The following was originally written as part of an introduction to a blog, but these paragraphs took on a sarcastic tone that was inconsistent with the rest of the post (and it was way too long), so I extracted this passage and present it here separately. The complete introduction also appeared on my Substack under the title: “On Fanfiction and Annoying Wokeness: What is your personal victimhood score?” which I hope you will visit and maybe subscribe. It’s totally free.
Currently, I have been fascinated with Supernatural (the TV show) and fanfiction written about it. I even wrote some of my own fanfiction. I wanted to get beyond the usual romantic affair of Dean and Castiel falling in love and having sex that most “Destiel” (Dean/Cas homoerotic slash fiction) seems to be about. For instance, my fanfiction has Jesus in it. I’m not saying it’s great, but I wanted to do something a little more literary (and the historical Jesus has been one of my longtime interests), so it made sense for Jesus to make an appearance in a world already populated with monsters, angels, demons, a god who writes his own fanfiction about the Winchester brothers, his sister, a Nephilim child, and the four archangels: Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Lucifer.
It was, however, woke female writers of Destiel fanfiction that dragged me into critical theory. I remember this stuff from graduate school but was surprised to find it in fanfiction. I had not realized how far outside of the university it had spread in recent years. I remember how much I disliked it then and find it even more insidious now. It may have seemed respectable in the past, but now it just feels exploitive and manipulative. Its jargon ladened, double-speak vocabulary and opportunistic claims to “Social Justice” I think have misled and corrupted many young people who are well-meaning and want to do the right thing. This wokeness has made them meanspirited, intellectually ill-equipped, emotionally volatile, ungrateful, glib, sanctimonious, facile, and easily exploited by academic and political militants. Their universities and professors didn’t really do them any favors. They were cheated out of a good education. I will be “canceled” for this, but it doesn’t matter, if I wasn’t good enough for the academy before, I’m surely not good enough for them now either.
Here are my sarcastic comments on Critical Theory.
I want to start with an example of Woke media criticism of the show and its main protagonists, the Winchester brothers. This criticism comes from a female, “queer,” person of color, who is a fan of the show and the “problematic” nature of the show she discusses. However, I will have to hide her name. The current nature of woke “call-out” and “cancel” culture could easily get me hit with a “hate speech” charge for criticizing someone from a marginalized group. Woke ethics currently demands that unflattering speech be considered hate, and hate speech is seen as a form of violence that is harmful and dangerous to minorities. Certain words and ideas constitute physical, psychological, and emotional threats to minority persons and compromise their safety. My words might endanger this person or put her life at stake. Words are violence; hurting someone psychologically or emotionally is the same as violence. I will keep her anonymous to protect her from my words.
Despite my protection of her identity, I’m going to be sarcastic. I know this is probably unfair, so let me apologize to her ahead of time. In her online article, “[title expurgated],” [name withheld] expresses (I’m assuming her, since she doesn’t give him/her/they pronouns and her name is female) her Woke analysis of Supernatural (the activism component of her woke “Critical Theory”—its Praxis) that requires her to “problematize” the show and identify its “inherent bias” (a procedure required by Woke belief), and produce an “offended response” (my term) out of her “oppositional knowledge“ (their term) as an oppressed (politically black) female of color (she also expresses her “queerness,” which is not the same as being gay or lesbian (anymore), since to be queer is to frustrate the gender binary, a binary which gay men and lesbian women Do identify with) as expressed in her essay to make an “intervention” against “systemic racism/sexism/homophobia” — (a response that might not be honest or true, but its truth is irrelevant anyway since truth by Woke definition can’t be known because of Woke adoption of postmodernist principles of unknowability, social construction, rejection of metanarratives, and adoption of Deconstruction. Only a “raised consciousness” of an “oppositional racial/gender identity” is capable of making such a truth identification anyway, and such a consciousness is the only structure (as a political identity) that is impervious to deconstruction, and thus the sole mechanism by which to launch a Social Justice challenge and disrupt the oppressive privilege of dominant groups). Does that in any way sound pretentious? Yes, I know, that all confuses me too. This is how they talk. Racism and sexism are certainly real, but the way the “woke” talk about them sounds like a lot of BS.
She says she loves the show, but that might be taken as evidence for some “internalized whiteness” or being too “white adjacent” (as a “Latinx” female group member—everything is about what groups you belong to, not you as an individual person) that might eventually get her “canceled” (expelled from group “inclusion” for having an improper self-awareness (a “critical consciousness”) or being faulty in one’s activism) if it has not already. The Woke are not very forgiving. However, she does have female, queer, person of color victim points on her side to give her some protection. The “problematic” she identifies is that women viewers of the show are turned into real and symbolic “monsters” to be used for the sexual pleasures of white men. These women are then cast off or killed.
This dynamic has the effect of simultaneously exploiting women’s own sexual fantasies while misogynistically denigrating women into unknowingly participating in white male privilege by recasting women’s desires into men’s stories. She mocks the homoeroticism of the show while calling it homophobic because some of the lead actors of the show express discomfort with fans writing openly gay pornographic stories about themselves and their characters. These objections are seen as evidence of the actors’ homophobia, and their objections are said to inflict “damage” and “invalidation” on the identities of fans (another instance of speech as violence). She is offended by the tropes of white masculinity and male sexuality that refuse to fall into bed in a full-blown incestuous gay sex scene between the brothers. It’s also homophobic because writers show restraint where she wants to see hot man sex. I’m of course paraphrasing her words not her meaning. These kinds of arguments are always essentially the same: “white men are bad, all sexist and racist (homophobes too); that use women as sexual tools, while refusing to acknowledge their own homoeroticism, thus hurting queer people, and here is more proof. See what bad people the Winchester brothers are (and thus all white men too).”
The belief structure of Wokeism requires the presence of systemic bias and bigotry (racial, patriarchal, homophobic) to be imputed into every and all interactions and performances involving oppressor groups and the members of them, in this case straight white men. The (race, gender, sexual) ideology of the show (Supernatural) has to be perceived as being generated from a position of false/exploitative knowledge because it’s framed by someone else’s (not-oppressed) privileged “positional” perspective that has been predetermined to be prejudiced or oppressive (by the operation of “power-knowledge discourses” that entrench the interests of the dominant groups and their privileges), a “knowledge” and “perspective” that her wokeness and her “black feminist positionality” (she appears to be Latina, but this is a “political identity” not a racial one—a distinction I don’t understand) would not allow her to hold. The white male ideology of the show must be rejected for systemic racial and sexist reasons because it’s white and male. No other argument or recourse is allowed, especially the possibility that a white male subjectivity might be a valid discourse or grounded in some kind of scientific or objective proof. Science is denied; the discourse is rejected. Ipiso facto.
“Privileged” persons cannot have “authority” to speak on an issue when they occupy the dominant position, and must always defer to a person of “oppressed positionality.” They don’t have an “authentic lived experience” and thus cannot speak truthfully. Their speech can only be “hate speech” that is (consciously or unconsciously) intended to support their privilege and to hurt and oppress the marginal. They can only convey discourses of internalized power and privilege. This lived experience (of the marginalized) grants them “standpoint epistemology,” which determines that only people who directly experience oppression can have true knowledge about it. The oppressed have a “special knowledge” that the privileged should “shut up and listen” to. Therefore, because [name withheld] is a queer, female, person of color, she can speak truthfully to issues of race, gender, and sexuality (and identify them in the Winchester brothers. Something they couldn’t identify about themselves). Whereas I, who only have a (potential) victim position of being gay, can only speak with truthfulness and authority on the issue of gay sexuality. I argued elsewhere that with the advent of “queer” and “trans” “positionality factors” gay and lesbian people are being transferred to oppressor status because of their adherence to the male/female gender binary and have fallen under “queer/trans suspicion.”
The argument [name withheld], and other “Woke” people make, exists only for the purpose of reaffirming “Woke” activism against racial, gender, and sexual oppression (as they define it), and to instruct the biased, privileged, oppressor group members to “raise their consciousness,” reflect on their internalized bigotry, “check their privilege” and “be less white” and stop being a “toxic” homophobic male.
From a Woke perspective, I have just committed violence against [name withheld] as a white man, (which is tantamount to rape and murder) and threatened her emotional and possible physical safety by my act of discriminatory free speech (even though I’m on a different continent from her) and made her feel “unsafe.” Making someone feel “unsafe” isn’t just an emotional thing, but more importantly, it’s a violation of his/her/their “inclusion” by creating an atmosphere where they might feel uncomfortable. One should never criticize an oppressed person because it might scare them like skittish animals. True inclusion can only happen when all “positionally factors” are included in a “safe space.” A safe space is where everyone shares the same “critical consciousness”–that is everyone is Woke. The presence of a privileged “false consciousness” or someone with “internalized oppression” of an unknowing (self) victim (status), creates violence against those seeking liberation from oppression and impedes or destroys the Social Justice ambition of creating racial, gender, and sexual “equity.” Inclusion basically means different faces but not different opinions. Opinions that lack “critical consciousness” must be “canceled” or “de-platformed” for the safety of vulnerable minorities. Expressing opinions that lack critical consciousness are considered “acts of violence” toward the oppressed. Canceling and “calling out” people are also necessary for the furthering of Woke activism to bring society to a “proper mindset and awareness” and lead others to end “systemic injustices” the “Woke” have identified as problematics.
Are you rolling your eyes yet? You should be. Wokeness is absurd. Let’s continue, I’m getting close to the end here (of the Introduction anyway). [Name withheld’s] bio-line says she is a Ph.D. and “[attached to a UK university],” so by her own academic reckoning, I should be someone completely beneath her notice. Her status as “educated” and “credentialed” should give her privileges far beyond mine, but not all privilege statutes are weighted equally. Maybe she won’t notice me writing this, but the “Woke” are notorious for “punching down.” My threat to her as a white male is not sufficiently outweighed by me also being a gay male. My “oppressor points” outweigh my “victim points.”
You can measure your oppressor/victim points by clicking 
Add one point for each privileged group you belong to, and subtract one point for each oppressed group. Are you above or below the Domination line? As I said, not all oppression groups are weighted equally. A rich, educated, credentialed, black, queer, female has a greater victim status than an impoverished, uneducated, homeless, white, straight, man. I’m more in the middle, being poor but educated, white male, but also gay. I could score more victim points by identifying as “queer” or “non-binary” but that seems too trendy and something that young people are doing (I also don’t want to cover myself with tattoos, dye my hair neon colors, and wear lots of piercings). Did I mention, I’m also middle-aged and have mental illnesses (real, not “self-diagnosed” ones). I do get victim points for those? Right? (only if they are self-diagnosed). Being diagnosed by a professional doctor is an imposition of white male (supremacy) “power/knowledge” regimes to render mental illness as pathological (and thus discriminatory and oppressive) rather than as neurodivergence and empowering. Self-diagnosis, on the contrary, is considered “valid” (in woke speak), and as a legitimate expression of a marginalized “intersectional” identity.
Yes, I’m being sarcastic and subjecting [name withheld] to ridicule, which she probably doesn’t deserve, in order to make a point about the narrow-minded obsession of Wokeness with sex and race (there are other “intersectional” oppressed “identity factors” too, such as literacy, education, attractiveness, body size, disability, age, and mental illness, which I will ignore for now), their convoluted and self-serving analysis, and the way they see everyone, except themselves, as sexist bigots, in the name of Social Justice (their capital letters). I’m very well aware of my “bad behavior:” my sexism, misogyny, bigotry, racism. I’m a white male and so by woke principle, I can’t help it. I can’t unlearn my internalized white supremacy and male privilege; just try to be less white, less toxic. Such baloney.
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c. e. hammock 