Years ago, on a typical night out, my wife and I sat at the bar in one of our favorite restaurants. We ordered food and soaked up a couple of Cosmos or Lemon Drops. We chatted with the bartenders, who we had come to know by name. Jeff, one of our bartenders, has a razor-sharp wit. I hear his voice louder than usual as he speaks to another patron seated behind me. He said, “Sir, there’s no sleeping at the bar.”
At first, I thought Jeff joked with the patron, but I turned around to look. A man a few seats down nodded off at the bar. Shortly after that, the patron settled his tab and left. Bartenders walk a fine line; they manage the most good for the most people. In most instances, this means allowing you to do what you want as you enjoy your drink; sometimes it means imposing standards that impede others’ experience.
Years later, we befriended another bartender at a hotel where we stayed. One patron, already showing signs of inebriation, moved a couple of seats over to converse with us. The conversation turned a bit touchy; we could see his wife, in their original seats, horrified by his behavior. My wife looked at our bartender and subtly mouthed, “save me.”
Johnny, our crafty bartender, walked to us. While the man looked away, he picked up his beer and placed it back next to his wife. A minute later, the patron looked for his drink and returned to his original seat. We’ll never know if he knew that he had been manipulated, but he was out of our hair.
Navigating a complex world
As a young child in the 1970s, I had a classmate who struggled to read. As he tried to read, he clearly transposed letters within a word. At the time, I found that unusual. Today, I know that to be dyslexia. Since then, we’ve made accommodations for blindness, color blindness, ADD, and ADHD. We made some accommodations due to the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act), but we made the other changes because it was the right thing to do.
Additionally, as we examine language, we understand there’s more nuance than we once believed. We can break this down:
- What we literally said.
- What we meant to communicate.
- What the recipient(s) understood.
- What others (casual listeners) understood.
Let’s say a restaurant host seats a group of female college students on the patio. The host tells the waiter, “I put the group of girls on the patio.” None of those college students are children. Female children are girls; female adults are women. Historically, the term ‘girls’ when referring to adult females has been used to undermine credibility. That may not be what the host intended to communicate. For many years, ‘girls’ has been used synonymously with a group of females.
If you refuse to change while the world moves on, you’ll be left behind. People didn’t have mobile phones in the 1980s; today you’d be a relic and an annoyance to your friends. Similarly, if you continue to use ‘girls’ when referring to adult females, you’ll communicate that you’re either unaware (ignorant) or apathetic (callous). Neither is necessarily a good label.
We have freedom of speech here in the United States, but that does not include freedom from consequences for what you say.
Pushing back against ‘political correctness’
In the 1930s, Dr. Seuss published children’s books with images that are racist by today’s standards. In 2021, they pulled six of those books due to their racist imagery. The publisher decided to pull these books after consulting with educators and other experts; they weren’t pressured to pull their decades-old books from the market.
Look, I get it. Things change, and we need to make adjustments. Windows moved the ‘Start’ button to the center of the screen. The iPhone got rid of its home button. There’s a very distinct ‘who moved my cheese’ moment. However, we cannot improve anything without changing it. At first, people looked like freaks wearing Bluetooth headsets in public; today many people walk around wearing AirPods.
To resist change on principle doesn’t make you cool or retro. It makes you a dinosaur, an annoying, whiny dinosaur.
This leads to the polarizing term ‘woke’. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as:
Woke is now defined in this dictionary as “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice),” and identified as U.S. slang.
Moreover, it describes how it is used today:
The disapproving sense of woke is today quite common, often used by politically conservative individuals to criticize people who are considered too politically liberal, especially in relation to issues of race and social justice.
Keep in mind that this movement is about social awareness. We, as Americans, will not tell you that you can’t use the N-word as every other word in dialogue. We are merely suggesting that you shouldn’t. Again, you don’t have freedom from the consequences of your speech.
The difference between “don’t”, “can’t” and “shouldn’t”
Conservatives paint the past as a wide-open prairie where we could wander wherever and whenever we wanted. As we make progress, any restriction, as trivial as a traffic light, naturally impedes our ability to do what we want when we want.
I grew up using the term ‘Oriental’ for Asian people; this term has fallen out of favor. I’ll say don’t use that word. I won’t say you can’t use that word; I will say you shouldn’t. If you continue to use it today, you’re either ignorant (unaware) or an asshole (aware). There’s no third option.
The very foundation for conservatives is to resist change, independent of whether the suggested change is reasonable or warranted. They gloss over the fact that this very nature means you can’t improve anything. The very label Progressives, your political enemies, derives from the term progress.
The problem lies in how they hear the message. We may say that you shouldn’t, but you hear that you can’t. You shouldn’t use ‘girls’ to refer to adult females, or ‘Orientals’ when referring to human beings, or ‘Illegals’ for that matter. You absolutely can continue to use these terms, and remove any doubt that you’re a colossal asshole. You have that right.
I honestly doubt that most publishers want to put racist imagery in their children’s books. Similarly, I doubt that most people want to undermine the credibility of women when using the term ‘girls’. We don’t really intend to paint Asian people as exotic when we use the term ‘Oriental’. We don’t like to be told what we can’t do.
The one place where we do mean “can’t”
I understand that culture has changed considerably, but there’s one instance where we really mean that you can’t. Ignoring these rules doesn’t merely make you a colossal asshole; it also makes you a criminal. However, we built a culture where we not only minimize the bad behavior, but we also encourage complicity. I only need to mention this:
Cornell 7
And you’ll understand; the term is rape culture. We have years of social conditioning by the likes of Animal House and Porky’s that we need to undo. There are two positions when it comes to rape culture:
- You oppose rape culture.
- You either participate in or condone sexual assault.
- You abstain from the conversation.
“Didn’t you say two positions?” If you are in group #3, you’re effectively in group #2. This third position is passive and, by definition, complicit with sexual assault. I believe that #2 is a very modest percentage of our population. Unfortunately, the passive, spineless #3 group continues to perpetuate rape culture.
There’s only one question when it comes to sexual assault or rape. Was the alleged victim able to consent, and did they explicitly consent? Nothing else matters. Not what they wore, not how many drinks they had, etc.
As the Cornell 7 story unfolds, seven men allegedly participated in the sexual assault; these are group #2. They added fifty additional fraternity brothers to a Snapchat thread; some reports suggested one person contacted the authorities the morning after when they saw the thread. This means 49 men (seven times as many as the sexual assaulters) did nothing to save her; these are group #3.
We are telling you what not to do
Tragically, the standards by which I grew up are insufficient for filtering out criminal and predatory behavior. In the early 1970s, a woman may be raped by her husband, and it wouldn’t be a crime; by 1993, all states had laws on the books against marital rape. I imagine that a similar grace was given to many boyfriends. Not anymore.
We have changed the standards of consent. Where we used the standard of effectively “don’t drive through a red light”; it is now “do not proceed until you explicitly get a green light”. Consider how many victims either simply acquiesced or didn’t have the wherewithal to voice an objection. What could best be described as pliability is now called sexual assault.
Predators used alcohol to lower inhibitions. Today, the landscape is far scarier. Rohypnol is readily available and used, and apparently so is ketamine. Roofies (rohypnol) impede your ability to recall events. You can’t make a solid case against your attacker if you lack memories from the assault. Women go out in groups to deter the likelihood of being targeted by roofies; this is profoundly sad.
Impinging on your freedom?
We, who oppose rape culture, will tell you that you do not have the freedom to engage in sexual activity without explicit consent. Second, we’ll tell you that it is not okay to subject someone to a roofie or controlled substance for pliability. Finally, stop abstaining from the conversation. If you are silent, you are complicit. The next target may be your sister, wife, daughter, or mother.
Naturally, some will object to the “stop preaching your ‘woke’ ideology” and our telling you how you should behave. You may choose to turn a blind eye to your fraternity brothers gang raping a woman to “own the libs”. To those of you, I have this to say. Listen to the message and consequences about rape culture on its merits and stop contemplating whether it’s ‘woke’… You disgusting fuck.