disagreement isn't the end of the discussion, but the beginning of a negotiation.

I kind of like "not asleep" as a definition, but also like the idea that every time you hear those on the right make up their own definition you simply replace it with "Ewok" in order to point out the distinction

A lot of political terms are poorly defined, like liberalism. By the traditional economic definition both US parties are liberal.

Personally I'd define woke as the toxic mixture of identity politics and cancel culture. Mark Fisher wrote about an embryonic kind of this in "exiting the vampire castle"

But what I'm saying is different. "Woke" is presently weaponized in an extremely effectively divisive way, e.g. Dave Chappelle's comedy is simultaneously extremely "woke" and also extremely NOT "woke."

You can't do that with e.g. "liberalism" today.

I saw a video of a home inspector who said he leaves fire safety kids' books when he can tell a kid lives in the house, and someone was angry at him about it being 'woke'.

And it is very woke of them, as in being awaken to the opportunity to teach and prevent harm

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