I don't buy that all literature has served the purpose of speaking out for the weak and against the strong.
The words "weak" and "strong" do not appear in my writing. The phrase I used was "Stories have ALWAYS discussed contemporary issues of their time."
Along with some notable examples. Which I think you would find is quite accurate.
Furthermore, I did not say that all literature (media) focuses on this. I said that "most media is inherently political."
"Oh, gender norms were an issue in Ancient Greece, and gender norms are an issue today; therefore, all social issues today are the same social issues through history." I think that's a faulty line of thinking that attempts to extrapolate a few historical points to a host of contemporary issues.
The point is not that all social issues are the same, but connecting to the original conversation of "anti-woke" sentiment. The idea that works were criticized for simply being bringing up political issues as opposed to being discussed on their merits. I'm sure many a humorless nobleman would have said Lysistrata was "woke attack on men" and "giving their wives silly ideas like standing up to their husbands", etc. As well as the aforementioned point that much of media has always been political.
The earliest forms of literature exalted the strong. If you've ever read Nietzsche's "On the Genealogy of Morals," you know that a lot of ancient literature was drafted by the strong, by the rich, by the elites, and that they saw themselves as strong and righteous simply by virtue of being the elite.
Is this not political? Elites stroking their own ego writing about how great they are and how they deserve their power and wealth? This is the media I referred to as some "praising political media that supports their narrative, claiming it is actually non-political." Propaganda even. Any noble that wrote anything in dissent would have been thoroughly rebuked for even daring to question their consensus on the matter without even considering their opinions. Have you seen what happens when rich people get criticized literally ever? Do they ever address the substance of the matter or wave it off as peasants being jealous of their wealth.
This hits to the main point that you've been avoiding: Certain media criticism has always been dismissed out of hand for one reason or another. Whether its criticizing nobles hoarding wealth or general notions of equality or having gay people in a video game. It has always happened. It's just called "being woke" nowadays.
Nietzsche wasn't an antisemite himself (in my opinion, and most academics' opinions), but he lived in a somewhat antisemitic period in history, and was fond of using coded language.
Side note:
Bruh, you just said "he wasn't anti-semitic, he was just surrounded by anti-semites and liked anti-semitic slang"
I didn't think I would ever get the opportunity to explain the nuance to Nietzsche in the Genealogy on a video game forum. The specific term Nietzsche uses is not an antisemitic canard, but rather the term, "Jewish Priests." In the context of the work, he is discussing the revolution in moral values from good-bad (that good is noble, high, mighty, healthy, and bad is ill, weak) to good-evil (good is righteous, selfless, kind, and evil is cruel, powerful, oppressive). Nietzsche largely traces this to the Judeo-Christian tradition, and so uses the term "Jewish Priests" as the means of this moral revolution in history. If you want to get really precise about the values he's talking about, he's really talking about the traditions of selflessness in the line of the early Church Fathers, who were Jewish Christians, hence, Jewish Priests. He's also talking about the Mosaic tradition, which is a tradition of slaves revolting against their masters and going to a new land. So, the Jewish Priests.
But there is also the matter of immediacy in politics. To clarify, I didn't go after you in the beginning because I'm a member of the no-politics crowd. I went after you because I felt your political terminology and methodology were incorrect. When the anti-woke crowd talks about politics in media, they are talking about cleavage issues. I'm not using the term cleavage to be funny. It is a technical term https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleavage_(politics) . The crowd is complaining that companies are honing in on cleavage issues and taking a specific position, and they are mad because that position conflicts with their life narrative in some capacity, and this therefore has political consequences.
Edit: The whole point here is that, yes, works of literature discuss social issues of their age. No one doubts that... what else would they talk about? Metaphysical musings? But, I would maintain that these social issues have varied, ebbed, and flowed over time, and that we cannot draw a straight line between Aristophanes and modern day social discourse on gender. I think that's a highly anachronistic reading of Aristophanes and ignores, as you said, 2500 years (!), of social and moral development. The matter I have issue with is that the term "political" when applied as a pejorative to media is not an insulting descriptor of the media, but an insulting accusation that the piece of media in question is weighing in on an immediate sociopolitical issue. I sincerely hope you don't think there was a significant and robust women's rights movement in Classical Athens at the time of the first presentation of Lysistrata. Athens was NOTORIOUSLY PATRIARCHAL, almost fundamentally. Lysistrata did not represent a competing worldview to the Ancient Greeks; I think it served to mock the mores and views of the day, which is not what the no-politics crowd is complaining about. When I speak of social cleavages, I am talking about issues that neatly divide a broader society into competing narrative camps. In my own case, sociopolitical cleavages in the USA include abortion, worker's rights, religion and state, the right to own firearms, and diverse representation. A so-called "political" game hones in on a sociopolitical cleavage, not just any random social issue. The crowd complains because it hits close to home because it takes a side between two competing narratives in a given political society, and that side is not the same sociopolitical side that the crowd is on. The social issue is therefore transformed to a political one because it is situating itself within the immediate sociopolitical cleavages of our current society. Not every social issue is a fire bell in the night.
