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A fact from Woke appeared on Misplaced Pages's Main Page in the Did you know column on 13 January 2017 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
  • Did you know... that Bloomberg Businessweek asked, "Is Misplaced Pages woke?"
A record of the entry may be seen at Misplaced Pages:Recent additions/2017/January. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Woke.
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This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Allyborghi (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Watkina, Abamzai, Ujwalamurthy.


Term becoming internationalized

  1. elespanol.com - 19 series y películas de derechas para escapar del tsunami woke
  2. standaard.be - ‘Ik word wat moe van al dat woke-gedoe. Ook mannen kunnen voor vrouwenrechten opkomen.’ Conner Rousseau bekeert zich tot het antiwoke-kamp (in De Standaard).
  3. volkskrant.nl/[https://www.volkskrant.nl/columns-opinie/veel-critici-van-cancelcultuur-doen-gemakzuchtig-en-luidkeels-hun-beklag~b5f0a5a2/ - ‘Radicale woke- en genderactivisten .. en wie zich niet aan het ondoorgrondelijke lexicon van de ‘wokies’ houdt, wordt simpelweg opgeheven.
  4. document.no

No coverage given non-Right critics seeing Woke activism as a new Puritanism( &c)

  1. gq-magazine.co.uk - Woke or not, the culture wars make hypocrites of us all: Whether it's woke puritanism or anti-woke cynicism, participation in the culture war is also a guarantee of hypocrisy and bad faith. That's because nobody can live up to the standards they set for others
  2. 31aug2021theAtlantic.com (Anne Applebaum): "THE NEW PURITANS: Social codes are changing, in many ways for the better. But for those whose behavior doesn’t adapt fast enough to the new norms, judgment can be swift—and merciless.espite the disputed nature of these cases, it has become both easy and useful for some people to put them into larger narratives. Partisans, especially on the right, now toss around the phrase cancel culture when they want to defend themselves from criticism, however legitimate. But dig into the story of anyone who has been a genuine victim of modern mob justice and you will often find not an obvious argument between “woke” and “anti-woke” perspectives but rather incidents that are interpreted, described, or remembered by different people in different ways, even leaving aside whatever political or intellectual issue might be at stake. .. "
  3. thos. edsall's 14jul2021 weekly nytimes column: ".. Democrats, if they want to protect their fragile majority, must be doubly careful not to hand their adversaries ever more powerful weapons." Quoting andrew sullivan (although labeled somewhat libertarian, a biden voter/early obama booster): "Look how far the left’s war on liberalism has gone. Due process? If you’re a male on campus, gone. Privacy? Stripped away — by anonymous rape accusations, exposure of private emails, violence against people’s private homes, screaming at folks in restaurants, sordid exposés of sexual encounters, eagerly published by woke mags. .. "
    etc.
    --Hodgdon's secret garden (talk) 01:24, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
    As has been explained many times on this page already, opinion pieces are primary sources. Opinion writers' careers depend on their ability to deliver spicy takes, not sober, reasoned analysis, and this article already cites too many of them IMO. Articles should be based on reliable, secondary sources to avoid giving undue weight to such manufactured outrage. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 01:55, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
It's not unbiased editors' job to decide whether Woke or anti-Woke sensibilities/outrage are manufactured or legit and Sangdeboeuf's appearance to think it is might reasonably indicate hi/r not belonging on this page. See Misplaced Pages:Impartial: "Misplaced Pages describes disputes." The article at present engages in them via favoring only non-disparaging analyses, whereas good-faith perusals of wp's guidelines en toto would entail screwing obvious skews. You know, denial is more than a river in egypt and willfully ignoring wikipedia:Balance's imperative about "describing opposing views clearly, drawing on secondary or tertiary sources that describe the disagreement from a disinterested viewpoint" and its corollaries throughout the guidelines doesn't enable truthful claims of unawareness such exist.--Hodgdon's secret garden (talk) 17:31, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
I do think we should describe the non-right critique of 'woke' clearly, drawing on secondary or tertiary sources. Have you come across any? You also appear to be manufacturing a straw man version of Sangdebouef's argument to suggest that they shouldn't participate in this discussion; Sangdebouef did not suggest that it's our "job to decide whether Woke or anti-Woke sensibilities/outrage are manufactured or legit". In fact, in suggesting that we look for secondary source coverage of the view, they are pushing us toward exactly the procedure to avoid making such a decision. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 18:09, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
The editor seems to be hovering over the article: eg I just tried to make a subhead refer to "disparagement" instead of "pejorative" & the claim was made that WP must rely solely on sources that so label it. Come on. Academic inquiry requires that varying viewpoints' airings, pro and con arguments' consideration. Each instance of this is called opinion. 2ndary sources making note of these opinions confer on them so-called notability. If certain editors here believe criticisms of woke socially unacceptable, sure, such prominence given on WP to the designation of all instances of the same as "perjorative" at least makes sense, in that light. But, not from the standpoint of our guidelines which emphasize absolutely stringent neutrality on issues! Indeed, prominence given on WP to this designation as applied all such criticism makes it seem WP -- instead of our following the form: So-and-so argues thus; so-and-so argues thus -- endorse solely "So and so argues thus" but without rejoinder, criticism thereof inferred as socially unacceptable. Per my editorial senses -- and my voice counts -- is that "pejorative" carries baggage of association with eg d*ck or whatever respective sexual organ for a person-perceived-of-as-overbearing of one/another gender...suffix -tard; British; n-word,; boy in reference to a man; blah blah blah: which are allsocially unacceptable. (Or, if ever borderline acceptable, never so in polite company.)--Hodgdon's secret garden (talk) 18:33, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
If you continue to feel that Sangdebouef's conduct here is inappropriate, the first step in conduct dispute resolution is to discuss it with them politely at their user talk page. As far as this article is concerned, I think the sources are better summarized by pejorative/derision than disapproval. Your edit made some other improvements that I intend to restore, so thanks. Firefangledfeathers (talk) 18:48, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
It can be seen the, well, the um-teen times section reiterates "Writing in The Guardian, the commentator Steve Rose writes that the political right has "weaponised" the term woke" seems a bit much. Rather than its reading, "the Right", blah blah blah, "the Right," blah blah blah, "the Right"), when unbiased & full-spectrum reportage includes a slew of other criticisms, at minimum, the section should include, by way of balance, such reportages as by journalist-&-historian Anne Applebaum (see my above quote of her), plus utilize such as her as a 2ndary-source providing requisite notability to such nuanced & non-Right opinions about woke of John McWhorter / of such victims of woke outrage as given media coverage by Applebaum (and others) such as Ian Buruma and others).--Hodgdon's secret garden (talk) 20:29, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
Applebaum's piece is a polemic, not a reliable secondary source. Further, she is using the term "woke" and "wokeness" – in quotation marks, mind – as a synonym for moral panic. She is not commenting on use of the term by others, as a secondary source would. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 22:36, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
As I have stated already on this page, I don't think the Steve Rose column is a useful source, and I would be fine with removing it entirely. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 23:18, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
Misplaced Pages:Balance's imperative about "describing opposing views clearly, drawing on secondary or tertiary sources that describe the disagreement from a disinterested viewpoint" – I quite agree with this approach. However, none of the quoted pieces are "disinterested". They each have a point of view to advance. That's the whole purpose of opinion essays. The third essay hardly mentions "woke(ness)" at all; Sullivan's use of the term is basically a throwaway which the author, Edsall, does not bother to elaborate upon. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 23:15, 6 September 2021 (UTC)
Epigraph: "The fatal attraction that totalitarian power has for contemporary intellectuals." (Newsinger, J. (1999). Destroying the myth: George Orwell* and soviet communism. Critique, 27(1), 55–80.) Which attraction, as well, illuminates Sangdeboeuf's look of approval on"even-handed" journalism while squinting atas mere "polemic." Which, at its heart, really amounts to wp:Censored/systemic bias, wherein the only lens allowed in coverage is one that superficially aligns with the false dichotomy ofObjectivity versusPartisanry. The Orwellian sieve whereby our article's skewed to the extent that wokeness is associated with self-censorship, without this criticism being levelled through a partisanly-political lens, is null.
______
  • Orwell: Outspoken novelist, essayist, journalist, critic Non-Right-wing -- I'll repeat this: non-. right. wing. -- political writer and super-committed Socialist allegorically/otherwise penning only-too-obvious observations garnered from his experiences with the in-practice & inherent "fascism" of the Communism among the Republicans in Spain and what he had learned from investigations into Soviet "temporary" measures of state-capitalism toward the self-governing, classless and government-less society of the future. (Whose trenchant observations, under Sangdeboeuf's non-ideal editing regime, would need be discarded in favor of "objective" reportings that, by lucky circumstance, (by way of this inherent & systemic bias in favor of ersatz "progressive" trajectory to history) inherently align with the If-your-not-with-the-struggle,-you're-against-it conceit.

    --Hodgdon's secret garden (talk) 16:12, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

"Pejorative" section title

The use of the term by opponents of perceived wokeness is best summed up as "pejorative". According to the sources cited:

Among conservatives, 'woke' has been adopted as term of derision for those who hold progressive social justice views.In the six years since Brown’s death, 'woke' has evolved into a single-word summation of leftist political ideology This framing of 'woke' is bipartisan: It’s used as a shorthand for political progressiveness by the left, and as a denigration of leftist culture by the right.n culture and politics today, the most prominent uses of 'woke' are as a pejorative — Republicans attacking Democrats, more centrist Democrats attacking more liberal ones and supporters of the British monarchy using the term to criticize people more sympathetic to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.Some people say being woke is a sign of awareness to social issues, others whip out the term as an insult It has become a common term of derision among some who oppose the movements it is associated with, or believe the issues are exaggerated.
  1. Smith, Allan; Kapur, Sahil (May 2, 2021). "Republicans are crusading against 'woke'". NBC News.
  2. Romano, Aja (9 October 2020). "A history of 'wokeness'". Vox.
  3. Bacon, Perry Jr. (17 March 2021). "Why Attacking 'Cancel Culture' And 'Woke' People Is Becoming The GOP's New Political Strategy". FiveThirtyEight.
  4. Butterworth, Benjamin (26 June 2021). "What does 'woke' actually mean, and why are some people so angry about it?". inews.co.uk.

"Denigration" and "derision" mean belittling, attacking, ridiculing. This is far more than just "disapproval" or "criticism". --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 00:36, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

A new "hays code"?

  1. McWhorter's nytimes piece about woke's semantic shift, pos to neg, along with this latter's meaning's involving a close association with new regimes ofself-censorship

    (First, the following's from his 2016 book): "Why do civilized euphemisms such as disabled so often get reclassified as quaint or even insulting?Why is it so hard to truly accept that there is a 'dialect' called Black English? Why does William Powell in The Thin Man say that he is going to round up all the sus­PECTS instead of the SUS­ pects? (I’m sure you’ve always wondered about that!) Why have emoticons caught on to such a degree?This book will answer all those questions. The answers require understanding a mere five ways that language changes. The question is not whether a word will undergo one or more of these processes, but which ones of them it will go through.
    _______
    *from nytimes review: "I loved 'Words on the Move,' but it’s possible I am suffering from Stockholm syndrome. I keep saying to people who aren’t particularly interested, 'Let me list the five ways that new words are — and always have been — created out of old ones. First we must consider modal pragmatic markers.'" (_Me_: Q. Hmmm-so then what are these 5 ways, hmm? A. : (1) expanding (2) contracting (3) receiving emotional colorings (4) becoming their implications And, this, via "meaning creep, by analogy with the term mission creep—bit by bit, new shades creep into what we consider the meaning of something to be, until one day the meaning has moved so far from the original one that it seems almost astounding.")

    McWhorter believes "words referring to issues societal or controversial .. will often need replacement about once a generation." More:

    "white kids sound a little Blacker in casual speech than their parents .. 'Stay woke' on white people's T-shirts is a sign of coming together. .. A white college friend, very much of the left, usedwith a quiet sprinkle of irony, but sincerelya certain complex of leftist beliefsobviously the proper ones for any reasonable person to have .. The result will be resistance .. 'Woke' has just undergone the same processhow we got from 'politically correct' to 'wokethe path from 'crippled' to 'handicapped' to 'disabled' to 'differently abled.'"

    Re censorship:"omething 'problematic'in modern usage so often implies not just that something is abstractly a problem but also that it ought to be classified as inconsonant with civilized sensibility and cordoned off from it in some way. Especially on the left, 'problematic' is being drawn onto the treadmill to step away from the stodgy, menacing, backward associations that the word 'censorship' has taken on, while engaging in what many would treat as the same project."
    Hodgdon's secret garden (talk) 20:04, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
  2. robt tombes (cambridge historian) - "A far more insidious ideology — if it can be called an ideology — is extending a deadening grip not only over the educational system, but over our whole cultural life, and this time especially in the English-speaking world whose attachment to intellectual freedom has proved feeble. We tend to call it 'wokeness' " --Hodgdon's secret garden (talk) 20:49, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
  3. david denby (2016) - "after 1934, when censorship seriously came into effect, more imaginative people made better movies and still scored at the box office. Censorship can cripple, inhibit, and destroy, but, in forcing artists to invent, it can liberate ./. Thomas Doherty insists that the Lord-Quigley document—which became the Hays Code—was not 'a grunted jeremiad from bluenose fussbudgets, but a polished treatise representing long and deep thought in aesthetics, education, communication theory, and moral philosophy.'" --Hodgdon's secret garden (talk) 22:05, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
  4. winter2020claremontreviewofbooks (William Voegeli-sen. ed.) - Upon realizing that their Twitter feed is not their country, many solipsists will withdraw, transferring their allegiance from the real country that has betrayed them to the artificial one that respects and affirms their every idiosyncrasy. Others will react with anger, grimly determined to transform their country into their Twitter feed—and do so by any means necessary. The latter will, at the same time, impose ever more stringent loyalty oaths on their Twitter feed, creating a 'turbocharged tribalism,' in Ms. Lewis’s phrase, where the 'stridency of highly polarized voices online…has a chilling effect on less engaged and less confident tweeters.' --Hodgdon's secret garden (talk) 23:39, 7 September 2021 (UTC)
  5. +more mcwhorter (from july): "language policing has reached a near fever pitch, out of a sense that labeling common terms and expressions as 'problematic'—that is, blasphemous—is essential to changing society." The "Prevention, Advocacy & Resource Center" @-brandeis "teaches us to not refer to people as survivors of a traumatic experience because it implies that what they went through is their essence" but-to "describe them as having experienced or been impacted by something bad." "ell someone who has been a victim of racist abuse that they really ought to phrase it as though they have merely experienced it" No. "To be sure, the list specifies that some people may prefer the terms now being battled" "allowing terms such as victim to be used when rhetorically powerful"--Hodgdon's secret garden (talk) 00:47, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
  6. There is traditional liberalism. Then there is the following POV expressed in Vox. "BothWeiss andSullivan are frequent critics of the modern left’s position on identity issues; in their departure letters, they both describe their publications as in thrall to a rising tide of left-wing censorship sweeping the country’s media.Abstract appeals to 'free speech' and 'liberal values' obscure the fact that what’s being debated is not anyone’s right to speech, but rather their right to air that speech in specific platforms like the New York Times without fear of social backlash." Yet, it seems sometimes that only Vox's prism's allowed reflection on the pages of Misplaced Pages!
  7. Andrew sullivan jun2020: "To be woke is to wake up to the truth — the blinding truth that liberal society doesn’t exist, that everything is a form of oppression or resistance, and that there is no third option. You are either with us or you are to be cast into darkness." "The puritanical streak of shaming and stigmatizing and threatening runs deep.The new orthodoxy — what the writer Wesley Yang has described as the 'successor ideology' to liberalism — seems to be rooted in what journalist Wesley Lowery calls 'moral clarity.' He told Times media columnist Ben Smith this week that journalism needs to be rebuilt around that moral clarity."
  8. Looking for answers to how calling a trough, a trough* has become untenable <Despite the usual phrase's Classical provenance it's fashionable to avoid it>, I find the answer in the journo Will Storr. From ed west's review: "'When a high-status individual does something,' Storr writes, 'our subconscious copy-flatter-conformprogramming is triggered and we allow them to alter our beliefs and behaviour… We mimic not just their behaviour but their beliefs. The better we believe, the higher we rise. And so faith, not truth, is incentivised. People will believe almost anything if high-status people – whether priests, generals, actors, musicians, TikTokkers – suggest them.'"
  9. Hence, per Misplaced Pages-approved reporting, the triad of liberal linguists & thinkers mcwhorter, pinker , and chomsky all three are< takes a beat >right wing, as well as the kneejerk deletion when nuance is attempted to be brought to WP's overgeneralization of this sobriquet in questioned.--Hodgdon's secret garden (talk) 16:12, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
    ______
    *npr.org - "University of Vermont's Wolfgang Mieder in his 2002 case study Call a Spade a Spade: From Classical Phrase to Racial Slur: 'To call a spade a spade" entered the English language when Nicholas Udall translated Erasmus in 1542.'Mieder concludes his case study with the argument that 'to call a spade a spade' should be retired from modern usage: 'Rather than taking the chance of unintentionally offending someone or of being misunderstood, it is best to relinquish the old innocuous proverbial expression all together.'" --Hodgdon's secret garden (talk) 21:23, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
  10. anti-wokester Peter Boghossian's tweet from within the last hour: >>>>>"I've been deluged with requests to appear on conservative media regarding my resignation fromU. And yet, I don't consider myself a conservative. I've received zero requests for interviews with liberal media. I’d enjoy having a conversation with you."<<<<<--Hodgdon's secret garden (talk) 22:00, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
See Misplaced Pages:No original research. One can cherry-pick a handful of opinion writers and label them "anti-wokesters" as well as "liberal" or "centrist", but this does not outweigh the descriptions cited in reliable, secondary sources. --Sangdeboeuf (talk) 22:08, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
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