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For several months, the idea that woke culture has gone out of fashion , citing a series of setbacks in human rights at the international level. At times, it seems like just another formulation along the lines of "feminists went too far" or "progressivism overreacted ." For those unfamiliar with the term or these debates, here's a brief summary.

Woke is an American English term meaning "to be awake" or "conscious." It became popular in the United States during the 1960s due to the Black people's struggle for civil rights. It's a message, a way of remembering that they were fighting. In 2010, in the United States, thanks to the Matter , the term became popular and its meaning broadened. In the 21st century, with the hashtag #StayWoke, for example, it not only included anti-racist stances, but also feminist positions and the defense of LGBTI rights, among others.

As with the current logic of social media debate, and in a particular and historic way in the United States, woke movement emerged to oppose the agenda of demands that the woke movement more or less represented. woke movement is based on the most conservative discourses and as a reaction to certain debates that took place in the first decades of this century.

What does this have to do with Argentina and Latin America?

First and foremost, we're talking about this because we live in a hyperconnected world, where certain topics or words are shared globally. But above all, because we have a fairly established tendency to borrow words, phrases, or entire ideas from the global north and use them in our context. Ever since the old MSN, it was clear that anything, no matter how unoriginal it may seem, said in English garners a little more attention and prestige. I like to call this tendency the Santiago Artemis syndrome , where every two words are added to a third in English, like someone announcing they're bilingual and thinking in those terms.

While many issues are being discussed internationally, they don't occur in the same way or represent the same meaning in one country or region as they do in another . For example, a few years ago, everyone saw #MeToo as a movement generated in the global north to denounce sexual assault. Many people in these parts began using MeToo to talk about these issues, as if Ni Una Menos hadn't started two years earlier in our country. Not to mention the lack of acceptance by much of our society of addressing the structural racism in which we live.

Furthermore, there are significant differences between #MeToo and #NiUnaMenos, ranging from the context in which they emerged, the places where political representation took place, and the paradigmatic cases that gave rise to the movement. This may seem obvious, but when we try to encompass mass experiences under single categories, we generally end up simplifying them so much that we completely change the meaning of those experiences.

In Argentina

It's important to assess what meanings are liquefied in our recent history when we equate struggles and replicate disputes. Something similar happens when everything is debated under the term progressivism-antiprogressivism, as if the meanings of equality, freedom, rights, and countless other issues that arise in our lives haven't always been in dispute.

At the risk of sounding absolutely like Dr. Polo, saying "no hello" or "no afternoon, " Spanish is spoken here. It's necessary to be able to put our history into words, to embrace those categories and forms of social and political organization that help us and to set aside those that don't. During the 678 vs. Clarín dispute, the expression " cultural battle" became popular, a term that even in our present has shown its limits.

The slicing of our reality into a phrase often responds to a class perspective, to the pretensions and desires of a certain sector rather than the entire population. In Argentina, as in the rest of the countries in the region, profound contradictions and diverse cultural expressions coexist.

In times when ultraconservative right-wing discourses are being expressed around the world, the way we interpret this rightward shift cannot be through the eyes of another region. While in the United States, Disney is announcing the end of woke culture, eliminating visibly LGBTI or racialized characters, in Argentina, the most-watched TV show featured one of the most moving moments in which a trans person starred.

Luciana's mother, a trans contestant, came into the house to hug her daughter for the first time after learning about her transition . A small woman with a large cross hanging from her chest came into a reality show to hug her daughter and say, " I love you ." The scene of a trans mother-daughter relationship is universal because, more or less, we all go through life seeking the love and approval of our parents.

This scene doesn't erase the regression we're experiencing in our country regarding human rights . Nor does it justify saying we're better off than the United States; it simply shows that cultural transformations are always complex.

Trump Effect

The same day we saw the emotional scene in Big Brother and Donald Trump assumed the presidency of the United States saying that there are only two genders, male and female, Gabriel Lucero , comedian and creator of “gente rota” (broken people), revived on X a fragment of an interview with a non-binary trans person in which the word “xadre” or “sadre” was used. Many people heard that word for the first time. There was rejection, mockery and contempt and many people also saying that this is woke . Personally, I have known the expression for a long time, but I do not use it, because I do not like the way it sounds and I consider that I have enough vocabulary and tact to respect identity without speaking in the language of a certain sector of diversity. And because there have always been debates and different ways of seeing the same fact in every movement. There were some at the National Women's Meetings since the 80s, there were some in the Pride March organizations, in the networks of teachers, actresses or professionals and there will surely continue to be.

Making complexity evident also helps us see that not everything is about certain battles that seem more important than others , and that there is resistance and creation that exceeds what any organized rights group tries to project. For several generations of us who grew up with Disney content, it didn't take much for us to twist our meaning and become boys or adolescent boys who dreamed of being princesses, or vice versa . We created our LGBTI+ culture by taking what we like and adding other things. Millions of people found freedom in the editions of Bailando por un sueño where, amidst the fight and exuberance, dancers appear, and every so often, now-iconic figures like Florencia de la V. 

We build ways of living, of forming families, and of inhabiting the world alongside our loved ones, and this doesn't end with being categorized as woke , much less understood as a fad.

This article was originally published in La Nota . It is republished here thanks to a republishing partnership.