Too Grateful to Be Woke

Rejecting victimhood in a culture that rewards it

Chestnut Tree in Blossom, Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1881)

In my late teens, I came across an article on a progressive news website that talked about how men were more likely to have manuscripts accepted at publishing houses. I had wanted to be a writer since I was a kid, and the article made me angry—but not at the idea that publishers were biased against me for being female, rather at the idea that I should focus on and be bitter about this supposed injustice. I left a comment that I was a female writer and I was confident I'd be published one day. I felt like it was an insult that the article made it seem like the scales were so tipped against me.

The woke attitude and desire to be aggrieved were always antithetical to me. I guess I naturally rebelled against the idea of being a statistic and held something like a belief that generalizations didn't apply to me as an individual. I don't really think that way completely anymore, to be honest. I know I'm typical in a lot of ways. I know I probably fit a lot of generalizations, and that's okay. I would probably also take the aforementioned stat about female authors with mild interest while still feeling confident that I could be successful nonetheless. I'm curious about human bias without necessarily always assigning it nefarious intent. Plus, let's be real here—today, a male name on a manuscript might actually be a detriment.

But I'm glad that my initial, natural reaction to an article trying to convince me I should be aggrieved and bitter was such a strong one, because I think it was protective for what was to come. Over the following years, from about 2010 onward, woke progressive grievance-infused thought began to permeate everything, including media, politics, and education (and I was in university at the time). Soon, I was swimming in it, and somewhat taking it on board as well. For example, I've written before about how I once nodded unthinkingly along to the idea that “trans women are women.” As a young adult, I also bought into the awful lie that the driving force behind conservatives was basically just hatred of minorities.

So yes, grievance culture did indeed manage to sink its claws into me, but thankfully never all the way. This was in large part due to my early and natural disinclination toward collectivism. But over time, I think what really helped draw me out of it was a deep sense of gratitude for the life I get to live. I'm well aware that it's a complete historical oddity that I get to be married to a woman and that we get to raise a child together. Even today, that's not possible in a lot of places, and there is a renewed effort in America—but I think we're going to see it elsewhere, too—to roll all of that back.

Still, knowing this makes me feel like even less of a victim and even more cosmically lucky, or blessed. It would be easy to focus on the negatives, but then I'd miss out on capitalizing fully on this rare and amazing chance to live how I do. Nor am I too aggrieved that for most of human history there was no such thing as “gay rights.” Forget even gay rights. The reason homosexuality was always focused on men and lesbianism was never an issue on anyone’s radar was that women as a whole had little agency. There wasn’t really a feasible way until relatively modern times for me and another woman to live on our own together, in a relationship, raising a child.

And no, that wasn't because people throughout history just hated lesbians and wanted to keep us down. There was no concept of such a thing because the vast majority of people throughout history were just trying to make the best of their own lives rather than conspiring to keep down minorities. This is not to absolve the people of the past or people today of their moral failings when it comes to the mistreatment of women or persecution of minorities. There is plenty of moral culpability to go around. I'm just not sore about the fact that people who have their own things to deal with have not and are not taking up my specific cause. I'm hardly doing the same for most of them.

Acknowledging this makes me acutely aware of how lucky I am to have what I have and live how I do. Instead of feeling the weight of centuries of persecution, I just feel incredibly grateful. It also makes me very defensive of the kind of society I live in. Ironically, despite outwardly being a picture of progressivism, this has me lined up with the conservative side of today's political spectrum. I want very much to conserve the society that has allowed me to live this way.

The woke, on the other hand, are more interested in tearing it all down, convinced that, somehow, something even better will come from the ashes. I think you need to have a strong coupling of ingratitude and ignorance to think that would be the case.

None of this is to say that people who have legitimate grievances should just shut up because it could be worse, or that they should be thankful for crumbs and not fight for anything more than the most basic decency. Women, for example, are being treated with absolute disdain in clashes between sex and gender identity. This has very real repercussions for women in prison, women in sports, and women who need or offer single-sex services.

But a lot of the groups in the West, at least, who have “grievances” in the woke sense are not oppressed by any sensible metric. They are generally comfortable and free to live as they want. What they sometimes lack, particularly in the case of trans activists, is total and complete compunction to their every demand. That's not oppression. This is unfortunately also true of a lot of gay activists who, having won the right to marriage, now have nothing to shake their fists at except the spectre of a religious right that has had no power and influence in places like Canada for a long time and who attach themselves to other causes like trans or stanning for Hamas.

I should also note that I don’t believe the woke attitude only exists on the left. It absolutely exists and is growing on the right as well, with many more groups attempting to reap the social rewards that come with shouting the loudest about being aggrieved. In some cases, there is a kernel of truth in the grievances, but it is also sometimes taken too far. As I said above, it could be true in publishing today that being a straight white male is the worst thing you could be. There are many legitimate issues with DEI initiatives and I am for people being judged and considered on merit rather than for the diversity checkboxes and quotas they fill.

The fight against the excesses of woke is important, but unfortunately, many who fight it have chosen to use the woke playbook to further their own agenda. For example, the liberal feminist script that men are basically evil and the cause of all the world's problems (unless they put on a dress and call themselves women) is being flipped in certain radical right-wing male spaces. It's so extreme that if you find a news story about a man killing his wife, you'll also find no shortage of comments blaming her for driving him to do it.

This kind of blatant, obvious misogyny has always existed, but I do think it's increasing and I do think a lot of the men who espouse it have learned much rhetorically from the way progressives have been airing their grievances over the last decade. The woke victimhood mindset has been a disaster for everyone.

I won't pretend that platitudes about gratitude are going to solve these deep and complex problems. But on a personal level, at least, refusing to be a victim and acknowledging the things I have to be grateful for and how rare they are has been protective against feeling aggrieved and wronged by the world. If I wanted to, I could expend a lot of energy focusing on the people who disapprove of me. I could go out into the world with an attitude that looks for slights and “microaggressions” against me. As rare as they are, I'm sure I could blow these occurrences out of proportion and farm a good deal of sympathy.

But the idea of doing that repulses me. I have the option today to choose the life I want, and that's exactly what I've done; everything else is just background noise. Perhaps I've faced some hurdles because of my sex or sexual orientation or the way that I look, but everyone has their own hurdles. Trying to quantify and stack up my oppression points against everyone else would be a waste of time. No one really owes me anything aside from basic human dignity, so anything extra is just a bonus that I am happy to shut up and enjoy.