The stupidity of "Woke" and "Politically Correct".

      OK, let's start with the ludicrous "Woke" culture, or lack of it.

ADJECTIVE. Someone who is "woke" is very aware of social and political unfairness. (Collins English Dicionary).

According to the dictionary definition, it just means a "normal" person, whatever that may be. I really can't imagine why normal people need a special term for no special reason. And, of all the words in the English language, why "woke"?

As someone who has passed three quarters of a century, speaking English for more than seventy of them, why would some idiots try to confuse me with a totally un-necessary extra meaning of a simple word?

I have lost sleep over that conundrum. On several occasions, I woke up at some ridiculous hour, after having a nightmare about the use of the word "woke". Having woken up, it took maybe half an hour and a couple of single mat scotches to get back to sleep, only to have woken up several more times, during the night because of the same bloody nightmare. It wasn't all bad, due to the scotch. However, every time I woke up, my getting in and out of bed for more whiskey, woke my wife, who didn't appreciate being woken up.

As you can now appreciate, the misuse of the poor little word, "woke", is detrimental to our health.

 

UNCOUNTABLE NOUN Political correctness is the attitude or policy of being extremely careful not to offend or upset any group of people in society who have a disadvantage, or who have been treated differently because of their sex, gender, race, or disability. ( Collins English Dictionary)

OK, I admit it.
I hereby confess to being totally against the stupidity known as Political Correctness.

That does't mean that I'm homophobic ( just ask my gay friends), nor am I a misogynist. After all, I did marry a woman, who I'm devoted to. Come to think of it, I'm not racist either, as my Vietnamese wife will attest.

However, I do despise the tip toeing we are expected to do in our day to day communication, lest we offend someone who is of a different gender, a different race or has a different sexual bent (pun intended).

It is a fact that, in some way or another, we are all different from each other, so let's call it for what it is. There are men and women in most fields of employment. Policemen and policewomen, foremen and forewomen, waiters and waitresses, stewards and stewardesses (sometimes it's difficult to identify which is which here). Whoa! Was that homophobic? Anyway, you get the idea.

Acknowledging a person's gender does NOT denigrate them. It just tells it like it is. Just a thought. The German language has the gender based der, die, das to identify all objects. Have they done away with der and die? Is everything or everyone just a das now? Who cares?

Recently, in a group of MEN and WOMEN, I told a couple of gay jokes. This horrified several of the group, in spite of the fact that the jokes were bloody funny. In my defence, the jokes were told to me by several of my gay friends who didn't care one iota that I retold them. When I related this incident to them (my gay friends), they fell about laughing.

I also told a very bad joke about a dwarf to a group men and women that I work with. I was told by one idiot that the term dwarf was derogatory. The bloody joke wouldn't have been remotely funny if I had referred to the dwarf as being a vertically challenged person.

All I'm saying, people is it's time to lighten up! Relax and stop tip toeing your way through conversations. If you offend someone, tough luck. Maybe they need to lighten up, too.