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I would be curious what kind of person feels like they're on the receiving end of hate from "woke" people. Such a thing is practically the anthesis of what it even means to be part of that group. I'm in no way saying this means they're good people or that their legislative direction is good public policy but the only time hippie liberals push back at all is when someone tries to hurt one of their own. Liberals for the past decade have been entirely on the defensive. In my state there are 14 bills right now in the state legislature that explicitly target vulnerable populations. The democrats and our chapter of the ACLU can barely do anything but try to stop them.

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> I would be curious what kind of person feels like they're on the receiving end of hate from "woke" people.

In December 2014, Scott posted a comment [0] in a discussion on his blog about how, as an adolescent, he had struggled greatly with anxiety issues, and how he believed that some messages some feminists were broadcasting had contributed to his mental health problems. And in response, a huge number of online feminists decided to publicly denounce him in a massive pile-on; Amanda Marcotte's contribution is representative [1]

Ever since then, some "woke" people have been convinced that he's a "bad person". And he's said other things to upset them since, e.g. publicly disagreeing with proposals that his field (quantum computing) abandon some of its technical terminology ("quantum supremacy"), which some claim "makes women and minorities uncomfortable in our field" [2]

So yes, Scott really is on the receiving end of a lot of online hate from certain people, and it has never stopped–including trolling campaigns against his blog [3], demands sent to his department that he be fired/disciplined, etc. And Scott calls the people behind this campaign against him "woke" (or even, as he does in this blog entry, "wokesters"). I know a lot of people have an allergy to that word, but can you see how it makes sense from his perspective? Why shouldn't he use it?

[0] https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=2091#comment-326664

[1] https://www.rawstory.com/2014/12/mit-professor-explains-the-...

[2] https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=4450

[3] https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6552

A sample of the "woke" people that are attacking him:

> And oh, your wife? I lookrd her up Scott and… She’s maybe a 3 on a good day. You know, maybe a 6 at a MAGA rally where all the other chicks are fat midwestern racists. She’s got that TERF Karen look Scott. Let’s be real, you wish you could have bagged one of those hot blondes instead but that’s what you ended up with. I really doubt that’s satusfying enough to keep you from lusting after your younger hotter students. God you’re such a fucking sexist creep.

Sounds like an obvious troll to me (and to some of his other commenters). But he replies in full earnestness to him. Probably a mistake, but I'd still put the blame on the troll rather than the victim.

Such trolls depress me because people will conclude 1) they're real and 2) representative. And then I and my people get blamed for their behavior, even though I'd never do anything like that. sigh

Anyway, what a cesspool. I'd enjoy reading his blog but I don't need that toxicity in my life.

Amanda Marcotte and Jessica Valenti exist. There are lots of people who take great joy in their hatred on every side of political issues.

By "my people" I meant trans women, but I'm sure you'd be able to find instances of bonafide trans women saying abusive or hateful things. Regardless, there are trolls, and the comment bore hallmarks of being a troll. But even still, my point is that I don't post hateful things like that, most of the trans people I know are kind people, and reading dehumanizing comment threads like this is incredibly depressing for me.

Maybe I’m misinterpreting you, but your comments give the impression that you think Scott is anti-trans, or when he says “woke” he means trans people. I don’t think that’s true. The term “woke” is used by lots of different people in lots of different ways. Some people view the existence of trans people as a type of “wokeness”, so I can understand how you could have formed the impression that’s (part of) what Scott means by “woke”-but if you read more of what he has to say, I think it will become clear he doesn’t define “woke” in that way at all.

Unless I’m misunderstanding what you are saying. You started talking about “my people” in a conversation about “wokeness”, I thought you were self-identifying as “woke”, and I’m probably not the only one who read you in that way. Now you say by “my people” you meant trans women, which leaves me confused about what you were trying to say all along.

You also speak of a “cesspool” and “dehumanizing comment threads” and I’m wondering what you are actually calling those things and why you are calling them that. Again, I suspect you may have the wrong impression, but I’m not entirely sure what you mean, so maybe my suspicion is based on misunderstanding you.

oh, I'm sorry, I wasn't talking about Scott. I don't have any problem with him. My problem was with some of the comments on Scott's blog, specifically with the (suspected) troll who used degrading and objectifying language to talk about Scott's wife, rating her appearance and calling her a "TERF Karen." There's a stereotype of trans women as violent men shouting down and degrading women by calling them TERFs, which has been used to rile up the public against us (particularly in the UK, see JK Rowling for example.) I assume that was a troll pouring fuel on the fire.

So to sum up, I have nothing against Scott, I'd greatly enjoy meeting him and reading his blog, I just had a bad time in the comments section today.

I mean, sure, you can dismiss the perpetrator(s) of the recent trolling attacks on him as not really being "woke", maybe it's even an "anti-woke" person just pretending to be "woke" in order to make "woke" people look bad. We don't really know what the perpetrator's motivations are, all we can do is guess, and maybe one guess is as good as another.

But what about Amanda Marcotte's vicious public attack on him? (And many other less well-known figures besides). She's now a senior journalist employed by Salon.com, I don't think she can be so easily dismissed as just a "troll"

>I would be curious what kind of person feels like they're on the receiving end of hate from "woke" people.

An arbitrary example I saw yesterday:

An elderly white man was leaving a parking lot with one-way traffic flow. A young white woman was standing in the road talking with a friend. He pulled few feet away from them, waited, then politely asked them to move when they didn't.

One woman started accosting him about entitlement, white privilege, male privilege, and refused to move. The scene went on for a while until he was able to reposition the car and barely drive by her brushing her with the car.

These are the "woke" people who are poisoning the well for others. They just use it as a pretext to rage and hate on strangers simply because of their race, age, or gender.

I'm not saying this is typical behavior, just an interaction where someone probably felt targeted.

In a more general sense, I have been told by hiring managers and recruiters that white males shouldn't bother applying for some jobs. That certainly made me feel angry and targeted by ideologs.

This isn't "woke", this is just being an asshole.

The term "woke" is supposed to be related to awareness of racial injustice and inequality. Not one group exercising prejudice and bias and against another based on ethnicity. Furthermore, this term has become a label associated with loaded language employed by the conservative right to vilify opposition. It is a reflexive control word and propaganda device to used to focus hatred and resentment from conservatives towards any aspect of culture or ideology contrary to their interests, regardless of it actual relevance to racial injustice. So when you start calling assholes "woke", I am not sure if you are conflating the meaning of it because you are a victim of this propaganda or if you are intentionally using the term to foster resentment against others.

Either way, claiming that people "who are aware of racial injustice" direct hatred, resentment, and prejudice against others because of their race, age or gender is so blatantly contradictory that it is absurd.

Being woke and being an asshole are not mutually exclusive. You can do both. As you say,The term "woke" is supposed to be related to awareness of racial injustice and inequality. What you do with that awareness is an entirely different question. If you use the fact that someone is part of privileged group as a justification for harming them, that makes you both woke and an asshole.

>Either way, claiming that people "who are aware of racial injustice" direct hatred, resentment, and prejudice against others because of their race, age or gender is so blatantly contradictory that it is absurd.

I don't think this is contradictory at all. Victims of abuse and Injustice are certainly capable of victimizing others and carrying out injustices of Their Own.

The idea that a victim of racism, for example, can't also harbor racist prejudices themselves is laughable. History and the contemporary world are full of examples of people who are simultaneously victims and abusers.

You labeled them as 'woke' and then subsequently said they were demonstrating prejudice. The idea you may assert your opinion that they both have awareness and that they do not is your self-contradiction, not theirs. Claiming they are both is doublethink.

I honestly don't understand where you think I said they don't have awareness. They obviously have awareness that privileges exist because they are accosting someone for having them. Where do I deny their awareness intimate doublethink?

I can be aware and angry that someone hates me for my identity while simultaneously hating someone else for theirs. This does not negate my awareness of their identity.

Do you think that being 'woke' (aware of racial injustice and inequality) means that a person is incapable of holding hate and biases of their own?

The differentiation is based on which person is making the observation.

>I can be aware and angry that someone hates me for my identity while simultaneously hating someone else for theirs. This does not negate my awareness of their identity

This statement is correct because you would intimate and factual knowledge concerning the matter.

>One woman started accosting him about entitlement, white privilege, male privilege, and refused to move. The scene went on for a while until he was able to reposition the car and barely drive by her brushing her with the car.

To then further say that woman or those people are woke is not, because you do not have any intimate or factual knowledge of them to make the claim.

It's like saying that you saw man in a firefighter jacket intentionally set fire to a building and run away and then said "That firefighter burned a building down." In reality, you only observed a man commit arson but had no idea of whether he was actually a firefighter despite what his clothing might have suggested.

In the instance where the two things are contradictory, and you have one unknown, the assessment must be based on the known (they were assholes). You cannot claim both.

I see what you are saying, but disagree that it is unknown. They are verbally accosting him of having unequal racial privilege, which is direct factual evidence that they are "aware of racial injustice and inequality".

What could possibly be stronger evidence of awareness then them verbally demonstrating it? Am I to think that the person shouting about someone having white male privilege verbatim is not aware that the concept of white male privilege exists?

It is like saying that "a person who knows how to make fire burned a building down". The evidence is in the observation.

>In the instance where the two things are contradictory, and you have one unknown, the assessment must be based on the known (they were assholes). You cannot claim both.

Why would there be any contradiction? Being woke has no bearing on being an asshole or not.

> What could possibly be stronger evidence of awareness then them verbally demonstrating it? Am I to think that the person shouting about someone having white male privilege verbatim is not aware that the concept of white male privilege exists?

The fact that they screamed what they did at him shows they do not understand the concept, as what he was doing was not an expression or instance of white male privilege.

Regular people. I've been, long ago, at college, before "woke" was coined I believe. To be honest the vitriol was over the top, I found it funny. Just my experience, not proxy for anyone else's.

What was your experience? Genuinely curious. I've definitely experienced the "economic" prejudice since college was when I found out the hard way that my family was poor. I had a friend who had to deal with insecure butthurt white folks being mad that the kid from China swept them in exams. I was not at his level but we bonded because I was the only girl in class. Dude is legit gonna be one of those mathematicians where every other theorem is named after him. Oh god and the computer science shit. Fuck that "make me a sandwich" nonsense. That was the subject where I had the upper hand but you'd never know come project time when nobody wanted to work with me because they thought I wouldn't pull my weight.

An ex-girlfriend had shifted deeper into women's studies, had spent a week or so chuckling over the fact that you could castrate by crushing, and in a bit of anger over my not living up to her ideals (we were still friends) called me "a racist sexist homophobe" which was the worst insult she could think of. Women have dealt with a lot of shit, so I understand the enjoyment of misery, but my testicles recoiled.

At 20 or so, I was more of the latter two than I am now, not at all the last one that I can tell and conscious of my failings at the second one. Product of Chicago in the 70's.

The insult came, if I remember the sequence of events correctly, after I said that in my experience white people can come by racism from daily experience, not just other people spewing it. I was mugged five times from 5th grade through high school, jumped for fun once, had an older girl say "come here little white boy, let me set your hair on fire" holding matches when I was in second grade, and had a crowd of 5 or 6 follow me and a friend home chanting "honky" and running up to almost touch us, I think around 6th or 7th grade. I've never been anonymously attacked by a white person, just a statistic but it's mine. I've also had plenty of black friends over the years.

When I was in college I did a small thesis on race riots in Chicago. To my suprise, most have been whites rioting against blacks, especially moving onto a white block, and they were mostly not reported on in the papers to avoid spreading the word. I gained total sympathy for the shit they went through, and of course their kids would grow up feeling the burn too and trying to maybe even the score. It just creates a cycle that sucks. Gandhi and King were right, though progress hurts while the cycle is getting stopped.

> Such a thing is practically the anthesis of what it even means to be part of that group.

"Woke" is a synonym of "enlightened." Don't trust anybody who claims to be enlightened, or rails against enlightenment.

Oh I completely agree which is why I put it in quotes. I've never found anyone on any side of the political spectrum actually self-identify with that label except ironically. Right now today it just seems to be pejorative-de-jour for people who are vaguely liberal.

Which is kind of funny, since if you asked me 10 years ago about the cultural associations of “woke,” they’d be, uh, more scattered. Black nationalists of the wacky “Beethoven? Oh yeah, he was black” sort, but at the time I also saw a neo-nazi using the term. Almost always in the “woke to” formulation. Nazis were “woke to the JQ”, but maybe some special type of weirdo would be “woke to big foot” or “woke to the templars”. So basically I think it was appropriated from a specific black culture to general extremist/conspiracy culture, if such a thing truly exists, and maybe was re-appropriated into modern discourse.

And now I find my self using the term occasionally to describe a set of views without really engaging with them. Such as when someone showed me some pictures from their cruise (which was neat, they’re an engineering nerd and carefully detailed some elements of the ship) but had to give me a cruises are evil disclaimer before uh, saying well I went on one anyway, family, and so on. “the typical woke reasons.”

They're not liberals, they're authoritarian leftists.

"what kind of person feels like"

It's a quest for victimhood to justify hate.

Maybe, there is plenty of fodder out there for #persecutionfetish but someone who is calmly like, "yeah they might hate me but I still don't wish them ill" feels pretty good faith. They can still be wrong but I don't believe for a second this person in particular would be like "and because they hate me I'm justified in x, y, z."

There are people who actively wish ill on all kinds of groups and the “woke” are no exception. Plenty of people hate their political enemies and have no great concern if they are hurt and some take real joy in the idea.

Yale invites speakers who talk about their fantasies of killing white people. Mainstream feminist websites do backflips trying to sugarcoat that they think every single man is a threat.

> Yale speaker says comment about killing White people was meant to spark deeper talk about race

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/06/09/yale-lec...

> But the socialization of men is such that even a good man – a supportive man, a respectful man, a trusted man – has within him the potential for violence and harm because these behaviors are normalized through patriarchy.

> And as such, we know that even the men that we love, never mind random men who we don’t know, have the potential to be dangerous. Surely, all people have that potential. But in a world divided into the oppressed and the oppressors, the former learn to fear the latter as a defense mechanism.

> So when you enter a space – any space – as a man, you carry with yourself the threat of harm.

https://everydayfeminism.com/2016/10/yes-actually-it-is-all-...

More narrowly the demographic that loves censorship is of the left now.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/professor-terminated-art-h...

> In a controversial move, an adjunct professor at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota, has lost her job after showing her class Medieval paintings depicting the Prophet Muhammad, founder of the Islamic religion.

Ezra Klein supports laws he believes will lead to miscarriages of justice because of the political consequences.

> "Yes Means Yes" is a terrible law, and I completely support it

> For that reason, the law is only worth the paper it's written on if some of the critics' fears come true. Critics worry that colleges will fill with cases in which campus boards convict young men (and, occasionally, young women) of sexual assault for genuinely ambiguous situations. Sadly, that's necessary for the law's success. It's those cases — particularly the ones that feel genuinely unclear and maybe even unfair, the ones that become lore in frats and cautionary tales that fathers e-mail to their sons — that will convince men that they better Be Pretty Damn Sure.

https://www.vox.com/2014/10/13/6966847/yes-means-yes-is-a-te...

The new Harry Potter game is a perfect example. They went around screaming the game and JK Rowling were causing 'real world harm to trans people' which of course was BS.

But the people trying to boycott the game couldn't leave it at that. They bullied and doxxed streamers just for enjoying a game without gender politics.

Because of perceived slights they resorted to becoming actual bullies.

We have come full circle.

I mean JK herself literally is, the game definitely isn't. If you've stayed out of this dumpster fire enough to actually not know you're probably better off.

JK is a 70's-era radical feminist who's always been a little transphobic (that was the era, everyone was) but in this decade got sucked into the feminist-lesbian-to-TERF pipeline and dug her heels in when people started calling her out for it. Ever increasing levels of escalation on both sides later she's weirdly become the most prominent transphobe in the English speaking world and throws her weight behind hate groups like the LGB alliance. She even got a shoutout from Putin for it which is kinda funny.

This is no way whatsoever justifies being mean to someone playing a video game but it's not hard to see how we got here. We live in a world where absolutely horrible people are so completely insulated from the consequences of their actions that the people who are harmed by them are pretty much powerless to do anything and have nowhere productive to direct that anger and frustration. In a less civilized time a mob would have shown up to her house with pitchforks years before it got to this point.

Tweets do not kill people.

David Duke probably hasn't killed anyone either.

Forming a lynch party and burning crosses on people's lawns is different than tweeting "I think being female is an important part of being a woman."

Something even less benign than that, such as "men cannot get pregnant" is enough to be labeled a transphobe. If you went back as little as 15 years ago and told people "men can get pregnant" they'd rightfully laugh at you.

What usefulness does that sentence hold? It is true that in our society some people who you'd socially describe as men are able to get pregnant, because they have biologically female sex organs. We also know that following their social wishes (i.e. referring to them as men) dramatically increases their quality of life.

Given these facts, can you really not understand why people see that sentence as transphobic? It doesn't accurately describe our social landscape, and it hurts some of the more vulnerable among us.

>What usefulness does that sentence hold?

What usefulness do objective facts and the truth hold?

>It is true that in our society some people who you'd socially describe as men are able to get pregnant

That is not true at all. It's actually a gross inversion of the truth, a foundational feature of Big Lies. There are trans-men, who are actually women, that may get pregnant, but they're by definition not men. They are human females, AKA women. No amount of cross-dressing and body mutilation will change that.

>because they have biologically female sex organs

Yes, they're women. Glad we agree.

>We also know that following their social wishes (i.e. referring to them as men) dramatically increases their quality of life.

"We also know telling schizophrenics that the coffee maker IS indeed an evil demon and removing them from the office will dramatically increase their quality of life."

No, feeding into delusions will not increase their quality of life.

>Given these facts

"Given the fact that the coffee maker is a demon".

>can you really not understand why people see that sentence as transphobic?

"can you really not understand why not believing that coffee makers are demonic is schizophobic?"

>It doesn't accurately describe our social landscape, and it hurts some of the more vulnerable among us.

It does accurately describe our social and biological landscape. If biological realities, truth, and objective facts hurt "the most vulnerable among us", it sounds like they have a mental illness.

The best our actual doctors (obviously not you) have been able to determine, yes it really does increase their quality of life. I know that doesn't matter to some people, but a lot of us do care.

>The best our actual doctors (obviously not you) have been able to determine, yes it really does increase their quality of life.

No they haven't, and you don't need to be doctor to know that.

>I know that doesn't matter to some people, but a lot of us do care.

Lot's of people care about factually incorrect things that go against narratives for sure.

>> The best our actual doctors (obviously not you) have been able to determine, yes it really does increase their quality of life.

> No they haven't, and you don't need to be doctor to know that.

Do you have studies that indicate this, or do you just believe this to be true? The latter part of your response strongly points towards one side, but I'd like to give you the chance to send any contrary data, if you have it!

>> It is true that in our society some people who you'd socially describe as men are able to get pregnant

> That is not true at all. It's actually a gross inversion of the truth, a foundational feature of Big Lies.

Please read what I write carefully. I specifically said "socially describe". Do you walk through your whole life checking the genitalia of any person you interact with to make sure you refer to them by their biological pronouns? Or do you rely on social cues (e.g. their looks, outfit, hair, voice and so on) and assume their gender? I really hope it's the latter.

Now please read my earlier response again with the correct understanding of what the words I type mean.

>> We also know that following their social wishes (i.e. referring to them as men) dramatically increases their quality of life.

> "We also know telling schizophrenics that the coffee maker IS indeed an evil demon and removing them from the office will dramatically increase their quality of life."

> No, feeding into delusions will not increase their quality of life.

Can you show me studies that indicate this? I don't care for what you believe, I care about data and studies.

>> Given these facts

> "Given the fact that the coffee maker is a demon".

>> can you really not understand why people see that sentence as transphobic?

> "can you really not understand why not believing that coffee makers are demonic is schizophobic?"

Next time make sure not to go overboard with mocking the other person, or at least wait until you've made sure you understand them correctly. Since you fully misunderstood the opening of my earlier response this reaaaaally makes you look bad.

This presumes the only thing she's done is make public statements but that's not actually all that important to my point so whatever.

So look, I don't know, I obviously fall on one side of this issue but disagreement on it is more American than apple pie at this point. The idea that certain kinds of speech manifest in real life harm is the basis for hate speech laws around the world.

I'm just gonna quote Germany's legal code because they distill what hate speech is better than I could. "Assaults the human dignity of others by insulting, maliciously maligning an aforementioned group, segments of the population or individuals because of their belonging to one of the aforementioned groups or segments of the population, or defaming segments of the population." In my view you can only say "la la sticks and stones" up until the point where all the dehumanizing speech turns the political tide and the cultural forces that keep people from wantonly harming particular groups fall apart and we get articles like

* 2022 - https://reports.hrc.org/an-epidemic-of-violence-2022

* 2021 - https://reports.hrc.org/an-epidemic-of-violence-fatal-violen...

* 2020 - https://www.hrc.org/resources/violence-against-the-trans-and...

* 2019 - https://www.hrc.org/resources/violence-against-the-transgend...

* 2018 - https://hrc-prod-requests.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/files/a...

It's really depressing they can fill one of these articles out every year.

Isn't Germany a country where you get arrested if you insult a politician? Forgive me if I don't think highly of their "hate speech" laws.

Also, 44 GNC or trans people were murdered in 2020 and I'm supposed to be concerned? How do we know they were killed because of their identity?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/09/09/pimmelgate-g...

Last headline I saw, she made a comment about how fake women were taking away from the progress that real women had made via feminist pushes of the past few decades. That comment doesn't seem inaccurate to me.

What has she done to become the most prominent transphobe in the English speaking language?

Oh I've seen it and no she literally isn't causing them real world harm, nor is the game.

This is the same woman who made Dumbledore gay to appease Twitter. Retconned characters to different races to appease Twitter.

What she took issue with was women being labeled as 'birthing person'.

I can see how we got here, and claiming either she or the game causes people real world harm isn't disingenuous, it's outright lying.

They also called her a literal nazi ti the point the BBC had to apologize after she had enough and sent lawyers after them.

Twitter isn't real.

You have a theory that certain speech causes violence. Well there's no evidence of the alleged "tweets -> violence pipeline". If anything it goes the other way: as the amount of speech increases, there seems to be less and less violence.

That aside, I find it interesting that you're honing in on JK Rowling. If speech really does cause violence, then lots of speech is causing violence, including speech with which you agree. It seems notable, then, that you're going after speech with which you disagree. Makes me think the whole "speech causes violence" argument is a ploy to attack speech you dislike.

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