Not everyone yet knows that Titania McGrath is a spoof, which only goes to show how extreme the Woke Left is: you can’t tell satire from reality. This week’s Spectator has an “interview” with McGrath by Tanya Gold (click on screenshot below to read it). Nobody knows who McGrath really is (that photo isn’t her, and “she” may be a “he” but probably not a “they” or a “hir”), and so Gold recounts the unusual circumstance of the interview:
Titania McGrath, 24, is a radical intersectionalist vegan activist, feminist slam poet and the author of Woke: a Guide to Social Justice. She won’t meet me in person for security reasons – she fears doxxing – or send me a photograph of her face. Rather, she consents to an interview by email from her gîte in the Buis-les-Baronnies district of France, where she is “working on a new anthology of slam poetry which will end the patriarchy” in the nude.
I suspect that Ms. McGrath is the same person as the male spoofer Godfrey Elfwick, but who knows? At any rate,Titania uses the interview—really a collection of bon mots—to flog her new book Woke (see below).
A few gems from the interview:
She wrote Woke because, “I was permanently banned from Twitter for a whole day. This gave me time to reflect on my subjugation as a woman in a patriarchal world and write a book about my oppression. The entire document is a masterpiece unparalleled in the history of the written word”.
I am not sure a book dedicated to the destruction of the Capitalist patriarchy should be available on Amazon but there is no contradiction for Titania: “I’m attempting to destroy the capitalist system from within, and the only way I can do that is to make a shit-load of cash”.
She is confident of good reviews, but she will not allow men to review Woke: “Any male who attempts to review my book will be committing a form of sexual assault”. (I hope the literary editor is reading this). She thinks men are the cause of all misery, and should wear blinkers, like horses: “They’re gruff. They’re bad-tempered. They have base sexual instincts. And they sleep standing up”.
And the best bit:
She is not afraid for herself, “but I am deeply concerned that free speech extremists will find a way to prevent the state from monitoring what people say and think. We need to ensure that the police can arrest those who digress from woke ideas in order to prevent the rise of fascism”.
This is pretty close to what the Wokers at places like Williams College say for real.
Titania’s new book is available at Amazon UK, which carries the following blurb.
In Woke, Titania McGrath demonstrates how everybody can play their part in the pursuit of social justice. As a millennial icon on the forefront of online activism, Titania is uniquely placed to guide her readers through the often bewildering array of terminology and concepts that constitute twenty-first-century ‘wokeness’. These new ideas often leave the general public bemused, particularly if they don’t read the Guardian.
Being woke is actually much easier than people think. As Titania demonstrates, anyone can be an activist. By simply adding a rainbow flag to your Facebook profile, or calling out an elderly person who doesn’t understand what ‘non-binary’ means, you can change the world for the better. Indeed, social media has now made it possible to show how virtuous you are without having to do anything at all.
Timely and indispensable, Titania’s step-by-step guide will help you to become the woke person you need to be in an increasingly progressive world. In a non-patronising manner, Titania will explain why you are wrong about everything and how to become more like her.
The book is already #117 on UK Amazon, and it actually promises to make Titania some dosh, which of course she needs to destroy capitalism from within (click on screenshot to see or buy the book):
Lisa Graves and Andrew Doyle are the prime suspects according to an article in Spiked which is referenced by Titania herself
I’m pretty sure Titania is not the same person as the first incarnation of Godfrey, who was an Engishman who, at some point, was finished with Elfwick and closed/deleted the latter’s Twitter account. It was subsequently taken up by someone else, who might or might not be the same as Titania.
I agree. Their styles differ significantly as well. Godfrey Elfwick’s satire was significantly less blatant. It was clear to those who knew, but he could much more easily be mistaken for a real woke activist, even a top leader of woke activism. Titania McGrath often goes a bit too far and makes the satire too obvious.
Still, I appreciate Titania’s efforts.
Also, Elfwick was far more interested in being subtle enough to get important “woke” people to agree with him, while Titania seems to generally fool the non-woke. Elfwick quit once word spread among the “woke” crowd that he was a satire account made to embarrass them. I think he was much more interested in making a political statement and demonstrating just how far “woke” people will go and what they’ll agree with just to signal their righteousness (and he achieved those goals), while McGrath just likes poking fun at “wokeness.”
McGrath is virtually trolling the woke community.
One of the jokes in this ‘interview’ convinces me it is, in fact, the satirical genius behind the original Elfwick.
The references to Fred West, for sure.
As pablo recalls, Elfwick’s creator pwned donald trump’s twitter account into sharing congratulations on the West’s wedding anniversary.
I like Bansky’s art, this seems maybe a literary version of the same style. I’ma gonna get one. Thanks for the heads up!
Wikipedia:
The question is how many…
Works for #45 who is embraces being a caricature of himself.
Since that is not the picture of zer, I wonder if it is somehow a photoshopped composite of different faces. It has the ‘look’ of that.
Btw, when I first wrote ‘zer’ the text editor immediately autocorrected it it ‘her’. No doubt Titania would have something to say about that!
“These new ideas often leave the general public bemused, particularly if they don’t read the Guardian.”
Finally! Someone actually used the word “bemused” properly and got in a shot at The Guardian, all in the same sentence.
I’m somewhat bemused by your comment. I was unaware that people using the word incorrectly?
Besides “ironic” (which, at this, point, has become a synonym for “coincidental,” and there’s no going back) and “literally,” it’s probably the word I most often hear being misused. People seem to think it means “amused.”
I once used ‘bemused’ in a business email, as a project manager for a utility company. A very officious Chairman of a Residents Committee sent us notice that he was going to take us to court (over some trivial issue which would have been easily resolved. It was an empty threat and quite pointless and he was just being as obstructive as he could). I replied that we were ‘bemused’ by his announcement.
I was being naughty, I knew he’d get it wrong. He hit the roof. 😎
(In my defence, I would never have done it if he hadn’t been such a dedicated asshole. I figured there was nothing we could do to placate him because he didn’t want to be placated, so I had nothing to lose by pissing him off. Besides, being patiently polite to assholes can be quite fatiguing).
cr
I used “if practicable” in a report to a Government agency and they got a little bent out of shape because they though I meant “if practical”. It’s the little things …
Are you saying he hit the roof because he thought you meant “amused” when you used “bemused” and thus felt abused?
Merriam-Webster: Definition of bemuse
transitive verb
1: to make confused : puzzle, bewilder
2: to occupy the attention of : distract, absorb has bemused audiences around the world
3: to cause to have feelings of wry or tolerant amusement
I’d like to know when the third definition was added, as several other reputable dictionaries don’t list it.
Yes, that third one is, to my mind, spurious. It possibly arose because of the similarity of the sound of the words.
[Omit long discussion of how common a ‘wrong’ meaning of a word needs to be before a dictionary lists it]
cr
I’ve literally never heard of people thinking that “bemused” meant “amused”.
Mind you, I’m completely disinterested in this.
“I was permanently banned from Twitter for a whole day.”
Missed that on first reading…
“Any male who attempts to review my book will be committing a form of sexual assault”.
Oh god that made me crack up!
And the fascism quote!
I may actually have to get that book.
That whole section was clearly a dig at Brie Larson.
It also reminded me of when Emma ‘Mattress Girl’ Sulkowicz posted a graphic recreation of her alleged sexual assault, noting that it was free for anyone to watch, but if you were aroused by or in any way enjoyed it, you had done so without her consent and had also sexually assaulted her.
I just Googled that out of prurient interest, mostly to see if I could arouse the enthusiasm to sexually assault her, but no luck.
What I did find is that the relevant account in Wikipedia is not only confusing but almost unreadable, and keeps giving the impression that the alleged rape was actually a threesome, or that Sulkowicz was a committee. Such as “Sulkowicz alleged that N— choked them, slapped their face, held their wrists, and anally raped them, while Sulkowicz struggled and told him to stop.”
He got TWO of them at once? That must have taken some doing. I *think* that, for some bizarre woke gender reason, the Wikipedia account is consistently referring to Sulkowicz (single) as ‘they’.
Which just shows the confusion caused by this BS ‘woke’ distortion of the English language. In this case, referring to a single individual by the plural pronoun.
Now I know that one can occasionally get away with a ‘they’ or ‘their’ for a single individual, usually when the identity of the individual is not known (“Will whoever left their bag in the locker please collect it”) but it ceases to work when strained to cover a known single individual. Just read the Wikipedia account to see why.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_University_rape_controversy
cr
I suppose there will be a good percentage of people who will try to put this into practice or be pleased to see they are doing it right.
I’m waiting for Jordan Peterson to come out in the same way
I wonder if it would be clear to the reader that the book is satire? If Titania sounds real to the non-Woke (Asleep? Sleepers? Sleepy?), how much more would she sound to those who are already sympathetic?
You’ve cracked open another shell of religious meaning with Sleepers; Herbert and Muab’Dib, “… the Sleeper has awoken! Father!”
She does not seem to be an intellectual Titan.
The blurbs here seem much funnier than most of Titania’s tweets. The latter often seem to be too close to what we normally see from real woke people on Twitter, as our host points out.
Is it possible to at least find out whose young face is in the twitter profile picture?
You’ll find nothing useful from a reverse image search – it’s not one original picture. You’d have to image search the face oval without the spectacles to have a chance of finding the original face, but it probably isn’t on Google etc anyway as the face oval may be a scanned or photographed B&W newspaper pic. Or not.
This is the JPEG on her Twitter & all I usefully can tell you it was made on an Apple computer:
https://flic.kr/p/RgGeuv
This little slice of the pic shows four or five layers from different sources probably
Bookshelves.
Hair.
Spectacles.
Eye: sclera is very white & reflections of bright lights like a fashion shoot.
Face: Skin dotted pattern looks like the reprographic halftone dithering dots used in B&W newspaper pics. Could be a colourized B&W pic or a pic made to look like it was treated that way. 🙂
Nose tip & lips. altered or added
https://flic.kr/p/24qBY8H
In fact I bet the face is a B&W halftone of a chap. Colourised & feminised for irony meter 11 purposes.
That would up the irony meter for sure. The chin looks rather masculine. Dunno.
Judging from skin tone, it’s a composite from several face images, joined at the nice thick spectacle frames. Assuming a modicum of awareness on the composer’s behalf, the two or three contributing photos are probably from royalty-free stock photo buckets.
It reminds me of a 1970s “Photofit” facial reconstruction, but slightly improved by non-straight joins.
Titania McGrath is a radical intersectionalist poet committed to feminism, social justice and armed peaceful protest. A regular on the live-slam poetry scene, Titania regularly performs at arts festivals, deconsecrated churches and genderqueer spiritual retreats. Her unique blend of art and activism has been variously described as ‘inspiring’, ‘groundbreaking’ and ‘woke as fuck’.
– from the Amazon listing.
Some of us can remember when computers were non-binary, but analogue instead.
I had both in college. We had an analog computer with a patch bay. Class assignment was to simulate a swinging door with springs and a damper. Also took a synthesizer class where we played with Moog synthesizers (Model 12s if I recall) which were analog.
Some very old timers here might remember when computers were *people*, like in the 1930s or 1940s.
So when did the last person whose job title was “computer” lose their job? Obviously a lot of people still do calculations as part of their job but they are not computers, people who are given equations and numbers to calculate.
‘Brexit shows democracy doesn’t work’ is a perfectly defendable thesis.