(2) I live in one of the wokest small cities in America. My acting coach got devastated because she cast the 'wrong' person for a role in a high school play. She's trained people who have gone on to real careers in Hollywood, you wouldn't expect to find somebody like that in a small city -- they destroyed her.
I've seen the devastation that the current environment brought on many young men who are turning to charlatans like Joe Rogan, who are either taking anabolic steroids [1] or estrogen because they can never be enough. I can't stand glib pronouncements for the good of 2 or 3 people when so many young men are failing or being failed.
(3) I am not fan of PG's essay on wokeness, it's the same glib register as the signs they put in the bathroom. Woke isn't bad just because it's bad, it's bad because it's turned the left from something that should be majoritarian (we are the 99%, talk about pissing off PG!) into something that's minoritarian.
[1] ... but not as part of a program of athletic or bodybuilding training
If the left had been focusing on broadly inclusive issues (speak to 5% of persuadable people, instead of 1% of extremists who'll stay home on election day anyhow) we could have 'woke' up in a different America; anti-fascists crying wolf for 20 years brought on the thing they said they were afraid of -- or were they?
I know you feel this to be the case in the same way PG feels “woke” is what made Silicon Valley turn rightward. But do you have evidence beyond your feelings? It’s OK if you don’t. Most of our beliefs about such matters are unsubstantiated.
My view is that this is all part of a new reactionary masculine pushback. For the first time in thousands of years women in a few countries are able to exercise sexual autonomy and are gaining economic independence. Men largely can’t handle this new reality.
https://www.amazon.com/Why-Love-Hurts-Sociological-Explanati...
PG's talk about it reminds me of Rush Limbaugh talking about Net Neutrality. I disagreed with Rush about most things but most of the time I thought Rush had some understanding of the issues he talked about. His opposition to Net Neutrality came across as completely ignorant, he didn't seem to know what it was, he was just against it because the phone company told him to be against it, the same way that my son's trans friend hates J. K. Rowling because somebody told them to.
Unlike PG I can point to specific men and women, some trans, who have been hurt by it. That's a step up in evidence.
I've spent plenty of time looking at conference proceedings, review articles and such in the social sciences. If a literature search turns up a conclusive conclusion about anything it's because somebody wrote one paper and nobody followed it up for 20 years.
Liberals/Democrats, classically, were the party of the little guy, the working class. The working class has been being destroyed ever since NAFTA. Thinks are getting worse and worse for them. The Democrats should have been running on how the economy effects the little guy. They should have been the ones screaming about the price of eggs.
Instead, the impression everyone got was that, if you're working class but you don't think gay marriage is a good idea, or you don't think trans people belong in womens' bathrooms and on womens' sports teams, or you don't like abortion, then you're a moral leper, and the Democratic party is committed to the total eradication of your viewpoint and culture.
Unsurprisingly (given human nature), a bunch of people on the receiving end of that decided to flip the Democrats the bird, and instead voted for the guy who at least pretended to care about their concerns.
So, yeah. There may be "reactionary masculine pushback", but I think it's more pushback from the socially conservative section of the working class. Those people are supposed to be the Democrats' core constituency, but the Democrats quit listening to them.
