I am continually amazed at how, in some circles, being woke is considered a negative trait. Now, I could remind all those who are wielding the woke truncheon that one of the most woke people in the history of the world was Jesus of Nazareth. But I know that statement would not be taken in the vein that I am suggesting, but might be twisted by some to mean that I am suggesting that Jesus was some kind of combination pedophile, man in drag, homosexual. Yes, he certainly loved speaking with children, wore loose clothing and hung out, mostly, with men, but that is not why I consider him to be woke. His spirituality was clearly in excess of most, and his life's lessons, his greatest being love for all, when followed, makes our world a much better place to live.
However, rather than pursuing that angle, I thought it best to approach the issue from the perspective that, like so many societal debates, it is really only a matter of how woke someone is, not if. That we are really only arguing about degrees of wokeness.
Take women's rights. Just about 100 years ago, women secured the right to vote in America, after 150 years of not having a say in how our country was run. In other words, women have been able to participate in the democratic process for less time than our country has existed, not to mention for a speck of time when considering the the millennia that preceded when they were more property than people.
If you were to read the newspapers of the day, when women's suffrage was being debated, there was not a consensus, to say the least. Women were jailed, even force fed when they refused to eat. Popular opinion was not on their side, and certainly not the powerful men of the day who were quite happy with women staying home with the children so they could make all the consequential decisions. While the term woke was not used then, only woke people of the time thought women were smart enough to understand politics, or for that matter, be doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc. Even wearing pants in public was controversial!
While I am sure there are still some men who long for the days when women were property, I would imagine that most men today are now woke in this perspective, that their wives and daughters and granddaughters have every right to vote, become doctors, lawyers, etc, and should be considered equal in their mental abilities.
Compared to our grandfathers and great-grand fathers, we are all incredibly woke in regards to women's rights.
Another obvious example is in the area of race relations. While there has been a resurgence of late of white nationalism in America, most people are far more woke in this issue than the men of the 19th and early 20th century, even more so than our founders, who penned the idea of "all men are created equal" but did not include women or men of color. But now, the vast of majority of people in our country believe in the rights of our black and brown fellow citizens, and eschew the idea that anyone should be owned by another.
Additionally, mixed race marriages were against the law in many parts of America into the 1960's, yet biracial couples and their children are now generally accepted today, in politics, on the Supreme Court, and on TV commercials and shows. We "notice" biracial couples less because we are far more woke than previous generations.
Now, in the area of homosexuality, we have not progressed quite as far when compared to considering female, brown and black citizens of America equal, but compared to the 1980's, there has been an obvious change in society's perspective. Over 100,000 people died from AIDS in America in the 1980's, which was bad enough, but worse when you consider that some on the religious right believed that they deserved to die, that is was a punishment from God. There was even some evangelicals who advocated for wearing masks when in contact with gay people, for fear of catching their disease. (Pretty ironic considering the backlash against masks that occurred during the pandemic).
But happily, while being gay isn't quite mainstream, we do have a cabinet member who is gay, and marriage equality for the LGBT community. While there are still some who believe that gay people can be converted, most of us accept that they were born that way, and that being gay is a trait akin to skin color or eye color and that it is part of God's grand creation design.
Which brings us to the current kerfuffle over trans rights. I am still befuddled over why people are boycotting Bud Light beer because of their collaboration with a trans individual who is happy to feel better about them self. If Bud Light disappears from the market, does that mean those protesting have won something? Do they care if everyday Joes lose their jobs on Bud Light production lines? Do they think trans people might disappear if Bud Light isn't purchased anymore?
If someone decides not to buy tuna because they believe some tuna makers are raping the ocean, or, won't purchase Exxon gas because of the Valdez accident, I get it. If you are boycotting Bud Light because Anheiser Busch believes trans people are people too, well, I guess that is also your right, but, when compared to holding tuna and oil companies accountable for their environmental misdeeds, it seems rather silly.
And another example of the misguided belief that more freedom for someone else equates to less freedom for oneself.
They say that knowledge is power. Certainly, women becoming educated, and colleges being desegregated, provided those who previously were denied these white men only advantages, the opportunity for economic and social freedom. Or perhaps we might say that granting them more freedom, gave them those opportunities.
There is certainly some debate as to whether transitioning men should be allowed to compete in women's sports, but the controversy about Bud Light was not about a trans person competing in sports, it was just about men who felt that their beer of choice, a light beer at that, shouldn't be consumed by a trans person. Perhaps as our understanding of why gender confusion occurs, how it was ignored in the past and the damage it did to those suffering from it, and how it can be addressed moving forward, will provide some insight to those who, like their predecessors who didn't understand why woman, black and brown people, and gay people should be treated equally, don't seem to have become quite woke enough to know that no one is free, until everyone is free. Or for some, until someone in their own family struggles with their sexual identity, and then, perhaps, they will get it.
I guess what I am saying is that we have seen this movie before. A suppressed minority protests and fights for an equal footing in "the land of the free", the establishment pushes back by appealing to the good old days when everything was better, not mentioning that it was only better for them since they held all the cards and reaped all the benefits of the economy and social norms of the day, but eventually enough woke people realize that granting freedom to a segment of society does not make those who had previously created the obstacles less free. Freedom is not a zero sum game. Men did not become less free, nor did white people, once we moved closer to the ideal of all men are created equally and enlarged the circle to include women and blacks in our free society.
We are not free until everyone is free may perhaps, be one of the greatest sentiments ever expressed, and should be the goal for all people who claim to love freedom.
And, I would like to think, people will write about those unwoke people of today who believe it is OK to deny freedoms to the trans community, just as we write about those who fought against women's suffrage and civil rights.
Better woke than asleep!
I found the following post, written in August of 2017, which I thought might be interesting to add to this post. It touches on the idea that reasonable people often have unreasonable ideas, but that if we maintain the idea that people with whom we disagree are reasonable, there is room to find common ground. Once we jettison that idea, and determine that those with a different perspective are not reasonable, or patriotic, or god-loving, there is little hope for society to come together to solve its problems. Here is the link.
https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2017/08/unreasonable-perspectives.html
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