Discussing what the issues with "wokeism" are

 So, I kind of realize that part of the reason my view on wokeism was recieved so poorly on r/aspergers was because I did not properly define it, and that that may have led to some misunderstandings. After all, "wokeism" is a weird topic these days. Most people who rail about it don't seem to know what it is, and when a definition is forced, such as recently in Florida when they banned it and then had to later define it, it often comes down to accepting things like systemic racism, sexism, and poverty. This is kind of stupid in my opinion, as I acknowledge these things as fact to some extent.Yet, I still oppose the concept of wokeism, why? Because to me, wokeism isn't about the ideas themselves. it is about the attitudes, cultures, and behaviors that surround these ideas. And that's what I'm going to discuss here, and then I'm going to go back to the r/aspergers situation and apply what I discussed to that issue. 

So what are the core issues with wokeism?

1) Rigid adherence to critical theory to the point that it becomes a defining feature of their worldview, personality, and self worth

Again, I want to make clear, the issues with wokeism are not the ideas. The ideas are nice. They have academic support. But I would argue that anyone well versed enough in sociology as a topic to have a detailed knowledge of critical theory, should also be well versed enough to understand that critical theory isn't all there is to the world.

Critical theory was a lens created as an offshoot of Marxism, applying the principles of Marxist oriented conflict theory to issues of race, gender, sexuality, and other identity groups. It is intended to shine a specific light on issues that certain subgroups in society face, and to bring attention to those concerns.

However, "woke" people, or as I like to call them, SJWs, tend to take things a bit too far. Their entire worldview is defined by critical theory. Everything in the world relates back to race relations, or some sort of microaggression, and blah blah blah. And that is one of the key problems. It's fine if this theory informs one's worldview, but to define it is kind of dangerous. There are other theories out there, and other ways to see things. people who so rigidly associate with it to the point that it becomes a religion need to go outside and touch some grass already. I know I have my own ways of looking at things, but that's what I keep saying about pragmatism, I can turn off those theories and look at things in other ways. And I often do. And my overall worldview is one in which I tend to view things differently. "Postmodernism" (the "Understanding the Times" term for "wokeism") is a nice lens through which to view the world, but it is only one tool in a toolbox. But in modern times, everyone has to become extremely polarized and run to the furthest extreme possible, and a lot of people have chosen to treat this stuff as a religion or a cult. And that is dangerous. 

2) Aggressive evangelism and purity testing

A huge problem with woke people is that they not only become religious adherents to this "postmodernist" worldview based on critical theory, they are also aggressively evangelical. It's not enough that they believe this stuff, their sense of extreme moral absolutism requires that they spread it, and that ultimately, you have to believe it too. They will say things like "if you're not actively anti-racist, you are racist". This is a variation of the good old "if you're not with us, you're against us", expressing the moral absolutism expressed by Anakin Skywalker and George W. Bush. It is common in my experience that even mild deviations from the expected behavior of an adherent of this ideology are heavily looked down upon, and treated with ire. I will go more into detail on this a little later when I get to the concept of moral policing, but I want to treat that separately, and address another topic first. 

3) "Virtue signalling"

This is controversial in our society, as people who are not in their little moral in group tend to very quickly recognize this stuff, but people who are within the ideology typically do not recognize it. Often times, when this idea is brought up, SJWs will often act like this isn't a problem and that we are just seeing things. Gaslighting behavior is also a common feature in these groups, but I will not be dedicating a topic just to that. I want to discuss virtue signalling here.

So what is virtue signalling? According to google, virtue signalling is:

the public expression of opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one's good character or social conscience or the moral correctness of one's position on a particular issue.

"it's noticeable how often virtue signaling consists of saying you hate things"

 Virtue signalling tends to have an obnoxious and self righteous quality to it. That is by design. Because one of the key points of virtue signalling is to...signal to the world how virtuous you are. You are one of the good guys, you understand how the world really works, and by throwing out some obnoxiously self righteous statement, you can stroke your own sense of self ego while teaching some poor soul the "right" way to think about things. 

In a lot of ways, virtue signalling is about signalling one's place of belonging in a social group, with other people normally responding in a way that affirms the original statement, thus giving a massive stroke to the ego of all involved. In other words, it's a massive circlejerk. Literally. 

But the point of virtue signalling goes beyond that. It often acts as a speech check to test one's character and committedness to the group's ideals. If one person virtue signals, you are expected to virtue signal in return. If you do not virtue signal in return, people notice that. If you dare express an opinion contrary to the virtue signal, then there is a problem, and things can become hostile real quick.

Think about it, if one is expected to be actively anti racist to not be racist, then one is expected to have a positive duty to be an activist for anti racist causes. They are expected to virtue signal. And if you do not virtue signal, then this causes a problem. Even if they do not say anything right away, they notice. I mean, I generally try to keep hostility toward wokeism to a minimum on parts of my social media with more active intervention with friends and stuff like that, mostly out of respect for them (as some of them are "woke"), but once, I got into a disagreement with a friend, and they pointed out that i never "speak out" about woke issues and blah blah blah. Well, who says that I have to do that? other woke people, of course. You're not only required to be a member of their little clique, you need to actively virtue signal too and play the social games involved. Wokeism does use social games like this in order to act as a mechanism to enforce conformity.

And as I said, if you actively reject the virtue signal's moral lesson, or even once, use a semblance of free thought to argue against it, then you are labeled excommunicado in the group, and may face social consequences for doing so. Which brings me to the final point.

4) An active hostility toward deviation from the norm

Wokeism does NOT like deviation from its moral mandates. You are expected to be a good believer in the ideology, and if you do not, there will be consequences. These guys are so convinced by their idea of right and wrong that anyone who does not believe the same is just evil (see point 2), and must be punished. These sentiments also follow from self righteous virtue signals in and of themselves, stuff like "we cannot tolerate intolerance", and that "free speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences."

Essentially, because they are morally righteous, and trying to make a better world where everyone is included and blah blah blah, anyone who dares not disagree with them must be a moral reprobate, they must be wrong. Even more so they must be in line with...with....fascism! Which is why they're so quick to call anyone who doesn't agree with them a fascist.After all, if you don't agree with them, you must hate minorities, women, the poor, what have you. They are convinced by this, and will attempt to character assassinate anyone who doesn't agree with them.

They also believe in policing behavior to the greatest possible extent, and imposing significant social consequences on those who disagree with their ideology. They believe in defriending people who do not express the right values, and let me tell, you I have lost friendships with the woke for all kinds of reasons, including the following:

1) Not acknowledging that Andrew Yang is doing white supremacist dog whistles because he dared talk about issues associated with white people

2) ACCIDENTALLY misgendering a trans person (they were in that weird in between state where they were like born female, but kind of acted male, but didn't actually transition, so it was like that weird grey area where I forgot)

3) Standing up for a mentally ill friend who accidentally said something not PC and got castigated for it.

4) Celebrating Hillary Clinton losing on election night, not because I like trump, but because i hated her guts at the time given the hell she put us through in the 2016 election. 

5) Refusing to vote blue no matter who

Need I go on? That isn't to talk about other forms of social sanctions these guys employ. They will use whatever institutional power they get to toe their line, and anyone who doesn't abide by that will get booted. Take note of what's going on on reddit where SJW moderators take over subs and then ban people merely for expressing certain viewpoints they don't agree with. A few lolworthy bans worth pointing out over the years:

1) Arguing against adding a BLM styled flag in a video game, by arguing that the game should remain apolitical (it was a science fiction game and recently removed another similar police styled flag because blue lives matter morons were using it as their virtue signal). I got banned for a week. Why? Because "human rights aren't political". A virtue signal. That's what I got. F them.

2) Controversy erupted on a meme sub after OP used the "f bomb" (you know, the three letter anti PC one that was common in american lexicon until SJW ideology took off). I pointed out that the term had uses other than being a derogatory slur for gay people, referencing south park and their usage of the word to mean "inconsiderate harley riders". Ban. Just for that. Not using the word, just pointing out that the term is not categorically a hate term and that its usage is broader than that. I appealed it, and I got self righteous circlejerking in response there too.

3) Various subs just for disagreeing with a policy they implemented saying "anyone who expresses X opinion gets banned". Sometimes this happened when I didn't even post in the sub itself. I posted on a more general sub talking about that sub. Opinions included anything as innocuous as wanting to buy the new harry potter game, to expressing pro life views (which i disagree with but believe people shouldhave a right to express).

 

4) Various subs just for daring post in another sub that THEY DID NOT LIKE. If you post in an anti PC sub, expect all of the PC subs to detect your comment and auto ban you from their subs. It's ridiculous. I've gotten banned from several subs just for that. Oh, and these guys also actively try to pressure reddit admins to remove those subs from reddit, claiming they're "hate subreddits." Now, I admit, back in 2015 I was for them removing LITERAL hate subs, but back then, the bar was so low it was like "watch(n words) die" and stuff like that. Yeah, maybe a sub like that IS better off not expecting. Now it's anything that shows any conservative leaning at all. It's like they're actively running conservatives off of reddit. 

 

I could go on and on. But yeah, these guys want to actively police content to ensure that no one is left on these platforms but them. And they justify this by saying that "free speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences".

And it goes further. These guys will use cancel culture to try to ruin peoples' lives sometimes. I know someone who will actively go around reporting people to their employers if they see them saying anti PC things online, in an attempt to get their bosses to fire them. Let me put this another way, they're using institutional coercion to try to ruin someone's life financially, for daring to say things online that go against their ideology.

And of course, they will try to also punish celebrities who dare go against the grain. When Roseanne had her little ambien inspired trip causing her to say some black person looked like a monkey, BOOM, she was killed off in the show, she was forced to divest from the show, and they changed the show from "Roseanne" to "The Conners". 

Or take, again, JK Rowling. There is intense social pressure against buying the new Harry Potter game because she's a "TERF", with people on one subreddit even threatening to ban anyone who says that they bought the game. Im gonna be honest, I dont like harry potter, but i paid far more close attention to the game simply because of the controversy. SO they're inadvertently "streisand effect"ing this crap here. But yeah, they're screaming so loud about how this woman is a transphobe and anyone who buys who game is supporting bigotry and blah blah blah, and they try to impose active consequences on people for daring to go against their dogmas. 

This is why I say that these guys are a fundamental threat to free speech. To be fair, DeSantis and his anti wokeness crap is too. I wanna make that clear. Seriously, F that guy. But, these guys are like a cult. Like, literally. This kind of behavior is the kind of behavior expected from a highly militant and evangelical religion. By expelling anyone and imposing social consequences on anyone who dares criticize the group's ideas, the group maintain's solidarity through authoritarian means. Those who question the group are cut off from their social circles, making their life MUCH more difficult in hopes to force them back to the fold, while those who still maintain the ideas maintain the group's integrity. The group is both protected from assault in this way, deviation is deterred, and solidarity encouraged.

5) A final point: this stuff is literally brainwashing

Howstuffworks.com has an interesting article on brainwashing that I've found very useful at various points of my life. It discusses thought reform, mostly in the context of a country like North Korea, and mentioned how brainwashers attempt to break down one's identity by convincing them that they are bad, and then trying to build them in in such a way that they are good. This is intended to undermine someone's self esteem, make them feel guilty, and then force them to change their ways. I made an interesting parallel when I blogged on atheistanalysis before coming here in which I looked at how Christianity is literally brainwashing. The article no longer exists, but the long story short is I basically broke it down to the point that Christianity uses the same kind of brainwashing process, convincing people that they are evil via mechanisms like sin and original sin, and how the salvation story is essentially an attempt at thought reform similar to brainwashing. By channelling one's guilt and accepting Christ as one's savior, a bad person becomes one of the good guys, and gets to start life anew, while being "born again". 

Postmodernism, ironically, or maybe not since Noebel actually managed to call it, also behaves like a religion. It has the same "mind virus" techniques of making one feel guilty due to things like privilege and the past wrongs of their identity group, tries to manipulate people with stuff like privilege and white liberal guilt, and ultimately serves as a form of behavioral reform to change how the person thinks and to make them an adherent of their belief system. This really is the new "religion" of the left. And a huge reason I tend to be so resistant to it is because of my dedication to free thought and the rejection of organized faiths without sufficient evidence. I did not leave Christianity, just to put up with THIS. And I will continue to be a vocal critic of this belief system when it calls for it. They do not have power over me. They might try to virtue signal, and bully me, and push me out of online spaces, but they cannot change my mind. I admit, a lot of atheists have gone down this path. I have discussed how in some ways, postmodernism has replaced secular humanism on the left as the religion on the left, much to my dismay. I've also expressed how the democrats use this religion to enforce conformity to their own brand without having to do anything. That said, I do want to discuss some of the social consequences of this, and how this stuff works in the wild, using real examples I've come across.

How the left uses woke ideology to enforce conformity on their side

This shouldn't be anything new, but the left constantly uses acts of virtue signalling and social justice politics to act as a unifying base on its side of the aisle. How do you enforce an ideological consensus without actually doing anything? Why, you just appeal to a bunch of identity groups susceptible to this stuff, look at the entire issue through those lenses, and then bully and virtue signal people into submission. 

In America, we have two parties. Because of historical forces, one side of the aisle is made up almost exclusively of white people, and is more predominantly male. This means that everyone else is thrown into the other side. So most people of color, women, the LGBT+ community, etc, are all liberal. And due to the historical forces of the previous party realignment, the democratic party has gone all in with being a multicultural, socially progressive party, but an economically moderate party, winning over a sliver of white males who are highly educated, affluent, and who are themselves susceptible to woke ideology. In some ways, these groups are more responsible for wokeism than even the identity groups they're intended to serve. In a way this ideologies serves LITERALLY as a secular church for these people, in which they can virtue signal all they want and feel good about themselves, without actually doing anything in the real world. It actually serves to reinforce the democratic status quo, and to enforce conformity to its values. 

 

We saw this regularly in 2016. In 2016, the democrats would constantly "play the race card" so to speak. They would speak so self righteously about how Bernie, ya know, the dude who has been fighting for minority rights all of his life and was even arrested in the 1960s for protesting segregation, doesn't get black people. We get constant virtue signals about OMG THE BLACK VOTE and stuff like that.

These are virtue signals. In the context of online discussions, these are often speech checks too. The goal is to see how one reacts. It's a statement that's INTENDED to be polarizing and provoke response. If one adheres to the woke religion, they won't see much of a problem with it, they'll just go on about how the other person is right and bernie needs to "get it". What is "it" and how do you get it? That's the neat part, you don't. It's a circle jerk of social conformity. It's an in group out group thing. Either you're "with it" or you're not. There's no real metric of how one can get good enough to be part of the special elect few white people who "get" black people, like Hillary happened to be. It's as if the talking point was designed in order to enforce conformity around clinton. And you can either get on board and prop up the circlejerk...or...you can fight.

So what happens if you push back? Well, then they call you a racist. They can say you dont care about black people and other such things, and paint you into a corner. They did the same thing with sexism, saying anyone who wouldn't vote for clinton was sexist. Even if you happened to support jill stein because you didnt support the woman who could win. It's an ever shifting goalpost in order to force social conformity around whatever they want to do. And you're put in a position of either giving up on your own position and joining the circlejerk, or fighting back getting socially exiled.

Being as blunt as I am, I chose social exile. I will almost always choose social exile over giving up my own voice. I refuse to virtue signal, I refuse to give up my concerns for this stuff, and if my ideas make me less popular, then so be it. I dont care what people think of me. I care about my ideas and shifting conversation toward my own ideas. And that's why I tend to get in so much trouble with these guys. These guys dont like independent thinkers with a spine. heck, their goal is to marginalize us, either through social disapproval, loss of friendships, or even removing us from public spaces if they have the institutional power to do so (which is what makes this mindset among reddit mods so scary to me). 

The same applies to the idea of voting blue no matter who. How do they enforce this? By telling people if they cant' do it for themselves they have to do it for their privileged brothers and sisters and blah blah blah. Rejecting this and pushing back, once again, gets social consequences. ANd there is a lot of hate toward those who refuse to fall in line. Which, given my mentality, just makes me more rigidly against them. Because I will not submit. 

Again, this is a speech check. It's intended to make you respond by saying the right thing. "Oh yeah, you're right. I can't just abandon POC, gee I guess i better vote democrat after all!" is what they want. If you dare assert your own interests, that's selfish, that's privileged. It's a no win situation for you. Either you agree with them, or you invoke their wrath. And because my autism makes me brutally honest, and unwilling to bend to social conventions that i fundamentally disagree with, I tend to not react well to that.

Speaking of autism

So, that brings my back to r/aspergers and the crapshow that happened here. r/aspergers, much like other autism related subs it seems, have fallen to the woke mob. Autism is strange, community wise. It's mostly a disorder (if you can call it that) that affects males predominantly, but it also does affect some women. Transgender people also are far more likely to be autistic, and there is a link between gender dysphoria and autism. 

This creates some tensions within the community. On the one hand, autism is predominantly male, and males are privileged. But at the same time, there is a lot of social pressure for these subs to be inclusive, and this makes them often susceptible to these social justice ideologies. This leads to a sort of duality in the community in which you got a lot of tension between the predominantly white male group of autistic people, and the more woke, socially inclusive group. And because of social pressure and wanting to be inclusive, the woke elements seem to have won out. 

This leads to weird tensions over "inceldom", where autistic males tend to struggle with dating and tend to lack understanding of, or don't care about social conventions, but as we can tell, the woke stuff is highly a social phenomenon. It is mostly enforced at the social level, between people, and often through moderation in communities like these. And because a lot of autistic males tend to struggle with dating, they often are prime candidates to become "incels". Over time, rejection by women, and rejecting of social norms tends to drive some of them to sexism, hating women, and longing for the good old days when men were just expected to ask women out and be persistent and blah blah blah. Wokeism actually changed a lot of the dynamics, made things a lot more complicated, and a lot of people with autism just struggle to get it. And after a while, some will choose to just abandon those norms and become incels. So inceldom is actually a MAJOR problem within the community.

But...the community also wants to be woke, and appeal to the trendy trans aspies and stuff like that. A lot of women on r/aspergers go on about how they "fear" men because they're creepy and don't know how to take no for an answer, and of course, there ends up becoming social tensions, in which the woke ideology tends to resolve....by expelling any men with any incel tendencies.

Merely expressing ANY view on r/aspergers that can be called even remotely incel, gets a ban, as I found out. And yes, they did give a warning not to make "rape jokes" or "incel BS" on that thread, but I really did not feel like my content violated those rules. As a matter of fact, I don't know how we can discuss the issue, without actually delving into the thought process that makes autistic men turn incel. I really do think social justice ideology does that. Because social justice logic is polarizing. As I said, a virtue signal is a speech check. It's an attempt to test one's conformity to that belief system, with severe social sanctions involving refusals to do so. So when they say "well you're not entitled to affection", you're supposed to say "gee, sorry, you're right, i guess i shouldn't just feel like crap for being rejected without even understanding why". And that just doesn't fly for a lot of aspies. Because a lot of aspies, like me, ahve their own developed senses of right and wrong, we dont obey arbitrary social conventions, we often see through those conventions, and we have severe problems with just conforming to crap we don't see the point in conforming to. So you confront an autistic man struggling with dating with a virtue signal like this, and by expelling them from your community for wrong think, you're driving them to the other side.

As I said, this is polarizing, and those who do not conform to this religion often are pushed to the opposite extreme. Which i admit, is very toxic. I dont endorse that extreme. I dont support what the right thinks about wokeism. my criticism is primarily from my own liberal/libertarian secular humanist worldview with an emphasis on freedom of thought. Many rightoids reject social justice ideology for all of the wrong reasons, including: thinking sociology is BS, being fundamentalist christian, thinking they're stupid and just throwing the baby out with the bathwater, blahj blah blah. Many begin to think being "woke", which in their mind, merely means believing in the ideas of systemic problems, is bad, and that that needs to be policed. That's what desantis is doing, and that's very anti intellectual and wrong. No, I recognize the ideas, I support their freedom to openly discuss the ideas, I reject the cult like aspects and all of the social conformity BS that accompanies it. That I want to make clear. 

But, as I said in my previous article, something I've noticed is that most people aren't as smart as I am. Im not saying this to virtue signal my own intellectual superiority, but to point out that in my experience, most peoples' tribalism seems to override their intelligence, and ability to think in a nuanced way. People just fall into tribes and run to the furthest extremes possible it seems, and most people who become anti woke actually DO become the opposite extreme. Which is, quite frankly, just as bad or worse.

So my goal IS to actually prevent people from going down that path. But to do so, you need to stop alienating people where they feel the need to do so. if you arent' woke, and dont conform to that ideology, and find the rules confusing, cliquey, and manipulative, you might join anti woke groups that radicalize you the other way. I dont want people going on 4chan and listening to literal fascist sales pitches and getting their life "back together" because of jordan peterson and his toxic ideology. I dont want people to become woman haters. But, if you wanna prevent that, you gotta address the root causes that cause that, and that means dropping the insufferable circlejerk that drives people away. Rather than ban men with any "incel" wrong think instantly from your community and PUNISH them for daring...have thoughts that you don't approve of, try LISTENING to them, and giving them helpful advice. Not virtue signals. Not self righteous nonsense. Not telling the person they're creepy and that women are LITERALLY LIVING IN FEAR OF THEM, just, being there for them. 

If you dont want people to become tribalistic, you need to check your own tribalism. And that's what I encourage any member of an autistic community to do so here. I mean, it's rough, I've been there, and quite frankly, I actually have come to realize that the social justice crowd has put some really harmful ideas in my head that negatively impact my own self image and lack of confidence. Because we dont really get social conventions. We dont know how to behave, and social justice dynamics just confuse us MORE. Trust me, if you don't become an incel and reject those norms outright, what ends up happening is you become me where you are so socially inhibited you literally dont know how to approach people for fear of doing something wrong, and that affects you mentally too. And even though I know that that stuff is toxic, I also know that well, it's very easy for women who happen to accept those attitudes to destroy your self confidence. Trust me, been there. 

Again, that's the consequence of my MIDDLE ground position. Understanding that this stuff is bad for me but being forced to agree with the logic to the point that I'm extremely inhibited, have zero self confidence, and live in fear of rejection. It's not healthy. But that's what this stuff teaches. And yeah. 

Anyway, this isn't about me, although I did feel the need to discuss my own experiences with it. But I really do think that if people want to stop turning people into incels, they need to stop teaching them toxic social norms that either destroy their sense of self worth, or cause them to reject those norms to the point of becoming radical on the other side. Social justice ideology has a serious extremism problem, and that extremism fuels extremism on the other side. 

And you could say, but doesn't their extremism fuel extremism on this side? Yes, it does, but at the same time, I believe my humanist approach based in liberty is a much better counter than this woke nonsense. Both sides are extremist ideologues with harmful ideas and ideologies. My side is more moderate, still represents left wing values, and disarms people more, as it avoids falling into the worst pifalls the woke do.

The problem with the woke is all of those characteristics mentioned above leads to an ideology with no checks and balances. Extremism is encouraged, moderation is dissent and leads to social consequences. SO it's just a massive example of groupthink in action. The way to counter group think is to have a dissenter challenge it, which snaps people out of their spell, but here, dissenters who think ratiionally are enemies of the movement, and treated as such. And that's why that's so harmful.