Woke: The Weirdest Insult

What is it? What isn't it?

There is no more inflammatory derogatory term today from the far right than for someone to be ‘woke’. I have been called ‘woke’. I know many others have, too. Woke from what, exactly? In what sleepy state are those who are not ‘woke’ stuck?

Merrian-Webster defines ‘woke’, in this context, as “aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)”.

By that definition, I am most assuredly woke, and if you haven’t unsubscribed from me yet, you probably are too.

The question of what is ‘woke’ and why it matters is back to the fore in light of the Paris Olympics, which seem to be providing more political and Internet meme fodder than actual sport competition.

Take the case of Imane Khelif, the Algerian boxer whose win has been over-shadowed by allegations that she isn’t a she, from a right wing that will, in the same breath, tell us that there are exactly two sexes and that there is no grey zone. If there is no grey zone, on what grounds are they questioning her gender? Never mind that Algeria, the country which she represents, makes any form of transexuality or homosexuality a criminal offence that comes with incarceration, adding to the general implausibility and misogyny of the allegation.

I was recently asked out of the blue if Michael Ignatieff is ‘woke’. It was an oddly specific question about someone long gone from Canadian political consciousness. My immediate response was that “of course. He’s not an idiot.” I expanded my response when questioned: “He's either a homophobic misogynistic racist incapable of empathy, or he's woke.”

If we break that down, the far right spends a great deal of energy making life difficult for people who aren’t cisgendered heterosexuals. All the more ironic given the numerous cases of homophobic conservatives being exposed as gay, leading one to wonder how much of homophobia is actually about repressed people hating themselves. Described by the right as unnatural, homosexuality has been documented in hundreds of species; homophobia has so far only been documented in humans.

To be woke is simply to recognise that other people’s sexuality is their own. You don’t have to agree with or accept it, but your disagreement or discomfort is your problem, not theirs. You may not understand why someone growing up in a society which still promotes traditional gender roles may feel they have been assigned the wrong gender, but I assure you the numerous people who have taken the massive steps of physically transitioning to the gender with which they identify do understand.

If someone chooses to identify themselves with a new name or a gender other than the one they were labeled with upon visual inspection at birth, you can be assured they have done so after considerable, deep thought. When Conservative governments take steps to prevent people from following this path, they are putting affected people’s healthy lives in danger. Homo- and trans-phobic people also tend to use deadnaming, addressing people by their previous, abandoned names after transition, to ensure the rejection is comprehensive.

The misogyny piece is just as interesting and is linked to the above. The right sees women as child-bearers with little else to offer. Take the bizarre case of Trump vice presidential candidate James Donald Bowman. Sorry, I mean James David Hamel. Oh, right, I mean James David Vance. We wouldn’t want to inadvertently deadname him, after all. Vance’s now infamous quote that the country is run by a bunch of “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices they have made” speaks volumes about how he sees women in general. His wife’s defence that he only wants to hurt people who don’t want kids rather than only those that don’t have them is all the stranger.

The critical piece here though ties the misogynistic and racist pieces together. The ‘pro-life’ movement is a relatively new phenomenon, and is the core battle of the religious right that has taken over Conservatism in the United States and is attempting to do so in Canada as well. It is well documented that the pro-life movement was created and promoted as a proxy for segregation after the civil rights movement technically ended it in the US. Preventing abortion and birth control was — and is — about controlling minority populations and disempowering women, not about serving any gods.

To be woke is simply to recognise that people can make their own choices about their own lives, whether it be about wanting or having kids and the use of birth control, or having careers or lives of their own; that gender need not be linked to roles. Once again, the right’s discomfort with the lives and decisions of others should not, should never, be the problem of those making those decisions about their own lives. Basic empathy is not within the unwoke’s capabilities.

What really gets the right up in arms and throwing the ‘woke’ label around though is anything to do with race. Critical race theory (CRT), at its core, is the idea that social structures in our society are racist whether or not individuals are expressly so, and that the history related to that has to be taken into account in policy and education decisions. CRT is the absolute lightening rod of the unwoke right. It is a wholesale rejection that largely proves the point.

To wit, back to our friend Vance on one side, on his Indian wife: “Obviously she’s not a white person, but I love Usha, she’s such a good mom.” And to Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris on the other: derided as a “DEI hire” by her opponents.

What’s a DEI hire? Someone hired as part of CRT generated policy to ensure historically disadvantaged demographics get a fair shake. That Kamala is among the most qualified presidential candidates the US has ever seen is irrelevant to the unwoke. All the right sees is a childless non-caucasian woman running for President, and it presses every one of their buttons.

So what is the opposite of ‘woke’?

I’m going to go with ‘weird’.