In the 60s, many of us believed that there was something like a moral obligation to acknowledge that a joke was funny, even when it was racist or sexist or cruel, or just disgusting. The ability to laugh at what were called “Sick Jokes” was seen as a kind of authenticity or integrity. It reflected the ability to own and acknowledge even the darkest parts of your personality.
Perhaps wokeness is the children of the Hippies rebelling against the outspokenness of their parents. These things do happen in cycles. The Victorian era was a similar rebellion against the sensuality of the 18th century. This time around, however, the banned words are usually racial not sexual. Once TV couples had to sleep in separate beds, now Netflix and HBO are filled with fucking, both the word and the action. But Racism and Sexism have become the new Taboos, and Progressivism is now defined by the search for new words and actions to ban, rather than by new bans to break.
https://teedrockwell.medium.com/the-fall-and-rise-of-forbidden-language-bb0a27152b09
