By Daviemoo
Throughout 2020 and 2021 we’ve been lambasted daily by shouted stories of cancelled professors, of anti-woke comedians storming from interviews, having gigs cancelled, losing work… and where have we seen these stories? The front pages of newspapers, prime time radio and TV interviews, endless magazine spreads. I have seen more of Kathleen Stock’s face than my own father’s this year. When will the ignorant masses of this country wake up and realise that they’re expending endless energy on empowering a movement built out of matchsticks and playing cards?
John Cleese was in the news again recently for apparently storming out of an interview, something to do with being asked a question – I don’t know. I’m not interested. I’m not interested in that or in the aforementioned Stock’s voluntary decision to leave her job despite the full support of the university being broadcast writ large on social media. But I have no choice but to care. I can’t get away from these things. I see them on social media so down goes the phone, but there they are, flitting from station to station like angry little puppets desperate to decry the UNFAIRNESS of facing public anger for their actions.
In my eyes and the eyes of others, having to listen to people face anger, irritation and more for the things they say and do is ludicrous. Should I be allowed to walk around screaming offensive slurs because it’s my right or is that just public flippancy and makes me an indecent idiot who deserves whatever comes to me?
These people who ask for the public’s indulgence as they hammer out offensive thought patterns, who ask for the public’s allowance to make insensitive jokes or to platform views akin to the far right don’t seem to be aware that public discourse is always constrained by decency. If you want the right to platform bigoted views then it won’t be granted by those but the worst in society – you aren’t being cancelled for being gender critical, you’re aligning yourself with the parts of society who agree with you- and if you don’t like that, it’s not because society needs to chance to accept your idiotic prevarications.
When it comes to the war on woke- it’s the most obvious false flag in all of discourse.
Trans people aren’t trying to erase or change women’s rights, they’re trying to broaden understanding of what makes a woman- and that doesn’t take away from what the core tenets of womanhood are to the individual woman or women at large, it allows for the broader acceptance of people who may not fit those stereotypes whether trans or not.
People of colour face systemic racism. It’s that simple and to deny that is insane.
The acceptance of, and changing of public spaces for, disabled people is not some grumbling concession- it’s necessary for disabled people to be able to feel part of society and therefore contribute to it.
The war on woke is laughable. Firstly, I am woke and I wear that label indifferently. It’s not an insult or a compliment. It just is.
Secondly, woke means awake to racial injustice. If you’re not woke you’re denying people’s founded experience out of pure, sheer and total ignorance. Hardly a good look.
People have become so fed up of the changes in the world to try and make more people feel part of it that they’ve up and lost any ability to empathise, and therefore anything they’re asked to do to accommodate people is WOKE and if they don’t do it they’re CANCELLED- at least that’s the narrative. If you want to live life in ignorance which some folk do, you can. People have and will for all of time. But being asked not to say racial slurs, asking if pe0ple can use inclusive language isn’t like being dragged shackled to the stake and burned before a baying audience. The desperation to be seen as oppressed, chained, forced, coerced, is ridiculous. And the idea of cancellation is pathetic when it never affects anyone negatively for long- because they literally always bounce back from it and in fact use their supposed cancellation as a platform to grow even larger.
The fact is, if you’re tired of it, whichever side you’re on, you’re not the only one. We’re all fighting an imaginary war armed with peashooters while the real war sails on over our heads, tory turrets tumbling our right to protest, our nationality, our NHS, raising taxes. While you’re saying you don’t use pronouns and I’m telling you that’s impossible, VIP lanes for PPE supply are set up.
We’re pitted against each other by a far right government with wet dreams of being in charge of everything and who push out this constant message of “you’re the victim because of the trans and the gays and the people of colour and the forriners landing on our beaches”, as they stick their hands in your back pocket for all your loose change.
The fact is, until we disengage (on BOTH sides) from this endless cacophony of nonsense from a media complicit in pushing fake outrage pieces, our rights are up for grabs and this factionalisation does nothing but hurt all of us. If we could put down our arms and realise that working class issues also encompass any and all minorities- because almost every minority is also typically working class but has less of a voice: we would be able to face down the bigotry and tear it out and- united- oust a government indifferent to the suffering, not only of minorities, but of everyone who is not then. Until then tribalism will lead us back and back and back again to these same tired points.
The ultimate question is- do you want to disengage from fighting people just like you who want a better life, or do you want to continue a fight that’s damning everyone but the ruling elite to some form of oppression or other?
Daviemoo is a 34 year old independent writer, radicalised into blogging about the political state of the world by Brexit and the election of serial failures like Trump and Johnson. Please check out the rest of the blog, check out Politically Enraged, the podcast available on all streaming platforms and share with your like minded friends! Also check him out on ko-fi where you can keep him caffeinated whilst he writes.
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