Woke Movies

[Unseen]

What today’s woke generation doesn’t get is the value of free speech, even when it’s hateful. If hate speech weren’t allowed, we’d have little tangible proof that our speech is free.

This lack of understanding comes from their years in school being made aware of bullying and the need to refrain from disruptive speech in the classroom context. As a result, they can’t understand that it’s okay for a Nazi, Evangelical Christian who opposes abortion, or climate denier to speak in one of their auditoriums to an audience consisting of people who volunteered to listen. This shortcoming is not good for a free society and especially not in an academic context.

[Unseen]

Schoolyard taunts 1/burglaries 0.

It’s laughable, but this is the sort of shyte extreme wokeism can lead to. I was called four eyes for wearing glasses, fatso because…well, you can guess, and yet I survived and I’m here today generally unscarred by the experience.

Of course, the answer will be “but that was before social media,” which is undeniably true, and yet where is the movement to do something about that?

[Simon Paynton]

Unseen wrote:

Schoolyard taunts 1/burglaries 0.

I haven’t heard anything about this story, and no reputable or mainstream UK media sources are carrying it.  I suspect it’s not true.

I don’t know about hate speech.  People need to be protected from bullying.  But as far as loopy ideas go, it is better for them to be aired and challenged rather than forcibly silenced.

Someone like Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin can do a lot of damage with manipulative disinformation.  So it depends on the context whether malicious bullshit is acceptable or not.

[Simon Paynton]

Simon Paynton wrote:

So it depends on the context whether malicious bullshit is acceptable or not.

Not that strange ideas, that I might not agree with, are necessarily ill-intentioned.  It’s not malicious to believe that the Earth is flat.

[Unseen]

Simon Paynton wrote:

I haven’t heard anything about this story, and no reputable or mainstream UK media sources are carrying it.  I suspect it’s not true.

It has to make the news to be true? According to the Wiltshire Police’s own website one is encouraged to report it and then…

Uniformed officers may take an initial report, after which specialist detectives may investigate.

So, Johnny calls Billy a putz and suddenly some Dick Tracy type is knocking on Billy’s parents’ door. You really see this as a police matter. I’m not talking about a physical assault which, if serious enough, is a police matter but our woke folk would like the government to intervene in far less perilous scenarios.

don’t know about hate speech.  People need to be protected from bullying.

Better than being protected is to have an effective response. Being under someone’s protection doesn’t garner respect, and it’s respect one wants in the end. Respect because one has a bigger bully on one’s side isn’t real respect.

But as far as loopy ideas go, it is better for them to be aired and challenged rather than forcibly silenced.

Agreed

Someone like Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin can do a lot of damage with manipulative disinformation.  So it depends on the context whether malicious bullshit is acceptable or not.

Then one becomes dependent on some “authority” to tell one what to think and how to act. That would be anathema to America’s Founding Fathers.

Lately, it may even be an AI ordering us around. Here’s something I’ve learned as a photographer and it’s something a lot of photographers are having to deal with according to discussions I’ve seen. We need to be careful how we use the word “shoot,” which is a semi-technical term in photography. I had to reword a post where I talked about a model and used the phrase “shoot a girl” in a sentence. Something like “When you shoot a girl in an outdoor setting” (or something like that). I was told no one could see my post because references to violence are against policy. Now, I think a human reviewing the post wouldn’t have done that and maybe future AI’s will be sophisticated enough to take context into account…although that’s scary for a totally different reason, I suppose.

[Simon Paynton]

Unseen wrote:

“Uniformed officers may take an initial report, after which specialist detectives may investigate.”

This text is from the Wiltshire Police page about reporting child abuse, by which I presume they mean sexual or physical abuse.  It’s not for reporting playground taunts.

However, since the story appears in three mainstream newspapers, I’m willing to believe it happened once.  It seems there’s the issue of “non-crime hate incidents” which means

those ‘perceived by the victim or any others to be motivated by hostility or prejudice.’

Around 10,000 incidents are recorded on a yearly basis.

I don’t know the law, so I don’t know what kind of incident they’re talking about.  But if it’s calling someone a freak or something – they’re talking about protecting people from hate speech – that which is “motivated by hostility or prejudice”.  Personally, I would come down on the side of agreeing with them: it’s necessary to protect society’s minorities and vulnerable citizens from bullying, which is what hate speech really is.  It’s not “anything I disagree with”.  I don’t believe that someone who genuinely believes that biological sex can’t be changed, for example, and says so, is making hate speech, violence, or whatever.  That’s crying wolf.  It’s just an alternative point of view that doesn’t have to be motivated by hostility of prejudice.

Unseen wrote:

“Someone like Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin can do a lot of damage with manipulative disinformation.  So it depends on the context whether malicious bullshit is acceptable or not.”

Then one becomes dependent on some “authority” to tell one what to think and how to act. That would be anathema to America’s Founding Fathers.

What I mean is, free speech can be dangerous in the hands of DT or VP because it allows them to manipulate compliant, dim-witted pawns into doing their destructive bidding.

[Noel]

@Davis:

“Woke has become a snarl word, used by those who resist change to old structures that give an unfair advantage to certain people and keep us from giving the respect and equality to all…”

Thank you. I needed someone to explain this to me like I was 10. Have been walking around doing my lawn, cutting the hedges, and power washing my driveway and the word woke is banging around the sides of my brain. I really had no reference or idea about WOKE. So thanks.

[Noel]

“It’s laughable, but this is the sort of shyte extreme wokeism can lead to. I was called four eyes for wearing glasses, fatso because…well, you can guess, and yet I survived and I’m here today generally unscarred by the experience.”

Different times I guess. Maybe our social skills were a lot more developed. Looking at my 34 year son, who works IT and comes home to his place and immediately turns on his Playstation. No social skills what so ever. The outside world must be a really scary place for him. Ask him about friends and he says he has plenty. All on line.

Like I said different for us. We were forced to go outside and play and socialize. We were also brought up to “develop a tough hide”. What ever the fuck that means. Had a friend who told me that for the first 7 years of his life he thought his name was Sonofabitch. He lived with his father, who had custody since his mom passed, and when ever he was up to no good his father would yell out, “Sonofabitch what did you do now?”, “Sonofabitch throw out the trash”. I think he developed “tough skin”.

Wife’s nephew, 15 years old, bullied no end at school and was deemed persona non grata by most of the kids he called friends. He hung himself in his bedroom at around 3:00 am when he knew his parents were sound asleep. He did not have a tough hide. He was a great kid. No one picked up on the signs of the extent of his depression. Parents, school, family, and me could not see it.

[Davis]

Schoolyard bullying is so bloody nasty in Anglo-Saxon countries it is flabberghasting it has taken this long to be addressed. IT is far less of an issue in many countries (including much of continental Europe though not all). I don’t remember any bullying at all when I studied in Germany but in Canada it was so vile and out of control, people were relentlessly and viciously name called, beaten up and harassed for no discernible reason. Teachers did little about it. This led to serious mental health issues, poor school performance and a pointlessly hostile schooling culture.

No unseen, I don’t agree it is acceptable to not intervene with bullying. Imagine the joy that virtually all my Spanish friends experienced going to school without worrying about a hostile and aggressive social atmosphere, pointlessly being bullied, where people generally got along and respected one another. It is possible. It should not be tolerated. It is not acceptable to expect 10 year olds to fend for themselves or just get over vile treatment. You can help students develop skills for fending for themselves in other ways as adults. And even then, bullying in work culture is being addressed in most of the world. My ex was a construction worker and even found the fairly aggressive banter between one another was being addressed and heavily reduced. If you’ve lived in an environment where bullying is replaced with genuinely good natured and non-harmful banter (or just positivity), it is hard to understand why people are indifferent to bullying/toxic environments continuing.

[Davis]

Unseen, free speech is not absolute. If you don’t have any problem with curtailing free speech when it comes to libel, copyright, endangering others (shouting fire in a cinema), then I don’t see why you’d be against particularly harmful hate speech which demonstrably leads to violence and suicide against vulnerable people. Perhaps you don’t care about these vulnerable people as much as you do about copyright law or people being libelled against?

[Davis]

Thank you. I needed someone to explain this to me like I was 10. Have been walking around doing my lawn, cutting the hedges, and power washing my driveway and the word woke is banging around the sides of my brain. I really had no reference or idea about WOKE. So thanks.

Any time.

[Simon Paynton]

Noel wrote:

I really had no reference or idea about WOKE. So thanks.

You might be interested in these BBC Radio 4 programmes:

a 28-minute one-off documentary https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000gkwc

a 5-part series of 15-minute programmes tracing its history https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001jc1k

Both are fascinating.

[_Robert_]

Woke is also a word used to describe the forcing of cultural ideas that lie outside the obvious reality most people experience. The intent can be well and good, but the effect can further alienate and divide.

If every white male character in a movie is a villain and the ‘strong female’ who weighs-in at about 100lbs is gonna physically kick the shit out of the bad guys, well that is just as toxic and as the original problem and unbelievable as well. Kids are impressionable.

This teaches young white guys that a woman or other non-white characters are his enemy and when a young girl thinks she is gonna take on a guy, takes a swing and then gets clocked, well let’s just say she’ll see stars for a while.

I think there are better ways. I see a real brewing issue with resentful guys. They don’t eagerly help women in trouble and even worse this kind of stuff.

Is this the equality we want?

[Davis]

Most people who are dismissed as woke, are simply standing up for their own equality and dignity. I’m sorry, quietly asking people if they would kindly treat others with respect and equality does not work. This is, once again, a conservative overreaction to people standing up for their rights, equality and dignity.

A few decades ago, the reaction was against “equal rights” and that they were demanding too much. The consensus was, just allow segregation to continue. Things are fine the way they are. They are being loud, argumentative, shrill and we are just sick of hearing it.

So it goes with issues today. Transrights, equal pay, representation in the public sphere (still not even close to what it should be), sexual harassment, believing rape victims. It goes on. Dismissing wokeism right now, or overgeneralising about it…is no different to resistance to equal rights or the fight against racism decades ago. Just a different flavour. Consider rethinking kneejerk reactions. Yes, sometimes, like everything it goes too far. So what. If we discredited everything for a minority who goes too far, then everything, absolutely EVERYTHING would be discredited. Marginalised people deserve equality, respect and recognition, and we aren’t REMOTELY close to it, however fine people might think things are. This shouldn’t be controversial.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 9 months ago by Davis.

[_Robert_]

I simply think there are better ways to achieve those goals than the forceful fantasies presented in the media. Unfortunately, it’s causing a huge backwards reaction, a culture war. Gives power to the conservatives who are already prone to believe in fantasies and who are rolling back progressive laws. They actually fear that gay and trans parades are going to sweep into their farm towns and groom the children, LOL.

[Author]

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