Tag: woke

What would a world without “woke” culture be like?

By Daviemoo

Many of us who are labelled “woke” already live in a world suffused with anti minority sentiment- a cursory scroll of someone like Katy Montgomerie’s twitter shows the relentless onward rumble of abuse that she faces from those who are mildly uncomfortable with transgender women, to those who outwardly call for the arrest and forced de-transitioning of anyone transgender; conversely, many of the most outspoken critics of “cancel culture” live in a world where they can and do say whatever they want to and face absolutely no consequence for it. But what if those who rage against cancel culture win? What would that world look like? And could we really stomach a “so what” society?

Society at it’s core is huge, vast and varied and unfortunately it’s a simple fact that society must function by making allowances for divergence from what could be termed as the norm. If every person who did not fit the norm was ostracised from society, human civilisation would be laughably small and far away from where we are now. Human acceptance has been perilous ever since the first human emerged from their cave, saw another human and wondered why their hair was a different colour.

The benefit of intellect is that we can discuss how we can co-exist and make each other’s lives easier- but humans are still in some strange phase of our existence where we’d rather exhaust debate on why we shouldn’t, than why we should.

Let’s say the anti woke brigade won: how would life be for anyone outside of the lucky few who aren’t affected now by, and would continue not to be affected by the implementation of a “so what” culture?

People of colour

“Woke” sentiment is closely linked to anti racist sentiment- so scrap any and all discourse around racial inequality. It doesn’t mean racial inequality doesn’t exist- merely that it is not discussed. Any person of colour who faced inequality- be that micro aggressions or outright hatred- would be met with indifference in the “so what” society. Racist hiring practices could continue unabated with employers merely shrugging when called out on their inability to hire people of colour. Tests on blind CV’s have highlighted a worrying disparity on conversions of people with ethnic names to employees at organisations- and the backlash to organisations offering roles to people of colour has been thunderous- even when those roles are either best filled by people of colour due to the nature of the job or are specifically designed to wall over a shortfall in representation when it comes to broader society.

In the “so what” society, systemic racism would be glossed over with reports from the government that would reference experts who were not consulted to contribute. The inequalities faced by people of colour in the UK would be explained away with “agency” rather than a deep look into how the continuation of ostracising behaviour propagated by the government and a systematically racist society has contributed to worse living conditions, worse mental health outcomes and worse treatment by institutions like hospitals and police.

When nation wide protests are sparked about racial inequality and how to deal with it, including the glorification of slave traders, a “so what” society would likely spend more time focusing on the damage to a public statue and the four white people who did it than the feelings of people of colour who had to walk past a statue of a man who may have enslaved their ancestors.

LGBT+ people

Often when we speak out about the abuses we face, whether again micro aggressions like being asked invasive questions about who puts what genitals where, who has what genitals, or disgusting comments about STIs – we’re told that it “could be worse” and to be “thankful” for how we’re treated or spoken to or about.

We’re treated to regular sermonising about how we’re perverted or seen as unseemly because we have different sexualities.

Gay men are often accused of paedophilia as a pejorative, never so much as recently with the stoking of anti trans sentiment- if you publicly defend transgender people on the internet you will, it is a solemn promise, be labelled a paedophile.

In a “so what” culture, one could expect that hate crimes would rise precipitously because anti minority sentiment would be allowed to go unchecked to the point that organisations would step away from legislation designed to protect minorities from discrimination- and in fact, aid it.

In the microcosm of anti LGBT sentiment in the “so what” society, the BBC would knowingly allow a lesbian rapist like Lily Cade to contribute to an article about fear of rape, and use widely questioned figures- like a survey run by a transphobic group to indicate societal findings about fear of trans women.

In this “so what” society, discrimination like my own, where I was called “faggot” in front of everyone at work would be allowed to happen with no punishment: I was slurred in front of half the office, some of whom were my literal employees and in response my boss- the company owner- did nothing to protect me, to punish my aggressor- I would suggest that this fits in quite well with what would happen in a “so what” society.

Of course as an already polarised person I’m looking at this through my lens- but it’s the lens of those who don’t follow the flow of society on dint of who we are that need some social consciousness in public or we’re the ones who suffer.

Women

Need I say it?

When women can be murdered in the street by policemen and the police response is to wear the right shoes or that you should flag down a bus and not to look at serious police reforms, one starts to wonder whether this is exactly what a “so what” culture would do.

When women’s reproductive rights are restricted or debated, and women are overruled on their own healthcare regularly, and when medical problems are under-diagnosed even though they are common, you could surely say that this is indicative of a so what society- or when women speak out about their genuine fears in a society that is pervaded by men who don’t respect bodily autonomy or boundaries, and “not all men” is the immediate response rather than any attempt to work with women to allay their fears or deal with the causal root of the issue one could say that’s very typical of a “so what” society.

When violence against women is met with questions like “but what was she wearing“, or when society sexualises young women like schoolgirls and thinks this is normal- the infantilisation of women for sexual pleasure- one must truly question whether society works for women, or whether it’s already the common case that when women speak about women’s issues they’re met with “so what”.

The disabled

What would likely typify the behaviour of a “so what” society when referring to disabled people? Say, in the midst of a pandemic, throwing off all restrictions to mitigate spread and ensure people were kept safe? Or perhaps not giving full living wage allowance to those forced to care for relatives who either cant afford or just don’t want to house their loved one in a care facility?

In a “so what” society, giving space and air time to disabled people would be a rarity because it would underscore the lack of support for disabled people in a country that barely tolerates the audacity of someone to be disabled, and those who do speak against the government struggle to be heard.

And when, at the height of death in the pandemic, the government legislates enforced Do Not Resuscitate orders for disabled people you have the true measure of whether a society does, or does not feel “woke” about disabled people’s issues.

You have what you want

Society has long been about asking people to at the very least control their voicing of their inner thoughts- think what you want, but don’t say it. Even this has become too much for the polemic group of anti woke nonsense pushing. Simply being asked to think whatever you want, no matter how heinous but keep it in your head is a travail they cannot endure. And yet when it is our comfort, our autonomy, our names, our pronouns, our liberties we ask to be respected -they cannot do so. How strange that we must return the favour which is never employed for us?

When you look closely at our society, you begin to understand that the issue that the anti woke crowd have is simply that they aren’t able to thoughtlessly speak with impunity – but none of us are barred from doing just that, we just elect to be decent people. What we have is a crowd of people desperate to have society foster their desire to say bad things without being made to feel guilty for them.

I’m afraid, dear anti wokers- you have the society you desperately crave and you’re wasting time asking for it to be more closed. Imagine what society would be like without allowances for difference, without consideration for other people; a deep, dark and horribly unhappy place where even the discussion of inequality cannot be stomached because it may make people feel bad.

If you really want to know what the society of your dreams looks like, perhaps it’s time to realise that it’s actually your worst nightmare.

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.

Oh just shut the f*ck up about “free speech” and start defending your sh*t takes if you believe them…

By Daviemoo

And so begins another week in the UK where another entitled person – shocking no one, a cisgender straight white man – rails against the terrors of the cancel culture machine, a machine that literally stops nobody who decries it.

The ex member of Mumford & Sons, Winston Marshall unleashed his full potential as a spewer of nonsense today on GB news, or as I like to call it, “Gammon Blithering news”. Railing against the horrific, life ending effects of a cancel culture that’s claimed literally not one person who has spoken out against it, he explained his ire with people “cancelling” Joe Rogan’s podcast and stating that he sees this as trying to censor free speech.

Ultimately, adopting phraseology which allows you to attack people who are more adept at navigating the human experience than you is the ultimate weapon of people utterly ill suited to sharing the planet with others. If someone told me my behaviour was offensive to them and rather than even hearing them out I declared them woke, I’d probably be ashamed- and therein seems to be the crux- those anti woke amongst us are desperate to be allowed to continue verbally shitting their pants in public without being called out on the stench of their ridiculous words.

Listen reader, you and I are as bored as each other with this absolutely bottom drawer argument about cancel culture, wokeness and free speech so, dearest reader- lets do some debunking.

Cancel culture

Not one person that complains about cancel culture has ever been a victim of it. Let’s look at some examples.
JK Rowling- constantly stirring up transphobia, still rakes in millions, lives in a castle.

Donald Trump – he wasn’t cancelled, he lost an election because he was about as good at being a president as I am at being a blue whale

Joe Rogan – his podcast is one of the widely disseminated pieces of media that exists today even with episodes removed

Kathleen Stock – Regularly making the rounds on British media, stepped down voluntarily from her teaching role and her university protected her, immediately obtained another job

Yes some people have been wrongly accused of x and y and people have jumped on them, and this isn’t cancel culture. Its mob mentality. Normally these people are successful and people are quick to attack them because people love to see the fall of a star. It’s now par for the course for these so called “cancel culture victims” to actually be seen and heard wider from the front pages of our unquestionably right leaning media. In a way it’s become a lucrative side gig to claim cancellation and lap up money and accolades from your blind defenders. At worst cancel culture means a change of status, of employer or something else- but never for these people does it mean CANCELLATION.

“Wokeness”

Woke comes from slang to mean that someone is awakened to the existence of racial injustice. It’s now regularly thrown at people like myself as an insult, a pejorative term to indicate that I’m offended by everything and yet I have sound solid reasoning for my stances for and against certain things, whereas it’s all too easy to throw out the “oh that’s woke” flare that means that you can 1 attract your fellow thoughtless to defend whatever you’re saying and 2 immediately insulate yourself from the critique- after all, why SHOULD you have to moderate how you speak to people if theyre offended by everything? Is it because humans have been doing that since literally the beginning of time.

I’ve no doubt that if everyone walked around saying what they thought the world would look something akin to the middle of a disaster movie, riots in the street every day. It’s not woke to ask someone not to say something stupid or offensive, it’s common sense- and if you immediately declare something woke without even listening to reasoning then you’re hardly a brainbox- in fact, it takes a stupefying dearth of independent thought to simply disregard everything you don’t understand as just another thing you don’t need to learn or account for in your own behaviour. If children learn not to urinate in their pants by age 4 it’s eminently possible for an adult to learn that something they do or say is rude and adapt their behaviour.

Free speech

Ah free speech. I’ve said this literally hundreds of times: free speech actually doesn’t exist. If you walked down the street exclaiming how much you wanted to fucking murder every bastard who got in your way, you’d be in the back of a police van fairly quickly- not as quickly as before the conservatives gutted police numbers, but still. If you walked into my office as a new employee and called me a fag, I’d rightly complain and if justice prevailed you would lose your job.

Of course you’re able to say whatever you want. But should you? Free speech has been used as license for utter, mind boggling stupidity for years in online discourse. Racist people will use the N word and then cry FREE SPEECH when they lose their liveliehoods over it, shocked that they’re being punished for using hate speech- because you see, free speech is often in an intimate tango with hate speech. It’s never someone like me talking about how terrible the state of the world is decrying my lack of free speech, because what I’m saying shouldn’t be offensive to you –  I’m looking out for your interests. So we see this neat intersection between free speech and hate speech, and these two things are distinct. Saying something discriminatory isn’t something to be proud of and even if you were absolutely able to do it, you exercising that right means you’re… well, an asshole. It’s that simple. You can think it all you want, but it’s possible to have thoughts and believe them deeply and not say them-  I believe I want to mount some of the more muscular guys at the gym but I fully expect they’d probably be pretty offended if I sashayed over and gave them the laundry list of tawdry acts I’d perform on them. It’s common sense to keep your thoughts in your head- and the free speech bayers often lack common sense in place of the ability to censor or hold in their thoughts.

Additionally, let’s go further with all these things.

Many of the Cancel Woke Free Speech shouters claim they want people to be able to say whatever they want. Recently in Germany a far right politician ran on the platform of “you should be able to say whatever you want!” and when a political commentator said “yeah, listen to the Nazi bitch” she… sued him.

So it’s never, ever about being able to say whatever you want. And if someone from Isis was online spouting off about the west being decadent and disgusting I guarantee they’d raise their hackles- it’s exclusively about right wing bigotry being allowed. Let’s put it this way- if they really believed in free speech they wouldn’t get so pissed off when we called them out on their disgusting words and actions.

Joe Rogan has the ability to say the N word. He shouldn’t. Society dictates that- if he wants to do it, society is allowed to call him out. He’s absolutely able to platform anti vaccine propogandists- should he? It’s easy enough to find well reviewed peer confirmed data that shows vaccines are safe and effective. So he’s being called out for doing shitty things, and for being WRONG… and if it’s now become “cancel culture” to tell someone they’re wrong then the problem isn’t political correctness gone mad- it’s stupid people becoming far too confident in being able to create verbal diarrhoea without being told they are being stupid.

If you don’t want to be called stupid, either be smart, or be quiet.

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.

The War on Woke is Fake News, and Cancel Culture is Nonsense- Stop Buying into it

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.

The Radicalisation of the Left

By Daviemoo

In a country utterly obsessed with woke cancel culture, with media outlets like the BBC and the guardian facing daily callouts on it’s factionalisation of the transphobia row, where racist events like the euro cup are fully expected by POC and their allies and where anti LGBTQIA sentiment is slowly burning backwards- can we really claim surprise that those pushing for tolerance are getting happier and happier to claim the weighty mantle of “radicalised” against the other side?

Here’s an excerpt from an email I’ve just sent my long time friend Pam: “People will literally twist themselves in knots to avoid actually confronting their implicit biases cos they cannot admit that we might be in the wrong and have work to do to make the world a better place; It’s up to everyone else to take the blame, it’s everyone else’s job to do the work to make the world better. The second you say hey so maybe our country is racist its IT IS NOT PEOPLE ARE JUST SENSITIVE CANCEL CULTURE WOKE SNOWFLAKE… it’s literally more work to cling to your rhetoric than just admit it and work on yourself.”

I often laugh when I read the endless epithets I’m gifted online by the supposed anti woke brigades: woke, weak, snowflake, SJW. What’s thrown at me as an insult, I wear with pride. If it’s woke to care about others, weak to be offended by hate speech, snowflakey to demand racists are held to account then I am the SJW you so angrily proclaim me to be, and I couldn’t be happier about that.

I’m also not quite sure what a “radical leftist” is, and why they are apparently so dangerous. I hardly plan to break into the houses of parliament and force Boris Johnson to respect people’s pronouns at gunpoint. It just so happens that I’m very much frustrated by injustice and therefore, loud about it’s removal from a society that has the means but not the wherewithal.

Easy as it may be to rest in your ignorant shell, there comes a time where those with any moral fibre become embroiled in the fights that may not directly involve us and suddenly become aware of the impact we can have just by standing shoulder to shoulder with others.

I can’t tell you how many times a month I’m asked if I’m trans because I defend my trans brothers, sisters and enby folk. I’m not trans, and I can scarcely imagine their struggle- but imagine I have, to the best of my abilities. But you shouldn’t have to put yourself in someone else’s shoes to empathise with their plight.

As a white (as fuck- I am roughly the colour of fresh milk) cis man, I will never understand even a corner of the struggle that POC face in a country with such blatant systemic racism oozing from every crack in it’s wall of ignorance- but that doesn’t mean I can’t empathise fully with those who suffer from it, and want to do what I can to chip away at that wall, to expedite the drainage of such disgusting pus that festers in the wounds of every heart it infects.

Today, as is par for the course, my insistence that a man who tweeted the N word, blaming the POC players for England’s loss at the Euros led to me being compared to Nazis. This comparison always confuses me: Nazi ideology was based on only the able bodied arian white folks being the cream of society, able to live on the backs and deaths of anyone who was other, on the subjugation of those seen as lesser- and the weakness of a mind who compares a demand for consequences to that is beyond the stupidity I can muster the energy to comprehend.

Nazism is the most abhorrent system of thinking that’s been widely accepted and known to humanity- so for internet weaklings to compare holding people to account for their own actions, to conflate holding people to account for refusing to absorb the simple truth that racism is appalling and only believed by fools and willing bigots- should be, but is not, laughable.

The invective that right-wing aligned people throw at the supposed “woke” always misses the fundamental hypocrisy that nazis were… far right politically.

As right wing populism grows underfoot, as it snakes into the houses of parliament, the left are further demonised by a press monopolised by right wing punditry: from Rupert Murdoch’s empire to what I can only equate to “tabloid-lite” papers like the daily mail, England in particular is beset by bigotry at every turn, and every word carefully selected by journalists to toe the line and maintain the fiction that England isn’t steeped in the blood of the people of colour who were dragged here to build it, manufacture for it and better it at their own expense, is another brick in the wall mentioned above- as one falls out, another journalist who believes the rhetoric that white people could ever truly understand daily racial abuse will simply slide another block in.

Is it any wonder…

That leads me to the whole point of this post: Is it any wonder that, as this system propagates itself even in the face of it’s own hypocrisy, as it grows and maintains itself even under growing calls for it’s examination, it’s dismantlement, it’s replacement with equity for all who share this land, that those who have patiently or impatiently watched it’s sinuous twisting of the truth for it’s own benefit, have grown tired and become, to use the descriptor the right so love- Radicalised.

I’m not quite sure what reaction right wingers expect from me when they call me a radical lefty. “Yep” is usually it. I am. They see the moniker of radical as a terrible thing, because of course they equate it to the oft-disparaged, even in their own rags, far-right.

Here is the difference.

On the far left we have people willing to fight for equality, equity and fairness in a system that’s always been kiltered to cater to the few instead of the many.

On the far right? Literally nazis.

The Myth of the “Tolerant Left”

It’s been said before many times but it bears repeating that the tolerant left is a myth.

Do we “tolerate” (a word anyone who follows my video posts will know I detest), or as I prefer to call it, accept people whose needs and wants are different to our own? Absolutely. Do we try to cater for those who need different requirements than us to exist with dignity and prosper in a world that caters to homogeny? We do, or we try.

What we don’t, won’t and can’t tolerate under our wide arching but moral beliefs, is bigotry.

If you think we should accept that people have a difference of opinion on whether tomato soup is the best soup, I can cope with that. Accepting that you think gay people are disgusting, that POC are lesser than you with your white skin etc, that’s quite another thing.

To tolerate the existence of beliefs that mean others should suffer for their existence when it harms no one and is as normal as any other is the cognitive dissonance I feel the right are well known for in leftist circles.

There are many right wing arguments I’ve gone to pains to debunk over the years, including:
Gayness is not a choice, but even if it was it’s still not unworthy of respect in a democratic society, hiring practices that prioritise people of colour are not “biased” in a country where POC are underrepresented in many workplaces and specialities, trans women are not comparable with cis men.

But as time goes on I’ve realised that all I’m doing is recycling talking points to shut right wing mouthpieces up when they begin their usual ignorant sermonising. You can not change the mind of someone who has willingly immersed themselves in bigotry, even if it’s more work to continue to cling to and push said bigotry- because the terrifying reality for these people is that they would have to question themselves, realise that the bias is with them, that they are in fact in the wrong, and they’d need to do work on themselves to improve- so the choice comes to continue to cling to bigotry over questioning their own internal bias and ask whether it’s worth keeping that ignorance alive, or letting it die and becoming something else.

The war on woke is essentially a bunch of people claiming that they’re fighting for their freedom – their freedom to remain ignorant in a world filling, daily, with information that proves their choice to stick to ignorance makes them part of the problem.

I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’m told that the fact I’m not willing to compromise and have calm discourse with racists and bigots and scumbags, oh my, is the reason for their continued ignorance- so let me spell this out for you:
We are not your mothers. We are not here to teach you. The resources exist in the world to help you- you need only stop knee jerk reacting with your fragile emotions towards the changes that keep happening, and listen to POC, listen to minorities, read the books that are written about these topics- and realise that when you simply start to address those inner biases you’re doing the same thing we did to become your most terrified title: woke.

So Many Causes, not Enough Time

One of the strangest things someone said to me recently is that they’re surprised I have enough time to work when I’m so busy being a “woke warrior”.

The short answer is: if you care about black oppression, trans rights disinformation or the other glaring issues you see daily – you’ll make time. I’m surprised people have all the time in the world to watch a 1 hour and 20 minute football match which includes kneeling for BLM, LGBTQIA representation and a hugely diverse set of players and still miss the point of the hilariously mistitled “gesture politics” that take place. Again as I’ve argued with someone recently, if you see these things as gesture politics you’re probably likely to not have ever needed to see that representation and therefore are incapable of understanding how much it means to those who do. If you think a rainbow armband or taking the knee are unnecessary then please tack on the words “for you”. Because for those it represents, many are thankful to feel like we’re cared for by others who may or may not be like us.

The mental gymnastics involved in decrying kneeling against racism, only to go on and leave so many racist comments a 19 year old player for your country’s team that he deletes his social media, or to give the usual tired bleating of “the gays forcing it in our faces!” but say nothing when a gay man walking down the street in liverpool is assaulted so badly he’s convinced he is about to die, is quite something to watch play out in real time.

It may be easier to simply start questioning why these things are being introduced to you, why they please those they’re for and why they annoy you so- simply because you’re suddenly made aware that the world does not cater to you exclusively, and that others deserve the same basic experience of existence without conflict that you have.

Wrapping up…

This blog was essentially a place for me to write down my thoughts as I grow more frustrated with the country I’ve been raised in, to get to grips with my own frustrations when it comes to politics. It’s become one of the few things I have that allows me to vent my anger at a world so screwed up that I willingly paid for it to be hosted. I don’t even really care if others read it. I just wanted a space that was mine, where I could write down my thoughts and explore my ideas out loud.

A few people have said they appreciate it and I’m very glad of that. It’s becoming more isolating to hold moral views- I’ve tried to reason with people I grew up with who refuse to let of of bigotry, I tried to gently explain that I’m allowed to exist as a gay man with people who think gay sex is worse than murder, I’ve tried to gently express hope that I’ll be accepted- no more.

It seems that as we’re accused more and more of being extreme, so we have to become that. The country takes drunken lurching step after step to the right, and as we dig in our heels, lean back and pull on the tautened rope we’ve thrown around it’s neck, we become more tired and less capable of patience.

Blamed constantly for “radicalisation”, I’d like the right wingers who throw the labels I’ve brought up in this blog post to ask the question: do you blame us? Do you take ownership for your own part in our radicalisation, as we have to become louder, more indignant, more insistent to work to counteract your hateful rhetoric? Or is it, as is always the right wing way, our own fault: no one is responsible, it’s a hum dinger, clearly people are just magically becoming radicalised by… I don’t know, society, music, drugs, instead of the appalling behaviours of our fellow man- otherwise known as you.