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Comment by geodel | Hacker News Reader

Not much better I'd guess. Last time he was news when woke crowd was really after his blood.

I still have yet to hear a coherent and succinct definition of "woke."

It's a smear word for 'people that care about people'

From the perspective of someone left-leaning, it’s an illiberal faction of the left that has very specific beliefs about race, gender, and sexuality that not everyone agrees on, and an extreme but unsubstantiated set of explanations for them and how to resolve them. They’re very good at baiting and switching too, using language that we agree to be good and can get behind, but don’t mean what we think it means. Because of this sophistry, it’s easy for them to denounce their opponents as morally bad people for rejecting their views, when their views weren’t the good things we thought it meant in the first place. This moving of goal posts is precisely what you’re doing right now.

Someone who explains the same thing better than I do: https://helenpluckrose.substack.com/p/defining-woke-and-woke...

Oh, I am sorry. You are right. It's not intended as a smear word at all. Thanks for your explanation.

Oh, it is absolutely a derogatory term - it's just that the people it is applied to are really not 'people that care about people'.

Ok, try me. What is a non-derogatory way to describe people that are called woke derogatorily?

So from this definition, Richard Stallman is woke. Because his views on sexuality are the ones that are unusual, and when the debate arose, the people criticizing Stallman were denounced as morally bad people for "being against freedom of speech", when this view (saying that everyone who debate is a bad person because they cannot disagree because freedom of speech) wasn't the good thing we thought it meant in the first place.

I think it's the trick with the "woke" definition: people who think it's a good definition always end up given a definition which describe them very well or describe the group that they are claiming is the victim of the big bad wokes.

The best definition that exists is "woke are people that defend a view point I don't like. I'm using the same strategy as them to defend my own view point, but because I like my views, I think my views are reasonable, and because I don't like their views, I think their views are unreasonable"

Maybe I should have been clearer and used "particular", "flavour", or "brand" in place of "very specific" to describe the kind of beliefs they hold. In other words, I'm not using "very specific" to denote any arbitrary beliefs that are unusual in general. Rather, I'm referring to a set of beliefs that are more or less distinct (which is elaborated clearly in the link I referenced in my original post). In case I wasn't clear, a corollary of my clarification is that your example isn't relevant.

This shouldn't come as a surprise really, certain words have been in vogue in the last few years (i.e. "systemic", "white supremacy", "inequities", ...), and they all share a common theme/premise about race, sexuality, and gender. Associated with these beliefs are people who use these beliefs to justify illiberal behaviour. Is it then unreasonable to denote this observable phenomena with a term, which just so happens to be called "woke"? This is the same line of reasoning which has led to the (rightful) creation of terms like "right-wingers" to denote illiberal people on the political right, and their associated beliefs. There's nothing here that's partisan or conspiratorial. So what's your deal with describing observable phenomena with some word?

Perhaps you should consider that your final paragraph more aptly describes your position than it does mine.

After his blood: He doesn’t believe in statutory rape. In other words, he supports child sexual abuse. He’s a cretin.

That's a ridiculous mischaracterisation of what he said and you know it.

He said some vaguely questionable thing about the definition of the word assault and people sought to interpret that in the absolute worst way possible.

He's a weirdo, and he says some stuff that clearly indicates there's some social stuff he just doesn't quite understand. Like the fact that "assault" or "rape" doesn't necessarily mean an outright violent physical assault.

I mean who the hell expects RMS to have a nuanced understanding of interpersonal relationships?

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