Can you guys tell me what exactly "woke" means?

[CatWoman]

I'm seeing it more and more spouted by republicans.

Is this their new catchphrase of the year???

[StrictlyRockers]

1. I originally heard it come out of Black culture.

And it meant you were waking up to the social injustices in the world.

[Shermann]

6. Yep and now hijacked by cynical right wing white pseudo-intellectuals like Steve Hilton nt

[Catherine Vincent]

50. Yes, they have turned "woke" into a negative

Just as they did with "liberal".

[uponit7771]

38. +1,

[Aristus]

2. Pretty much.

It was 'SJW' before that.

And 'Political Correctness' before that.

It's just a recognition that there are people on Earth who aren't white, Christian, heterosexual, and cisgender, and that they matter as much anyone who is.

Republicans hate that...

[CatWoman]

3. what's "sjw"?

[Nittersing]

5. social justice warrior (I had to google) nt

[Hugh_Lebowski]

9. Nobody has ever called you an SJW?

I've had a buncha wingnuts call me that in years past. It was like their favorite insult.

You must avoid those kinds of people. Smart

[FakeNoose]

20. And here's me ... thinking it meant single Jewish woman

Actually I had no clue what it meant.

[PatSeg]

32. Ha, ha, ha!!!

Now I can see that.

I didn't know what it meant either and I'm tired of looking up acronyms.

[Wounded Bear]

36. It used to mean that in the personals columns of newspapers...

[Caliman73]

8. This encapsulates it beautifully

It's just a recognition that there are people on Earth who aren't white, Christian, heterosexual, and cisgender, and that they matter as much anyone who is.

Republicans hate that...

[Hugh_Lebowski]

10. +2 also a fan (nt)

[Iggo]

4. Newly aware of widespread injustice.

As in you just woke up.

[abqtommy]

7. Enlightenment, understanding and woke all mean the same thing. Trust a reTHUG

fascist to be a fool while thinking they're cool.

[Caliman73]

12. It isn't about being cool. It is about killing the vocabulary.

"Woke" had meaning within Black activists and popular culture. Conservatives have had success at turning phrases with some social power into "dirty words".

Remember what they did to "liberal" in the 1990's. You had Democrats running away from the word because it was toxic. They did the same to "politically correct".

Conservatives retain an outsized power to their numbers in society because they play on the fears of moderates who they can convince that Black and Brown people, gay people, and other undesirables are coming for them and will rob them of all freedoms.

[betsuni]

11. I'm puzzled when people say political correctness, cancel culture, woke, social justice warriors,

etc., are right-wing creations because none of them are. Not saying you are, CatWoman, but I see it a lot. Republicans give those words a different meaning from the original, as usual.

[AZProgressive]

15. SJW definitely is

The word comes from Gamergate and from the alt-right of Gamergate.

Social justice warrior (SJW) is a pejorative term used for an individual who promotes socially progressive and liberal views, including feminism, civil rights, gay and transgender rights, and multiculturalism.[1][2][3][4] The accusation that somebody is an SJW carries implications that they are pursuing personal validation rather than any deep-seated conviction, and engaging in disingenuous arguments.[3][5]

The phrase originated in the late 20th century as a neutral or positive term for people engaged in social justice activism.[1] In 2011, when the term first appeared on Twitter, it changed from a primarily positive term to an overwhelmingly negative one.[1] During the Gamergate controversy these negative connotations had increased usage which overshadowed its origins.[1][2]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice_warrior

[betsuni]

19. According to my information it isn't. Was first used in 1991 by Canadian union activist

Michel Chartrand, not used as an insult until 2008.

[AZProgressive]

21. I remember Gamergate

The Gamergate controversy concerned an online harassment campaign, primarily conducted through the use of the hashtag #GamerGate, that centered on issues of sexism and anti-progressivism in video game culture. Gamergate is used as a blanket term for the controversy as well as for the harassment campaign and actions of those participating in it.

Beginning in August 2014, a harassment campaign targeted several women in the video game industry; notably game developers Zoë Quinn and Brianna Wu, as well as feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian. After Eron Gjoni, Quinn's former boyfriend, wrote a disparaging blog post about Quinn, #GamerGate hashtag users falsely accused Quinn of an unethical relationship with journalist Nathan Grayson. Harassment campaigns against Quinn and others included doxing, threats of rape, and death threats.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_controversy

Those that defended the feminist video game developers were called 'SJWs'. The reason why I am familiar with this is because I play video games. Milo and Candace Owens built their careers taking the alt-right's side in Gamergate. I didn't agree with them I want better characters & more intelligent video games.

[TwilightZone]

25. Your excerpt contradicts your claim.

"The phrase originated in the late 20th century" which clearly indicates that it didn't come from Gamergate. Gamergate just made it a negative.

[AZProgressive]

26. I never heard of the term until the alt right started using it

Same thing with the word "cuck".

[Treefrog]

39. I first heard the word "cuck" here.

Oddly, I learn a lot of right wing crap here since some people insist upon posting that stuff.

[PatSeg]

33. Yes, republicans will take anything

positive and pervert it to mean something negative. Personally, I am tired of catch phrases and "woke" just sounds too superficial and cliché to me.

[AZProgressive]

13. 'Woke With a Hard R': How the Right Created a New Dog Whistle

The word first blossomed in pop culture in an Erykah Badu track back in 2008. On “Master Teacher,” she breathily whispers about how she’s trying to find her way to a beautiful world (and herself). As the afro-crowned crooner goes on to dream about this world, she poses and answers a question: “What if it were no niggas / Only master teachers? / I stay woke.”

Throughout the rest of the song, Badu uses this refrain, “I stay woke,” imbuing it with a mystical yet practical meaning. It’s a way to speak to the dual social consciousness of Black Americans. We can never be just one thing. Even when we chase the American Dream, we must “stay woke.”

(Snip)

Then, Ferguson happened. After Michael Brown’s murder, the BLM movement leapt into the national consciousness. With it came wokeness, a culture unto itself. “Woke” soon started to serve as a shorthand among people calling for the world to wake up to the systemic racism that was causing Black men and women to become hashtags at an alarming rate. Next, as often happens, white people seized on woke as a handy catchall. As such, woke morphed into an online signifier, but one generally used by young, well-meaning white people who were urging others to become aware of the racist agendas operating against Black life. Woke became a semi-hip racist critique.

Quickly, though, woke also became the opposite. It became a polite slur, a dog whistle used to mock anyone who dares to suggest that American history and culture is racist, and argues that life in America should radically change based on that understanding. This new cultural meaning for “woke” helps to explain why, when Senator Josh Hawley recently lost a big book deal, he didn’t pause to reflect on the fact that he’d incited a riot in the nation’s capitol that claimed five lives; instead, he blamed “woke culture.”

https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/woke-with-a-hard-r-how-the-right-created-a-new-dogwhistle

[OneGrassRoot]

44. Thank you for this. n/t

[WheelWalker]

14. Socio-Political Kenshō

[speak easy]

16. Anything they don't like

Human Rights/
Women's Rights/
LBGTQ Rights
Zero tolerance for Racism
Environmental Protection

and especially
Racial justice !

[jmowreader]

17. In the hands of the Republicans, it's the new "(N-word) lover"

[PatSeg]

34. I hadn't thought of that

but I am afraid you are right.

[Sympthsical]

18. I consider myself an anti-woke progressive

Wokeness is when social justice is taken too far, to the point it gets absolutely ridiculous. And in many places, it becomes toxic.

I'll give an example that's currently creating a lot of turmoil and rifts in the LGBT community.

There is, on Twitter, a cohort of the Trans community that has been going after people for not accepting them as women when it comes to romantic options. It began being called "genital preference". So, for example. If you're a lesbian, and you only want to pursue a cis woman as a romantic option, you're saying you only want to date women who were born with female reproductive organs.

Seems reasonable, yes? I'm a gay man. The men's tackle is kind of part of the bargain in that one. We've spent decades telling people our sexual orientation is not chosen and is immutable. I'm sexually attracted to male genitals. It's just how my orientation works.

Well.

There is now a bunch of MtF trans activists roaming around Twitter and other social media calling gay people - particularly lesbians - transphobic because they only want to date cis women. Imagine, a lesbian doesn't want to date someone with a penis.

(And let me just note here, when was it ok to reintroduce the word "preferences" when it comes to same-sex orientation? Didn't we just spend twenty to thirty years correcting people on that one?)

Anyway. It has become a total shitshow. Now gays and lesbians are being harassed for their orientation by the more radical segments of the trans community.

I abjectly refuse to have my orientation and attraction to the physical features of males referred to as a genital preference or transphobia. No rational human alive should be engaging in that kind of illogical nonsense.

And yet here we are.

Racial politics is full of this stuff as well. I've noted it in other posts on the topic, but Asians were being called "white adjacent" all over the place for the past few years. As if what they suffered just didn't count as much. That got real, real quiet with the rise in awareness of anti-Asian discrimination and violence. But it is undeniable that the wokesters really didn't care or like Asians so much. They actively promoted that thinking.

I'm against that kind of toxicity. A place like DU isn't really a place to discuss it because people generally don't like it when their own side is called out. But it exists, and I resist it.

There's a saying. "Don't become too open-minded or your brains will fall out." Brains have spent the last ten or so years falling out. Nah, thanks. I'm good over here treating people with decency, respecting choices, fighting institutionalized sexism, racism, and homophobia, and generally leaving people alone to pursue their lives as they wish.

[Croney]

22. That is very interesting; thank you for your perspective.

[cinematicdiversions]

23. The "genital preference" trans folks are basically incels with a different coat on.

They also have a lot in common with the more radical portion of the HAES crowd. All three groups are basically founded on the idea if you won't have sex with me you are racist, phobic excetra... (Though in all fairness only the Incels are shooting up the place over it)


Yes, some of the woke often hate Asians, Jews, Hispanics from Chile and Argentina, North Africans, and other people they consider too white. (Rachel Dolezal famously attacked white Hispanics who tried to talk in her classes.). It is often absurd to the point of parody.

Meanwhile, real people with real lives really don't care. Like you said better than I could they are "treating people with decency, respecting choices, fighting institutionalized sexism, racism, and homophobia, and generally leaving people alone to pursue their lives as they wish."

[Sympthsical]

27. That seems to be the consensus

I admit, I do not spend a great deal of time on Twitter following trends. I just have a feed of people I find interesting. I tend to not to read outside of it. I had known about the trans/lesbian issue for a few years. My lesbian friends had complained that they were getting harassed on dating apps about it. I've never experienced that as a male. I can count on one hand the number of times someone FtM hit me up on apps, and I never had an issue with them. It was only after #superstraight hit Reddit (which I do read a lot of) did I really get an eyeful of just how horrible it all had gotten. I mean, the trans people in my life do not act this way at all. I was like, "What, exactly, in the hell is going on?!"

To your other point, yeah. I've mentioned before, my social/family life is overwhelmingly Asian. I've watched how they've been treated by the "woke" among us for many years. It's a big reason I never really fell in with that segment of the social justice crowd. It's literaly drenched in racism. And the anti-white stuff has gone far too far. It's one thing to combat institutionalized white racism. That's a worthy endeavor we should all participate it.

It's another thing to blanket hate white people, talk all kinds of racist trash about them, and face zero consequences as a result. That's where I fall out. There was this hilariously over the top anti-white racist diatribe here on DU a few weeks ago. It stayed up. While many spoke against it, many others were falling all over themselves to give it a thumbs up. I said nothing. It was too over the top ridiculous to take seriously.

So, yeah, I'm not part of the woke cohort. They're authoritarians, too. They want the world ordered to their dictates and no one else's. And since I'm anti-authoritarian, I don't play ball.

[Scrivener7]

28. None of that really has anything to do with "wokeness."

[uponit7771]

40. No its not, the term in context came from black culture and wont be appropriated to mean stupid

... shit the right say it is.

Anecdotes of out of balance privilege doesn't change the meaning of the word mostly black folk came up with has changed

[Politicub]

41. I would not consider anything you wrote having to do with being woke. But thanks for

sharing that your genital preferences (I think?).

And your blanket condemnations don't help your case. You said, "But it is undeniable that the wokesters really didn't care or like Asians so much."

How utterly absurd.

[Treefrog]

42. I'm a gay woman and reading this makes me SO glad I'm out of the dating game, so to speak.

I guess I’d be called transphobic now. What a world.

[Celerity]

54. They can try and call you that but never give them agency over your autonomy. If someone tries

to do that to you, they are an abuser and they can go fuck themselves, as I sure as hell will not (besides the fact I am married and monogamous). I consider myself extraordinarily lucky to be the age I am (24) and therefore reaping the benefits of the queer, gender, and racial struggles for equality and dignity (I am a cis-gendered lesbian of colour) by those who went before me. They opened the doors of acceptance (I detest the concept of 'tolerance', as that is NOT acceptance at all) to a far greater degree than they were even 20 years ago. I will never allow that course to be reversed and submit to some niche power play move to try and disempower me, false frame me, or to try and force anyone else's orientation onto me at such a profoundly personal level. I am what I am, I love what I am, love whom I want, and I refuse to sink.

[struggle4progress]

24. Isn't that the past tense of "weak"?

The day before yesterday, I felt woke in the morning, but I'm A-OK now

[milestogo]

30. I didn't know adjectives had past tense.

[Celerity]

29. 'If You're Woke You Dig It', NYT, May 20, 1962

If You're Woke You Dig It; No mickey mouse can be expected to follow today's Negro idiom without a hip assist. If You're Woke You Dig It

By William Melvin Kelley
May 20, 1962




https://www.nytimes.com/1962/05/20/archives/if-youre-woke-you-dig-it-no-mickey-mouse-can-be-expected-to-follow.html

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1962/05/20/140720532.pdf

[Treefrog]

53. Ha! What a great find!

[jcgoldie]

31. I think a couple of decades ago the right called it...

“Political correctness” ... which seemed to mean a person was aware that racism and sexism exist... the horror! 😱

[Wounded Bear]

35. Like most RW buzzwords, it means what they want it to mean at the time they use it.

Which means it doesn't really mean much of anything other than being an implied slur of some kind based on possession of the RW secret decoder ring.

[Roisin Ni Fiachra]

37. Being conscious of injustices in society, and seeking to correct these injustices. nt

[Baitball Blogger]

43. What it means to me:

It is an awareness that helps minorities tell their stories and share their experiences. It legitimizes our pov. We have arrived and are ready to be taken seriously.

Republicans are simply freaking out, because they know what this means to them. Substitute the word "woke" for "uppity" and you'll understand their dog whistling.

[DFW]

45. I always thought it meant this:

What used to be the visible disturbance in the surface of the water after a boat has traveled through it, but after so much time, that the surface of the water has regained its original undisturbed appearance.

Then, again, I may not have gotten that exactly right..............

[BarackTheVote]

46. Can I just point out the irony

that the Right’s favorite conspiracy theory, QAnon, is built entirely around something called “The Great Awakening”? Meanwhile, they hold “woke,” something that came out of the Black community, up for constant ridicule. It’s racism, Lebowski, plain and simple.

I truly hope we’re savvy enough to not let them set the terms of engagement this time; they need to be called out. They no longer and can never have the moral high ground. They’re disgusting, and what they’re trying to do to undermine BIPOC advancement is disgusting, period.

[SunImp]

47. Proud to be woke

Link to tweet

[BarackTheVote]

49. Also

“Social Justice Warrior”
“Liberal”
and “Bleeding Heart.”

[MineralMan]

48. I think it has to do with recognition of one's own unearned privilege.

If you truly recognize that, you are bound to be "woke."

[Silent3]

51. Like many words, I think it started with a good meaning and migrated to a mixed meaning

Part of that is, of course, conservatives spitting the word out with venom in their voice, trying to rebrand a good liberal idea as a bad one.

But another factor in the word taking on a negative connotation is people on the left taking it to obnoxious and/or hypocritical extremes.

At its best, for me at least, "woke" means simply being more aware of whatever privileges you're fortunate to have, and being more understanding and supportive of those who don't enjoy those privileges.

[jalan48]

52. It means becoming aware of other people and our environment. Republican's want the world to

never change. It's a viewpoint that's very appealing and foolhardy.