Rebuilding Rob

The problem with using a word too much or out of it’s proper context is that it loses its actual meaning

Before I go any further, let me explain that I am white Americans would consider liberal. I’m sure some of the extreme conservatives would probably call me woke, or in some cases, they might even refer to me as a snowflake, having said that…

I am sick to death of the overuse of the word misogyny. We are at such a social, cultural and political tipping point in America that anytime somebody says something negative against a person who happens to be female, the conclusion that they must certainly hate all women is automatically jumped to, and the person in question is labeled as a misogynist. And when a word is incorrectly thrown around like that, it really diminishes the meaning of true misogyny.

Maybe this next term I notice a lot, because I am a schoolteacher, but the term bully, or bullying is throwing around way too frequently after times by students.

Look, bullying is a very real problem in our society. It always has been and, sadly, they probably always will be. Social media, for all the good it has done in the world, has open up a whole new avenue for bullying to take place. And it allows bullies to get their message out immediately and to a lot of people at once I absolutely despise bullying. I told my students at the beginning of the school year. I have zero tolerance for it in my classroom.

When I have a student who approaches me and says “he made fun of my hair. He’s bullying me!“ I worry. I worry about the overuse of that term. And I understand: students have had the term, bullying, anti-bullying, and various anti-bullying campaigns driven into them probably since they started kindergarten. Some of them use the term in jest; and some of them have heard the word so much that it has just lost meaning to them.

Finally, woke is a relatively new term into our American lexicon; least in the sense that I am going to explain it here. Woke originally started as a term to identify someone or something that has come to some new level of understanding or enlightenment. Somebody who has learned some thing about the world that I didn’t know before. Somebody who may have once previously been insensitive or unsympathetic, who has learned a degree of empathy and is learn to show compassion for others.

I’ve been a lifelong fan of the Star Trek franchise. Lately, I’ve been hearing some self-professed “fans“ current series in the Star Trek franchise – particularly Star Trek: Discovery are “too woke“ because of the use of LGBTQ characters in the main cast. To this, my usual response is “what sci-fi franchise have you been watching for the last 50 years? Star Trek has been woke since day one!“

Conservatives in this country will throw the term around, as if it is one kind of insult. I have had conservatives try to insult me by saying things like “you support the Black Lives Matter movement? You’re just a woke liberal!” Again, it is another term that has been used so excessively and so out of context that it has basically lost all meaning.

As an English teacher, words are what I do. So this kind of thing really grinds my gears…

Thanks for stopping by Rebuilding Rob. Be sure to like, comment and subscribe to my blog below. It’s greatly appreciated! Also, feel free to follow me on social media as well! Check out my most recent posts as well as some earlier, related posts:

• Teacher Armor and the Saturday Clearing
• The Extra Day: A Ten-Year Memory
• Of Training Wheels and Christmas Lights
• Charity Starts at Home (And I’m Back in My Childhood One)
• The Muscle of Empathy

The article “Misogyny, bullying and woke” first appeared on Rebuilding Rob.