These are the same thing, and for the same reason.

It’s the latter.

“Woke” is mostly used nowadays as a pejorative by folks who are worried that their “tits or GTFO”-style post histories might actually have real consequences and are involved in a harried attempt to rewrite contemporary social mores in their favor.

It is also used (in the US) by naive, misguided, and mostly older people that are genuinely trying to signal some sort of connection to progressive politics, generally with limited knowledge of them.

Either way it’s a word that I personally use as a sign not to engage with the person speaking because either way it’s somebody asking for (or demanding) a free education about stuff they refuse to google.

A bit of both, IMO.

That is what it meant; i.e., that you open your eyes and start seeing the injustice around you. And then the right-wing media machine found out about the term and turned it into a catchall insult, like they do with so many terms they appropriate from the left.

It's just the latest iteration of what happened with phrases like "trigger [warning]" or "politically correct."

It strikes me as a real stretch. The effect of taking the red pill is like an LSD trip.

LSD by the way does not wake you up from hallucinations. It causes them. Are you referring to psychedelics raising one's sense of connection to the world around them?

I don't know if you've seen the fourth movie but it basically makes fun of attempts to interpret the Matrix as a metaphor like this, with a trans metaphor being one of several interpretations of the Matrix Trilogy pitched by the wacky Warner Brothers marketing department. This is not played as a serious interpretation. It seems awfully reductive to say the movies just mean that one specific thing. (Incidently in the video game Matrix Path of Neo the Wackowskys break the fourth wall and discuss the theme of choice versus fate.)

LSD causing hallucinations is the mainstream interpretation of reality. The characters in The Matrix believe the things they see after they take drugs are real things, and the things that they see without drugs are the fake things. But the things they see on the drug visually resembles a bad acid trip.

However, there's a VERY LOUD yet VERY SMALL minority of people that try to "out-woke" everyone else. On reddit, I recently had someone tell me not to use the acronym "POC" and to spell out "People of Color" because POC can also mean Piece of Crap. I whole-heartedly rejected their comment and told them it was a deliberate bad faith interpretation in an attempt to "out-woke" me and it just made them insufferable. I asked if they scolded electronics engineers for referring to a "surface-mount device" as an "SMD" because "SMD" can also mean "suck my dick", or if they even go a step further and say they shouldn't use the word "mount" because that can be a sexual term which might offend sexual assault victims.

They deleted their comment.

Back on topic, "woke" has also been hijacked by right-wing media to also refer to "Cancel Culture". CC is also another problematic term, because to some, CC just means "responsibility for your shitty opinions", while to others, it means "simple disagreement". The problem of course is what makes an opinion "shitty" is incredibly subjective. Certainly, someone who is very vocal about how they consider any non-white race to be inferior is shitty, and I think deserves to get "cancelled". But some people have genuinely learned and improved themselves, and yet people still try to cancel them.

the puberty blocker exists solely to give them the time to choose, it's not the same thing as transitioning itself. Denying puberty blockers is letting nature force the choice.

Along with your suggestion that "3 year olds are being given genital surgery" as another commenter highlighted - like it or not you are repeating bigoted conservative talking points here and I think what you are seeing is not "I have to walk on eggshells to avoid upsetting people" but people's valid and legitimate negative reactions to bigoted opinions that you are espousing.

For the record, just because OAN is even more reactionary than you, doesn't make the things you're saying centrist, they're still reactionary and bigoted.

This is not my suggestion, I am saying that this is what the right think what the left wants for everyone. I know this is not a thing that happens and is complete bullshit.

> For the record, just because OAN is even more reactionary than you, doesn't make the things you're saying centrist, they're still reactionary and bigoted.

Apologies if you misunderstood, I should have rephrased it, this is mostly what people complain about during off-corpnet casual team chats and whatnot re: eggshells. I don't think that they are/were reasonable opinions myself and I am fully aware that giving puberty blockers after puberty is rather pointless, for example.

I am Indian but I speak English as a second language and it feels like a lot of older hyper-conservative coworkers are more at ease to openly discuss these things with someone they think is from the same background and in their language.

Giving puberty blockers (steroids) to children cause irreversible developments (undersized genitalia, irreversible higher pitched voiced, etc. to males) and absolutely should not be given. Not allowing children to go through puberty is a crime against their humanity.

If you cared about these kids you would learn about why they want puberty blockers rather than suggesting we torture them by denying them medical treatment because of some concept of "natural".

Wrong. Giving water to a dehydrated person is a natural medical treatment. Your entire premise is now disproven.

>You know what's natural? Infant mortality. Nature sucks.

You know what's natural? Children having identity crises and not being mentally developed enough to know the long term effects of their decisions. Nature sucks.

>If you cared about these kids you would learn about why they want puberty blockers rather than suggesting we torture them by denying them medical treatment because of some concept of "natural".

If you cared about these kids you would learn about why they want puberty blockers rather than suggesting we torture them by pumping them full of steroids to destroy their bodies and denying them their natural development because it's politically expedient.

"Treating" "trans children" is a crime against humanity. Much the same way lobotomies, FGM, etc. are.

This is false. You question ask a minor about the consequences of a procedure and judge if they understand it by how they respond.

But it's clear you, personally, are not capable of doing such a thing because you would instead prefer gaslighting.

Wrong. That is true.

>You question ask a minor about the consequences of a procedure and judge if they understand it by how they respond.

OK groomer. This is the same logic pedophiles use. Children are not legally nor mentally capable of making such decisions. Full stop.

>But it's clear you, personally, are not capable of doing such a thing because you would instead prefer gaslighting.

Projecting about gaslighting is one of the signs of grooming. You're right, I'm not capable of doing something as morally bankrupt like grooming children.

There’s nothing bigoted about this, and you’re just using that language as a political weapon to demonize and guilt dissent.

This of course does not happen, which is what makes it such a perfect bogeyman.

    The enemy is both weak and strong. “[…] the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”

"Libs" (or whatever the villain of the day is called) are so terrifying we're cutting off baby penises with a lawnmower in full view of our cheering public but so weak that all we need is a single person to call us out in a nasty email to completely defeat us (please send money to our campaign against lawnmowing baby penises).

It seems pretty natural to denigrate your enemies as well as play up the fear depending on your goals at that particular moment.

If I had to boil it down to a single line the issue with "the right" from "the left"'s side, it would be that the right is "intentionally heartless".

Not stupid or intentionally fascist, just, intentionally heartless. That's a far cry from the Right's rhetoric of "Commie loving tree hugging libs" and that "We should kill them all and let God sort them out", etc. I'm sure the reality is far more distressing than my imitation thereof.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/12/11/hatred-li...