Anna Krylov called my attention to this articl at the site The Gadfly, which appears to be run by Frederick Alexander—someone I’ve never run across before. His article gives ten phrases associated with wokeness, four of which I really detest. I’ll put them all below the screenshot (click it to read the article), and perhaps you can guess which four curl the soles of my shoes.
Alexander’s phrases are in bold, and all of his words are indented. My few comments are flush left. He begins with an introduction about how the burgeoning of DEI after George Floyd’s death in 2020 has led to embedding certain phrases in woke language. Some of them are well familiar to me, while others are not.
Part of the intro:
It’s tempting to look back on those events as if they were a curious aberration, a moment of hysteria brought about by lockdown cabin fever. Today, it’s common to hear that “woke is dead” – and it’s true that many DEI programmes have been shut down or rebranded. The finger-wagging sanctimony has been toned down a few notches, too.
But what remains is the language: a distinct and unmistakable lexicon with a long half-life. This is the fallout from a blast we thought was long behind us. DEI no longer marches through institutions with a fanfare, but it operates as background radiation. Wave the Geiger counter over policy small print or the latest HR initiative, and you’ll hear the familiar crackling of progressive orthodoxy.
The language has insinuated itself into corporations and public bodies across the Western world, becoming almost invisible through constant repetition. Phrases that sound benign on the surface mask a cold system of enforcement that continues to reward fluency in Newspeak while punishing dissent. Taken together, they form a closed moral system – one that begins with empathy and ends with coercion.
Here are a few phrases you’ve probably heard before.
You can read Alexander’s full explication at the site; I’ll give just a sentence or three that he says about each one. And I’ll add my own short take:
1.) “We’re on a journey.” The world’s most overused corporate metaphor is also a favourite of institutions haemorrhaging money on failed DEI initiatives. Bud Light went on a journey with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney in April 2023 and ended up in corporate hell. The brand lost its spot as America’s top-selling beer, two marketing executives were put on leave, and the whole debacle cost a billion dollars in lost sales
That one I’m not familiar with, nor am I familiar with #2:
2.) “Bringing your whole self to work”. Silicon Valley invented this one. The idea was that workers would bring their creativity and passion to the job. Instead, they brought their politics and personal grievances.
It turns out there’s only really a problem if your “whole self” doesn’t align with “correct thinking”. Don’t bring your whole Christian self to work – the one who opposes abortion or thinks polygamy is a bad idea. That won’t go down too well. Think national borders might be a good thing? That whole self had better stay away, too. A gender-critical whole self? Don’t be silly. Best put all those whole selves back in their box, or wave your career goodbye.
3.) “Brave conversations. . . We’re talking about “courageous dialogue” with your line manager following an apparent “microaggression”. Turns out you need more training in how to think and when to declare your pronouns.
These conversations tend to begin with an admission of privilege, followed by an acknowledgement of harm, and conclude with a commitment to growth. Actual conversation – the kind where people disagree and minds change – never happens. That’s the wrong sort of bravery. The proper kind is where you confess to thought crimes you didn’t know existed.
I haven’t heard that one, either. Where have I been? After all, I’ve been on campus for decades.
4.) “Educate yourself”. This is a phrase professional activists and scolds deploy when they can’t defend their position. It’s the go-to for transforming intellectual laziness into moral superiority.
What “educate yourself” really means is this: read the approved texts so as to arrive at the conclusions I agree with – what we used to call indoctrination. Any other outcome is seen as proof of moral and intellectual deficiency.
I’ve used #4 myself, but only when faced with obtuse commenters who make arrant misstatements, usually about evolution. And I don’t use it too often, though of course all of us in academia have heard it used in exactly the sense that Alexander means.
5.) “Psychological safety.” Today, it means an environment where nobody can disagree with progressive orthodoxy without being invited to an HR struggle session. The safest spaces, it turns out, are wherever difficult questions are never asked. Feeling “unsafe” is now what happens when we challenge someone’s views on immigration or question whether men can become pregnant. JK Rowling has spent years being told her defence of women’s spaces makes trans people “unsafe”.
Of course we’ve all heard of “safe spaces,” which is apparently what “psychological safety” means. I’ve never heard that term used, though.
6.) “Lived experience.” This one refuses to die, which is a tragedy because few ideas on this list have wrought so much chaos and misery as the idea of “lived experience”. A phrase that transforms subjective feelings into unassailable truth, lived experience is invoked again and again to shut down “problematic” questions like “why are you trialling experimental puberty blockers on children as young as 10?”
This is how clinicians at Tavistock were silenced when they raised concerns about rushing children into medical transition. They were told they were “invalidating young people’s lived experience” of gender identity. Evidence-based medicine lost to feelings-based ideology. The Cass Review finally reintroduced rigour, but only after a decade of children used as test subjects.
Or consider Iranian women protesting forced veiling. Western feminists have dismissed them while deferring to the “lived experience” of those women who defend the hijab as empowerment. When evidence becomes inconvenient, personal testimony is invoked as epistemological authority, leaving empirical reasoning nowhere to go.
Several times this one has appeared on my “words and phrases I detest” posts (I need to make more of these). First of all, it’s redundant, since all experience is lived. (Is there such a thing as “unlived experience”?) But, more important, it suggests an alternative form of personal truth, a form that is fundamental to wokeness, is derived from postmodernism, and is explicitly antiempirical.
7.) “Equity, not equality”. Equity used to refer to the value of shares issued by a company. Now it refers to equalising outcomes rather than opportunities. The switch transformed Martin Luther King’s dream into its nightmare opposite.
That’s a terse entry but a true one. One has to be careful not to mistake the terms. The problem with ensuring equity is that different groups may have different preferences, which will create inequities despite equal opportunities. Therefore, if you see uneqaual representation of groups, you have to suss out the causes before you start mentioning bigotry, misogyny, and other causes based on prejudice.
8.) “Decolonizing the curriculum.” “Decolonising the curriculum” is largely about treating Western knowledge as inherently suspect because it’s Western. Ideas are judged not by whether they’re true but in terms of their provenance. Plato or Locke are “problematised” rather than argued with. Rejecting classical liberal principles in favour of progressive ones is “challenging power”.
In short, “decolonising the curriculum” is a licence to swap scholarship for grievance. It tells students what they’re meant to feel about the civilisation that built the university they’re attending.
That’s a strong statement, but again largely true. Certainly non-Western material is unduly neglected in some courses, more often in the humanities than the sciences, but beware of calls to “decolonize” an entire curriculum, particularly in STEMM.
9.) “Be an ally.” Allyship used to mean supporting a cause. Now it means performing endless penance for demographic characteristics you can’t change. The progressive ally must publicly confess privilege, declare solidarity, and accept instruction from activists without question.
It’s the “without question” part that bothers me. I am in agreement with the aims of many “progressive” causes, but don’t necessarily buy into the whole ideology or bag of tactics that go along with them. I prefer just to state where I agree or disagree rather than saying, “I’m an ally” or telling someone else to be one.
10.) “Impact over intent.” A lesser-known phrase, these words ensure your guilt is inescapable. It doesn’t matter what your intentions are; only how others feel about your actions. What’s that you say? You meant no harm? Irrelevant. Someone felt harmed, and that’s all that counts.
I’ve not heard that exact phrase before, but I’m well familiar with what it means and how it would be used. Two examples are the suspension of Professor Greg Patton for saying a Chinese word that sounded superficially like a racial slur, and the firing of an art-history professor at Hamline University who showed her students (with warnings) two famous Muslim paintings that depicted the visage of Muhammad.
I don’t have much to add to what Alexander and I have said above, but wanted to add Alexander’s pessimistic ending, noting first Alexander’s arguable claim that the phrases are the provenance mostly of the privileged.
. . . . much of the language persists because the people who use it pay no price for the harm it causes. HR directors still have jobs and diversity consultants still bill by the hour. The costs are absorbed by those with the least ability to navigate the new moral codes.
A decade from now, these phrases will sound dated, and eventually they’ll fade away. But others will take their place – a vocabulary already incubating in universities and carrying the same assumptions.
This is how ideology colonises institutions in a post-religious age: through a moral language that redefines virtue, reshapes norms, and renders dissent unspeakable long before it becomes the object of cancellation.
Note the emphasis on the moral certainty of the progressive ideologues, something we’ve talked about recently.
Haven’t read Alexander’s piece yet, but I don’t see “Doing the Work” in his list. I have heard and read that phrase being used in the context of anti-racism. You can see an example here, as one of the headings of the UC San Diego anti-racism guide: https://ucsd.libguides.com/antiracism.
Here’s another example using that phrase: https://localnewsmatters.org/2022/12/05/do-the-work-reveals-antiracism-as-a-journey-of-attainable-goals/
As an scientist, many years ago when I was just starting my career, I remember first encountering “lived experience” from an anthropologist. She was responding to my argument that we need data, not anecdotes, to make wise decisions, by saying we should be listening to people’s stories and lived experiences. That was when my first doubts began to emerge about the methods of many of the social sciences. Later I was on a search committee for the same department (as the outside person) and every Biological Anthropologist was never serious considered because they “only look at data.” So the result was the department never had a diverse source of opinions about human behavior.
I was just looking through the comments, and someone actually mentioned this as another one.
Not too surprising; after all, the woke religion has more than the traditional number of ten commandments.
Another one missed is “My Truth”. You cannot deny someone else’s Truth – to do so is to “erase” them (another one).
Agree.
IMHO the intent of “lived experience” and “equity, not equality” is sublation of the corresponding points in United States doctrine of “happiness” and “all men are created equal”.
That makes this “alchemy of the word” (Marcuse, Counterrevolution and Revolt, 1972) a project of Marxist theory.
The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.
~ Philip K. Dick.
“First of all, it’s redundant, since all experience is lived. (Is there such a thing as “unlived experience”? )”
I hope that our host isn’t being a vampire-phobic bigot! ;o)
“Bringing your whole self to work”. This was exemplified by an appalling example that I was reminded of on X yesterday: https://x.com/SVPhillimore/status/2009895303378321461
I agree with the critique of “lived experience” in the referenced article as well as here.
However one could sort of have “unlived experience” by making use of statistical modeling or a computer simulation. For example, airplanes and ships may largely be designed by computer simulation, building on “lived experience” of models in wind tunnels as well as the “lived experience” of the engineers.
This isnt really how the term is used. It is used to validate person A’s actions based on their “lived experience”, denigrating person B’s “lived experience”. Certainly the “lived experience” of scientists is to be skeptical and doublecheck the data a la Feynman.
I agree that it is redundant, and annoying, but I think it is more of a dual word emphasis. Like will & testament. Same thing, but more impressive that way. One could just say “in my experience…” as we used to do, but mo bettah with “my lived experience make certain….”. Or, like Jerry likes to say: “It is what it is!”
Indeed. I rarely encounter the “lived experience” nonsense face-to-face, but my preferred offensive (in both senses) response is along the lines of my lived experience being that arguments relying on “lived experience” are worthless. (Sometimes, discretion results in a more polite response.)
Lived experience is not lived experiencing, but (alleged) knowledge resulting from what one has “lived through” or undergone.
“Lived experience refers to the firsthand knowledge, insights, and understanding that individuals gain through their personal life circumstances. In a DEI context, it is especially relevant when referring to people from marginalised or underrepresented groups. Lived experience offers unique, real-world perspectives on how systems of inequality, bias, and discrimination operate on a day-to-day basis.”
Source: https://oxford-review.com/the-oxford-review-dei-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-dictionary/lived-experience-definition-and-explanation/
There are a gazillion different definitions of lived experience. Here is another from Wikipedia
But they all come down to pretty much the same thing: subjective truth that you have gained through your own experience. To narrow it to marginalized people is ludicrous. It is also proffered as another way of knowing; it offers perspetives, as you say, but not objective truths. Everything beyond the first sentence of the second paragraph is an irrelevant add-on.
A few months ago I asked a woke person what “lived experience” means and I compared it to “dead experience.” This person told me that there are three types of “experience:”
“Lived experience,” in which someone has direct personal experience with something, anything at all;
“Loved experience,” in which someone loves someone with “lived experience;” and
“Learned experience,” in which someone is educated about something, anything at all, and who may work in a professional capacity about that something.
For example, someone diagnosed with cancer has lived experience of cancer. A partner or family member of the person with cancer has loved experience. An oncologist has learned experience of cancer. Of course, lived experience is the highest of the three.
I’ve long argued that language use is critical when fighting any ideology.
For example, the “unborn child” from anti-abortion rhetoric has been in the vernacular for about 50 years. No one questions it except some feminists. In addition to being an oxymoron, “unborn child” intends to evoke an emotional response that a fetus is a literal child and abortion is murdering that child.
Other language is “trans woman” and other transgender oxymorons. This language has also entered the vernacular. The term is deliberately ambiguous — is a “trans woman” a woman who rejects her sex or a man who rejects his sex? The correct terms are trans-identifying male or female. These are unambiguous.
The word “identify” used to be a neutral verb. Now it means that feelings supersede facts. If a man “identifies” as a woman, then he magically becomes a woman, and any woman who dares disagree is a “phobe” and a bigot.
Speaking of phobes, transphobia and Islamophobia are not actual phobias but buzzwords and labels intended to shut down all legitimate criticism of trans ideology and Islam, respectively.
If we stop using ideological language like this and correct those who do, we can disarm it and its parent ideology.
I despise these terms and all the woke ones Alexander lists.
Excellent post! I’d just say that “trans-identifying male or female” may be unambiguous, but it’s also pretty much incoherent. I’d prefer “male-identifying female” and “female-identifying male”.
Thank you, Danny. Interesting suggestions too.
I think the words “identity” and “identify” are particularly slippery. Traditionally the primary meaning of the word “identity” was the state of being of the person (or thing). Only recently has the word come to predominately mean one’s feelings or perceptions of oneself. The left constantly plays on this ambiguity to sow confusion.
The word “identify” is similarly ambiguous. It can mean to objectively ascertain the being and nature of a thing. But nowadays we usually hear the word in the context of one’s psychological process of perceiving oneself as this or that. The way I speak English, it would be absurd to say that I “identify” as male or tall or somewhat nearsighted. I simply am those things and there is no psychological process of identification going on. But “identify” seems to mean something different when we speak of a trans person “identifying” as female. For most of us, an identity is something we simply have, not something we can cultivate or can choose.
I once had a prolonged fight with another trans agitator who claimed that I’m not a woman because I don’t “identify’ as one. I replied that I AM a woman. I don’t ‘identify’ as one. This agitator also claimed that my mother isn’t a woman for the same nonsense. I replied that my mother gave birth three times so she’s absolutely a woman. The agitator then flew into a rage — as they do — and called me all kinds of names. She knew she lost the fight.
I told her that ‘identifying’ as something means you’re NOT that something. Women ARE women. A woman (or man) is not an ‘identity.’ She’s a real human.
So I agree with you.
My ABC’s of technical communication: Accuracy, Brevity, Clarity. ‘A’ is paramount.
Of course political rhetoric is a whole different beast.
Not only “different preferences” but different abilities. At some point society is going to have to admit this. The fingers-in-ears and burn-the-heretic response can only last so long.
Just for example, India is a vast country of 1.4 billion people while Jamaica is a tiny country of fewer than 3 million people. Yet Jamaica has had about 15 athletes in recent Olympic 100-m sprint finals, whereas India has had none. This isn’t about opportunity or preferences, it’s about biology (genetics), and at some point denying that gets perverse. More than 95% of the world’s top sprinters have ancestry from a rather small region of West Africa.
Society can just about cope with people pointing out the above, but try, say, mathematics, and counting finalists in the maths Olympiad who are Han Chinese compared to those having Bantu ancestry, and society freaks out and has a collective meltdown.
Recently Team America beat Team China in the Maths Olympiad. Well done America! But it’s amusing to Google for an image of the winning America team (e.g. link) and see what you notice about how it compares to American demographics generally.
The language of equity is pernicious. Given its ubiquity, even in opposing it one can unwittingly adopt its frame of privileging the group over the individual.
That photo is hilarious. It’s like when US teams beat Canadian teams at hockey, with teams almost entirely made up of Canadians.
I have worked in more than one organisation where these and similar phrases were peppered throughout HR documents, and even in more technical and business ones. After a while, it became easy to tell which individual had contributed which bit and led to much hilarity among the handful of us who possessed common sense and critical thinking.
I can recall a few times where five or six wokeisms would be in the first page or two… and sometimes more than one in the same sentence. “Our journey towards equity will require us all to engage in brave safe-space conversations” is especially memorable if you are a fan of UK comedy ‘The Office’.
However, even with a sense of humour, this stuff quickly becomes greatly wearing and it’s a key reason that I decided many years ago to work towards (successful) early retirement.
In countries like New Zealand where the ‘equity’ and ‘decolonisation’ nonsense is particularly strong it makes it very hard for good people to get on and do productive work. I hate to think of how much time and money has been wasted on often multi-day ‘seminars’ and ‘workshops’ devoted to these topics. NZ has very low, and reducing, worker productivity… I see a correlation 🙂
Very disappointed by the absence of “indigenization.” Frederick Alexander needs to do better.
On reflection, also very disappointed by the absence of “do better.”
Well, that was extraordinary! Then I looked at another half-dozen of his essays, and subscribed.
Yes there is such a thing as “unlived experience.” I call it “reading a novel, poem, or story”. One point of fiction is to experience lives we can’t possibly have lived. That’s why silencing authors writing about groups they are not part of is so insidious. Or consider good old-fashioned empathy.
Also, didn’t the last paragraph bother you? It implies that we need a return to religion in order to get our words right. A couple other passages also imply that we’re where we are because we lost our religion. That’s pretty bad in my book. “heretical” anyone?
Reading is an experience. Imaginatively identifying with a character in a book is an experience.
“One point of fiction is to experience lives we can’t possibly have lived.”
Except we don’t have experiences we haven’t lived. We imagine the experiences of others, real or fictional, but their experiences aren’t ours. The sympathy and identification we may experience is…an experience. One which is ours.
“Also, didn’t the last paragraph bother you?”
“This is how ideology colonises institutions in a post-religious age: through a moral language that redefines virtue, reshapes norms, and renders dissent unspeakable long before it becomes the object of cancellation.”
He’s comparing Wokeness to religion. It has its own ideas about virtue and it has reshaped norms: that’s undeniable. I doubt Alexander thinks we should “render dissent unspeakable,” so I don’t see how that paragraph implies that we need religion.
One phrase I don’t hear as much these days; “check your privilege”. It was only ever used as a cudgel; meant to silence, never a call for introspection.
That one is really hard core, Edward. The speaker is TRYING to be an a-hole.
It is very, very “activist”. I can see the young lady’s purple hair from here! 🙂
D.A.
NYC/FL
All of these are very cringe!
[Runs away].
‘Recovering racist’ is another one ie just like recovering alcoholic
Ramesh. 2% recovering Denisovan
I keep this excellent definition of “wokeness” handy, as to me, it is one of the best ones I’ve come across. It appeared in an article by Jamil Jivani in October 2020 in the National Post, and also in the Macdonald-Laurier Institute website, titled “Wokeness – the new religion of the left.” Things, in Canada at least, have not changed since 2020. If anything, the situation is more dire. The “mostly performative and ritualistic” quote is my favourite. “Wokeness, which is based on the belief that prejudice and discrimination are present at all times like an unseen spirit influencing our every thought or action, is mostly performative and ritualistic. Woke adherents show how pious they are by reciting the correct political scriptures about alleged injustices. To attain woke status you don’t have to actually help anyone overcome injustice. All that’s required is condemning others for not being woke enough….Wokeness appropriates many concepts found in traditional faiths, such as blasphemers (those who have ‘problematic’ opinions) and heretics (those who are targeted by social media mobs)…”The ideas of sin (privilege) righteousness (victimhood) and damnation (cancellation) are well established within wokeism.”
I’ve heard you use “Educate yourself” in a lecture/talk, but context is important. It struck me as a bit fun, but in no way patronizing. Context is important, as is the speaker.
All the others hurt my ears. They’re also quite feminized I think.
D.A.
NYC /FL
Oh yes, playing whale songs to ailing trees is equal to the scientific method.
It may even be greater, depending on the funding agency’s priorities.
Yes, but you must admit the brazen audacity and chutzpah was strikingly successful in netting NZD $4m.
DEI/woke progressivism’s phrases, concepts, and the like seem such performative garbage to me that I have had trouble taking them seriously.
That is my own failing as those very things have infected my own field of pediatrics to disastrous proportions (see childhood sterilization via transgenderism for evidence).
Progressives have weaponized morality to their own ends.
They are not liberals.
And I thank our host for calling them out as the worst enemies of our Democratic Party.
Pretty much by definition, no authoritarians are pluralists.
Sad to say Woke lives in local community college catalog. But then, they take the “teachers” who come forward, and have almost no standards. Mindful Bird Watching (not making this up) and of course the traditional Qi Gong and Tai Ji (always spelled “Chi” like they didn’t get the pinyin memo) and silly Yoga stuff — just learned that chairs! need Yoga! Right there in the catalog. An elderly woman bowing down to this folding chair! Who knew? This bottom feeder woke and pre-woke crap has been persistent for decades. I one dared to challenge the claims in a Bay Area suburb and found my name denounced in pre-wokish terms on the community center bulletin board.
I haven’t seen “psychological safety” put exactly like that, but the trans-identified activists and their “allies” often claim to feel “unsafe” when someone expresses an opinion like, “trans women really aren’t women,” or “there are only two sexes.” (I assume by “unsafe” they mean “psychologically unsafe”, but it’s hard to be sure, as they like to pretend the trans-identified are in constant danger of being murdered by transphobes.)
“Impact over intent.” This one was popular with the Pharyngula crowd, but they phrased it as “Intent is not magic.”
“It’s a journey” used to drive me mad. Patients started responding with it when I explained that I would be gone for six month’s chemo. I gritted my teeth on the basis that they were simply grabbing something they had heard others say in an awkward situation, rather like the stilted way we say “My condolences.”
But when nurses, transplant co-ordinators etc all began to use it, I had to draw the line. I made it plain that I did not wish to hear the phrase, and strangely they all respected that, perhaps they marked my chart!
Thanks for the recommendation. I’ve just read several of Frederick Alexander’s pieces and he’s an unusually gifted writer and very clear thinker. A good new discovery.
The DEI woke word/phrase list embedded in many universities, particularly in New Zealand and Canada. Just ask around. If not formally stated in university policy documents, certainly unstated. Just ask all those whose grant applications were rejected….
The New Zealand Ministry of Health official chose the phrase ‘one’s medical journey’ on being entangled with the hospital system. Picture a camel caravan from Timbuktu to Fez.
From Mamdani’s NYC comes ‘violence interpreters’.