The trouble is, it is such a broad term nowadays and everyone has their own definition or idea of what it means. I think the bolded part of your post is what it originally meant and honestly I believe most right minded people are on board with those values. Again it’s not something that is easy to sum up on football forum but I’ll give it a go (or at least give my thoughts on what it means and why it is such a hot topic). Whilst I don’t agree with Marky’s views in his original post and often find myself disagreeing with his political views in general, I do understand where he’s coming from in certain situations and I realise how woke culture can be a bit of an eye roll to some people. There’s people who are woke in the sense that you mean, being alert to social issues for example which is something I’d like to describe myself as. But there is a particular type of woke person that is very irritating; the type of person who judges everyone (alive or dead) by today’s standards. It’s ludicrous to hold people like Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and Winston Churchill to 2023 standards when they lived hundreds of years ago in very different times, less tolerant and progressive times. I don’t see what pulling down their statues and renaming schools that were once named after them does to help people that have been dealt a bad hand in society. Maybe it’s a generational thing, but I blame universities for a large part of it for indulging students with safe spaces, trigger warnings etc and allowing them to shout speakers down and bully people who disagree with them.
Social media hasn’t helped either. Everyone now has a platform so they feel the need to pile on people who they disagree with. I just don’t feel that being super woke and liberal necessarily go hand in hand. Liberalism is about lifting people up who have been cheated or hard done by whereas I feel some woke people are more about virtue signalling and self loathing and scolding everyone, it doesn’t actually help anyone.
I also feel it reduces everything to black and white, with us or against us mentality when in reality life is more complex than that. There isn’t always a right a wrong. Take the Israel-Palestine conflict for example, large portions of the left have decided that Israel are the bad guys and Palestine are the good guys. 32 student groups at Harvard recently blamed Israel for the Hamas attack on October 7th. Like I said before, it’s a difficult issue and I accept Israel doesn’t always cover themselves in glory with how they respond but blaming them for the original attack is preposterous.
It’s no secret that Hollywood and the entertainment industry has always been left leaning but I feel a lot of the content these days has a preachy SJW agenda which I don’t feel was the case 10 years ago and I can see why it irritates people.
To answer your last paragraph, it shouldn’t be classed as woke to want your daughter to be happy and to fight oppression. My personal view is you do that by arguing and persuading whereas I don’t feel that censoring or policing language is that effective. I hope your daughter can one day live in a world that doesn’t discriminate, sadly I don’t think you will ever truly get rid of prejudice but I do also feel things gradually improve as time goes by.
