Meghan Markle admitted to “spoon-feeding the clickbait” by defending the word “woke” in the latest episode of her “Archetypes” podcast.
In the episode, titled “The Audacity of the Activist,” the royal spoke about words that become “unnecessarily charged” when it comes to women, giving examples such as “feminism,” which she said is “often treated, as taboo, as the F-word.”
“Or the word ‘woke.’ I know I’m saying ‘woke.’ I fully realize I am spoon-feeding the clickbait, but here’s why,” Markle, 41, said. “Because ‘woke,’ by definition, means alert to injustice in society, especially racism.”
“Now, what’s loaded or wrong with that? And when you layer a woman into that seemingly anodyne definition, it becomes for many almost disgusting, ‘outrageous,’ they would say, but why?” she continued.
Many critics of the Duchess of Sussex have used the word “woke” to describe her negatively, with some even branding her and Prince Harry as the “King and Queen of Woke.”
“What is so scary about a woman having an opinion as strongly as a man does? And why do we sometimes cower to that? Turtle, as I often say — go back into the safety of our own shell,” Markle said on the podcast.
Markle’s podcast guest, British actress Jameela Jamil, told her that she had “fought back on behalf” of the royal and defended her against “demonization.”
“I’m sure maybe you can’t keep this in or whatever, but the treatment of you and, I’m so sorry, you’ve had to withstand, it has re-highlighted for us there is intense unkindness and bigotry and misogyny of our media,” Jamil, 36, shared. “I think and I hope and I feel faith that tides are changing, because so many of us are fighting back.”
At the beginning of the episode, Markle explained how female activists are often looked at with irritation.
“I started to notice this almost default eye roll when someone would mention a woman fighting for a cause,” she said. “ ‘Why can’t see just sit down and’… you know the rest. The unspoken annoyance that seemed to swirl around women in activism was astounding to me.”
In a previous “Archetypes” episode, the royal said that calling a woman “difficult” is “a code word for the B-word.”
“Well isn’t that a convenient villain? An assertive woman in a position of power being called the B-word,” Markle said. “It becomes a way to take their power away and keep them in their place.”
