Woke: A Guide to Social Justice

This month I have themed reading of Social Justice, so appropriately enough, the first book of May is Woke: A Guide to Social Justice by Titania McGrath.

First off, for those who don’t know, Titania McGrath is a satirical Twitter account operated by British satirist Andrew Doyle. Now, however satirical the account is, I chose this one to kick of the month of Social Justice reading because Doyle so perfectly encapsulates the absurdity of the Social Justice movement, using quotes from ACTUAL SJW Twitter accounts to highlight McGrath’s points.

So, McGrath is the epitome of the Social Justice Warrior, she was born the only child of two barristers in England, with a posh home in Kensington and vacations with British royalty. She resents her very wealthy parents for having breast fed her, despite having been a vegan at 6 months old, and how could her parents not know this about her? She was genderqueer before it was trendy…. excuse me, before they knew how to diagnose this condition.

And of course, all men are awful. Heterosexual sex is a woman agreeing to be raped by the patriarchy, although if a woman becomes a transman, then there is nothing more satisfying than the breastmilk of a loving father. She calls Ben Shapiros famous quote Facts Don’t Care About Your Feelings to task, inverting it and claiming Feelings don’t care about your facts. This is how social justice works. If you FEEL something to be true, then it IS true.

She says out loud what the average SJW will deny out loud…that SJW don’t actually believe in science. Because according to McGrath, things like biology, medicine, and endocrinology is pseudoscientific. Now…this book was written and released in 2019, and I know the SJW screamed loud about how they obviously believe in and trust science more than anyone who declined to vaccinate…but I feel like, given that they deny the basic tenets of biology and that humanity is a sexually reproducing dimorphic species…. Do they REALLY believe in science? Or was it just the political clout they got from having THEIR president pushing the vaccines that they loved.

McGrath unironically says things like “if it is true that men are superior at sports, why is it that transgender athletes tend to win more medals AFTER they transition to female?” She also condemns Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. saying that he was a self-hating racist because he knew nothing about intersectionality. How dare he suggest we judge people based on the content of their character, and not the color of their skin?

Twitter is a cesspit of the far right and McGrath champions the open racism of the left, because only white people can be racist. Except, of course, for Titania herself, who has “always felt a profound connection with people of colour. Perhaps it’s because when I was growing up most of our staff were Filipinos.” But she uses the term persons of color, or POC because “it is a convenient way to group all non-whites together without having to go to the trouble of identifying their differences. Needless to say, this is particularly helpful when it comes to oriental countries like Japan, China and Siam, whose citizens are pretty much indistinguishable.”

Now, if all of this sounds completely horrible to you, you are not wrong. But all of this is part of the zeitgeist of the Woke left, who have completely turned their backs on the philosophies of Freedom as embodied by Martin Luther King jr, Mahatma Ghandi, and basically everyone who fought for freedom in this country in the 18th and 19th centuries. Because of course, they are all white men. Or as the news reported, the black face of white supremacy.  Because as McGrath says, “It is not racist to hate someone on the basis of their skin colour, IF THAT PERSON IS WHITE.” Again, she’s saying out loud what the intersectionalist woke crowd has been tip toeing around and trying to deny they mean when they speak these words quite plainly. And of course, “in order to sustain the dignity of POCs, we should not hold them to the same standards as whites.”

Lived experience is more important than truth. Unless that lived experience goes against the narrative, like that of Yeongmi Park, who I don’t believe was specifically mentioned in this book, but most likely is a right-wing shill who doesn’t know how good she had it under the auspices of the Kim family in North Korea. Her lived experiences do not matter to the intersectional feminist that is Titatnia McGrath.

Brexit is the fault of those stupid working-class people who failed to do what they were told in opting to stay in the EU.

McGrath LOATHES the self-hating women like Christina Hoff Sommers, Camille Paglia, and Ella Whelan, quoting their absolutely nauseating belief that “Women are not children. We are not fragile little birds who can’t cope with jokes, works of art, or controversial speakers. Trigger warnings and safe spaces are an infantilizing setback for feminism—and for women.” That quote was Christina Hoff Sommers.

Or Camille Paglia’s statement that “The problem with too much current feminism, in my opinion, is that even when it strikes progressive poses, it emanates from an entitled, upper-middle-class point of view. It demands the intrusion and protection of paternalistic authority figures to project a hypothetical utopia that will be magically free from offense and hurt.” I mean…how DARE she calls out fourth wave feminists like that!

Or what about Ella Whelan “Perpetually portraying women as weak and vulnerable, at every turn, contemporary feminism undermines women’s autonomy.”

She knows Kate Middleton personally, and understands what financial hardship is, as she is still making payments on her second wine fridge.

And she applauds Katherine Nolan, the creator of the pussy-hate knitting pattern that graced feminist heads everywhere during the dark Trump years, for removing her pattern from the public domain due to how exclusionary it was towards transwomen. But she also denounces Nolan for having not realized how exclusionary this hat would be, and for her replacement pattern, which includes a yellow rose. After all, the yellow rose might be triggering to anyone who has been raped by a florist. You cannot make this shit up. Except for McGrath, of course.

This book is brilliantly satirical. So much so that when it was published, the woke left were wholly unamused at the amount of fun being poked at them. Andrew Doyle gave a speech on satire in the digital age, I’ll link it below, wherein he says at one point “Those in power do not like to be mocked. And to put it simply, the woke ARE the establishment.” And that if Titania IS a straw man, then why is it whenever he tweets as Titania, a number of people take it seriously? If there were no Real-Life Titania’s out there, why would anyone ever take her seriously?

Valid questions. I once watched a lecture series through I believe it was Great Courses, about ancient Celtic civilization. And I found it profoundly fascinating that satirists were exempt from retribution by those they satirized. 21st century comedians are holding the line of satire for those of us who are too scared to poke our heads above ground. Doyle has created an absolutely wonderful satirical character in Titania McGrath, whose blustering bloviations are recognizable as the absurd end point of wokeist ideology. Which is why I picked this book as my intro to Social Justice month. Because however much she expounds on the evils of the white cis hetero men, I know Titania is a satire account. But I also know that she is deadly serious. They don’t want you to know it…not yet at least…but this is EXACTLY how the Woke left see the world.

So, if you want a fly on the wall perspective of what exactly the Woke, Social Justice Warrior is thinking, Woke: A Guide to Social Justice by Titania McGrath is a palatable version that will make you laugh out loud at the absurdities that are being produced by the over educated pomposity of 21st century college campuses. One thing I love…if you read the reviews on the back of the book, it includes one from The Times: “Hilarious…if the woke read this book they will not find it amusing, since dogmatism kills all sense of humor.” Followed immediately by a blurb from infamous lefty rag, New Statesman, which calls it “Tired and unfunny.” Which exactly proves The Times point.

This book was originally reviewed on YouTube on May 7, 2023, but is now available on Rumble and PodBean.