This is funny and apt about the "woke" cult in philosophy; an excerpt (but read it all, really):
As is so often the case, these recent woke outbursts were caused by something utterly ordinary and reasonable, specifically, a short piece that appeared in Inside Higher Education, in which twelve philosophers called for an end to the no-platforming and silencing of critics of contemporary gender identity theory and for a conversation on sex and gender within the discipline that is simultaneously rigorous and civil. (2) In making one’s way through the woke responses to the piece, one finds oneself confronted with rhetorical maneuvers straight out of the Oceanian playbook: repeated outrages to reason and common sense; bold inversions of reality; a constant refrain of “nothing to see here,” regarding things that are staring you right in the face; and of course, cynical manipulations of language and rejection of the ordinary, standard uses of common words.
The result is a bizarre universe in which middle aged, lesbian professors are deemed so hazardous to their colleagues and students that they must be targeted by academic mobs, for the purpose of stripping them of their employment; (3) where prominent – and in a few cases, distinguished – philosophers appear in the pages of the APA blog to brazenly lie to everyone’s faces that “there is no established orthodoxy about gender in academic philosophy,” even as they maintain, in the very next paragraph, that the central issues in the contemporary debate over gender identity – whether sexes are natural kinds, whether social identities, like genders, are determined by social negotiation or individual fiat – should be off the table, as they “question the integrity and sincerity of trans people [and] the validity of their own understanding of who they are”; in which gender critical philosophers are dismissed for engaging in activism in un-refereed venues … by people engaged in activism in un-refereed venues; and where words like ‘male’ and ‘men’, the proper uses of which people know by the time they are three years old, are ominously characterized as “transphobic dogwhistles"....
Since Woke Philosophy operates very much in the manner of Scientology and other cults, these sorts of manifest contradictions and collisions with reality never deter its members or even give them pause, but are simply integrated into their already unhinged narrative.... As a result, the Woke Brigade will never stand correction; will never believe their views have been refuted or even problematized in any way. The best advice, it would seem, then, for anyone who wishes to enjoy a relatively pleasant philosophical career, is to avoid going anywhere near the Woke Triangle and the people patrolling it....
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