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Comment by naming_the_user

6 days ago

My interpretation is something like:

Step 1 - recognising an advantage e.g. "I am straight/white/Asian/tall/short/whatever".

Step 2 - recognising that it's unearned "I didn't choose it, I was just born that way".

Step 3 - is to hold the belief that because it's unearned that no advantage should be assigned to it, we cannot claim that it's preferable, etc.

To me, what it means to be woke requires the belief in step 3.

That's what makes it a kind of funny insult word, because it's logically unworkable and runs counter to well, literally the entire world. It feels like the kind of classic autistic technical gotcha.

If you're stronger and faster you don't get eaten by the tiger. If you're more attractive you get the better mate. At the end of the day it's just like, you know, grow up, deal with it.

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naming_the_user

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josephg  6 days ago

> Step 3 - is to hold the belief that because it's unearned that no advantage should be assigned to it, we cannot claim that it's preferable, etc.

This is simply a statement against being prejudiced (racist or sexist). We never needed a new concept or word if thats all "woke" meant.

> That's what makes it a kind of funny insult word, because it's logically unworkable and runs counter to well, literally the entire world.

You're completely misunderstanding what someone means when they use "woke" as an insult. I agree with PG here - as an insult, its basically the same as calling someone a prude / prig.

In context, imagine a statement like this: "Ugh shut up woke people, yes - I know you hate kevin spacey. I don't care right now. He's still an incredible actor and American Beauty is still a masterpiece. Shut up. I'm trying to enjoy the movie."

You can replace "woke people" there with "prude" in that statement and the meaning is unchanged. Essentially, I think there's two separate things: First, being against discrimination in all its forms and second: being really annoying about it. Its that second part - the annoying puritanical finger wagging that people are referring to when they hate on "woke people".