naraburns
nihil supernum
No bio...
User ID: 100
Rather I think there are many layers of various pillars of society going towards the shitter that I think makes some kind of collapse of Western Civilization inevitable.
Living in a material world under the known laws of physics makes the collapse of all civilizations inevitable.
History gives me strong priors that most such "collapses" are local and move slower than most individual human perception. By the standards of Western Civilization circa 1800, Western Civilization has already collapsed and been replaced with something comparatively grotesque, which we today call "Western Civilization." The prevalence of atheism, pornography, premarital and extramarital sex, illegitimate birth, etc. would shock most Westerners from the mid 20th century, never mind the 19th. By the standards of those days, we already live in a dystopian hellscape.
And yet if you spend much time talking to nonagenarians, you will often hear resignation to the idea that the world simply changes (though some will definitely tell you that the world has gone to hell in a handbasket). Humans are incredibly, almost comically adaptable. Just about anything can become a "baseline" experience for us, given sufficient exposure (and lack of exposure to alternatives).
Now, some of the more extreme climate eschatology, political alarmism, nuclear war worries, AI doomerism, etc. will be quick to remind that some collapses are more dramatic, sharp-edged, and/or final than others. This is surely true. But given the number and variety of collapses I can see through history, the collapse of Western Civilization as we know it is shaping up to be more of an evolution than a revolution, and sufficiently gradual that it will annoy me when I am a nonagenarian (knock on wood), but probably not kill me or even cause me very much suffering. At worst, it will inspire in me only deep disappointment.
At best, I will have alien descendants born on Mars, whose lives and lifestyles would shock and horrify me. But hey--Mars!
The end will come for humanity, eventually, too. It would be nice, I think, if we could escape that. But I do expect, to my sorrow, that I will not be alive to see how our story ends.
Thanks for those examples. I think they are okay. Certainly they are better than your examples from this space. What I would say I see happening in the "woke Fed" example is wokism getting generalized to leftism-writ-large, rather than applying to leftist identitarianism. It's guilt-by-association, basically. Not really a "nebulous bogeyman" but certainly a sloppy use.
The "woke Democrat DA" I would need to know more about. Leftist identitarianism often has a lot to say about criminal justice through a racial lens; was this such a case? I don't know. Certainly this could also be a sloppy case.
Give me an example of it being used as a "sneer" before 2010--which I think you are going to have a lot harder time doing. Why? Because the definition has had significant "creep" since then, which is my point.
I think you're maybe underestimating the rapid timeline on the pejoration process. Circa 2010 it was "social justice warriors," not "woke." Before that, I'm not sure... "cultural Marxism" probably, though my memory is that was more of a 1990s thing, driven in large measure by Pat Buchanan. I think maybe the first decade of the 2000s was sufficiently focused on "Islamophobia" and "Islamofascism" that maybe we didn't have a dominant shorthand meme for leftist identitarianism then? (Right now, "DEI" seems to be rising to the top as the preferred nomenclature of leftist identitarians, which is why it, too, has become something centrists and rightists mock. Once it was just called "affirmative action," and that became a bit of a sneer, too. New viral memes meet cultural immune systems every day!)
What is more common us the use of the word as primarily a sneer, but a smaller amount of truth to deride that person, object, idea, or company.
I don't really get why you're so fixated on this. I've granted that it gets used as a sneer, sometimes. But you're insisting the sneer is the "real" or "primary" definition or use, and as far as I can tell that simply isn't true. "Woke" means "leftist identitarianism" and sometimes overgeneralizes to "leftism" and rarely overgeneralizes to simply "bad." What's surprising about that? We could say similar things about "Nazi" ("German national socialist" overgeneralizes to "fascist/racist/authoritarian" overgeneralizes to "bad") or any of a host of other political identifiers.
But its primary use today (January 2025) is to tar and feather others, before finding out more about what is being described.
This is just false--especially here on the Motte. The primary use of "woke" today is to describe leftist identitarians in a single syllable. Personally, I don't blame anyone for feeling bad if they are leftist identitarians; on my view, they should feel bad, and should repent! So sure, right wingers and centrists and Marxists all probably say "woke" with a sneer, but that's because they find leftist identitarianism genuinely awful.
And this last bit in your response is an excellent demonstration of what I am talking about, and it looks like the person getting the pejorative treatment is me.
Look, you are a "new" account that fits the MO of certain ban evaders and known trolls. You show up saying you're a "long time lurker" and immediately pick a super common topic of discussion, on which the Motte has a much, much better handle than the wider world of so-called journalists writing on the topic. Then you steadfastly insist that the stupidest possible interpretation of "woke" is the "real" one, which is exactly the position woke people are taking right now, because the word has become an effective way to limit their political power--in the face of multiple well-considered explanations for why you're mistaken.
If you are not yourself a leftist identitarian, then I don't know why you would take that position--unless you are trying to make a particularly pedantic argument about language, in which case I would expect you to bite the bullet and also argue that "Nazi" and "alt right" and "Communist" and "Neoliberal" and the like are all just meaningless slurs, given their common deployments, despite the possibility that they once had analytic content. But you don't appear to have found that angle interesting.
Conversely, if you are a leftist identitarian, then several people have given you very clear answers to your question which defuse your complaints entirely; you would be better off learning from those responses, I think, than stubbornly sticking to the current dogma as promulgated by MSNBCNN.
naraburns
nihil supernum
5d ago
I defined it that way, simply because that is the way it is most commonly used.
I don't think so. In your previous comment you suggested two examples of people using "woke" as a mere sneer, when in fact those were both perfectly coherent criticisms of left wing identitarianism.
Those are good examples, but I can provide hundreds if not thousands of counter examples where it is folks right of center using the term to describe progressive or anti-racist ideas, policies, goals or activities.
I suspect you might, and yet so far you have failed to even provide one clear example. In particular, I would be interested to see an example of someone using the word "woke" to describe something, anything, that is not at all plausibly left wing identitarianism. Like, someone taking a bite of pistachio ice cream and then saying, "ugh, disgusting, this ice cream is so woke." That would be pure pejorative, and is probably too much to ask, but so far the closest you've gotten is an example, not of someone using the term as a pure pejorative, but using it to describe left wing identitarianism without apparently knowing a better phrase than "woke" to describe it.
Furthermore, if we look in the last 5 years or so, this is almost exclusively the case. If there has been a muddying of the waters of the term since the mid-20th century or even 2018 to now, would that not be by the folks who are constantly referencing, writing and talking about it and not those who have nearly ceased using the term?
The term hasn't been particularly muddied in the last 5 years, it has just been used to accurately describe the ridiculous policies that result from left wing identitarianism. The absurd response (your response, here!) has been to try to argue that it doesn't mean anything in particular at all, and that it is just an empty smear. But it's not; it's a word that left wing identitarians used to describe themselves, and so it became a pejorative because left wing identitarianism is (it seems to me, and many others) objectively terrible.
It's like... imagine you meet someone who wishes to restore Germany to nationalistic glory, in part by stripping Jews of citizenship, socializing the German economy, et cetera. And you say... "damn, fella, you sound like a Nazi!" And he responds, "oh, get out of here with your nebulous bogeyman terms. People just use 'Nazi' as an empty smear. Sure, maybe it was once used to describe certain political beliefs, but in the last fifty years, the most common usage has just been to tar your political opponents."
I don't know about you, but I feel like the appropriate response would be, "well, true, I would like to see fewer people using the word 'Nazi' as an empty smear. But it does have an actual meaning, and expelling Jews from Germany is kind of a key aspect of that. In fact, it seems like you don't want me to call you what you are because you know that this will probably help some people realize that they do not like your policies and do not wish to vote for you."
To be frank: I think your engagement on this issue is disingenuous. I think you are very much like a Nazi who is complaining about people misusing the word Nazi. Yes, there is a motte here: the word "Nazi" definitely gets used as a nebulous bogeyman! And yet when actual Nazis use that argument, I think it is reasonable to be very suspicious of their true motivations! Because the bailey is that it's more difficult to criticize a political coalition that is constantly shifting its identity in an attempt to evade accountability and criticism.
So it is with "woke." Are there problems with how the word gets used? Sure, that's reasonable. Does that mean that all or even most use of the word "woke" is just empty rhetoric? I have seen (and you have provided) no actual evidence of that.
To me, wokism or calling things woke is a catch all term that someone right of center calls a social activity or value that someone left of center espouses.
It does sometimes get used that way, but I don't know why you would elect to espouse the least clear and useful version of the word as the archetype of the concept. Most people, right or left, are kind of stupid, and when they say political things they are mostly just signalling virtue by parroting something they heard somewhere. Children use words they can't define, sometimes properly, sometimes not; this does not actually muddy the underlying concepts.
So I can't figure out why you're in one breath complaining about people using the word in vague or merely pejorative ways, and in the next breath saying that, to you, that actually is what "woke" means. Any time you see the word in the wild, just substitute "left wing identitarianism" and it should be pretty easy to see whether the person speaking is using the word meaningfully, or just as an empty sneer. In the examples you pulled for me, I don't see any use of the word "woke" as a "nebulous bogeyman." The first two are pretty clear and direct criticisms of left wing identitarianism and the political activities of left wing identitarians. The third is just one person admitting that they aren't sure what "woke" means, precisely, but they can see what it has accomplished.
For instance, I don't think I have ever heard in person or seen online someone left of center that uses it to describe an action or an ideology.
Then you haven't been paying attention (or maybe you're just late to the party). "#StayWoke" was a pretty early example of hashtag activism, circa 2012. The Wikipedia entry on "Woke" has a 2018 picture of former U.S. Representative Marcia Fudge holding a shirt that says "Stay Woke: Vote." The term itself originated back in the mid-20th century and was very much tied to the identity politics of black Americans, and its circuitous path to "viral hashtag meme" generalized rapidly to leftist identity politics generally. None of this is mysterious, and every news article out there complaining about the vagueness of "woke" ignores the well-established history of the meme in an attempt to muddy the waters of discourse, exactly as the political left has always done with words that capture its essence and expose its ridiculousness.
I would define socially conscious as the ability to identify differences in race/ethnicity, class, religion, etc, in addition to individual differences.
If that is your definition, then no, "woke" does not mean "socially conscious." To be "woke" requires a particular political attitude toward those differences; the ability to identify them is not sufficient, for the reasons I already outlined. Specifically, the identitarian right is definitely able to identify such differences, and is definitely not "woke."
naraburns
nihil supernum
5d ago
We’ve had several posters trying to get people to define woke in the past couple weeks — is this just the current meme again?
Seems to be. I assume that the leftist prospiracy is working to muddy the waters on "woke" because it has become a useful cudgel for rightists, which is a pattern that has been repeated for a while now.
It seems like there’s been a large increase in trolls and insincere posters as well.
I haven't noticed this, myself, but I haven't been able to spend as much time here lately as I used to.
I have noticed that many posts seem to point to an increasingly nebulous boogeyman
For our benefit, please provide an example of where you think the word "woke" was used as a "nebulous boogeyman" and explain how you think that nebulousness reflected an "increase" from previous use cases.
Because it seems to me that "define woke" is a question posed (mostly by trolls) all the time around here. I've never actually seen this community struggle, even a tiny bit, with what is or is not "woke."
What is woke?
"Woke" is a convenient handle for left wing identitarianism, broadly construed. It is often in tension with left wing materialism, so e.g. Marxists are often anti-woke leftists.
This can be confusing because "woke" is predominantly what was once called "cultural Marxism" (e.g.)--before that phrase got memory-holed into an "anti-Semitic conspiracy theory." Cultural Marxism, in turn, is the application of "critical theory" and redistributionist tendencies to "social capital" instead of monetary capital. This is one reason Marxists are often at odds with wokists; Marxism is a modernist and materialist philosophy, while wokism is postmodern and sociological. Classical Marxists will tell you that cultural Marxism is not even Marxism at all... but they still typically vote for the same people and policies.
One way in which "woke" may be somewhat evolved beyond cultural Marxism is that it seems to have incorporated a decentralized ethos impossible prior to the advent of social media; what counts as "woke" today can change rapidly depending on what is trending and who is getting cancelled. While "purity spirals" are evidenced in e.g. classical Marxist circles, "woke" (plus tech) seems to take this to unprecedented levels.
Is there a difference between one that is socially conscious and someone who is woke?
How would you define "socially conscious?" I am definitely conscious of the social issues that consume wokist thought, and yet it would clearly be a mistake to identify me as "woke," because I am not a left wing identitarian. Most people who are obsessed with issues of race or gender, and who regard those differences as central to all political questions, are left wing identitarians, but some are right wing identitarians, and those are not "woke" either--that's the "alt right"--or, better, the "identitarian right."
I wouldn't mind too terribly if the word "woke" went away, but in my experience the only people who would benefit from having it go away, and who really want it to go away, are left wing identitarians, and "left wing identitarian" is admittedly something of a mouthful.
naraburns
nihil supernum
8d ago
Thanks for digging those up!
Have you got any tips for finding such things? I feel like it should be a lot easier, in the 21st century, for me to find such documents. Most news outlets don't even link to the White House announcement page, much less original documents. SCOTUS makes it pretty easy to see their official opinions; Congress is a bit more complicated, especially with bills that aren't yet laws, but usually I can manage there. The White House seems much less interested in even a hint of transparency.
naraburns
nihil supernum
8d ago
My apologies. I'm sure if you have the ability to improve the codebase, you'd be welcome on the development Discord.
As for the post, looks like they've deleted it, so, I guess it's a moot point.
naraburns
nihil supernum
8d ago
...did you have a point you wanted to make?
Your post seems to be a stream-of-consciousness panic dump, ticking off a laundry list of fears of varying degrees of plausibility, rhetorical questions and sweeping pronouncements without the slightest effort toward evidence or even argument, to say nothing of focus.
Donald Trump will not be the President of the United States for another 105 minutes, at this writing. Pick an issue, make an argument. Trying to fit everything you're scared of (or every news media talking point) into one post is not really conducive to productive discussion.
naraburns
nihil supernum
8d ago
Are "Darryl" and "Darrell" Chambers the same person? Five minutes on Google has not cleared this up for me in any way.
President Biden has "pre-emptively" pardoned
General Mark A. Milley, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the Members of Congress and staff who served on the Select Committee, and the U.S. Capitol and D.C. Metropolitan police officers who testified before the Select Committee
Or at least, he has made a statement to that effect; compare the Hunter pardon, which was fairly detailed, complete with dates. The "pre-emptive" pardon announcement has no details. What are they pardoned for? During what time periods? This appears to be a blanket memo to the future: "these people are immune from prosecution, for whatever, because fuck you that's why." It's not quite at the gobsmackingly presumptuous level of inventing fake Constitutional Amendments, but it seems like yet another example of the Biden administration (and its propaganda arm, the mainstream press) being everything it ever accused Trump of potentially being someday.
I admit: I do not have high hopes for the Trump administration. Mostly I'm hoping that Justices Alito and Thomas have the good sense to step down from SCOTUS before the Democrats are able to take back the Senate. Perhaps I will be pleasantly surprised? But the outgoing administration is acting like it has been dipping into the till and never expected it might actually be held accountable for that. In particular, the possibility that the January 6th riots were fomented by justice department lackeys, whether as a conspiracy or a prospiracy, is something the Biden administration absolutely does not want anyone looking into.
Biden insists:
The issuance of these pardons should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that any individual engaged in any wrongdoing, nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense.
Historically unprecedented, although the Hunter Biden pardon definitely moved things in this direction. Malicious prosecution of political enemies has long been a standard play for Democratic politicians and bureaucrats--the failed prosecution of Trump himself, of course, but also the well known IRS prosecution of conservatives, throwing the book at local conservative officials who defy federal law while winking at local progressive officials who defy federal law, et cetera.
Of course, the famous MAGA "lock her up" chant should not be forgotten, and Trump has indeed suggested on many occasions that certain people should probably be investigated for wrongdoing. But the presumptions on display--"Trump (who has never actually carried through on these threats) is just doing this illegitimately for political gain, but Democrats doing the same thing (and actually doing it) to their political enemies are just rooting out corruption, which is totally legitimate"--seem clear. I don't doubt that corruption is fairly rampant in DC, on both sides of the aisle. Politicians in general make my skin crawl. But I feel like the Democratic Party's catchphrase has very thoroughly become: "It's Different When We Do It."
If Trump doesn't blanket pardon everyone convicted of an offense on January 6, 2021, I will be disappointed in him. And if he does, the propagandists in the news media will cry bloody murder about it. I wish I was in a position to extract shame or embarrassment from them for this, because I feel like the world would be a better place if more journalists paid a heavier price for pretending to be "neutral" when they are actually functioning as shills.
naraburns
nihil supernum
10d ago
Just last month, 120 Democrats in the House and 46 in the Senate signed letters asking Biden to take this step, since, in their view, the amendment was already validly approved.
I have a hard time believing that attitude is anything but kayfabe. If it wasn't an amendment they liked, I don't think they would have the same view on the ratification process.
naraburns
nihil supernum
11d ago
He will not be president long enough to be impeached.
Correct. Which is why he's doing this now.
In practice, the Supreme Court needs to be convinced that that bureaucrat had grounds to publicize it. They won’t be. This is extremely silly.
This is an attempt, effectively, to fork the Constitution. This creates and purports to legitimize a blue-tribe consensus that there is a 28th Amendment and that it is the ERA, while the red tribe continues to operate under the view that there isn't such an Amendment.
Will it work? I don't know, but someone clearly thinks it has a chance of working. How many people have to act as if something is the case, before it becomes the case? Might this go nowhere? Sure, it might. But all by itself, Biden's and Harris's willingness to try it is shocking and disturbing.
naraburns
nihil supernum
11d ago
It's meaningless until some left wing judge acts on it. It's meaningless until some bureaucrat can be pressured to publicize it.
It's literally legal disinformation being promulgated by the President and Vice President of the United States. It is a naked power grab. Presidents have been impeached for less.
naraburns
nihil supernum
11d ago
No, this is disinformation coming from the President and Vice President. At least stupid executive orders are president-things that presidents do.
Officially declaring the existence of a fake Constitutional Amendment based on the dubious theorizing of an advocacy group is exactly the kind of oligarchy-style nonsense the President of the United States just warned us about.
naraburns
nihil supernum
11d ago
Biden wants a constitutional crisis, apparently.
Well, that's editorializing, but like, seriously--WTF?
Biden says Equal Rights Amendment is ratified, kicking off expected legal battle as he pushes through final executive actions
He's got chutzpah, I guess (or, realistically, one of his staffers does). Never have I seen such a nakedly partisan attempt to create mass confusion concerning American constitutional law, nor such an inducement for left wing justices to defect from the rule of law. It is perhaps the single least professional, most embarrassing thing a sitting President has done in, like, six or seven weeks.
Just to get this out up front: no. The Equal Rights Amendment has not been ratified, and is not the law of the land. When asked for comment by CNN, the U.S. archives referred the station to previous statements from the U.S. archivist that
the amendment “cannot be certified as part of the Constitution due to established legal, judicial, and procedural decisions,” pointing to a pair of conclusions in 2020 and 2022 from the Office of Legal Counsel at the US Department of Justice that affirmed that ratification deadlines were enforceable.
The President has no particular role in the ratification process anyway, so his opinion is legally meaningless. Certainly his appeal to the "American Bar Association" (an especially left wing advocacy group) is meaningless. But it's a signal, and the message is clear: time to ignore the law, precedent, history, and any possible position of compromise and coexistence. Watching the outgoing administration slap the "defect" button as rapidly as possible does not bode well for the next four years. At best, it's an inducement for the Trump administration to play tit-for-tat. At worst, I don't know--civil war?
The fact that the CNN article is still pushing this wild "pre-emptive pardons" stuff is also concerning, but illegitimately announcing an Amendment to the Constitution has surely got to be the most brazen lame duck move in American history. This is banana republic levels of absurdity.
naraburns
nihil supernum
11d ago
Several times per day, a new account gets created and posts a variation of this post. Sometimes in Russian. "Where are the admins? I want to talk about advertising. It's important!" And so on. We have mostly just removed them, as with all spam, but this one had been quite persistent, rolling IPs and browsers and so on, posting and posting. After a while we tried responding, but it became clear that there was not a human at the tiller--actually saying "yes this is the admin" did not generate any results.
Actually approving this post may have been the thing that broke the bot's loop, as after it was approved, an actual spam post got made (advertising a Russian sex chat site), which I removed, and so far we've not received further spam of this variety. Time will tell. We do deal with a fair bit of spam, but nothing quite so automated and persistent before this.
naraburns
nihil supernum
13d ago
It's not just you.
I heard a right-coded radio host mention the New Orleans attack somewhat recently, but it was only a passing reference in connection with a Biden gaffe.
I don't know that "marital rape" only happens when a soon-to-be-ex assaults his wife.
I mean, presumably there are other cases--that's just the one that I've actually seen in court, and the one I've heard used to justify the changes. I don't make a habit of following criminal prosecutions meticulously, but the rate of "marital rape" proceedings that are either preceded or followed by "divorce" proceedings surely approaches 100%, whatever the gory details.
But what about unhealthy ones, where the wife is never in the mood and the husband decides he's sick of taking no for an answer? If there is no such thing as marital rape, then all she can do is divorce him, I guess? (Which most tradcons who oppose marital rape laws also tend to think should not be an option.)
I don't feel like I know any tradcons who would reject "physical abuse" as possible grounds for separation, but I suppose they're probably out there. But really--someone who puts their spouse in prison for marital rape must surely understand that it is tantamount to a divorce anyway? This seems quite analogous to "battered woman syndrome" to me--the law has rarely faced any shortage of ways to answer domestic violence of various kinds; rather, a host of influences (love, material need, desperation, actual insanity, you name it) bring women back to their abusers under a wide variety of circumstances. Whether that's a "systemic" problem or a psychological problem or whatever, revamping central tenets of the ancient institution of marriage to better serve outrageous edge-cases does not seem to have especially helped matters improve.
This is a pattern I see repeated endlessly in conversations about "moral progress." I could hand you a dozen different papers purporting to explain how we can reduce violence against women through various social engineering programs, but none of them really explains the evidence for their own effectiveness. As far as I have been able to determine, the biggest progress in reducing violence against women has been made through IQ gains resulting from the near eradication of malnutrition, combined with an overall increase in the absolute wealth of the average American. Outside of America and Europe, "intimate partner violence" remains stubbornly unaffected by cultural interventions (though that hasn't stopped anyone from insisting their programs just need more money).
Cases like Gaiman's are special. He obviously isn't an impoverished blue collar laborer, lashing out at his long-suffering wife due to poor executive functioning. He's damaged in a different way: he's a wealthy, powerful man living in a world where sex and marriage have been decoupled, to the primary detriment of the very women the sexual revolution so often purported to advantage.
naraburns
nihil supernum
14d ago
"What counts as consent" is exactly what is at issue; if you think marriage counts as permanent and irrevocable consent (as various human cultures have held), then "marital rape" is analytically impossible.
Sure, we could redefine words so that you couldn't call women being physically forced to have sex with their husbands against their will victims of "rape", but I'm not sure what the value of that is.
No one is proposing to do that.
But when you take that away from marriage, it becomes rather less clear both what the point of marriage really is,
Do you mean that the point of marriage is that the man can have sex with his wife whenever he wants?
No; kindly stow the strawmen, please. Sex is, however, central to the concept of marriage, historically.
I would imagine the most common application of marital rape laws is invisible, i.e. deterring husbands from forcing themselves on their wives against their will.
You don't have to answer this, of course, as it is a somewhat personal question, but... are you currently a member of a marriage in which the higher-libido spouse refrains from forcible intercourse partially or primarily because it is against the law? Because, like, if you are, my condolences? But if you aren't, then where in the world would you pick up such a bizarre model of marital relations?
In fact I already briefly mentioned the (true, historical) primary driver of "marital rape" laws, which basically never apply to functional marriages. There were actual cases of H and W getting divorced. Enraged, H stalks W, rapes her, and then law enforcement responds "nothing we can do, sorry, it's not illegal to have sex with your spouse." This seems like a genuine problem! But there are many possible solutions, some of which do not have the same cultural drawbacks as introducing the "enthusiastic and continuing" consent model of sexual intercourse into private marital relationships, which should be mature and caring enough to negotiate such things without the assistance of a government cudgel.
No, half-hearted maintenance sex isn't rape. There's a healthy compromise position between "Everything is rape" and "nothing in marriage is rape".
Yes, that's true. The "enthusiastic and continuing" consent model isn't it, though.
I don't hold traditional ways of doing things as sacrosanct. I think it's entirely worth knocking down the Chesterton's fence of forcing women (and probably some men) to stay in relationships they don't want to and to submit to sex against their will. This doesn't mean I want to end marriage as an institution, rather that I think there are things from the past worth keeping and things worth discarding.
Again--I am broadly in agreement. What you don't seem to want to discuss in a careful or nuanced way is the idea that maybe there are times when people should be socially pressured to stay in relationships they don't want to, and submit to sex they aren't enthusiastically interested in having. I can only imagine why this might be; I do think Western attitudes toward increasingly absolute "bodily autonomy" have generated some peculiar attitudes toward sex, for example. The treatment of marriage as purely a matter of romance, rather than a union that can sometimes be practical or beneficial in other ways, may also play a role. I'm not exactly opposed to everything the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s has introduced into our culture.
I just think we're being deliberately obtuse if we try to pretend that Neil Gaiman, and others like him, are not also the fruit of that tree.
naraburns
nihil supernum
14d ago
Vanishingly few cultures genuinely held that husbands had unlimited physical dominion over their spouse, with no concept of consent possible.
Yes--of course. There are many different legal traditions that parse things out differently. A common Western one is that because husband and wife are "one flesh," and one cannot commit an offense against oneself, many interpersonal crimes are impossible between man and wife. However, one could still do morally atrocious things which were against the law--so for example, adultery was illegal, even though under the doctrine of coverture adultery was not strictly an offense against one's spouse. Rather, it was an offense against God and the State (which approved the marriage).
Except that, unlike the terribly old-fashioned practice of "celibacy when single, monogamy when married," the clarity of consent seems to break down in the absence of clearly-delineated relationship boundaries.
Unless you don't believe in the idea of marital rape, consent issues don't disappear in monogamous marriages.
@quiet_NaN also raised this point below, but I think it begs the question. "What counts as consent" is exactly what is at issue; if you think marriage counts as permanent and irrevocable consent (as various human cultures have held), then "marital rape" is analytically impossible. I think most Westerners today do not think of marriage that way! But when you take that away from marriage, it becomes rather less clear both what the point of marriage really is, and what else can/should constitute "consent."
Somewhat recently, a pre-2020 essay on "maintenance sex" popped up in my social feeds, and I found it faintly amusing. The "expert" being interviewed clearly wanted to say "it's normal and healthy to have sex when you don't want to, simply because your partner wants to and you care about giving them what they want." But he kept having to dance around it, resulting in amusing elocution seeming to simultaneously suggest that the indulging partner was both willing and not-willing. It included bad advice like "make sure both partners climax," instead of acknowledging that--particularly as people age--orgasm can sometimes become exhausting to pursue, or even totally unreachable, and this doesn't necessarily make sexual activity undesirable.
As I read, I reflected somewhat on the model sometimes taught to college students today, that "consent is voluntary, informed, and enthusiastic," and should be re-affirmed periodically throughout every sexual encounter. I perceive a very strong likelihood that this can, will, and probably already has led to some serious sexual dysfunction in Western relationships. Many people find themselves psychologically unable to express sexual desire in an overt and expressive manner; this is one reason why people sometimes consume alcohol with the intention of getting laid. People enjoy being swept away in emotion and sensation, becoming inarticulate with desire, etc.
Put all this into the context of a marriage, and the idea of "marital rape" becomes incredibly fraught. Realistically, the most common application of "marital rape" laws is to prosecute men who, prior to the finalization of a divorce, force themselves on their soon-to-be-exes. I'm sympathetic to the idea that the law should be able to react to such a development--and besides, I find it difficult to imagine anyone in a healthy and functioning marriage prosecuting their spouse for anything. That seems like a clear commitment to the immediate or eventual termination of the relationship. But since the advent of "marital rape" laws, I have seen a gradually increasing number of people (usually, women) wield the concept of consent as a form of control: by default, sexual activity becomes locked to the mood of the lower-libido spouse, with no compromise (or "maintenance sex") possible. After all--wouldn't that be rape? But it seems clearly absurd that the definition of "rape" should become "any sex you don't enthusiastically desire," much less "sex you later decide you wish you hadn't had."
So when you say "consent issues don't disappear in monogamous marriages," my inclination is to respond, sure, not necessarily--but they can, and ideally probably should, and the evolution of "sexual consent" as a concept in premarital and extramarital contexts is in this way directly corrosive to marriage as traditionally practiced. This is what people actually mean, I think, when they say that no fault divorce erodes the concept of traditional marriage. After all, someone else's divorce isn't going to change my marriage, right? Shouldn't I just let others do what they want, while I do what I want? But here we are talking about importing "consent" into marriage, as if it is a separate thing--when traditionally, marriage was how you consented.
You are just continuing to privilege your own perspective on any given term, above the term's actual history and usage.
Proponents of "woke" actively adopted it and wore it proudly for decades (though it did not "go viral" until more recently); many still wear it proudly today.
If a particular word is getting in the way of you making a substantive point clear, then by all means, taboo it. But very close to nobody is confused by the use of words like woke, fascist, or neoliberal. If those words are being used in a merely pejorative way, the audience generally understands this, whether or not they can articulate it. If I say "Hitler was a Nazi," essentially no one outside of small children and the mentally infirm is seriously confused if I later say "Obama is a Nazi." People will in general understand that the first claim is historical, and the second, rhetorical.
But deciding to taboo words should be something you do in the process of clarifying discourse on a particular point of substance. Sweeping declarations distinguishing "woke" and "fascist" from "neoliberal" would be inadvisable linguistic prescriptivism even if you had the facts and history right--and you don't even seem to have that going for you.
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