Category: Woke

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Idaho Republicans oppose providing free tampons in high schools because this would be too woke. This is beyond meaningless. I understand we don’t have enough money. I understand I don’t want to pay for them. I understand it isn’t our responsibility. Now I may not agree with those positions but I do understand them. I also believe I could have an intelligent disagreement with anyone who takes those positions. I may not change their mind but I can talk about it. But too woke? There is absolutely no there there.

Sometimes a girl attending high school will need a tampon. The question is will the school provide one for her free of charge. Woke has absolutely nothing to do with it. Christian women need tampons. Conservative women need tampons. It is a universal need for most young women. When the government provides a high school education to girls, there is a pretty good chance that, at some point some girls will need one while at school. There are three possible positions — the school provides them free, the school provides them at a cost, or the school leave it up to the girl to provide her own. But the school will have to take some position on the matter because it happens.

So when you say too woke, you are saying nothing. What does too woke mean here? It is an evasion. It is meant to shut down arguments with people who are afraid of being called woke. And nobody likes to be called woke these days. Well, fuck it, so I am woke. Now tell me why you don’t want to give free tampons to high school students who need them?

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I blogged the other day that I was afraid the Democrats would go down to defeat over a peripheral issue such as the use of personal pronouns that matters to only a small section of the population. Well, ask and ye will receive. I saw a good example of what I am worried about. Bette Midler objected to the use birthing people and menstruators instead of the now forbidden word – women. Women is not inclusive of trans women or trans men or something like that. I am not exactly sure why women is non-inclusive but it is. I am sure I will be accused of being transphobic but I am honestly don’t understand what the problem is.

And that is kind of a problem for Midler’s critics. I’m still baffled on why woman or women is wrong. I read a particularly nasty piece by Alison Stine in Salon charmingly named “Language is flexible, unlike boomers Bette Midler and Jordan Peterson” Someone else must have felt the same way about the title as I did because boomer has been removed from in the current title and from the article. I think this, alone, says a lot about Stine’s article. You really shouldn’t write about the importance of being inclusive and respectful of what people want to be called with a title that is clearly condescending to older people. The whole tone of the article is that old people just need to get out of the way of this hipper and with it and obviously better generation of people. And, then, dare to say that these older people just need to learn how to be more inclusive and flexible. Doctor heal thyself first.

Midler was upset because people were using birthing people and menstruators instead of women in an article about abortion and healthcare. Again Stine fails to live up to her own standards. ( I am assuming Stine is she. I didn’t see a preferred pronoun for her in the article. My apologies if I am wrong). Her whole point is that we should respect people’s wishes and call them what they want to be called. Midler wants to be called a woman not a menstruator or a birthing person. It seems simple enough. But women isn’t inclusive enough for Stine. Birthing people and menstruators somehow is although I am not sure why. Not all women menstruate nor bear children — so they are actually excluding a lot of women here. I recommend pre-menstruators, post-menstruators and a non-birthing menstruators. If you then, toss in menstruator and birthing people I think you will have covered most of the female population. Does everyone feel included now?

When inclusive is so inclusive that you are alienating and confusing your audience, its best to rethink your approach and not scold your audience for objecting. When talking about abortion as healthcare issue, 99% of the people who need abortions identify as women. So when people use menstruator and birthing person they are meaningless to much of their audience whereas everyone understands woman and most adults knows why she might need an abortion.

How can people be confused by something so clear as menstruator and birthing person. Well, let me tell you. I was trying to explain the Midler tempest to two 70 plus gay men who are both liberal Democrats. Neither one knew what I was talking about and couldn’t understand why anyone would use menstruators or birthing people instead of women. I always thought one of the main tools of persuasive communication was making yourself understood to the other person. So, if you want to be inclusive, then stopping using the language of the academic elite (I swear every time I see CIS gendered, I have to look it up to make sure I understand what they are talking about) and use terms that can be found in the language of every day Americans. Terms like woman for instance.

Stine talks about the need to be flexible because language changes all of the time. Great, I agree with that. But birthing people and menstruators are new words. Menstruators is so new that it isn’t even in spell check. Contrary to what Stine thinks, the society as a whole has not adopted these words. Scolding people for not incorporating these terms immediately into their daily language is a terrible way to get people to change. Particularly a person like Midler who is more often than not an ally for liberal causes. She also is sympathetic to trans people in a way that most people her age will never be. But calling her, and people like Macy Gray, J.K. Rowling and Martina Navratilova, as transphobic is a losing battle. They are not Ted Cruz or Sean Hannity or Donald Trump. If transphobic is so broad to include all of these people, the term ceases to have meaning. Midler is on the right side and we need to keep her there for the difficult elections ahead.

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I am pretty much a free speech absolutist. Protecting idiots from free speech seems like a hopeless task. If some grifter is telling you to drink Clorox to prevent you from catching a disease, then I am pretty sure some day you will hear that message or a similar one and drink the Clorox. Besides the impossibility of protecting idiots, I also want to know what people are saying no matter how horrible or wrong it is. Not hearing bull shit, on the other hand, gives me the illusion that everyone in the world is in alignment with me. The ugly truth keeps me more in tune with what is actually going on.

However, this, oddly enough, still keeps me at odds with the people who endlessly whine about the horrors of cancel culture. Nobody has stopped them from talking. Yes banning incorrect and hostile speech is limiting speech. I agree. On the other hand, it clearly isn’t stopping free speech because these cancelled people or their supporters are writing incessantly about the dangers of cancel culture. The most prominent cancelled person in the world is Donald Trump. He still is talking. Journalists still are talking about what Trump says. Trump supporters still are hearing his commands. So, then, how has banning him from the Twitter cancelled him.

What people who are afraid of cancel culture are really saying is that there shouldn’t be any consequence to free speech. For example, they don’t want to be called racist or for people to boycott their businesses or for them to be removed from Twitter because of what they have said. But, isn’t that a fundamental part of free speech? You say something and then I get to react to what you say. What the anti-cancel culturers really want is to be free to say anything they want without repercussions. This is not free speech.

Cancel culture, for me, at least, has created a much more pleasant environment in which to talk. I can’t remember the last time I heard the casual use of racial or ethnic epithets. There was a time in the not so distance past when people said them openly and fearlessly. When I was 17, in the 1974, I took the El train in Chicago with my grandfather. At each stop, he would announce in a loud booming voice the ethnic group who resided near the stop. His designations were horrifyingly politically incorrect. I was mortified but nobody else seem particularly bothered by his narration and that is because there were no repercussions for the person saying them.

People wanted to be nice. I wanted to be nice. Besides, the people who used racial epithets were in every other way nice people, nothing I would say to them would change their mind. Why get into an argument with someone, particularly people who might have power over me, people like relatives or teachers or bosses, when if I can just ignore it and it kind of goes away. Until the next time. The lies we tell ourselves to keep our mouths shut.

Today people are much more careful. Most people, and that includes many people who might like to use racial epithets, know that if they use derogatory language they face consequences. Apparently, it is unpleasant to be called a racist and better to keep one’s mouth shut in order to avoid be called one. Good. I am absolutely fine with that. Let them censor themselves.

You see they are smart enough, or most of them are, to censor themselves. This means they are smart enough to know when they have slipped into racism or a topic that might be considered racist and therefore modulate their behavior accordingly. A new norm has been created about how people should talk with each other. One I much prefer because it saves me from having to hear the rubbish that comes out of their mouths. It also proves, although I suspect that they wouldn’t admit it, they do know what racism is and what is not. They are not some innocent lamb wandering into a field full of cancel culture wolves. They fully understand the situation.

In the meantime, please stop talking about how you are being cancelled. You are absolutely free to say anything you want but, now you are also aware that I don’t have to listen to your bullshit without you hearing my response. The choice is yours.