11/19/2025
Some rightwingers fling the clichéd term "virtue signaling" as if it were a bad thing. Personally, I am all in favor of virtue-signaling.
I love to see people making full-bodied expressions of how much they care and what they want to do to make the world a better place. It's even fine with me if a part of their motivation is the desire to be loved by the rest of us do-gooders.
So yes, please feel free to flaunt your virtue-signaling in front of me. I will applaud and appreciate. Maybe you talk the do-good talk 70% of the time and walk the do-good walk 30% of the time. In my eyes, that's WAY preferable to those who walk the do-good walk 0% of the time.
If for some reason anyone doesn't like my virtue-signaling, they have my authorization to go in search of people who who prefer to engage in vice-signaling and selfishness-signaling and I've-got-mine-and-f**k-the-rest-of-you signaling.
And while we’re at it, let’s talk about the other term that some folks spit on: woke. As if caring about other people were a moral pandemic. As if paying attention to injustice required hazmat gear. As if noticing suffering were a character flaw instead of a Bodhisattva trait.
I long ago signed up to be deliriously, flamboyantly, unapologetically woke. I aspire to be so woke I need naps. I want to be so woke I register on seismic instruments. So woke I trigger amber alerts for runaway empathy.
Being woke means I’m committed to dismantling cruelty, listening to marginalized voices, helping refugees find safety, defending q***r joy, and supporting people whose struggles don’t mirror my own.
And if anyone doesn’t like my woke-ness, I happily authorize them to go commune with people who prefer snooze-button consciousness, bigotry-enhanced drowsiness, and the sacred art of never learning any thing about anyone else’s experience. I won’t be offended.
Image: Kurukulla, goddess of magnetization. Artist unknown.
