The Great SSP Canada Cancel Culture & Wokeism Thread

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Loco101

I am very disappointed that we don't have our preferred pronouns below our names!!!

Interesting you should mention that.

While I haven't yet encountered it in a workplace setting, I've been to a couple of volunteer/community meetings over the past year or so where people introduce themselves, and are asked to identify as she/her, he/him, etc. as well.

I definitely complied, but afterwards I thought how truly cringeworthy it is to ask (actually it's more "compel" - you're put on the spot in front of a crowd of people) to out themselves in terms of gender and sexual identity in front of a bunch of strangers.

Really, a person's gender or sexual identity is their own business and no one else's, just like their sexual orientation, religion, and host of other personal characteristics.

(BTW that sound you hear is the sound of two contemporary woke principles bumping against each other.)

[niwell]

Originally Posted by Pavlov

Oh no! We've identified a gesture of good will, acknowledgment and respect that might not be exactly historically or legally accurate (note: unsurprisingly, these acknowledgments are not intended to be and do not profess to be exactly historically or legally accurate as such things are incredibly complex)! Those dastardly woketarians are up to no good again! They're wasting my precious 30 seconds of time (or something?)! I demand satisfaction!

Good grief.

I made it through most of that article - aside from the insufferable LOOK HOW SMART I AM writing style, there's very little evidence to back up the claims being made. Caught my eye that he decries the claim of Othello as racist (this is fair), yet then proceeds to claim it's actually anti-racist. Which is hilarious, since racism as a modern construct didn't really even exist then! If there's an equal and opposite construct to the obnoxious internet woke scold, this guy is it to a T. Very "old man yells at cloud", or in this case, "old man jerks off to Shakespeare". And let's be real, at least 75% of people claiming to love Shakespeare are faking it to sound smart - that was the worst part of high school English.


Going to the "about us" section of the publication yielded few surprises...

[Pavlov]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Anyone sensible though would have to admit that it's a bit absurd.

It's a textbook case of trying too hard to prove a "point".

... or trying (too?) hard to be respectful, welcoming and inclusive? I don't count that as a fault, frankly (certainly not when it comes at no real cost to anyone else).

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by niwell

And let's be real, at least 75% of people claiming to love Shakespeare are faking it to sound smart - that was the worst part of high school English.

Shakespeare was by far THE BEST part of my high school English classes!

Why do you think a native French speaker such as myself can write such beautifully eloquent prose for you guys' reading pleasure on here?

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Pavlov

... or trying (too?) hard to be respectful, welcoming and inclusive? I don't count that as a fault, frankly (certainly not when it comes at no real cost to anyone else).

Debatable. Culture and history, and their amalgalm "historical culture", are not without value, and as such tinkering or tampering with them is not automatically without "cost".

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by niwell

Going to the "about us" section of the publication yielded few surprises...

I only looked quickly, but don't they publish stuff with a wide range of views? Will stand happily corrected if not.

But I did do a double-take at the article about Sir John A. being the PM who saved the most indigenous lives. Yikes.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by niwell

I made it through most of that article - aside from the insufferable LOOK HOW SMART I AM writing style, ...

As opposed to the congenial LOOK HOW DUMB I AM writing style that would be used by nice but intelligent people when they want to prove a point?

[niwell]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I only looked quickly, but don't they publish stuff with a wide range of views? Will stand happily corrected if not.

But I did do a double-take at the article about Sir John A. being the PM who saved the most indigenous lives. Yikes.

This one: "C2C’s unabashed bias is in favour of free markets, democratic governance and individual liberty"

Which isn't code for toeing the right wing line, but rather weird internet libertarian cranks. So yes, by some metrics a wide range of views!


Personally I couldn't stand Shakespeare in HS, but think the format of plays doesn't lend itself to reading very well. Plenty of classics that are better for that IMO, and still very glad my grade 11 English teacher let a small group of us read Vonnegut.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by niwell

This one: "C2C’s unabashed bias is in favour of free markets, democratic governance and individual liberty"

Which isn't code for toeing the right wing line, but rather weird internet libertarian cranks. So yes, by some metrics a wide range of views!


Personally I couldn't stand Shakespeare in HS, but think the format of plays doesn't lend itself to reading very well. Plenty of classics that are better for that IMO, and still very glad my grade 11 English teacher let a small group of us read Vonnegut.

I read Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five as well.

As I mention often, I moved around a lot so I went to a lot of different schools, and one (Franco-Ontarian actually) high school I went to had absolutely fantastic English teachers.

As you can imagine, not everyone was able to easily follow in their second language, as we had transfer students coming in from Quebec and Franco-Ontarians from small towns who really struggled.

But as they say, a rising tide lifts all boats and I am sure all of them ended up with better English skills than they would have had they not been pushed as hard.

One of my kids is reading Orwell right now (how very apropos!), but this is in a private high school in Quebec.

[Pavlov]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Debatable. Culture and history, and their amalgalm "historical culture", are not without value, and as such tinkering or tampering with them is not automatically without "cost".

Yes, I agree. However, it seems to me that the onus is on the person claiming that a certain case of "tinkering or tampering" is actually causing him or her or anyone a significant cost to actually explain and demonstrate it. We haven't seen that when it comes to the traditional lands acknowledgement before performances at the Stratford Festival.

[jamincan]

c2cjournal is the latest thing my Dad's started bringing up when I talk to him on the phone. Based on his description, I've understood it to be a conservative take on the Walrus or something.

This is the first article I've read from it, and I can't say I'm overly impressed. It comes off strongly of old-man-yelling-at-cloud as others have pointed out. Has he met theatre-people before? Surely he can't be shocked that they're perhaps a bit overly earnest.

FWIW, I actually am not a huge fan of the movement to acknowledging traditional indigenous land, not because I think there is anything inherently wrong with it, but because I think the left is generally far too happy to settle with symbolic measures instead of trying to actually correct any wrongs or injustices. It's easy and feels good to trot out an apology to residential school survivors or to acknowledge indigenous land rights before a meeting. It's a lot harder to actually make a real substantive change.

Cambridge has been fighting the construction of a safe injection site in their city for ages now, despite the benefits being well-documented and even shown directly next door in Kitchener. The same city painted a rainbow pedestrian crossing a few years ago and was praised by local LGBTQ+ activists. And this really bothered me, because the community benefits from that symbol; they get to feel good about supporting their gay community. But the reality is that they've done next to nothing and in fact by fighting a SIS are harming a population that has a disproportionate number of LGBTQ+ members. Why should Cambridge residents get to feel good about supporting the gay community when they aren't? Perhaps instead they should be painting a drop of blood for every person who dies of an overdose there.

Is the Stratford Festival actually doing anything to pressure the federal government to address land claims? Is the City of Kitchener? Is <organization of your choice that does this>? If not, there's no substance behind the gesture, and it should stop.

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by niwell

And let's be real, at least 75% of people claiming to love Shakespeare are faking it to sound smart - that was the worst part of high school English.

Shakespeare in high school is the last vestige of the 'Great Books' philosophy of pedagogy. One where all people - regardless of class or background - have a knowledge of a selection of important texts and the allegories contained within them. One that gives all of us a common reference point. Beyond creating a polity that shares unified experiences and is less fractured, it helps cultivate critical thinking because we can use well-known passages to explain profound things about the human condition or some of the vagaries of society and everyone will, almost literally, be on the same page. At the very least, we can use it as a jumping off point and skip the difficult step of communicating complex topics without knowing where to start.

This has to be taught at the high school level. Even if most of the kids are too young to grasp these texts, you have to reach as many people as possible. Not everyone will go to university, and most university programs have become more narrow and technical, so it's not like most people will have the chance to be exposed to the great texts there, either.

How much more prepared and resilient would our society be if we had truck drivers and personal support workers who dropped out after Grade 12 understanding what we're talking about when we say something like "Deepfakes are concerning and we can't take things at face value. It's a problem we've been grappling with since Plato talked about the allegory of the cave"?

PS: it doesn’t have to be Shakespeare or even a Western text, but Shakespeare has (or, in theory, should have) the benefit of common knowledge for all generations. You could abandon Shakespeare and have kids read something new but then we wouldn’t all have a common reference point. Path dependency.

[kool maudit]

From a purely linguistic perspective, Shakespeare and the KJV are probably the two best collections of work in terms of giving a good background in idiomatic English.

It is easy to forget how opaque things like "bated breath", "dead as a doornail", "foregone conclusion", "pearls before swine", "by the skin of your teeth" and the like can appear to the uninitiated.

[Aylmer]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Really, a person's gender or sexual identity is their own business and no one else's, just like their sexual orientation, religion, and host of other personal characteristics.

I don't know if you're actually interested in having your mind changed on this.

Sexual identity and gender are two very different things. I don't know exactly why you bought sexuality into this, or how saying "he/him" would provide you any information on someone's sexuality. Gender, however, doesn't fully have meaning if it isn't widely recognized by people around you.

The practice of introducing with pronouns is one which I find awkward and cumbersome. But I've never had to deal with people getting my gender wrong - people assume correctly 100% of the time. But I get the purpose of it - it's meant to normalize the practice so that, when someone who may not have a super easy-to-assume gender comes along, they don't feel like a freak. And tbh, it's made it easier for me too - I now don't have to awkwardly try to decide between either singling out someone by asking their preferred gender or guessing wrong. It's easy to sweep the awkwardness aside when it's just marginalized people, but that's increasingly not the case. For example, I felt really stupid mis-gendering a superior at the office. Increasingly, people who fall outside the gender norms are ending up as colleagues, bosses, clients. Is it illegal to offend them? no. But not being a dick to people you work with/for is just common sense.

I expect it'll just become one of these things which are done more and more regularly in a few years. I'm neither an advocate for or against it, but it's the way the wind is blowing. I'm also not too triggered by uttering two words after my name during the few times a week I meet new people

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by rousseau

By the way, some posters seem to want to insist that woketarianism is a "minor distraction," nothing more than arcane academic minutiae irrelevant to day-to-day life. That was probably true up until ten years ago, but not these days.

How? I've literally never seen this outside the internet. So yeah pretty irrelevant to me. And also why, to me, a lot of the kvetching over this, seems like yet another cultural anxiety issue blown out of proportion by the usual suspects.

If someone were to correct me on their preferred pronoun, I'd have no issues using it. Wouldn't give me much stress. I'd probably be amused to be honest. I don't get why people get bent out of shape on this.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by Aylmer

I don't know if you're actually interested in having your mind changed on this.

Sexual identity and gender are two very different things. I don't know exactly why you bought sexuality into this, or how saying "he/him" would provide you any information on someone's sexuality. Gender, however, doesn't fully have meaning if it isn't widely recognized by people around you.

The practice of introducing with pronouns is one which I find awkward and cumbersome. But I've never had to deal with people getting my gender wrong - people assume correctly 100% of the time. But I get the purpose of it - it's meant to normalize the practice so that, when someone who may not have a super easy-to-assume gender comes along, they don't feel like a freak. And tbh, it's made it easier for me too - I now don't have to awkwardly try to decide between either singling out someone by asking their preferred gender or guessing wrong. It's easy to sweep the awkwardness aside when it's just marginalized people, but that's increasingly not the case. For example, I felt really stupid mis-gendering a superior at the office. Increasingly, people who fall outside the gender norms are ending up as colleagues, bosses, clients. Is it illegal to offend them? no. But not being a dick to people you work with/for is just common sense.

I expect it'll just become one of these things which are done more and more regularly in a few years. I'm neither an advocate for or against it, but it's the way the wind is blowing. I'm also not too triggered by uttering two words after my name during the few times a week I meet new people

This would be a lot easier if there were gender neutral terms for he, she etc, and would be win, win for both "woke" and "anti woke". So I find it quite counter productive that often the same people who complain about being told what gender someone is are also resistant to new gender neutral terms, as if it's the first time in history the english language has been modified.

When it comes to trans issues for me personally it is the one issue I am least progressive on, I don't think the extremes we are going to today to redefine biology are going to be where we end up in the end. I think a more desirable end point is just less importance placed on societal gender, so it won't matter so much whether someone is a he or she in terms of how they live their life.

I see Ellen Page is now a he. Despite the fact (s)he is obviously still female. Wouldn't it be easier if he/she was just ze or something?

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Aylmer

I don't know if you're actually interested in having your mind changed on this.

Sexual identity and gender are two very different things. I don't know exactly why you bought sexuality into this, or how saying "he/him" would provide you any information on someone's sexuality. Gender, however, doesn't fully have meaning if it isn't widely recognized by people around you.

The practice of introducing with pronouns is one which I find awkward and cumbersome. But I've never had to deal with people getting my gender wrong - people assume correctly 100% of the time. But I get the purpose of it - it's meant to normalize the practice so that, when someone who may not have a super easy-to-assume gender comes along, they don't feel like a freak. And tbh, it's made it easier for me too - I now don't have to awkwardly try to decide between either singling out someone by asking their preferred gender or guessing wrong. It's easy to sweep the awkwardness aside when it's just marginalized people, but that's increasingly not the case. For example, I felt really stupid mis-gendering a superior at the office. Increasingly, people who fall outside the gender norms are ending up as colleagues, bosses, clients. Is it illegal to offend them? no. But not being a dick to people you work with/for is just common sense.

I expect it'll just become one of these things which are done more and more regularly in a few years. I'm neither an advocate for or against it, but it's the way the wind is blowing. I'm also not too triggered by uttering two words after my name during the few times a week I meet new people

Yes I realize there is a difference between gender, sex, sexual identity, etc.

That's not really the point. The point is that this is all very personal information, similar in nature to other examples like religion, ethnicity, race, etc. that people might not want to be forced into making declarations about in front of others.

I realize that this probably well-meaning and that the goal is to avoid misunderstandings, embarrassment or awkwardness, but if I go back to my original point, we need to realize that some people might feel comfortable with being put on the spot like that, and this can include cis-gendered, non-binary, trans, etc. people.

In our society, until now at least, we've generally frowned up putting people on the spot regarding Personal Characteristic X, Y or Z.

So if this gains steam (and you may be right that it likely could) it represents quite the paradigm change.

[O-tacular]

Is this the alternative you would prefer to all those virtue signalling bleeding hearts:

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.inde...391.html%3famp

[Aylmer]

Your premise is flawed though. Things like race and gender are things that you can't hide. In fact, they don't have full meaning without the recognition of others. If you wake up tomorrow identifying as black, what does that mean if no one recognizes you that way? Religion, tastes, sexual orientation, you can keep entirely secret and remain true no matter what anyone else thinks. That's not the case of gender.

Your concern for the non-binary and trans is very woke, congratulations But watch out - if you're invoking in good faith the fleeting discomfort of quickly stating your gender, you also have to acknowledge the much greater discomfort of being misgendered.

[p_xavier]

Originally Posted by O-tacular

Is this the alternative you would prefer to all those virtue signalling bleeding hearts:

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.inde...391.html%3famp

Preferably, and that article is insufferable.