Woke and the bastards who bastardised it
Let's hurtle forward in time to approximately 70 years later, and my first experience of the term "woke" which to the best of my memory was applied to a gay rights organisation who were speaking up for same sex marriage. On a radio phone in who's name escapes me now, callers rang in one by one to give the wireless's version of a vocal eye roll in the direction of these social justice warriors daring to rip up the norm as it then was in the U.K. where by the absolute bare faced cheek of these human beings wanting to express their love and commitment to one another was perceived as an outrage that should be killed stone dead in its infancy, and then one particularly angry caller expressed their disgust at these "woke agitators" trying to assert their progressive mumbo jumbo in a conservative society that simply didn't require their sort, and the changes they were seeking to bring. Woke! I remember liking the term and making a mental note to explore it further but as things turned out, the U.K. media saved me the time and effort. And so it was that my understanding of the word was simply to be applied to those fighting for a just cause, and not ringfenced solely for the fight against racism although perhaps there isn't a difference at all.
On the 13th of March 2014, the U.K. saw it's first same sex marriage accepted in law, and as a normal person I thought this was fantastic, and promised real progress and social change. Having spent many years socialising in Manchester city centre, so many of my best and most memorable nights had been enjoyed around the gay village which was and still is one of the most welcoming places for a straight man or woman to go and party safely, and it's something the majority of Mancunians are endlessly proud of, gay or straight as the city really has been trailblazing in shedding many of the toxic myths aimed toward the LGBQT community. It's just never been a thing in my mind as so many of my friends from an early age fell under that banner, something I'm always grateful for as it gave me an education into their struggles at an age where I might have been led down a diferent point of view by the less tolerant among my late teen wider social circle.
And so it came to be that putting your head above the parapet for a minority who remained a target of abuse would see you anointed with the title of being woke. For the purposes of counting, my understanding remained that woke became the colloquial phrase used only for those who believed in racial and sexual equality, and I carried on about my life not really paying the topic too much mind. Back into the tardis and forward to June 24th of this year.
Something deeply troubling occured on June 24th of 2022, and it happened in a country that almost nobody expected would go down such a path. Roe v. Wade was overturned by the US Supreme Court, thus abolishing women's abortion rights. It was a moment that actually made me stop in my tracks, and I recall the sinking feeling knowing the abject misery that such a blanket legislation would pour onto so many. Amid the furore, CNN did a livestream from outside the court house were crowds of pro and anti-abortion rights demonstrators were furiously exchanging insults across the media pack trying to conduct one on one interviews slapbang in the middle of what could have easily turned into a hands on pitched battle. As I watched the scenes unfold, I noticed the theme among the pro-life campaigners displayed in their various flags, banners, and t-shirts, many of which were labelling those in support of woman's rights as "Woke Libs". While woke had been slowly expanding according to the right wing media, this was a pivotal moment for me. Women had just had freedom of choice over their bodies removed by a panel of 9 judges, the majority of which had been packed into the court by serial willy slinger Donald Trump, a man who's fabled to have more abortions under his belt than points on his IQ score. Woke was no longer woke. It no longer belonged to the oppressed. It had become a weapon of the oppressor. So you want a fair deal? Woke... Think you should decide what comes out of your vagine? Woke... and on it goes.
And so to the evening of June 24th, and 5000 miles from Washington. As I scrolled through the torrent of articles and tweets relating to the drama over in D.C. my eye was drawn to one particularly reprehensible tweet from an American right wing pundit celebrating victory for the Republic over the "woke libs". Nothing unusual there of course, except this tweet had been retweeted by none other than Conservative MP for Blackpool South Scott Benton. This genuinely sent me into a fury having seen Benton's abhorent stance on people of colour, refugees, and in actual fact in general toward anyone slightly left of Nigel Farage. around 12 months ago Scott Benton chose to appear on comically right wing for the sake of it news channel, GB News to come out publicly as a gay man, and to announce his marriage to long time partner Harry Symonds, and I'm all for that as I can't imagine it has been easy for Mr benton working his way up through politics while trying to keep such a personal thing under wraps. That however is where my sympathy begins and ends.
Throwing his support behind the stripping of such a basic human right for women, and defending his position against anybody who challenges his view by quite simply drawing a box around them and adding the label "wokie" was possibly the best illustration of how the right have bastardised such a meaningful term. If it doesn't fit their agenda then it's woke. If they can't comprehend or fully understand a topic... just call it woke... and of course armed with the support of the "Rothermere Massive" over at Daily Mail HQ, the right are casting their net farther and wider day by day as they turn common sense debate into enemies of Brexit Britain, and at quite an alarming pace.
But back to Scott Benton, and his GB News interview in which he came out in a sincere and emotional exchange. I for one have always flown the flag for racial equality, and for gay rights, and even today as I sit here typing this, if woke came once more for the LGBQT community, in a heart beat I'd fight for Scott Benton's rights to live absolutely equally and freely as a married gay man in today's Britain. And this is where it leads me so often to put my head in my hands or to fire off a series of four letter expletives when I see so many of the far right "Call em all woke" crew carving up endless areas of our society and telling its audience that they simply aren't valid or on an equal footing with right wing opinion. Standing up for Scott Benton, and anybody else who's had abuse inflicted upon them for simply being how God intended them was woke just 8 years ago, just as standing up for black rights was woke 80 years ago. How short some memories are, or how careful some newspapers and political pundits are not to draw attention back to these unavoidable truths.
But to finish where we started, and remembering that the white man took woke from the black man and turned it into a stick to beat him with... let's not pretend that these people doing exactly the same thing today are viewing those they label as woke as any different to how many Americans viewed them black folk geting above their station with some of that progressive thinking nonsense way back in the 1930's. People who don't understand the neccessity of change fear progress, and the means of halting progress requiring the shortest of cerebral thinking is of course to simply call it the new enemy, and at the rate that new enemies are being magically identified, my bet is that by Christmas 2023, the only things that aren't being called woke are the Daily Mail offices, GB News staff, and of course those two enemies of the vaccine and the pop charts, the Freds... Collective sigh anybody? Stay woke lovely people x
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