Cancel culture is when the Woke Identity Politics lynch mob decide someone has breached woke mantra and must be ‘cancelled’.
In NZ, the Wellington Twitteratti lead this movement, and create secret Facebook pages with McCarthyist blacklists for various woke thought crimes. Hilariously some work at the very agencies that are supposed to protect people from online bullying so that when someone has been subjected to a woke online lynching and contact these agencies to complain, they sometimes find they are actually giving their complaint to one of the people who tormented them.
That’s why this is so ironically funny.
Overseas the cancel culture is far more powerful in the post MeToo cultural landscape and added with Millennial safe space micro aggression policing culture, the most recent examples are a voyage into pure insanity.
There’s the case last month of a gamer who was accused of sexually abusive behaviour by Zoe Quinn who committed suicide.
The French #meToo defamation case.
And the glorious example of a young man who generated $2million in donations for beer, only to be outed for some Tosh.O jokes he posted 10 years ago and be ‘cancelled’ for his efforts to support sick children.
Surely a great time to be alive.
In NZ, these woke cultural tensions have bubbled over at Massey University who inadvertently stepped into the horror minefield of Trans rights by hosting, ‘Feminism 2020’.
The feral nature of this debate between Gender Binary activists and Gender Critical Feminists is a well established fact now. Personally, I’m old fashioned. I believe that the journey to finding your true identity is one of the most sacred of the human experience and that within the spectrum of humanity the idea that there are some women trapped inside a mans body and men trapped inside womens bodies and some who feel like both genders and some who feel like none is as uncontroversial as the range of hair, eye and skin colours.
I think refusing to acknowledge a persons preferred pronoun and identity is grossly offensive and if a trans person wishes to share personal space with me, all power to them.
The trans community have suffered persecution for millennia and research shows how much mental health damages that community. We must reform things so that their lives have the same agency as anyone within society.
B-U-T and here’s where I deviate from Woke mantra and find myself on Wellington Twitteratti Secret Facebook blacklist pages, as a white heteronormative cis-male I don’t believe I can tell women who they can and can not accept into their women only spaces. Surely that’s a decision women must make and me forcing them to accept TransWomen into their spaces is the very antithesis of feminism.
These issues deserve the space to be debated, and Massy University will be doing that with Feminism 2020 despite the woke lynch mob now gathering to smite the feminist heretics.
I believe the debate requires far more love and respect within the rainbow community, but also appreciate how damaged it has all now become, When TDB posted a press release from Gender Critical Feminists last year, I received 4 threats to my daughter from Trans activists!!! I’ve been in this politics game for about 25 years, have fought the most extreme right wing elements in NZ, and I’ve never once had my daughter threatened by any of them.
The manner in which the Woke scream they are right and everyone else heretics was exposed most poignantly when the woke Pride Parade banned NZ Police in uniform from marching because the uniform might trigger trans activists because of past bad experiences with the Police.
The Pride Parade went from 30 000 people last year to a mere 2000 this year. The Woke Board called that a victory.
The woke use exclusion as the new inclusion. It is Identity Politics pure temple politics over broad church politics and makes getting to the 51% democratic majority a near impossibility in the age of social media subjective rage.
Woke cancellation culture mixed with micro aggression policing Millennials who believe they should have trigger free safe spaces mixed with 4th wave feminist accusation is evidence culture garnished with the language of catastrophe all add for a bitter cocktail of cosmopolitan pretension that revels in choking off speech it doesn’t like.
And I think that’s ultimately quite fascist.
Take the blistering debate about Israel between John Minto & Dr David Cumin that was live streamed on TDB last night. That was a celebration of free speech. It was angry, it was passionate and at times bitter, but we all had the benefit of actually hearing the arguments put forward.
While the NZ woke want to smother voices that trigger them, it’s important to see real debate can still occur. For that we should be grateful.
Your enemy isn’t your fellow countrymen and women, it’s the 1% who have economically structured us into subservience and division.
“When TDB posted a press release from Gender Critical Feminists last year, I received 4 threats to my daughter from Trans activists!!!”
Depending on the nature of the threats, if that were my daughter I’d report the matter to the police, rapidly. The origin of the threats – if they were anonymous, they could have been from anyone, anywhere, and they are likely to be attacking others in that way. It needs to be tracked, traced and stopped, before they can do too much more damage.
Kheala: “…..I’d report the matter to the police, rapidly. The origin of the threats – if they were anonymous, they could have been from anyone, anywhere, and they are likely to be attacking others in that way. It needs to be tracked, traced and stopped, before they can do too much more damage.”
I agree. I do hope that this is what Martyn did. That sort of behaviour needs to be nipped in the bud pronto.
You see the woke (new UnAmerican under the bed) as a threat to achieving a 51% majority for the left from the centre, thus your constant disparagement of them.
Based on your presumption, that they are a threat to your goal, they are effectively on your enemies list.
And then in classic projection and transference you claim, without any evidence, that they have an enemies list and operate via secret face book accounts under the protection of government agency/Deep State.
That Netsafe contract out identification of problematic activity online (ADL does much the same) and this includes Action Station is not evidence.
And reference to the Taxpayers Union Orwellian claim that Netsafe is a threat to equality of citizenship and civil rights is not edifying. It is someone of the conservative left joining to the identit’arian politics of Donald Brash, the dancing fossils/cossacks of our time today.
The natural order of (white male mob) civilisation under threat from the woke/Unamerican liberal (progressive for minority group rights/migrants/refugees) under the bed – hook line and sinker.
The Ch
Bomber you must have balls of steel to even post this. These people will do everything they can to “cancel you” if you don’t support their agenda. For people with common sense, it’s become clear that Social Justice Warriors have become their own worst enemy, because they continually keep shifting the goalposts. From the sidelines it’s kinda hilarious (in a schadenfreude sort of way), but it seems you’ve decided to get in the ring with them. I wish you the very best of luck.
“it’s the 1% who have economically structured us into subservience and division“.
Everything was going well until that Bomber. It is about 10 families in NZ (and Shane Jones currently) who have done this! The whole idea that a massive 1% of the country (50,000 people on a population of 5m) have any power over what happens is ludicrous.
And ain’t your lot in charge now?
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Is this THE Cathy Odgers? Or an old school reference to the golden age of blogging?
Yes, the cops need to know, and they will take it seriously. The community constables were very good when I had a threat from a neighbour – not as graphic, but physically intimidating – they visited that guy twice.
Three times I’ve been to the police with violence or threats of violence to me or family – and once when some total moron kissed me in NWS. This is a young girl, and they’re really tuned into kids, and importantly, well balanced persons simply do not threaten children – normal healthy folk are naturally protective towards children, so your lot are sickos. The police need to record this.
Martin,
I think it sad that there are only two comments after more than 500 views, and those comments are not about the substance of your column but the horrible fact of threats to your daughter.
I think that there are only two comments shows the levels of fear and uncertainty that the academic/ Woke Left creates. Silence is its own message.
Meh. I think the woke are starting to wear off. Woke ideology tells me that the woke Star Wars is worth watching and comedy can not mock anything accept for white people. How stupid. I’m never watching Star Wars again and anything the woke say not to watch, I’m fucking watching it.
Ada: “I think that there are only two comments shows the levels of fear and uncertainty that the academic/ Woke Left creates. Silence is its own message.”
No worries: it’ll be a cold day in hell before I’m silenced by anyone, let alone the woke left!
I’ve been busy with other things. I was just getting started, actually.
I agree with pretty much all of Martyn’s post. Although in some respects, my view diverges a bit.
Where he says:
“….within the spectrum of humanity the idea that there are some women trapped inside a mans body and men trapped inside womens bodies and some who feel like both genders and some who feel like none is as uncontroversial as the range of hair, eye and skin colours.”
I have a different perspective. While there are some individuals who are intersex – like the SA athlete Caster Semenya, who has testicles, but competes as a female – and others with genetic characteristics that lead to ambiguous sexuality, in my view mental health issues are most likely at play with the rest.
The sudden rise in cases of young adolescents questioning their gender cannot be biological: aside from the uncertainties over identity, which is common with that age group, rising rates of mental illness is the most plausible explanation.
I have an extended family member with body dysmorphia syndrome. It would not surprise me at all if that syndrome is what’s going on with at least some people.
Aside from that slight difference, I think Martyn is bang on. More power to him!
@Ada – Maybe not 500 individual viewers. There’s one man I know who views posts a hundred times waiting for his own comment to appear. Once he stayed up all night waiting and waiting. Another rereads her own postings a hundred times. That’s two hundred views just from two people alone, so we may need the algorithms to ascertain just what percentage of 500 views were from persons who you assume remained silent because of an alleged fear and uncertainty which affords you yet another opportunity to ping away at the left, Ada.
And you know Ada, those persons who are concerned about Martyn’s daughter – they are the ones who know how to prioritise, do you not think ? There is nothing more important than our children.
The fear and uncertainty being created with Auckland University’s white supremacist posturings is not very likely to be coming from the left. This is the sort of far right whinging which used to appear in the Dom-Post, Ada, from the sort of person kept awake all night by the thought of Treaty settlements, who oppose
minimum wages, Ada, and clergy wearing bone carvings, and who spew vitriol about homosexuality.
Ada “I think that there are only two comments shows the levels of fear and uncertainty that the academic/ Woke Left creates. Silence is its own message.”
Crap. There is no way that you can say that “fear and uncertainty” stop people from replying when using nom de plumes. What’s there to be scared of ?
Silence is it’s own message ? Really ? Are you psychic ? Got a private connection to the SIS ?
ok
This is maybe off topic
As an older style feminist, who wanted to make the world better for both men and women by freeing up the stereotypes,I have this question
Is there such a thing as a woman ?
And if so what is it?
What is a man?
What is a goose and what is a gander?
Any one care to tell me?
Asking for a friend
” don’t believe I can tell women who they can and can not accept into their women only spaces. Surely that’s a decision women must make and me forcing them to accept TransWomen into their spaces is the very antithesis of feminism”
Oh really Martyn??
Which women are you mandating to make that decision? Since when has onde group (in this case a majority) determined what rights a minority may or may not have??
When did you decide what is the “antithesis of feminism”??
Because you haven’t asked me. Or any women I know. The only one I’m aware of is well known TERF Ani O’Brien, whose social media posts you appear to “Like” regularly.
If one sector in society is going to determine the rights of another, regardless of “good intentions”, then prepare the floodgates of Pakeha determining the rights of Maori. Or the Christian Right determining that marriage is for cis het couples only – gays need not apply. That’s what you’re advocating whether conscious of it or not.
Please do not speak for women. We are quite able to do it ourselves and this woman is telling you in no uncertain terms that TERFs do not decide who is able to access so-called “safe spaces”. You are neither trans nor cis woman but you seem to have made up your mind what rights shall be allocated to whom. You fo know what that’s called, don’t you?
“While the NZ woke want to smother voices that trigger them, it’s important to see real debate can still occur. For that we should be grateful.”
Fine. Let us know when we can debate your identity, your existence and your rights. Oh, sorry, you’re a MAN, I forgot. Your rights are fully enshrined and protected. What was I thinking??
This is a funny response. and worth looking at.
Jane, I can’t tell women who they should include and who they shouldn’t include in women only spaces. Now I might be a white, cis male heteronormative member of the patriarchy, but even I appreciate that as a white, cis male heteronormative member of the patriarchy I can’t tell women who they can and can’t accept in women only spaces. Surely that’s a debate between Gender critical feminists and the trans activists who wish to change that?
As I have said, maybe a thousand times, I have no issue with trans people sharing male only spaces with me, I completely accept their pronoun and identity use and believe we should be active in alleviating the damage done to them, B-U-T you are demanding I tell gender critical feminists to share their space with you? Is that what you are demanding?
It’s just that I’m just not in the habit of demanding women do what I tell them over spaces they have fought for. I’m guessing if I did that over any other issue you would be the first to scream that I’m a chauvinist.
Perhaps less time spent yelling at me, and more time negotiating with your sisters might be a smarter tactic?
“If one sector in society is going to determine the rights of another, regardless of “good intentions”, then prepare the floodgates of Pakeha determining the rights of Maori.”…but by demanding that women allow TIMs into their female spaces isn’t that exactly what you are demanding, surely your logic is opening the doors for Pākehā to demand unfettered access to Māori spaces.
Jane B: “Which women are you mandating to make that decision? Since when has onde group (in this case a majority) determined what rights a minority may or may not have??”
I’ve read Martyn’ post carefully: he said no such thing. Nor did he say it in that quote in your comment above. For the life of me, I can’t figure out how you took that meaning from it.
It looks to me as if you’ve allowed emotion to cloud your ability to read what’s written.
Martyn is right: he can’t tell women what to do. Nor does he attempt to do so.
Comments are closed.