Glossolalia is the phenomenon of (apparently) speaking in an unknown language, especially in religious worship.
I’ve talked about this in relation to ‘woke’ before :
It’s a perfect term to describe the terminology of the cult (and sub-cults) of the whole “social justice” movement. They are, in essence, religious movements with their own incomprehensible and largely meaningless jargon.
In my last piece I bemoaned the corruption of scholarship represented by the views of a scholar firmly within the “social justice” world. She took issue with white people writing in a certain way about historical and (supposed) current racial injustices. For her, the only perspective that should be allowed to “take up space” was the one that she agreed with - and it was based on skin colour.
It’s not really the white vs black thing that is so galling here - it’s that this identity-focused approach sickens me because it’s a corruption of the whole process of discovery and knowledge generation.
The program to change the way we produce and analyse “knowledge” was started by the PoMo pillocks - a bunch of French perverts, who liked to abuse kids, and who decided that the current “power” structures didn’t allow them to properly pursue their vile ‘hobby’.
OK - that may be something of an exaggeration, but one cannot definitively rule out their perversion as being at least one motivating factor behind their philosophy.
Generating new knowledge is difficult. It requires expertise (usually) and dedication to objectivity, honesty and hard work. Wouldn’t it be so much nicer if we could just write about our own experiences (or those of others) and just call that scholarship and “knowledge”?
And so, to avoid doing any actual hard work, we now have the primacy of Lived Experience™ in much of today’s “social justice” scholarship. Some “research” papers read more like biographical sketches than any serious attempt at scholarship.
Even the (in)famous paper that kick-started a lot of this, White Privilege : Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, written by Peggy McIntosh in 1989 is an unevidenced list of opinions and assertions that presumably just “felt” right to the author. It’s basically a (slightly) more academic version of spouting forth to your mates after a few drinks in the pub.
I think from now on I might adopt the ™ symbol to denote this social justice glossolalia - much as we’ve done to describe Experts™ and The Science™ during the covid era.
Many of these terms are simply assertions - they are taken to be (a) meaningful and (b) a correct description of the world. They can simply be asserted without question and taken to be “true” in the new religion of social justice.
So, I’m going to try to produce a mini glossary of some of the terms that have troubled me since I first woke up to “woke” back in 2016. And so, without further ado, and in no particular order, here’s an incomplete list of problematic™ terms
Existence™
As in “fighting for my existence”. This came from the incident that really woke me up to woke and so it’s a good place to start. A student at Yale said this, a member of the group of some of the most privileged people on the entire planet, during a bit of a collective student meltdown because someone had questioned (in an email) whether it was the university’s place to dictate rules on Halloween costumes and a Professor (who didn’t write the original piece) refused to condemn this. You can search for yourself the various videos - which are extraordinary (a search for Christakis Yale Incident would probably do it).
You weren’t fighting for your existence, dear, you were having a hissy fit because you didn’t get your own way, and that someone had a different viewpoint to you.
We have a similar over-dramatization with the whole Trans Genocide™ thing.
Fact Checkers™
These are gloriously Orwellian entities that should really be called something like Fuck Chuckers, because they chuck fucked-up distortions of the truth out all over the place. They are neither factual and nor are they particularly good at checking anything. Their purpose is, of course, to plant firmly in the public mind that there exist “authoritative” sources of truth.
Do the Work™
This is really a synonym for “repent and only come back when you agree with me”. It, of course, pre-supposes that anyone who “does the work” could only possibly come to the same conclusion as the person who demands this ‘work’ be done.
Safe Space™
These are spaces where you can go to avoid hearing any opinion you might disagree with. Hearing stuff you disagree with is really pretty bad, and can lead to levels of trauma unheard of in all of human history. Rolling up on the beach at the D-Day landings was a fucking stroll in the park in comparison.
The term is a complete misnomer, because there’s nothing “safe” about these spaces at all. They are, in fact, dangerous spaces because they encourage and validate intellectual and emotional fragility.
Rape Culture™
Not a term I hear so much of these days, but this refers to the “fact” that we (allegedly) live in a culture which promotes rape. I’ve no idea what a culture that actually promotes rape would look like - pretty gruesome and abhorrent I imagine - but we’re absolutely not living in one of those.
On the other hand, if you’re prepared to re-classify a drunken tryst that is regretted in the morning as “rape”, then I suppose there could be some justification. But it requires that rape no longer means rape.
Racism™
Those old definitions, like that of rape, just aren’t good enough. We have to figure out a way for non-white people to be as racist as fuck without this being seen to be a bad thing. Simple. Just re-define racist as something that only white people can be, by changing its meaning to something like racism = prejudice + power.
Armed with this new spurious meaning we can happily call for “white genocide” without being seen as a racist twat.
Toxic Masculinity™
This phrase can be used like magic to label anything a man does, that you don’t like, as a “toxic” aspect of being male - which seems to be about pretty much everything that we used to see as positive aspects of being a man. It’s part and parcel of the push to view men as a kind of emotionally inferior and deficient version of a woman. Things like stoicism and fortitude are seen as “toxic” and, really, men should be weeping all over the place as they learn to ‘express their feelings’.
If you don’t understand this term, then you need to get some man to Mansplain™ it to you.
White Privilege™
This describes the benefits that automatically accrue to being white. It is well-known that banks, for example, apply an uplift to a credit score if the loan applicant ticks the box “white” on the form. White people are also able to buy decent shampoo. People with non-white hair styles struggle to find the right kind of shampoo - which is an absolutely appalling injustice in this day and age.
There’s no way to quantify how much of this “stuff” anyone has, or how we get rid of it, or when we should try to stop getting rid of it. It’s just this invisible “stuff” that exists because we said so.
Affirmative Action™
This is the practice of hiring people, or accepting them at university, only if they have the right skin shade. It has been operating for decades in an attempt to level the playing field. I think it will probably need another few centuries of operation before we can all finally relax and just again start hiring people because they’re actually good at their job.
If you’re Asian, you’re basically fucked. Nobody likes you bunch of smart-arses anyway because you make the rest of us look bad with your hard work and diligent approach to study. For the purposes of Affirmative Action™ we’re going to re-classify you as white.
Gender Affirming Care™
This is the practice of socially conditioning your child to believe that there’s some feeling known as “gender” which may not correspond to the biological bits and pieces they were born with. In many cases it eventually requires the excision of several body parts, and the addition of some surgically constructed other bits, so that their appearance and feelings match up a little bit better.
Unless you’re a TERF (Totally Enlightened by Reality and Facts) there’s no better way of showing care for your baby son than by chopping his dick off. And what better way can we care for our daughters than by convincing them that puberty is so bad they need to chop their tits off?
Even if your child has only just learned how to wipe their own ass they are the sole authority on whether they are “really” a boy or a girl. The hypothesised possibility that there could be a mismatch, of course, is almost all culturally driven. And cultures throughout history who were not aware of this “possibility” did not seem to have quite such rampant confusion over gender that we, in the “enlightened” West, are seeing today.
But some trans people have always been with us - and were well-known to the Romans, for example
Lived Experience™
This is different to normal, everyday, experience. Having Lived Experience™ makes you an authority on things. It’s a higher form of knowledge than doing experiments and shit and actually checking to see whether your subjective ideas and perceptions actually match up with reality. And who needs all that ‘reality’ crap anyway?
Indigenous Ways of Knowing™
This refers to some special knowledge possessed by people because they are, erm, indigenous. Indigenous Ways of Knowing™ which is abbreviated to IWOK (not to be confused with Ewoks which are a quite different thing - although Ewoks did have their own IWOKs) came to prominence after the invention of the Indigenous Transistor - which looked suspiciously like an abacus.
Cultural Appropriation™
This is the disgusting and abhorrent practice of actually liking stuff from another culture. If, for example, you like your hair styled in dreadlocks and you also happen to not have quite enough melanin, then you’re not copying the Druids or Vikings, but stealing this hairstyle from people with an acceptable level of melanin who actually own this hairstyle.
If you’re pasty white then stop cooking curries you fucking bigoted bastard.
And, despite most Chinese people (in places like China, for example) being absolutely thrilled you’d chosen traditional Chinese attire for your prom dress - just stay in your lane you miserable racist.
White Fragility™
This is a special quality that only white people possess. It is a modern-day equivalent to a medieval ducking stool; if you drown you weren’t a witch, if you survive then you are a witch and we’ll burn you at the stake. The best evidence we have that White Fragility™ exists is the denial of its existence. Joseph Heller eat your heart out.
It’s a useful thing when coupled with racism™. If a white person takes exception to a racist (old racism) comment then they are displaying White Fragility™. One presumes that the Lived Experience™ of white people in this regard can be discounted - and this is done through the application of the concept of White Fragility™.
There is no such thing as Black Fragility™ because that would be racist and racist™.
Decolonization™
Although it sounds like you’re giving someone an enema, this term refers to the fact that anything done by colonialists (but only the white ones) is really bad and should be avoided at all costs when learning about history or literature or music. Curriculums are decolonized by only studying the work of people who were not colonialists with the wrong skin colour. Nobody needs all those dead white men anyway - whatever did they do for us?
Interestingly, the work of some dead black men can also be discounted when their words disagree with the prevailing ideology. Martin Luther King’s exhortation, for example, to judge people by the content of their character is, today, seen to be almost on a par with the rancid frothings of the KKK.
Intersectionality™
This refers to the intersecting invisible webs of oppression that operate at all times and everywhere to annoy minorities. Traditionally, although not strictly a minority, women were included in this - but everyone’s got bored of that now and if you’re merely a woman you have a much harder time of it these days when redeeming your victim points.
If you’re a black trans aromantic neurodivergent queer panfried woman then you’ve cracked it - you’ve racked up a large number of victim points. It’s a bit like stamp collecting, only not seen to be as nerdy.
If you are of low status on the hierarchy of victimhood there are several things you can do to gain more status. If you’re a woman you can proclaim yourself to be a lesbian and that helps a bit - but you have to like dick. Which is great if you’re straight or bi, but not all that great if you are actually a lesbian.
It’s good news if you’re a scholar because you can now look at how X affects every single one of these threads on the oppression matrix. Climate change? Well, that’s got to affect nonbinary queer people more than others, right? Let’s put together some incomprehensible jargon to publish to claim that. With lots of values of X to choose from and lots of threads on the oppression matrix, you can churn out papers forever.
Trigger Warnings™
This is a neat trick to create the expectation of trauma. You tell people they’re about to hear, or read, something “traumatic” and golly gosh in galoshes they get “traumatized”. Works like a charm.
Ernest Hemingway’s Old Man of the Sea is one of the latest works to have one of these devices attached to it; it contains some seriously traumatic descriptions of fishing.
They should really be termed Drama Generation Engines because their purpose is to allow people to centre themselves in their own amateur dramatic production.
The Patriarchy™
This is an old one and refers to a secret society of misogynists who control and manipulate society to stack everything in favour of men. It’s a bit more than simply an Old Boy’s Club - it’s an Old Boy’s Club with balls.
2022 was a bit of a watershed year for this cabal of cronies; they admitted a transman to their ranks for the first time. To be fair, it was just because it gave them something new to talk about when they were standing at the urinals.
And that’s all I have time for today, folks. If you have any more suggestions of new woke words you’d like explained, I’d be happy to produce version 2 of this glossary. Just let me know in the comments.
Or in summation: all the terms you describe serve one and one function alone:
Dehumanisation of a race.
That is the first step in industrialised genocide (as opposed to "natural" such, as in Rwanda f.e.).
Witness South Africa, where millions of blacks chant "Kill the boer!" When will blacks, pakis, et c in Britain do the same? What will the response from the actualreal british people be?
Making excuses and bringing up historical factoids from the Empire-era would bemy bet, since the alternative is to accept the overt threat as real and promise, and act upon it.
Which is racist, when "white people" do it, and being racist is much worse than defending one's race, people, culture and nation against extermination. If you're white, of course. Or a christian indigenous people in MENA.
The goal is the extermination - the final solution - of all the european and european descended peoples, not necessarily by a grand plan by secret conspirators but as an inevitable consequence of almost a century now of anti-white propaganda and our own self-loathing made into a virtue.
Speaking of glossolalia, also consider echolalia and palilalia.
My liberal friends have learned to never use woke phrases around me. They now know that my safe space is saying ‘Fuck you and the horse you rode in on’ if they use one of these phrases.