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Comment by graemep | Hacker News Reader

I do not agree. The same division is spreading throughout the west, if not the world.

From the very woke education system in the US to the electoral success of the AfD in Germany we seem to be following the US.

Woke has not spread into Asia, but nationalism and racism were there already.

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Trying to parse a comment where someone implies that nationalism and racism are bad but also that ""woke"" (diluted into meaninglessness by over use) is .. also bad?

Yes, exactly my view. I am not signed up to a side and feel no need to follow a particular set of views because they belong to a group I identity with.

I'll bite: What is "woke" to you? The term's history has basically no bearing on what it means now. Preferably a definition, not examples, because often the examples, when you list enough of them, contradict.

It's two extremes. As with most things it's a spectrum, too far to either side isn't great. On the one hand you have racists and bigots, on the other you have people insisting that we should be asking everyone their preferred pronouns before addressing them and men who decide that they are now women should be allowed to compete in women's sports leagues, oh and actually gender is just a social construct because some women don't have uteruses or something like that, and so on and so forth.

To me, that's what woke means. Lots of making demands about how people should think/see things, and calling people names like TERF if they dare question the woke "truth".

Close to my view.

Gender IS a social construct though - but sex is not and people conflate the two. The other problem is that if something is a social construct you cannot claim it is also an absolute truth.

Race is also a social construct, which a lot of people who are woke seem to have trouble dealing with - a lot of people who accept gender self-identify seem to be unwilling to accept race self-identify.

Why is TERF as a term bad when it actually matches the ideology? You have to be against trans and otherwise feminist. Which is exactly what that is.

I dont know, I've just seen it used in a seemingly derogatory way. I don't know what it means and I don't care. Nobody in my real life uses that term anyway, it's just weirdos on Twitter and such.

A lot of people who get called TERFs absolutely don't identify as feminists, let alone _radical_ feminists. It's just a meaningless term now

The word feminist is also a hard one to pin down. SOme people define it as just meaning believing in equality - but in a society where that is the consensus view (its not true of every society, but it is where I most frequently come across the word) that has little meaning.

In addition to the other replies, plenty of words are descriptive until they get used offensively. Another example is "retard".

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