Eilis O’Hanlon
Sick and tired of being called narrow-minded by her own flesh and blood, Eilis O’Hanlon sets out to turn the tables on the ‘woke’ generation
Why I refuse to be woke
Iused to pride myself on my progressive attitudes. I’m now a unadulterated bigot with a set of backward views that make me more suited to life in Victorian times.
At least, that’s what my children tell me. We’ll be having a discussion about some subject or other over dinner, or in the car, and I will make what I regard as an entirely innocuous comment, and the response will be immediate: “I can’t believe you just said that.”
Usually all I’ve said is that there’s nothing wrong with men opening doors for, or giving their seats on the bus to, women. For that mere utterance, I’m loudly informed that I am now the female equivalent of Donald Trump, and that I have personally insulted every single woman on the planet by endorsing the misogynist creed that women need male help to accomplish basic tasks.
It’s not even that I think men should open doors for women, or that they should be congratulated for doing so. I just happen to think it’s not that bad in the grand scheme of things. That, though, is not enough to spare me from censure from a more enlightened generation.
In short, I’m told that I am not ‘woke’.
Take that, Snowflakes
To be honest, this is not a huge shock. I’m aware that I do have a certain scepticism towards ‘right-on’ opinion. The very word ‘woke’ brings me out in a rash.
What did surprise me was the realisation that simply by virtue of not being 100pc supportive of every piece of barmy faux-progressive thinking, I can no longer claim to be socially liberal on any issue whatsoever. It’s all or nothing with young people today.
To be fair to them, they’re pretty consistent in their own wokeness. When I say men are useless, which I admit I do with a certain frequency, they also tell me I can’t say that. It’s all rather depressing.
If you can’t even have a go at men now, what was the ruddy point of feminism?
There’s a scene in Frasier where Marty, the old guy, is exasperated at being told that he can’t use stereotypes, even positive ones, and blurts out: “Won’t somebody please just tell me the rules?” He simply can’t keep up with the manifold ways in which it’s now possible to offend those who love to play competitive outrage.
Increasingly, that’s how I feel. And the bad news is that even knowing the rules is no help, because they keep changing. What’s acceptable one week is, like, oh my god, the worst thing ever, the next.
That’s one of the few consolations of this enlightened political consciousness. If you put in enough homework and keep bang up to date with all the new terminology, you can even catch out the woke generation when they slip up, too.
Trust me, nothing’s more satisfying than seeing the horror on young people’s faces on realising they’ve unwittingly committed a thought crime. Now you know how it feels, Snowflakes.
The thing they don’t seem to realise is that they’re not the first or only generation to embrace political correctness. It’s just that time’s passing tends to temper one’s insufferably smug earnestness. We oldies simply came to realise that (a) things are rarely as simple as they look, and (b) whatever is offending you probably isn’t that bad in the grand scheme of things.
The one defence I have for not being progressive enough is that I’m a thousand times more woke than Himself. He’s so not woke that he’s practically Sleeping Beauty, and gets so much flak from the younglings for his antediluvian views that my own lack of wokeness seems far less serious in comparison. Naturally, I encourage them to concentrate on educating him rather than me.
The only problem is he doesn’t care that he’s not woke, so they eventually give up trying to make him more forward-thinking and turn their attention back to me.
“What’s acceptable speech one week is, like, oh my god, the worst thing ever, the next”