Danusha Goska writes about the latest shots fired in the Woke War on Birdwatching:
Those changing the name of the McCown’s longspur insist that their goal is to make birding’s future more inclusive. They are lying. Their goal is power. Milan Kundera, survivor of the Soviet Empire, wrote, “People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It’s not true. The future is an apathetic void of interest to no one. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past.” Now that John P. McCown’s historic contribution to ornithology has been erased, Woke’s war on birding is moving on to larger targets. The Woke are shoving down the memory hole John James Audubon himself. Audubon was a giant. He was a groundbreaking ornithologist. His contribution to the field cannot be overstated. Woke, like a parasitic wasp, has deposited its eggs into the body of the Audubon Society. Woke larvae are now eating the Audubon Society from the inside out. Accounts of the Audubon Society’s destruction by Woke can be read here, here, and here. Woke doesn’t just demand the changing of bird names. It demands the compete erasure of the man whose name stands for ornithology, birdwatching, and environmental protection. Local chapters are dropping the name “Audubon.” The New York City and San Francisco branches have voted to memory-hole the name “Audubon.” It goes without saying that none of the Woke revisionists has ever contributed as much to birding, to science, to art, or to conservation as the man they wish they could un-person forever.
This is the central thesis of her article, it's a shame you have to get 4890 words into the 5801 word article to get to it. While the opening bits about the joys of birdwatching are clearly her labour of love for "birding" crying out to be expressed, it could have been shortened up.
(On the bright side, the long initial foray did provide a few useful tidbits for the future: for example, Red Indians would bring the plants and animals from the lands they now claim have been theirs from time immemorial over to the far more intelligent white people who were moving in to ask hey, do you know what this is? The quote in the post title is part of a passage where Goska notes she has traveled to many places where the native language never got around to naming all but the most common of local creatures: this isn't explicitly tied with the cultural superiority of northern European in general and English in particular, but its certainly a fact whizzing past you like some really small bird in the area I couldn't name but I know people who are already surmising the answer)
Birdwatching has been getting bigger in the past few years, in particular I know a few young-middle-aged women in Ontario who all seem to be taking it up, which seemed to be an interesting thing for people to be taking up (though breadmaking shocked the hell out of me too). Whether the demographic most likely to be taken up by far-left bullshit and also seems to be anecdotally becoming birders is the cause of this issue is an interesting question not easily answered. Suffice it to say, it's harder and harder to get people to accept this perfectly valid (read: far superior) mindset which Goska gets to near the end:
I love and honor my Polish and Slovak slave, peasant, and serf ancestors. They bequeathed many invaluables to me, including my life. They could not give me birdwatching. To be a birdwatcher, I needed binoculars. Binoculars are the fruit of centuries of scientists, including Dutch, Italians, and Germans. I needed a field guide. American women with names like Parsons and Merriam pioneered field guides. Chester Albert Reed and Roger Tory Peterson developed the concept. I needed nature writing. Nature writing, like field guides, like binoculars, is largely the product of people of northwestern European descent, people like Gilbert White, William Bartram, Charles Darwin, Susan Fenimore Cooper, Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Aldo Leopold, and Rachel Carson. I needed preserved natural places. Again, the preservers of natural places in the US have largely been people of northwestern European descent.
Woke claims it erases history that is not “inclusive.” By Woke’s criteria, birding’s history is exclusive of me. I can’t think of a single Polish or Slovak peasant or immigrant who made a significant contribution to the invention of optics, or fieldguides, or the preservation of landscapes. Woke’s identity politics are wrong. This history is inclusive of me. Insatiably curious people; people who love nature; people dedicated to its preservation; people who call things by their true names: I am one with them. I don’t need Roger Tory Peterson to be renamed Roger Tory Peterson-ski to recognize him as my brother.
