Wokeness isn't dead because feminism lives

You'd have to be a woman to notice.

If you’re new here, I want to emphasize that I am not an anti-woke critic or reactionary. I write about other things, but this is just at the top of my mind. I am a former feminist who found the ideology to be psychologically harmful and rejected it so I could seize my mental health. Philosophy is the most excellent antidote to ideology. Those who have been around for a while, please know that I sincerely appreciate you.

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Wokeness is a psychological disciplinary system, and it’s not dead. Further, managerial class feminism underpins the system and is deeply embedded in the female psyche. Feminism and social justice are the default lens for reality, much like reflexive anti-wokeism is the lens for the far right. The ‘defeat’ of wokeism obscures its enduring victory; social justice governs social and professional norms but is buried so deep that we forget it’s there. Wokeism has won, and Trump is the justification for doubling down on authoritarian norms. It’s just how we relate to each other now. I didn’t want Trump to win because the left now thinks they have the moral high ground when, in reality, no one does.

I keep seeing declarations, usually by men, that wokeness is defeated because Trump won and companies are rolling back DEI. That, however, is merely representative of an institutional waning of wokeness.

Feminism as the foundation of social justice

First, the core of what everyone calls wokeness is feminism. Think about the people you would categorize as woke, who come to mind as easily offended, or who employ social aggression disguised as moral action. If it’s not primarily women, I want to know who thinks of a bunch of dudes when they think of wokeness.

When people think of the theoretical foundations of wokeness, the terms ‘intersectionality’ and feminism come to mind. Here’s a diagram showing how postmodernism, neo-marxism, feminism, postcolonial theory, social justice, critical race theory, and DEI intersect. And yes, I have read almost all of them in graduate school and while doing Teach for America (a story for another time).

If you use this, please credit.

Wokeness lives because feminism lives, and it infects all my social spaces. You will no doubt want me to describe what I mean by feminism or wokeness in social spaces. This worldview is the default among women with degrees.¹

Feminism as a social disciplinary system

Feminism is a system of rigid social discipline. Foucault described the control of post-Enlightenment institutions in terms of the panopticon, a prison designed to be more humane and encourage prisoners to police each other.

Feminist theorists later used the panopticon to be a metaphor for patriarchal institutions, but they became the prisoners and wardens themselves of the Mental Prison of Feminism.

Presidio Modelo Correction Center

Being a woman today means reciting a catechism of affirmations, pronoun rituals, moral posturing, conflict aversion, and social policing of Correct Thought. I reject feminism because I value my intellectual independence and psychological autonomy. No one is perfect, but we could at least not tell ourselves convenient lies about the world and our role in our life’s outcomes.

I say this, having once been an ardent devotee at the altar of grievance that is the Church of Feminism. Wokeism is merely the Protestant offshoot of that church. I went to both. Both churches are full of wealthy, connected people confident in their moral authority. There was ample mutual policing.

Feminism is a system of control spanning your self-conception to how you relate to others. I controlled myself when I was a feminist, in addition to everyone around me. I policed thought, morality, and behavior. I ended a nonzero amount of friendships over slights that I took to their most extreme interpretation, which is the behavior of the mentally ill, as I was at the time.

Foucault critiqued social systems as diffuse forms of control through which power is exercised on micro and macro scales. Power differentials, therefore, exist in every relationship, and the implication is that the exercise of power is always obviously done by the person appearing to have more social status. But being a victim is a source of social status today; I know because I once accrued it by playing up my victimhood.

‘Society’ is often blamed for ills by individuals like an amorphous force. Being raised by Indian-origin parents meant living by that dreaded question about your life choices: “But what will people say?”. In this question and the invocation of ‘society,’ we gloss over who judges. What is society? In my estimation, when people blame society, they are blaming women. That is, when women blame ‘society’ for their inability to do x, they’re naming each other as the oppressor. They think they’re complaining about men, but women are actually the wardens of the panopticon of feminist ideology.