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One of the things that really galls me about the Woke/Critical Social Justice ideology is how it positions itself as the unique pathway to authentic expression and, even more, authentic relationships. It fails both of these, and the latter is infuriating.
I'll save my general thoughts about personal authenticity for another time. I could talk about it all day since I think it's one of the most important virtues to cultivate. I'm annoyed due to what I've seen today about the idea that Wokeness leads to authentic relationships.
The Woke belief is that power dynamics like racism are present in every interaction, and thus authenticity in a relationship requires constantly looking for those dynamics, examining them, making them visible, and interrogating any defensiveness or other issues that brings up.
On Woke faith, you can't have an authentic relationship because the power dynamics (that they believe must always be present) prevent authenticity in the relationship, so the relationship has to be filled with examining and interrogating that to head toward authenticity.
This is ridiculous, and it ruins authenticity in the relationship. An authentic relationship is between two or more people (or, maybe, oneself alone) in which the people are able to see each other clearly as people and interact on terms set by the "covenant" of that relationship.
If there is some real "power dynamic" interfering with that, which might be racism or just an elephant in the room, as we say, that blocks authenticity because it prevents people from relating to one another wholly and honestly. The Woke seem to score a point here but don't.
Their belief system says there's ALWAYS a power dynamic there that prevents genuinely relating, which isn't necessarily true. In fact, assuming it's true creates the very "elephant in the room" that needs addressing and prevents authentically relating until it's addressed.
Because of the implicit covenant of any given relationship, in which each person is usually looking to give the others benefit of the doubt, etc., authentic relationships only take place when there's psychological safety for everyone. The "elephant" is something blocking that.
Woke beliefs ruin psychological safety in EVERY circumstance because they're only interested in digging up real or imagined slights and insults, divisions and differences, and looking at people not with charity and generosity but with cynical reads of intentions.
If you're constantly afraid you're going to get called out by the person you're with, you're not relating authentically, except according to the faith of Woke upside-down world. You're literally masking your authentic self so as not to cause offense, hit a trip wire, etc.
Authenticity in relationships can take courage and may sometimes require hard conversations, but it begins with psychological safety and mutual assumptions of goodwill. "Interrogation" isn't usually a word we associate with those things because it isn't productive of them.
For the small percentage of the time that the Woke have a point about cross-identity dynamics disrupting authenticity in relationships, they're wrong far more often, and forcing that error into the default setting creates problems and breaks down relationships.
