Waiting for Woke Twitter to call Jacinda transphobic in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
PM Jacinda Ardern says the Pride Parade is ‘at its best when it’s an inclusive event’
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says the Auckland Pride Parade is “at its best when it’s an inclusive event”.She told media this morning she had not yet looked at her schedule but usually does attend the Auckland Pride Parade.
The backlash of the Pride Parade asking Police not to wear their uniform because some trans visiting the parade might be triggered by seeing a Police Uniform continues with major sponsors pulling out left right and centre now…
BNZ Bank and Vodafone New Zealand pulled support on Wednesday for next year’s Auckland Pride Parade in February in light of the board’s decision to ban police from participating in the parade wearing their uniforms
“It’s simply the right thing to do to stand with the Police in this instance, as we would with any excluded group, and insist on inclusion for all,” Vodafone New Zealand said in a statement on Wednesday.
A BNZ spokesperson said the bank has decided not to participate in the 2019 parade, and will instead be “participating in the Pride Festival in other ways”. The bank emphasised that it encourages “events that celebrate New Zealand’s diversity”.
“We are looking forward to continuing with our plans to celebrate at the Wellington Pride Parade being held in March.”
…the woke Greens of course support the exclusion of the Police…
“There are also members of our community who experience discrimination and violence from the police and, for them, the institution represents oppression, not pride.”
…and Woke Twitter are rounding on any critics…
…seeing as the parade gets $45,000 of public funds from ATEED, asking anyone who is critical of the decision to stay in their lane seems a tad totalitarian.
What this has rapidly highlighted is the new culture wars of subjective pain. If someone feels ‘triggered’ by something, they can demand it be removed. Because it’s subjective, who is to tell a generation raised on the belief the world revolves around them being special that they could possibly be wrong? With social media feeds fuelled algorithmically on subjective outrage, this has created a cacophony of woke lynch mobs competing for the latest trigger outrage. This new feature of Millennial culture however might have the opposite outcome…
Content warnings are simply making Millennials more scared of life
SINCE beginning my studies at the Australian National University, I’ve noticed a serious flaw in my fellow students’ approach to mental health. Their frequent use of trigger warnings — or ‘content warnings’, as they’re more often referred — is a grave mental health concern that seems to be flying under everyone’s radar.
Typically found in classrooms and at the top of news articles and social media posts, content warnings alert students of potentially distressing content.
Their use is currently being pushed by extremely mobilised student leaders who dominate control of student unions and student media.
Content warnings originated in the feminist blogosphere to warn victims of sexual assault about vivid depictions of sexual violence. Recently however, I’ve witnessed an explosion of the list of subjects that require a warning. They’re now used for mere mention of potentially distressing subjects — it’s these warnings that, though well-meaning, I believe are doing serious damage to the mental health of my peers.
For example, the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) released a report in 2017 about sexual assault at Australian universities. Mere mention of the report’s existence required a warning. Any reference to the same-sex marriage postal vote also required a warning.I’ve seen content warnings for “discussion of invasion day”, “discussion of pornography”, “abortion” and “LGBT issues”. My student union has issued warnings for “holocaust denial”, “images of being bound” and “queerphobic behaviour”.
But it’s my student newspaper that has taken it to another level. They’ve used content warnings for discussion of “war”, “drugs”, “discrimination”, “sexism”, “racism”, “transphobia”, “homophobia”, “mental illness”, “displacement”, the #MeToo movement, “genocide”, “institutional betrayal” and “birth”.
In 2015, a highly influential article was published in The Atlantic titled: “The Coddling of the American Mind”. My student experience has convinced me that “The Coddling of the Australian Mind” has officially begun. And it’s not doing students any favours.
Rather than reducing fear towards certain subjects and non-progressive opinions, content warnings have only increased it. And rather than empowering students to conquer sensitive or disturbing subjects, they’ve only empowered the subjects’ ability to conquer students.
…Jacinda coming out now and stating the best Pride Parade’s are inclusive will have Woke Trigger Twitter on self harm watch.
This is all coming to a head as the wider rainbow community have demanded special meeting early in December to over throw the Pride Board and the Trans Activists are responding in kind…
Kia ora whānau,
As many of you may have heard the Auckland pride board decided to not to let police wear uniforms in the pride parade. Obviously we ideally we would not like police to march at all but this was a good first step and compromise. There has been a lot of backlash though and the people who want cops to march in uniform have been signing people up to be members and are planning on calling for a special general meeting to try and get rid of the current board members. So if you’re LGBT please sign up so that we can push for this decision to not be overturned.
Ngā mihi,
Auckland Branch
…this doesn’t seem to be about equality or fairness, it seems to be about power and that’s being expressed by having the power to exclude.
Pride has come before a fall.
The LGBTQACDEFHIJKMNOPRSUVWXYZ are becoming increasingly confusing to regular folk. It’s not really that hard to grok.
What will happen if someone wants to do a Village People tribute float? Ban it? How about Tom of Finland… Extraordinarily stupid call on part of what seems to be a collectively whipped up hysteria.
Martyn,
With all due respect, and I agree with many of your wider points about “woke activism” taken too far in a way which is not tactically helpful, the reality is that the experience of many people of police harrasment and brutality is not just a “feeling”, it’s a reality backed by data.
Here’s the NZ Herald analysis of the police’s own data about how they are FAR more likely to use force against Maori than Pakeha. For example, Police are over TWELVE TIMES more likely to let loose dogs on Maori than on Pakeha. And similar for the use of guns, police battons, etc.
https://insights.nzherald.co.nz/ar…/police-tactical-options/
Now you know why many are uncomfortable with the police marching in uniform at the Pride Parade.
I congratulate the Pride Committee for having the courage to stand with those who often experience police harassment and even brutality.
My unsolicited cisgender pov on that thinking is:
Surely we want the police to be formally inclusive as a matter of basic policy?; as is indeed their official brief. The law they swear to protect precludes any gender, racial or any other form of prejudice. So to disallow their presence in the uniform that denotes their pledge to serve and protect us all is to imply that the uniform represents non-inclusion and prejudice which, as Martyn points out, may be some individuals’ impression based on experience but is in no way the department’s position.
What’s more I can’t see any way in which disallowing them to represent authentically is going to be at all helpful to anybody’s cause? It only causes more division and confusion, as we have seen. If the police are welcomed to participate fully in the event, then those individuals within the force that fail to meet the expected standard of inclusion and respect can be more definitively held to account.
Of course there may yet be struggles in penetrating the old-boys community within the system, but if the conversation begins from a good-faith standpoint it will make any and all such issues comprehensively easier to navigate.
For gods sake, won’t it make it better for the police to understand gender issues and mainstream them if they march in uniform.
With regard the statistics of police violence against Maori being used as an example, isn’t that an entirely separate issue to sexual diversity which is what I thought the pride parade was about!
The problem with identity politics is that is ends up actually subjugating other minorities by adding them in or deleting them out of arguments.
What about LGBTQ police that want to march in uniform, do they not have rights too, cos I seem to remember some fake police uniforms last time I went to the parade that didn’t seem to be traumatising anyone?
What if they see a police in uniform on the way there?
I wonder how triggered these muppets will be when they need the police to come help them? Poor poppets.
The Greens? I’ve given up on them, they are taking diversity and environmental issues backwards and are too busy being better than everyone else to see the wood for the trees.
As identity politics does.
Lizzie Marvelly is a parody.
Sorry, got the link wrong.
https://insights.nzherald.co.nz/article/police-tactical-options/
And police malpractice seems to be getting worse:
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2018/09/revealed-the-significant-increase-in-police-misconduct-allegations-in-2018.html
Good on Pride for banning cops in uniform. At least they understand who the enemy is – capitalism and its state forces.
They should then ban cops out of uniform also. Cops serve the interests of capital and act as first line oppressors of all victims of the patriarchy and capitalism.
Who is calling for ‘inclusion’? People of power and privilege, or their servants and agents like academia and the media.
Then Pride should also reject sponsorships from employers, politicians and sold intellectuals who all depend on the survival of capitalism.
But power and privilege under capitalism serves the power of profits.
Women have suffered gender oppression for millennia and their unpaid labour is still vital for capitalism. Having cops and other state agents on the parade means that Pride is acquiescing in that history of gender oppression.
So if we recognise the class enemy, then it follows that we are members of the class that is exploited and oppressed. But understanding what we do as that class is not that straightforward.
The biggest problem the powerless have is that they do not recognise that their potential power must first overcome gender, ethnic and other differences that capitalism manufactures to divide us and destroy our class unity.
We need to overcome these differences.
All oppressed groups need to recognise that their oppression has the same common cause – capitalism needs a compliant wage labour force and unpaid domestic labour force to make its profit or it cannot function.
So instead of falling for the fake ‘inclusion’ of the powerful and privileged which broadcasts their message that capitalism can give us ALL freedom of choice including our sexuality, we ‘exclude’ bosses and their agents as exploiters and oppressors.
We should unite in one anti-capitalist workers’ front to smash capitalism and create a society in which those who produce the wealth are paid a living wage, and allowed to live their sexual lives in total freedom and privacy.
Inclusive = anti male
Diversity = anti white
Hmmmm, someone (male, white) is afraid of losing their privilege(s)…
I would like to ask exactly what privilege a white male gets in NZ.
I am actually a female from the Middle East. I have seen what inclusion and diversity has mutated to in Europe .
The whole ‘white male privilege’ has become a caricature for the right and picked up from the left to further globalism and immigration so the 1% can buy up more of the world’s assets, while relocating cheaper workers from around the world and dispose the 1st world poor with the rich and middle classes of the 2nd and 3rd world countries.
Just look at Auckland. Do a demographics search and find out where the Maori and Pacific Island and poorer Pakeha live. It ain’t gonna be Auckland anymore.
Lefties are the bigger fools falling for it because they have become so obsessed with the new right wing insult ‘racism’ that they are the hound dogs spreading neoliberalism on their behalf.
When ‘white Male privilege’ say that 2 Chinese are better than 2 Indians, did world war 3 of the PC break out, NOPE, quietly hushed up, because that did not help immigration or neoliberalism by the media.
However a 70+ yo Santa using “white male privilege”, 2 Canadians that nobody had ever heard about and the Pride parade to get PC about is much more important than any meaningful examination of who this largely faux in the 21 century, ‘white male privilege’ is distracting from.
No wonder the kids of the day, don’t understand what the word ‘trivial’ means.
A significant percentage of the ‘white male privilege’ don’t even understand the concept, it seems that those who are not representative of ‘white males’ aka MAGNOLIA types, are arguing with the left ‘white males’ aka FRANK MACSKASY who are the ones who seem to be spreading that message as an excuse for further expansion of neoliberalism, lower wages and working conditions, stealing local countries assets and privatising them and increasing inequality in all the name of faux racial inclusion that the righties and lefties agree on. WTF?
P.s. In the days before mass immigration the middle classes of Russian, China and India would rise up and overthrow their dictators and demand further rights, nowadays, the middle class support them, get a plane ticket out of those countries to places like NZ and leave the tin pot dictators alone, who then use their money to reduce the welfare and rights of small countries like NZ, whose government is only too keen to take the cash, the loans, and the cheap labour, decrease then educational standards, and pocket the money for their assets to be bought. Sometimes they are so frightened of being ‘racist’ they give them away for free, aka water rights. Anyone who doesn’t agree is ‘racist’ apparently.
Likewise the mass displacement of the Middle East and Africa of refugees and economic migrants. Guess what, nobody says stop bombing the shit out of those countries and start spending money on making sure that those countries are habitable with enough food and water and resources to support themselves is where the debate should be…
nope straight too, where should these people go?
The people of earth themselves are between rock and a hard place with so many stupid politicians and political strategists and the world’s media owned by the world’s wealthy and sending the same messages of distraction and neoliberalism to further a short term gain and environmental destruction, that won’t turn out well in the end.
With reference to Miss Marvelly, ratepayers have a stake in the parade as we fund it directly plus the costs the council bears in organising, cleaning up and funding other events around the parade. Thus we get a say. If it was totally privately funded then it may not be such a big story.
This use of the word woke, is reminsicient of the right using the term political correctness and earlier unAmerican. Sad.
Comments are closed.