Woke Archives - Medialternatives

by davidrobertlewis - August 10, 2024September 4, 2024

Gender Wars: Brave New Olympics, it’s not so simple.

AS THE world deliberated on the controversy surrounding Algerian boxer Imane Khalif, who had previously failed a gender test by the International Boxing Association (IBA), matters were coming to head in a long-standing legal dispute involving South Africa’s Caster Semenya, 32, who was born with ‘differences of sexual development’ (DSD).

Caster cannot cannot compete in female track events without taking ‘testosterone-reducing drugs’. World Athletics updated its rules in 2023 to state ‘DSD athletes would be required to reduce their testosterone level to below 2.5 nanomoles per litre for two years in order to compete internationally in the female category in any track and field event.’

The South African disagrees, stating:”World Athletics is showing discrimination against athletes with her condition” and her allegation is supported by Athletics SA and the SA government with the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights scheduled to deliver a final ruling.

Whither Weight Divisions?

Enter the Paris Olympics which has focused attention on the paradox presented by affected persons who include the ‘intersexed” — two boxers have been roasted on social media for competing in women’s events, even though under the International Olympic Committee (IOC) rules, those who transition from one sex to another, or who lack the chromosomes we traditionally associate with the two sexes, may yet be allowed to compete, under their respective, reassigned or altered genders.

Yes you read that right, the controversial opening ceremony with its drag queens and pagan references, was all about ‘reflecting equality and inclusivity’ for which the IOC now prides itself, no harm there, except if you happen to be a man pretending to be a woman, just to get a gold medal?

Though transgendered persons may possess a right in law to claim ‘womenhood’ for instance, they do not possess an automatic right to compete within many sports codes outside of the Olympics, for obvious reasons. If the trend continues so far as the Olympics is concerned, women’s events will invariably be dominated by cisgendered men at the expense of cisgendered women, — weight divisions are being further eroded by those who claim such distinctions are fat-phobic?

Hang-on a Minute, what about Blade Runner?

Just about nobody suggests that South Africa’s ‘blade runner’ Oscar Pistorius is being discriminated against for not being allowed to compete alongside able-boded athletes in the men’s 100m, since the use of a prosthesis and certain types of track shoes are also banned alongside performance boosting drugs, blood doping and other controversial medical interventions.

Allowing the intervention of technology (in this case gene or hormonal therapy) should always be considered an unfair advantage, much the same ways as a range of airfoils and engine designs are also banned in F1 racing.

Woke or Broke?

During a heated online debate on the subject I found myself being inboxed an article Shades of Gray: Sex, Gender, and Fairness in Sport, which at the face appears to make out a reasoned case that ‘hormones are all that separates men from women‘, even though on its own account, this isn’t actually true — the tragic reality of the human condition is our biology determines performance, with factors such as stamina, muscle torque, and relative weight and height – the same paper woefully proceeds to issue forth in utter ignorance of its own data.

Being a ‘cisgendered male’ competing in a women’s event (or somewhere inbetween) whilst undergoing hormone therapy or other therapies, clearly provides unfair advantages of reach and gait, whilst making a mockery of the division of the sexes. Does the Olympic event require a separate league for the differently-abled — those who may fall outside of standard definitions of what it is to be a man or a woman?

Do we know what the term ‘Woman’ refers to these days?

Spare a thought for biologist Richard Dawkins who was banned by Meta this week. His crime, being the author of an essay which had this point to make: “Sex is not defined by chromosomes, nor by anatomy, nor by psychology or sociology, nor by personal inclination, nor by “assignment at birth”, but by gamete size. It happens to be embryologically DETERMINED by chromosomes in mammals. … But it is universally DEFINED by the binary distinction between sperms and eggs.”

by davidrobertlewis - July 27, 2024September 25, 2024

Gillian Schutte defends race labeling, toads

In the critically acclaimed film “BlacKkKlansman,” directed by Spike Lee, the term “toad” is ingeniously used to refer to a specific type of ‘white person’. The historical context of this term presents all sorts of problems but has been decoded by critics as a dramatic technique that ‘provides insight into the racial climate of the time and the profound impact of the civil rights movement’.

Traditionally associated with amphibians, toad is used as a code word by Lee’s ‘African American’ detective Ron Stallworth” to ‘identify racist and bigoted individuals’ within the Colorado Springs Police Department.

The tactic, essentially one of reverse psychology, sheds light on the “hateful language used by white supremacists to demean and dehumanize black individuals”

Unfortunately South Africa’s Gillian Schutte is not Hollywood’s Spike Lee — her adoption of counter-factual histories, bold language and narrative that appropriates the rhetoric of the radical black left, (without giving any credit), is merely repackaged by a ‘white person’ given some leeway to comment on the sensitive topic — with the result she is a firm favourite of today’s editors — those who may wish to see their own jaundiced views reflected back in print media.

There is thus a plethora of Schutte’s published writing in my country.

Her opinion pieces circulate online in their dozens in the aftermath of the GNU — all leading one into the arena of ersatz political analysis, of the kind delivered by feminists who may object to transexuality by misunderstanding gender. Sorry Gillian, it’s not all reducible to biology but rather a subject informed by legal definitions open to legislative scrutiny. Allowing a man to transition to a women and vice versa, is neither a denial of the suffragette movement nor would treating all humans as equals — judging a person on the basis of ones character not ones colour — be a negation of civil rights — quite the opposite.

Schutte appears oblivious to the problem presented by ‘race and gender’ from the perspective of the administration of law, and I speak here as a recipient of the idiocy of laws of my own country. Yes, she may object to non-racialism but invariably it is without bothering to examine the provenance of the term, within the Unity Movement and the racialisation of society which this movement opposes. (Read my piece here)

The same may be said of Schutte’s Hogwarts feminism.

Race slurs are the tactic of racists.

Need one remind readers that racial slurs by individuals, like the tactics of racialisation, have long been a tool of those who lack coherent arguments, or who seek to reduce the nuance and complexity of life into convenient soundbytes. Maintaining power by replacing patriarchy with matriarchy, rule by men, with rule by women, ranks as bad an idea as replacing ‘racialisation with more racialisation’, one form of hegemony with another. Hurt cannot be healed by more pain. An eye for an eye leaves the world blind.

I thus find myself constantly amazed, gobsmacked that Schutte is allowed inches of column space to spew her drivel, pontificating on a subject for which she provides very little context and history, save an appeal to her own authority.

While those who were on the frontlines of the anti-apartheid movement and its campaign against the racialisation policies of apartheid may be a dying breed, one should never forget the premise of the Unity Movement — there is only one stream of common humanity, not separate streams resulting in different species of human, as the apartheid doctor Piet Koornhof would have it.

Race Theories rejected by science

The assertions made by Unity won out when the multi-regionalist theory of human evolution (the idea that the races spontaneously evolved in different parts of the globe resulting in mutual claims of superiority/inferiority) was finally shot down, alongside apartheid race eugenics, by the paleoscience of the nineties.

Sadly race science has seen an upsurge, there have been many attempts in recent years to resurrect the idea of ‘separateness in lineage’, those who seek to rebrand the theory to explain the presence of ‘Neanderthal alleles‘ and thus links to sub-populations seemingly external to our common human genome. But this tinkering with interpretation of data reminds one of the rephrasing of the specific ambitions of the anti-apartheid movement by millennial radicals into a more generalist claim involving ethnicity and religion, and a tragic process whereby the NGK is allowed to escape its role merely so Christianity may triumph?

The hackneyed arguments brought by Schutte that ‘dropping race labels are somehow akin to dropping gender labels‘, or egad, promoting non-racialism is somehow a ‘ betrayal of the struggle for democracy and human rights’, since it allegedly results in ‘an embrace of colonialism” by our GNU‘, must be rejected given the particular circumstances of our democracy. A state of affairs which is anything but PW Botha’s Tricameral Parliament — a dismal political experiment which comprised separate houses for each designated ‘race group’ alongside a reform of racialisation laws to reflect a new type of racist othering.

Strip away Schutte’s radical invective and all what one gets is a ‘lesson about toads delivered by a toad’, and if that makes one an enemy of amphibians then so be it.

READ: If everyone is a racist, nobody is a racist

READ It’s 2023, enter the ‘woke’ anti-everything brigade

READ: Yoga ‘wokeism’ misses the whole point of post-modernity.

by davidrobertlewis - January 8, 2023July 29, 2023

It’s 2023, enter the ‘woke’ anti-everything brigade

NEVER in my wildest dreams would I expect to be confronted by a ‘woke’ self-proclaimed Anti-Racist in my own home over the festive season. The young man from New York, is “studying colonialism and apartheid’, proceeds to challenge me with some academic BS, by throwing race labels around.

In particular he insists on calling me ‘white’ in front of my Rainbow household and busies himself with a George Floyd narrative about how his ‘unique black experience’ is particular to his ‘skin colour’ ‘ and how all the stats equal to non-racialism being dead, which to him is merely a ‘neo-liberal’ concept. You can read my experience of apartheid race labelling here

I explain that Steven Bantu Biko was correct in his analysis that blackness is not the result of skin pigmentation but rather a mental attitude. I don’t get very far in narrating the story of the Unity Movement as it relates to Black Consciousness and Non-racialism. Instead he takes umbrage and insists that he doesn’t know who Biko is, as if the name of a key figure in the anti-apartheid movement means absolutely nothing to him. It is clear he is being totally ignorant and throwing offensive race labels around.

The incident lead me to pen the following:

Note to self, when confronted by the next woke anti-racist nitwit issuing a confused assault against non-racialism as yes, ‘nothing more than racism’, remember to remind the aforementioned idiot that non-racialism is not ‘non-racism’ per se as in “I’m colour blind and don’t see racism” OR “I’m not a racist but”, OR ‘I’m not woke to racism, nor institutional racism, so please provide me with a woke lecture on why I should be”.

Rather non-racialism, as the late Neville Alexander would say, is ‘opposition to the racialisation policies of apartheid’, the pseudo-scientific categorisation according to now defunct categories of race, the entire racist endeavour and its opposition that the above dolt is now attempting to negate by pseudo-scientific, obsessive, wokeness. (see note below).

As I write, the death of Adriaan Vlok, apartheid-era Minister of Law and Order has been announced. Lest we forget.

When Anti-Racism manifests in true opposition to Racism, for example, Rwanda’s attempt to remove ethnic distinctions between Hutsis and Tutsis, it may be considered positive Anti-Racism.

Negative Anti-Racism of the woke variety, on the other hand, is essentially another form of Anti-Humanism. Yet another attempt to exclude persons, to otherise and ostracise individuals, on the basis of pseudo-scientific pet theories about race, this in an absurd and tragically flawed effort to forge some form of hip counter-Hegemonic Narrative, one based upon moral brinkmanship, cancel culture and ostracisation.

So let’s get this one sorted for the New Year — racism according to most contemporary definitions is ‘hostility, prejudice or discrimination towards another person on the basis of their membership or association with an ethnic or racial group’. It is also ‘the belief that different races possess distinct characteristics, abilities, or qualities, especially so as to distinguish them as inferior or superior to one another.’

Therein lies the rub.

Racism is certainly not challenging one’s strongly held opinions and beliefs about race, and it is by no means the act of refusing to be racialised or race labelled. I am pretty much done with ‘woke’ youngsters attempting to lecture a struggle veteran, on racism whilst upholding race categories that deprive persons such as myself of a defence against the problem, this at the same time my very real lived experience of apartheid and case against an apartheid media company (see here) is trivialised.

NOTE: Wokeism is a form of virtue-signalling but often going beyond what may be required. When one offensively treats everyone else as if they were asleep, or insists on lecturing from a primer on a subject to experts in the field. Thus amateurish over-compensation. Blind scholasticism without reference to actual evidence and research. Purposeful misreading of history to score short term popular goals. A denial of individualism in favour of a hive-mind or group-think. A platformism strategy, where an individual hogs the mic or assumes the mantle of expert even in the face of real expertise. The person who claims to be awake, is more often than not, the one still asleep.

SEE: Masilo Lepuru: ‘Africa, for the Natives Only.’