Is cycling ‘woke’? Cycling and culture wars discussed with a Conservative aide, plus Lucinda Brand and Eli Iserbyt on the future of cyclocross

It's on about a podcast that some commenters are too thick to have observed, or even chosen to listen to. Modern life huh.

Woke also means "not asleep".

Glad to be of service.

Dddrrriinnngggg !

I was wondering whether anyone had listened to the podcast, which is what this article is about. 

mark1a wrote:

I was wondering whether anyone had listened to the podcast, which is what this article is about. 

Nope. I don't do podcasts.

mark1a wrote:

I was wondering whether anyone had listened to the podcast, which is what this article is about. 

There is an article?!

Listen to the podcast? Are you mad ?

Hirsute wrote:

Listen to the podcast? Are you mad ?

What podcast?

..... don't you think

I didn't realise Kamikwasi and Truss were ultra liberal left, nor that the current party who are bent on wrecking the wine industry are also ultra liberal left.

You must have missed GB News cancelling a guest midshow and the government cancelling speakers for being critical of the governement on any policy, no matter how irrelevant to the topic they were asked to speak on.

The funniest one I saw recently were all the people "cancelling" Pink Floyd when they posted an anniversary image for Dark Side of The Moon, because they all thought the rainbow (from the original cover) was showing support fro LGBT.

Turns out the right isn't any more tolerant than the left. Weird that.

Oh yeah that was hilarous!

There is a lot of reaching there. 

I think we can safely say, and Rendell will agree, I fit in this place like a square peg in a round hole. Rendell himself claiming I hate cyclists, for holding a view that doesn't fit his or what seems accepted here by many.

However, going into a diatribe about woke, snowflake gen z, hard left liberals. Jesus wept pal, you have me rolling my eyes as much as I would as at someone on the extremes of the left of political spectrum. And that is just it, you are little more than the flip side of that coin. 

I tell you one thing, as a married gay man, I am more concerned about the rightwing ideology that is creeping in. It is that, that would "cancel" my rights and given half a chance anul my marriage, and I would hazard a guess that you wouldn't care, it would just be collateral damage to you as long as the "wokes" get their comeuppance so you can stop weeping for this once great country (what the actual fuck?) you'll be happy. It is also not the "wokes" or "liberal lefts" cancelling books in the US and taking away rights, like access to abortion. I generally think you're confused about free speech and cancel culture, what you want is consequence free speech, you want to be able to call me a shirt lifting poof in public and have no one call you out.

In terms of immigration, what is hilarious, is illegal arrivals has and continues to be overplayed the right. What we do have now is a huge surge in legal migration from outside the EU thanks to brexit and the massive shortfall in workers it has caused in all those industries, that apparently proper Brits were aching to take.

As for your trans nonsense, as someone with a trans nephew just fuck off with that shit. I guess you want a bearded biological FTM trans man to have to use the toilet with your wife. I don't think you are racist, or even transphobic, I do think you are awful human being though.

I enjoyed that post. Don't think I ever expected to read on road.cc the phrase "shirt lifting poof" !

As to migration, it's something like 700k with just under 50k asylum seekers (illegals to some) with work and study being over 500k of the numbers. University of Essex has a large number of overseas students paying very high fees, so stopping them coming here would put a rather large dent in their finances and hence courses provided.

Those were terms I grew up hearing. Also if we want to talk about cancel culture, growing up thanks to Thatchers section 28 legislation being gay was effectively "cancelled". Guess what though, not teaching it didn't stop me and plenty of others being gay, because it isn't sometheing you learn.

I see The Doctor is now officially gay and Dr Who is woke.

I'm not reading that as I'm yet to catch-up on Dr who, just in case there is a spoiler.

Pronouns is another example though. At the end of the day someone's pronouns has no effect on those who seem to lose their shit over it. The only issue is the few who lambast people who in innocence make a mistake.

Adam Sutton wrote:

I'm not reading that as I'm yet to catch-up on Dr who, just in case there is a spoiler. Pronouns is another example though. At the end of the day someone's pronouns has no effect on those who seem to lose their shit over it. The only issue is the few who lambast people who in innocence make a mistake.

It's totally understandable for people to make mistakes with pronouns as it's a habit to always use he/she and can take a while for someone to change their speech. I think most people would be understanding of that difficulty and certainly if the person making the error apologises. However, there are some people who rebel against the widening of society's genders and refuse to use the desired pronoun of someone which obviously makes things a bit awkward.

The Doctor Who pronoun bit was just a throwaway couple of sentences which didn't have much bearing on the plot. It did make me think that assuming someone's gender shouldn't be a major problem as it's fairly natural for people to make all sorts of assumptions about people/aliens when first meeting them, but the crucial point when called out for that is to ask the person how they prefer to be referenced and then try to use that. It's just simple courtesy.

Edit: hadn't realised that there was another Doctor Who episode last night

In my experience, I've never once seen or heard someone losing their shit over someone else addressing them with the "wrong" pronoun. People just tend to politely explain the situation & are understanding of innocent misunderstanding or mistakes. All the noise on this issue seems to come from those that get a wee bit uncomfortable in themselves about using some new terminology (a bit like how hearing a foreign language makes them feel uncomfortable rather than curious).

There's a recent TV interview with Miriam Margoyles who changed her views on the pronoun thing via understanding quite a simple concept; if it makes another person happy or more comfortable to be called "they" (or whatever) why wouldn't you do it?

Clem Fandango wrote:

if it makes another person happy or more comfortable to be called "they" (or whatever) why wouldn't you do it?

I saw an excellent line the other day in somebody's Twitter bio: "I couldn't care less about what pronoun you use for me but some people do so try not to be a dick about it."

Clem Fandango wrote:

In my experience, I've never once seen or heard someone losing their shit over someone else addressing them with the "wrong" pronoun.

Nor me, but I don't have much interaction with non-binary gendered people. I'm guessing it's more of an online problem where people tend to be a lot ruder and more belligerent.

Adam Sutton wrote:

Those were terms I grew up hearing. Also if we want to talk about cancel culture, growing up thanks to Thatchers section 28 legislation being gay was effectively "cancelled". Guess what though, not teaching it didn't stop me and plenty of others being gay, because it isn't sometheing you learn.

From what I recall of those days, it further stigmatised homosexuality as 'wrong', which among other things had the effect of emboldening violent gay-bashers and the marginalisation of anyone who 'looked' or 'acted' a bit gay.

The same kind of thing is happening with right-wing rhetoric about immigrants / refugees, Muslims, homeless people, trans people, climate change protesters and any other groups they don't like (which probably covers all vaguely lefty / green / tree-hugging / compassionate / empathetic people with a conscience and even cyclists; we are treated as an out-group too). Most of the MSM love repeating and amplifying the nastiness to their readers, fully aware of the dreadful things that may happen as a result.

Simon E wrote:

Adam Sutton wrote:

Those were terms I grew up hearing. Also if we want to talk about cancel culture, growing up thanks to Thatchers section 28 legislation being gay was effectively "cancelled". Guess what though, not teaching it didn't stop me and plenty of others being gay, because it isn't sometheing you learn.

From what I recall of those days, it further stigmatised homosexuality as 'wrong', which among other things had the effect of emboldening violent gay-bashers and the marginalisation of anyone who 'looked' or 'acted' a bit gay.

The same kind of thing is happening with right-wing rhetoric about immigrants / refugees, Muslims, homeless people, trans people, climate change protesters and any other groups they don't like (which probably covers all vaguely lefty / green / tree-hugging / compassionate / empathetic people with a conscience and even cyclists; we are treated as an out-group too). Most of the MSM love repeating and amplifying the nastiness to their readers, fully aware of the dreadful things that may happen as a result.

Yes, and right into the 2000's. I remember finally getting the courage to make gay friends and go to the local-ish gay pub in about 2000, and sitting in the beer garden hearing homophobic abuse being shouted over the wall. Even with my now husband we have encountered it in the twenty years we have been together, once because we are just two blokes we had some homophobe moaning to us about all the poofs etc.

The key is make them an enemy in some way. Phil giving prime examples. Trans it's about bathrooms, but Ill thought through. Migrants and Muslims it's about terrorism. I mean think back to the London attacks, they were British born citizens. Going further I recall a white British woman being radicalised, and she isn't alone. Then of course as you say we have the war on ln motorists etc. with cyclists I mean with that type bollocks is does that mean as a driver I am at war with myself? It's more a war on common sense. Yesterday I needed to pick two 30litre bags of cat litter and food, so I used the car. Today I'm going swimming, so I'll cycle.

Just because we disagree about our attitudes towards cyclists and cycling, no reason that I can't say very well said on that one.

I don't hate cyclists, and if we sat down over a drink we would find we have a lot of common ground. Cycling included.