7 ms·

Wokeness Is Here to Stay – Slavoj ŽIžek

44 points by thinkingemote 4y ago

4gotunameagain 4y ago
The recent controversy about the use of so-called puberty blockers concerns another aspect of this same complexity: The Tavistock clinic in London was ordered by higher authorities to restrict the use of puberty blockers that suppress hormones and in this way pause a child’s development of sex-based characteristics, such as breasts. Tavistock was administering these drugs to youngsters between 9 and 16 who appeared not to be able to choose their sexual identity. I still don't understand how it makes sense to have a child make such a decision. When I was 9 I thought I was a dinosaur. I bet that if we could, under the current political landscape we would pay huge bucks to pharmaceutical companies to turn millions of 9 year olds to dinosaurs.
- ourmandave 4y ago
  A boy or girl dinosaur is the question.
  - no-reply 4y ago
    trans dinasour ? /s
    - deserialized 4y ago
      Dinoself
      - red-iron-pine 4y ago
        Dinothey
- j_crick 4y ago
  I won’t pretend to understand what do people actually feel who really really need that, because I’m not one of them. But I don’t get how one can justify enabling a person to to switch their gender before the age of consent, or driving license, drinking or voting thresholds. I mean, at least you can stop drinking or voting if you don’t like it, and the age thresholds for those activities are a bit higher than the age of 9.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > But I don’t get how one can justify enabling a person to to switch their gender before the age of consent IF we didn’t impose gender before the age of consent, there’d be no reason for anyone to switch one before such an age. OTOH, any logic that can justify the imposition can justify the change.
    - j_crick 4y ago
      I’m thinking more along the lines of irreversibility. Reminded me of this recent post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34753240 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34753240
      - dragonwriter 4y ago
        > I’m thinking more along the lines of irreversibility. Puberty blockers are not, generally, irreversible (or even permanent-but-reversible, simply stopping taking them usually results in puberty), a fact widely recognized and documented in coverage of their use in delaying precocious puberty, long before ideological activists started attacking them based on a mix of anecdote and fiction because they were also used in treatment of trans kids.
        dogma1138 4y ago
        That’s true however with the caveat that the treatment duration is often far shorter than with misgendered individuals. The reality is that there are no long term studies on puberty blockers since in most used cases they are used as an intervention until the underlying medical condition can be resolved including in precocious puberty. The fact that individuals can be on them for years or even a decade without any significant long term or permanent side effects also isn’t supported by evidence.
        xg15 4y ago
        I'm not really deep into the topic, so this may be wrong/inaccurate - but I've read that puberty blockers were actually introduced as a way to solve the problem of children having to make life-changing decisions. A successful HRT becomes much harder after puberty. On the other hand, performing HRT on children is plain unethical, for all the reasons discussed in the rest of this thread. (And btw something the trans community is advocating against - because forced sex reassignment had been standard practice for intersex children for decades. The trans community is demanding to end this practice.) So to solve this, the idea was to artificially postpone puberty until the person is old enough that they can make a mature, informed decision about the subject. Of course that logic has its own weak points - e.g. that puberty itself may play a major role in the person finding their identity. So postponing it until the person has settled into an identity would be sort of like trying to outrun your shadow. I'm not sure what the status of science in that regard is though.
- RobotToaster 4y ago
  There's also no drugs approved by the MHRA (the UK FDA equivalent) as "puberty blockers" it's purely off label use of cancer drugs.
  - FluentFlan 4y ago
    [dead]
    - JoeyBananas 4y ago
      I understand that cancer drugs can be used for other things. That makes perfect sense to me. But we are not talking about using cancer drugs for things other than cancer in general, we're talking about using them as puberty blockers. The use of estrogen-blocking drugs as puberty blockers is not a good idea just because estrogen blocking drugs exist. They were not originally intended for that.
      - jemmyw 4y ago
        > They were not originally intended for that. Why is this important? Lots of things find use outside their original purpose. Intent doesn't really matter over function.
        FluentFlan 4y ago
        To be clear, I was not saying or imply GnRH agonists are estrogen blockers. Or making any claims about GnRH, it's uses or history of use. Or saying tamoxifen would be a good for use a puberty blocker. I was simply making the point that a drugs origin does not automatically imply something about the safety or the plausibility of it's use in other areas. I in fact agree with everything rhinoceraptor has said about puberty blockers. It's not new or anything to be panicked about. This non-issue is be used extremely transparently to stoke a "won't you think of the children" moral panic where trans people and trans kids are being made the punching bags. I'm old enough to remember when essentially all the same talking points were being used to drum up a moral panics about gay/lesbian folks. (I'm not even that old) That is why I called it rhetoric. I believe the poster I was responding to (RobotToaster) and it seems JoeyBananas are attempting to conflate puberty blockers (and if you read between the lines: trans people) with cancer. It's purpose is not to convey information but to inspire feelings, feelings of fear and unease. Of course I can't know the posters hearts and I have met folks who genuinely didn't understand the litany of dog whistles and red flags they were shooting off. It very lame to see yet another well known person (ŽIžek) jump in on it.
- bitwize 4y ago
  Trans people have a keen idea of their gender identity from a very early age. If it is a human rights violation to force an adult to live opposite their innate gender identity, surely it's a human rights violation to do the same to a child.
  - fffingal 4y ago
    [flagged]
  - xboxnolifes 4y ago
    The question isn't do trans children really know their gender identity. It's can the person responsible for allowing the transition to happen distinguish whether the child knows they're gender identity doesn't match their sex, or is it just a child being a child. Going through puberty isn't weird just for trans people. The issue is with regards to false positives. Parents have legal guardianship over children not because they 100% of the time know the correct decision, but as a compromise between children literally just coming into the world and knowing nothing, and not handing complete self autonomy over to the state.
- kryogen1c 4y ago
  > When I was 9 I thought I was a dinosaur. This undersells how sinister underage hormone blockers are, because being a dinosaur is not a normal part of human development. identity confusion, especially during puberty, is normal for a significant percentage of people - millions. Doctors administrating these blockers cross well past malpractice and into evil. If you are permanently altering children - the people we don't let buy cigarettes or alcohol, vote, or drive - without years of therapy first, you deserve jail time.
  - sundaeofshock 4y ago
    [flagged]
  - deserialized 4y ago
    Let's see this same energy for circumcision then
jrm4 4y ago
I need everyone, EVERYONE, who chooses to use this word to be very careful about how you define it, because most of you are NOT DOING THAT. And in the process, you end up fueling right-wing idiocy. Because there are presently two working definitions of "woke." Reasonable people have defined it as "a modern extreme naive liberalism" and that's fine. But the right basically uses it as "whatever we disagree with," and often pretty much feels like the n-word. And conflating these two is causing LOTS of problems.
- Taniwha 4y ago
  I kind of like "not asleep" as a definition, but also like the idea that every time you hear those on the right make up their own definition you simply replace it with "Ewok" in order to point out the distinction
- xg15 4y ago
  Yup. The right is fuelling the moral panic about trans people while going against abortion rights and contraceptives: https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/jul/21/house-passes-contraception-bill-decried-republican/ https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/jul/21/house-passes-...
  - tharne 4y ago
    > Yup. The right is fuelling the moral panic about trans people I wouldn't call opposition to performing irreversible gender transition procedures on children "moral panic".
    - xg15 4y ago
      Maybe true. But then that concern about irreversible medical procedures somehow results in a complete ban on educating children on gender identity or sexuality at all: https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/national-dont-say-gay-law-republicans-introduce-bill-restrict-lgbtq-re-rcna53064 https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/nati...
    - panarky 4y ago
pupppet 4y ago
Wokeness = no longer being able to treat marginalized people like shit without consequences. I'm glad it's here to stay.
- mansion7 4y ago
  Wokeness also informs us that "playing a wizard game makes you a Nazi, and you are literally committing murder".
  - pupppet 4y ago
    Being chastised or losing your job is not quite the same as what would result from having literally murdered someone.
- fffingal 4y ago
  [flagged]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
mycentstoo 4y ago
I won't speak to wokeness as a whole (I think the concept is way too slippery and politically charged), but I find the specific example of providing for puberty blockers for children particularly frightening.
- rhinoceraptor 4y ago
  Puberty blockers are not a wild or experimental new drug. They have been to children for decades, for a completely different reason: early puberty.
  - fffingal 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - rhinoceraptor 4y ago
      I'm inclined to trust medical authorities over the opinions of internet posters.
      - fffingal 4y ago
        The health authorities of several European countries have halted the routine use of puberty blockers for gender dysphoric children, due to a lack of evidence that this intervention helps rather than harms.
        rhinoceraptor 4y ago
        The health authorities of several US states have done the same. Politicians are not medical experts. I'm not aware of any legitimate medical authority that would agree with this fearmongering.
        fffingal 4y ago
        I wasn't talking about politicians, it is medical experts who have driven this decision in the health authorities I was referring to - e.g. England, Sweden, Finland. This is from applying an evidence-based medicine approach to this. The political side of things is yet another matter.
IndoorPatio 4y ago
My strategy is usually to replace the word "Woke" with the word "Polite." That has served me well, and served me well for decades doing the same for "Politically Correct." Sometimes for a laugh I'll replace the current moral panic word with a moral panic from an earlier age.
- red-iron-pine 4y ago
  Politeness has nothing to do with cops killing POCs, or systemic repression, or giving hormones to kids. You don't say slurs and use someone's preferred pronouns out of politeness; 'woke' is about systemic or deeper issues. Maybe the woke crows has bad takes on these issues -- happy to debate each on their merits in other threads -- but it's disingenuous to couch it in terms of simple social graces. This post reads like a rich white dude who was able to sidestep these deeper issues via a wink and a nod but without actually engaging with the core issues -- which is how these issues continue to persist. Keep getting your STEM salary and be nice. Reminds me of Marcus Aurelius and the Stoics, who wrote a lot about calming the self, being kind and non-judgemental to others, understanding that they might not be mad at you but at circumstances, etc etc. Meanwhile their entire system ran on institutional slavery and constant subjugation. Yeah they'd crucify people but those Senators sure were polite.
- fidgewidge 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - IndoorPatio 4y ago
    People said the same thing about abolitionists, suffragists, anti-segregationists, etc, etc. It's certainly possible that this time will be different, but I wouldn't wager money on it.
    - fidgewidge 4y ago
      Some radical suffragettes were actual terrorists and did their cause no good, quite possibly harm. Female suffrage came about as a result of the Great War, not verbal abuse by radicals. At any rate, you seem to be agreeing with me but justifying it by claiming these people are on the right side of history. Communists and the Jacobins both thought that, but were both dead wrong. Merely being an abusive radical doesn't mean you're right. These people are clearly on the wrong side of history: they're trying to drag the world backwards to one where everything is decided along racial and gender lines.
Connor_Creegan 4y ago
As someone who dressed up as Žižek at a Halloween party in my early twenties, I must say the man remains a puzzle to me. Or rather, it remains puzzling to me how he doesn't see the connections between the facets of culture that he criticizes (as in this piece) and the legacy that he defends. He is certainly intelligent enough, but perhaps lacks the courage to dismiss centuries of revolutionary legacy as ultimately vain. This, I think, is the hardest step most secularists have to make in their journey toward Truth.
- red-iron-pine 4y ago
  He gets paid to say things. You know his name because he says famous or controversial things -- so even if he sees the connections, why would he bite?
  - Connor_Creegan 4y ago
    My own exposure to him was primarily through his early works, which are at least worth reading to get a good grip on his intellectual genealogy. I think his foundational commitment to Hegel is ultimately what prevents him from repudiating Prometheus and revolution, not necessarily the fact that his thoughts are sanctioned by money.

44 points by thinkingemote 4y ago

The recent controversy about the use of so-called puberty blockers concerns another aspect of this same complexity: The Tavistock clinic in London was ordered by higher authorities to restrict the use of puberty blockers that suppress hormones and in this way pause a child’s development of sex-based characteristics, such as breasts. Tavistock was administering these drugs to youngsters between 9 and 16 who appeared not to be able to choose their sexual identity. I still don't understand how it makes sense to have a child make such a decision. When I was 9 I thought I was a dinosaur. I bet that if we could, under the current political landscape we would pay huge bucks to pharmaceutical companies to turn millions of 9 year olds to dinosaurs.

ourmandave 4y ago
A boy or girl dinosaur is the question.
- no-reply 4y ago
  trans dinasour ? /s
  - deserialized 4y ago
    Dinoself
    - red-iron-pine 4y ago
      Dinothey
j_crick 4y ago
I won’t pretend to understand what do people actually feel who really really need that, because I’m not one of them. But I don’t get how one can justify enabling a person to to switch their gender before the age of consent, or driving license, drinking or voting thresholds. I mean, at least you can stop drinking or voting if you don’t like it, and the age thresholds for those activities are a bit higher than the age of 9.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > But I don’t get how one can justify enabling a person to to switch their gender before the age of consent IF we didn’t impose gender before the age of consent, there’d be no reason for anyone to switch one before such an age. OTOH, any logic that can justify the imposition can justify the change.
  - j_crick 4y ago
    I’m thinking more along the lines of irreversibility. Reminded me of this recent post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34753240 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34753240
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      > I’m thinking more along the lines of irreversibility. Puberty blockers are not, generally, irreversible (or even permanent-but-reversible, simply stopping taking them usually results in puberty), a fact widely recognized and documented in coverage of their use in delaying precocious puberty, long before ideological activists started attacking them based on a mix of anecdote and fiction because they were also used in treatment of trans kids.
      - dogma1138 4y ago
        That’s true however with the caveat that the treatment duration is often far shorter than with misgendered individuals. The reality is that there are no long term studies on puberty blockers since in most used cases they are used as an intervention until the underlying medical condition can be resolved including in precocious puberty. The fact that individuals can be on them for years or even a decade without any significant long term or permanent side effects also isn’t supported by evidence.
      - xg15 4y ago
        I'm not really deep into the topic, so this may be wrong/inaccurate - but I've read that puberty blockers were actually introduced as a way to solve the problem of children having to make life-changing decisions. A successful HRT becomes much harder after puberty. On the other hand, performing HRT on children is plain unethical, for all the reasons discussed in the rest of this thread. (And btw something the trans community is advocating against - because forced sex reassignment had been standard practice for intersex children for decades. The trans community is demanding to end this practice.) So to solve this, the idea was to artificially postpone puberty until the person is old enough that they can make a mature, informed decision about the subject. Of course that logic has its own weak points - e.g. that puberty itself may play a major role in the person finding their identity. So postponing it until the person has settled into an identity would be sort of like trying to outrun your shadow. I'm not sure what the status of science in that regard is though.
RobotToaster 4y ago
There's also no drugs approved by the MHRA (the UK FDA equivalent) as "puberty blockers" it's purely off label use of cancer drugs.
- FluentFlan 4y ago
  [dead]
  - JoeyBananas 4y ago
    I understand that cancer drugs can be used for other things. That makes perfect sense to me. But we are not talking about using cancer drugs for things other than cancer in general, we're talking about using them as puberty blockers. The use of estrogen-blocking drugs as puberty blockers is not a good idea just because estrogen blocking drugs exist. They were not originally intended for that.
    - jemmyw 4y ago
      > They were not originally intended for that. Why is this important? Lots of things find use outside their original purpose. Intent doesn't really matter over function.
      - FluentFlan 4y ago
        To be clear, I was not saying or imply GnRH agonists are estrogen blockers. Or making any claims about GnRH, it's uses or history of use. Or saying tamoxifen would be a good for use a puberty blocker. I was simply making the point that a drugs origin does not automatically imply something about the safety or the plausibility of it's use in other areas. I in fact agree with everything rhinoceraptor has said about puberty blockers. It's not new or anything to be panicked about. This non-issue is be used extremely transparently to stoke a "won't you think of the children" moral panic where trans people and trans kids are being made the punching bags. I'm old enough to remember when essentially all the same talking points were being used to drum up a moral panics about gay/lesbian folks. (I'm not even that old) That is why I called it rhetoric. I believe the poster I was responding to (RobotToaster) and it seems JoeyBananas are attempting to conflate puberty blockers (and if you read between the lines: trans people) with cancer. It's purpose is not to convey information but to inspire feelings, feelings of fear and unease. Of course I can't know the posters hearts and I have met folks who genuinely didn't understand the litany of dog whistles and red flags they were shooting off. It very lame to see yet another well known person (ŽIžek) jump in on it.
bitwize 4y ago
Trans people have a keen idea of their gender identity from a very early age. If it is a human rights violation to force an adult to live opposite their innate gender identity, surely it's a human rights violation to do the same to a child.
- fffingal 4y ago
  [flagged]
- xboxnolifes 4y ago
  The question isn't do trans children really know their gender identity. It's can the person responsible for allowing the transition to happen distinguish whether the child knows they're gender identity doesn't match their sex, or is it just a child being a child. Going through puberty isn't weird just for trans people. The issue is with regards to false positives. Parents have legal guardianship over children not because they 100% of the time know the correct decision, but as a compromise between children literally just coming into the world and knowing nothing, and not handing complete self autonomy over to the state.
kryogen1c 4y ago
> When I was 9 I thought I was a dinosaur. This undersells how sinister underage hormone blockers are, because being a dinosaur is not a normal part of human development. identity confusion, especially during puberty, is normal for a significant percentage of people - millions. Doctors administrating these blockers cross well past malpractice and into evil. If you are permanently altering children - the people we don't let buy cigarettes or alcohol, vote, or drive - without years of therapy first, you deserve jail time.
- sundaeofshock 4y ago
  [flagged]
- deserialized 4y ago
  Let's see this same energy for circumcision then

jrm4 4y ago

I need everyone, EVERYONE, who chooses to use this word to be very careful about how you define it, because most of you are NOT DOING THAT. And in the process, you end up fueling right-wing idiocy. Because there are presently two working definitions of "woke." Reasonable people have defined it as "a modern extreme naive liberalism" and that's fine. But the right basically uses it as "whatever we disagree with," and often pretty much feels like the n-word. And conflating these two is causing LOTS of problems.

Taniwha 4y ago
I kind of like "not asleep" as a definition, but also like the idea that every time you hear those on the right make up their own definition you simply replace it with "Ewok" in order to point out the distinction
xg15 4y ago
Yup. The right is fuelling the moral panic about trans people while going against abortion rights and contraceptives: https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/jul/21/house-passes-contraception-bill-decried-republican/ https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/jul/21/house-passes-...
- tharne 4y ago
  > Yup. The right is fuelling the moral panic about trans people I wouldn't call opposition to performing irreversible gender transition procedures on children "moral panic".
  - xg15 4y ago
    Maybe true. But then that concern about irreversible medical procedures somehow results in a complete ban on educating children on gender identity or sexuality at all: https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/national-dont-say-gay-law-republicans-introduce-bill-restrict-lgbtq-re-rcna53064 https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/nati...
  - panarky 4y ago

pupppet 4y ago

Wokeness = no longer being able to treat marginalized people like shit without consequences. I'm glad it's here to stay.

mansion7 4y ago
Wokeness also informs us that "playing a wizard game makes you a Nazi, and you are literally committing murder".
- pupppet 4y ago
  Being chastised or losing your job is not quite the same as what would result from having literally murdered someone.
fffingal 4y ago
[flagged]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

mycentstoo 4y ago

I won't speak to wokeness as a whole (I think the concept is way too slippery and politically charged), but I find the specific example of providing for puberty blockers for children particularly frightening.

rhinoceraptor 4y ago
Puberty blockers are not a wild or experimental new drug. They have been to children for decades, for a completely different reason: early puberty.
- fffingal 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - rhinoceraptor 4y ago
    I'm inclined to trust medical authorities over the opinions of internet posters.
    - fffingal 4y ago
      The health authorities of several European countries have halted the routine use of puberty blockers for gender dysphoric children, due to a lack of evidence that this intervention helps rather than harms.
      - rhinoceraptor 4y ago
        The health authorities of several US states have done the same. Politicians are not medical experts. I'm not aware of any legitimate medical authority that would agree with this fearmongering.
        fffingal 4y ago
        I wasn't talking about politicians, it is medical experts who have driven this decision in the health authorities I was referring to - e.g. England, Sweden, Finland. This is from applying an evidence-based medicine approach to this. The political side of things is yet another matter.

IndoorPatio 4y ago

My strategy is usually to replace the word "Woke" with the word "Polite." That has served me well, and served me well for decades doing the same for "Politically Correct." Sometimes for a laugh I'll replace the current moral panic word with a moral panic from an earlier age.

red-iron-pine 4y ago
Politeness has nothing to do with cops killing POCs, or systemic repression, or giving hormones to kids. You don't say slurs and use someone's preferred pronouns out of politeness; 'woke' is about systemic or deeper issues. Maybe the woke crows has bad takes on these issues -- happy to debate each on their merits in other threads -- but it's disingenuous to couch it in terms of simple social graces. This post reads like a rich white dude who was able to sidestep these deeper issues via a wink and a nod but without actually engaging with the core issues -- which is how these issues continue to persist. Keep getting your STEM salary and be nice. Reminds me of Marcus Aurelius and the Stoics, who wrote a lot about calming the self, being kind and non-judgemental to others, understanding that they might not be mad at you but at circumstances, etc etc. Meanwhile their entire system ran on institutional slavery and constant subjugation. Yeah they'd crucify people but those Senators sure were polite.
fidgewidge 4y ago
[flagged]
- IndoorPatio 4y ago
  People said the same thing about abolitionists, suffragists, anti-segregationists, etc, etc. It's certainly possible that this time will be different, but I wouldn't wager money on it.
  - fidgewidge 4y ago
    Some radical suffragettes were actual terrorists and did their cause no good, quite possibly harm. Female suffrage came about as a result of the Great War, not verbal abuse by radicals. At any rate, you seem to be agreeing with me but justifying it by claiming these people are on the right side of history. Communists and the Jacobins both thought that, but were both dead wrong. Merely being an abusive radical doesn't mean you're right. These people are clearly on the wrong side of history: they're trying to drag the world backwards to one where everything is decided along racial and gender lines.

Connor_Creegan 4y ago

As someone who dressed up as Žižek at a Halloween party in my early twenties, I must say the man remains a puzzle to me. Or rather, it remains puzzling to me how he doesn't see the connections between the facets of culture that he criticizes (as in this piece) and the legacy that he defends. He is certainly intelligent enough, but perhaps lacks the courage to dismiss centuries of revolutionary legacy as ultimately vain. This, I think, is the hardest step most secularists have to make in their journey toward Truth.

red-iron-pine 4y ago
He gets paid to say things. You know his name because he says famous or controversial things -- so even if he sees the connections, why would he bite?
- Connor_Creegan 4y ago
  My own exposure to him was primarily through his early works, which are at least worth reading to get a good grip on his intellectual genealogy. I think his foundational commitment to Hegel is ultimately what prevents him from repudiating Prometheus and revolution, not necessarily the fact that his thoughts are sanctioned by money.