Midwife, Mother, Me

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Too much of a good thing

midwife.mother.me.

Yes, that does include chocolate

I was sent this reel recently:

It demonstrates perfectly how any extreme ideology is dangerous, in this case focusing on how extreme wokism totally defeats its original purpose, namely to call out racism.

Woke, like so many things, comes from  good place. But good things often get taken to extremes, which is always terrible. Every religion was inspired by a bona-fide good person; I’d even go as far as to say Karl Marx cared deeply about social injustice (although according to Google, he had his flaws as a person…) Jesus was seemingly good guy promoting good values to live by. Christianity? In moderation, sure. At its extreme, hell no. Marx had some good ideas, I’d wager he probably borrowed some of his values from Jesus. Communism? Nope. Terrible idea.

Wokeness sought to point out and combat injustice. Who can argue with that? To be clear, we should always fight injustice. We should accept that some people will need extra help and support to reach their full potential. There’s nothing controversial about that! Woke is often uncomfortable though, challenging the staus quo. But when it goes too far, it finds injustice absolutely everywhere,  taking offense at everything, making it impossible for anyone ever to have the correct political point of view.  You absolutely can be too woke and yes, it causes problems. Because people are fed up with woke dogma which defies common sense. To make things worse, the far right is “coming to the rescue” promising to allow undiluted freedom of speech which doesn’t so much redress the balance (and restore common sense) but pushes the pendulum right back the other way, allowing unrestricted hate speech which leads to hideous racist riots aimed at destitute migrants and refugees. I’d argue the far right is unashamedly racist even though it would strenuously deny this with sentences that begin with ‘I’m not racist but…’ for example: I’m not racist but look at the Rotherham grooming scandal…

So let’s talk about that. Here’s the anti- woke version: “Imagine being frightened, humiliated and passed between predators while the grown-ups whose job it was to protect you were worrying about whether somebody might accuse them of racism.” And that sounds reasonable, right? Because what was happening to these girls was truly terrible. And wokeness definitely delayed justice for these girls, no-one would deny that either. Question is, why were these girls believed only when the culprits were brown men? Hear me out: Are we really saying no girls had ever been groomed and abused, treated as child prostitutes (ie capable of giving consent to sex), their abusers not worthy of criminal investigation because they were paying? With sweets and trinkets? Thus it was a fair transaction? Because it seems to me that the groomers always existed, but when they were white and/or rich, never faced a single consequence. Their victims (until the Me Too movement started) disbelieved and trashed. Harvey Weinstein and the whole movie industry? The fashion industry? Epstein files, anyone? Muhammad Al Fayed? Jimmy Saville? Did they face justice? Nope. Did everyone know the abuse was going on? Hell yes. Did the Me Too movement go too far? Some would argue it did, but for a short while a woman could hope to be believed if she reported sexual abuse. With the Orange Lunatic in power protecting and promoting the manosphere, that hard won right vamoosed. The Epstein files (the little that has been made public) remain heavily redacted, Weinstein’s convictions overturned,  and this suits the bros very nicely.

Seems to me we only cared about the (mostly white) girls when the brown men abused them. Nobody cared before and, thanks to the right wing backlash, they likely never will again.

The most prominent girl who went to Syria after being groomed online to become an Islamic State bride is Shamina Begum. She was 15. My daughter is 15. She wishes she could consent to dropping maths. The most she can consent to is what she’ll have for dinner tonight. Actually, not even that. Shamina’s perps were brown. Unfortunately so was she. Look, I know she was part of a dreadful terrorist organisation but again, fifteen, and basically a baby-making prisoner. When there was talk of allowing her to return home (to a UK prison where she would rightly have faced some justice for her crimes, no-one is saying she was completely innocent) having gone through unimaginable trauma, the far right victim-blamed her with vengeful glee. She’s still paying for “her” mistakes which she “consented to”. Nobody talks about that.

We are, however, talking about Jason Arday at the moment. According to Wikipedia “The Guardian commented that the affair played into issues of Britain’s culture wars, in particular the view held by some that academic standards have been lowered due to “woke” beliefs and EDI policies.[75] Alan Lester, professor of historical geography at the University of Sussex, added that the controversy had provided “far-right racists” with “a weapon that they will wield egregiously”.[113] Various right-wing figures suggested that Arday’s appointment was the result of EDI policies. Former Conservative politician Jacob Rees-Mogg stated that the incident revealed how Cambridge had “drunk the D.E.I. Kool-Aid”.[14]”Never mind the fact that Mr Arday’s chief tormentor was a confirmed, self-proclaimed, racist white dude.

Perhaps Cambridge University got a wee bit carried away with the wokeness but the impression I’m getting is that Mr Arday’s so-called transgressions were no worse than those of many other (white) academics who got their wrists slapped but who didn’t get hounded out by the media… But the far right decided to remedy Cambridge’s apparent wokeness and guess who died? A black guy. With autism.

As Jeff Teidrich says in his brilliant blog (Everyone is Entitled to My Own Opinion), it’s heartbreaking when the worst people you know make a great point. My heart absolutely breaks to have to concede that I agree with the Orange Lunatic and his cronies on one thing, namely trans women in female competitive sports. According to Cyd Zeigler (14th July 2025) “trans athletes have gravitated to cycling, in part because of the welcoming culture many report in the sport. When trans woman Kate Phillips won a USA Cycling Masters Championship, she came from behind to do it. Second place was not very happy.” I wonder why…

Perhaps Hannah Arensman, a cycling champion who quit in May 2023 can explain:  “I have decided to end my cycling career. At my last race at the recent UCI Cyclocross National Championships in the elite women’s category in December 2022, I came in 4th place, flanked on either side by male riders awarded 3rd and 5th places. My sister and family sobbed as they watched a man finish in front of me.” No podium finish for Hannah, but she shouldn’t be such a sore looser, right? After all, as the trans woman puts it: ““Unlike some, I am not there to WIN,” she wrote on the comment board of Zwift Insider, according to the Blade, “I am there to do my best with the competitors and teammates I have around me trying to do the same…we are in it for the experience. I rejoice in their wins, and a lot of joy is reflected back to me when I have a good day.”  Well, that’s ok then.

I realise this makes me an unwoke TERF, a trans excluding radical feminist.  I accept that so-called insult  with caveats: people can be trans, live their best life, and expect to be safe from abuse. But trans women in female sports is just not fair. Both things can be true.

Everything in moderation. Yup, even chocolate! Moderate religion often gives people a sense of belonging, it often brings out the best in them. Moderate Marxism means fairer taxation system in which anyone mentioned in the Epstein files has to pay 90% tax (total wishful thinking). Moderate wokeness fights injustice with common sense. Moderate capitalism balances the right to autonomy with reasonable government oversight to ensure fairness for all. Moderate freedom of speech allows for dissent without tolerating abusive material.

I’d love to vote Green because, well, if this summer is anything to go by, we should all be squirming in our seats right now, our consciences properly prickling, ready to commit to tackling climate change in a meaningful, collective way. But Mr Polansky’s policies have taken woke to a new level, and seem designed to antagonise almost everyone. The tragedy is that they make the far right seem reasonable.  They aren’t. Meanwhile, Nige is laughing all the way to the bank because no-one is focusing on his unfairly-under-taxed wealth while they are distracted by the migrants. Thing is: the migrants will keep coming if their homeland keeps getting hotter. The NHS will quietly crumble if we don’t fund it, and everyone will need extortionately expensive health insurance. But hey, at least our taxes won’t have risen, am I right? Voting for sensible green policies, overseas aid and fairer taxation will help everyone, except the rich and powerful oil magnates… opening new oilfields? Not so much.

Extreme anything ends up hurting women, the LGBT community and poor people. So let’s all be a bit woke. The woke movement has undeniably made the world a fairer place. Let’s make an effort to see both sides of any argument and then  debate respectfully with those who arrive at a different conclusion. Because we’re never all going to agree on everything, and that’s ok.

But there’s always the middle ground. Let’s meet there!

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11 responses to “Too much of a good thing”

  1. Bob Lynn avatar
    Bob Lynn

    You make a compelling case for the pendulum swing, and you’re spot on that extreme positions tend to cannibalise their own founding principles. That Ryan Long sketch hits the nail on the head precisely because it exposes how easily the fringes end up mirroring one another’s absurdities.

    Your central premise rests on moderation: the idea that every philosophy starts with genuine virtue, turns toxic when taken to an extreme, and functions best when pulled back to a sensible centre. It feels intuitive. We see it plainly in the examples you’ve laid out, from safeguarding blind spots to fairness in female sports categories.

    If we follow that logic to its natural conclusion, though, it raises an interesting puzzle about how we define the middle ground itself.

    Take the historical examples you touched on, like challenging institutional racism, establishing women’s rights to be believed, or even early labour reforms. When those ideas were first introduced, the dominant culture viewed them as dangerously radical, unhinged disruptions to the status quo, not sensible compromises. The “middle ground” of the eighteenth or nineteenth century look horrifying by our standards today.

    If an idea’s label as “extreme” or “moderate” depends entirely on where the cultural baseline sits at that precise moment in history, how do we know whether a new, uncomfortable demand for justice is genuinely an excess that goes too far, or simply the next necessary truth that society hasn’t yet caught up with?

    Best wishes,

    Bob

    Liked by 3 people

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    1. midwife.mother.me. avatar
      midwife.mother.me.

      That’s an excellent question! To which I have no answer! As a rule, if a child asks you a question about something that seems blatantly unfair, and you cannot come up with a better answer than: “that’s just the way it is” then you haven’t reached genuine fairness.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
    2. David avatar
      David

      You make a good point Bob. What I see in our national politics in New Zealand is two major parties, one of which will get voted in for relatively middle of the road views then spend the next one or two terms drifting further and further to the left before getting replaced the the other party that gets voted in for relatively middle of the road views then spend the next one or two terms drifting further and further to the right before getting replaced the the other party . . .

      If one of them stayed in the middle they would probably stay in power a lot longer.

      Liked by 1 person

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      1. Bob Lynn avatar
        Bob Lynn

        You have described the electoral cycle down to the ground, David. It feels like watching a car drift steadily toward the ditch on one side of the road, only for the driver to violently overcorrect and aim straight for the hedge on the other.

        Your diagnosis makes complete intuitive sense: if the vast majority of voters sit squarely in the middle, planting your flag there and refusing to budge ought to be an unbeatable long-term strategy.

        Yet, looking at how political movements actually behave, the centre seems almost impossible to hold once a party is in power. That raises a fascinating question about what’s actually driving that drift.

        When a government takes office, it’s not operating in a vacuum. It relies on its activist base, its donors, and its vocal party machinery for energy, ground game, and survival. Those groups rarely join a political movement out of a passion for compromise; they join because they want change, and usually strong change in a specific direction. Meanwhile, the quiet majority in the middle goes about its daily life, only really speaking up at the ballot box when things have drifted too far.

        If that’s the case, is that drift toward the fringes an unfortunate blunder by politicians who simply lose their heads, or is it an inevitable structural trap where the people who help you win power demand policies that guarantee you’ll eventually lose the public?

        Bob

        Liked by 1 person

      2. David avatar
        David

        I think your final paragraph hits the nail on the head. The idea of getting involved to stop things changing is not part of normal political behaviour.

        Liked by 1 person

  2. David avatar
    David

    A very thought-provoking article. Moderation and tolerance is certainly a good starting point, although living in New Zealand, I am finding that the increasingly multi-cultural nature of the country is providing a lot of new challenges in defining what is ‘reasonable’.

    For example, when I was working in a Government Department there was a big push for people to join social groups as a way of improving the work/life experience. The biggest group was the Māori entertainment group open to anyone (assuming you were not tone deaf with no sense of rhythm – which describes be perfectly). There were also groups for Māori speakers, a woman’s group, various religious groups, a couple of sports teams, and a number of cultural groups for immigrants from various regions. It was all very positive except that there could be no group for rather socially isolated New Zealand white males like me – because that would be sexist and racist.

    In terms of trans-gender sports, the problem is that sport is by definition about winning. I know a lot of people get involved in sport for the fun and social experience, I played tennis and squash for those reasons for many years, but there is always the “winners and losers” mindset built into the rules, leading to separate men’s and women’s categories. Hiking in the local ranges, which I also do, is every bit as healthy and challenging as a sport but is not a sport because it does not have rules or winners and loser – everyone is there to be there not to get to the end first. A trans hiker is still just a hiker.

    Liked by 1 person

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    1. midwife.mother.me. avatar
      midwife.mother.me.

      David… you know you could set up a hiking club. All inclusive in theory, it would mostly attract white guys. And that would be ok. Also, I hate to break it to you but a) winning is awesome, especially if you’ve trained your backside for years, b) prize money is real, and it only goes to the winners, and c) sponsorship is real and it only goes to the best athletes. That’s why there are separate categories for women. If you wanna play for fun, that’s fine. Don’t compete in the women’s. Do go hiking, by all means, no-one is going to argue with that!

      Liked by 2 people

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      1. David avatar
        David

        I intellectually understand your perspective of the value of winning, but emotionally I have zero interest in competing with, or comparing myself to anyone else against a set of externally-defined rules. My interest is in continuing to learn, improve and get the best out of every day in ways that are meaningful to me. I get a huge amount of satisfaction from seeing the coffee table in the lounge that I hand-made from recycled timber, or the photo on the wall that captured the evening light along the coast on a recent solo outing, although nobody except my wife has ever commented on them.

        Liked by 2 people

      2. Bob Lynn avatar
        Bob Lynn

        There is a lot of quiet wisdom in that, David. Crafting a coffee table from reclaimed timber or waiting for the right coastal light demands patience, craft, and an internal standard that external validation just can’t touch. That kind of intrinsic satisfaction is often far more durable than a shiny trophy gathering dust on a shelf.

        It also highlights a sharp distinction between solitary self-mastery and collective structures. When you’re building furniture or walking a trail, the standard is entirely personal; you’re measuring your progress against yourself from yesterday.

        Yet the friction you pointed out earlier, whether it’s workplace culture groups or competitive athletics, exists precisely because society runs on communal spaces that require shared, externally defined rules. Sports create a ring-fenced arena for competition with arbitrary benchmarks for winning, just as institutions create structured groups to foster connection. When we step into those shared arenas, we inevitably run into the expectations, ambitions, and rules of other people.

        That contrast is really striking. Since intrinsic pursuits like your woodwork or solo hiking offer such genuine peace without the zero-sum conflict of “winners and losers”, do you think modern society simply over-indexes on competition and formal categorisation, or are those external frameworks a necessary evil to hold a diverse, complex community together?

        Bob

        Liked by 2 people

      3. David avatar
        David

        Thanks for the comments Bob.

        My studies indicate that most people’s needs are for a defined place in a social environment, with a high degree of social interaction. From what I have found out, the clinical physchology model in the 1970’s was that everyone needed to be part of a social network, with a few leaders (alphas) and a lot of followers (betas). Then a clinical psychologist spent 10 years tracking the behavioral patterns, stress responses, and social outcomes of self-identified outliers who claimed to be perfectly happy. While he expected to find unacknowledged problems like introversion or an avoidant personality disorder, he actually found these people were perfectly well adjusted, with higher than average “happiness” scores, but very much more focussed on intrinsically generated satisfaction than social acceptance.

        Eventually this type of personality was recognised as the “sigma” personality type, changing the entire foundation of the psychological model to include people who are not intimidated by social groups, but get little satisfaction from belonging to them, and have all the visionary skills and confidence needed to be a leader, but prefer to use these skills to follow their own path than to lead others.

        That is the group I fall into, hence the comments above.

        Liked by 1 person

  3. Dan (Steady Hands) avatar
    Dan (Steady Hands)

    I noticed you pointed out that “good things often get taken to extremes” and linked an Instagram reel to illustrate it. Your comparison of wokeness to religion and even to Karl Marx is striking, especially the line about Marx possibly borrowing values from Jesus. It’s true that any movement can lose its original purpose when it becomes rigid, just as a habit that once helped can become a burden. Your reminder that we still need to fight injustice while keeping perspective feels especially relevant in today’s polarized climate. Thanks for sharing a thoughtful, balanced take!

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