Out of boundaries

Published May 31, 2026 6:30am ET



The woke era that began in 2014 ended in 2024. Wokeness, of course, is not dead — it still hangs over many school districts and colleges and will make a comeback with Democratic victories over the next three years — but it no longer is the default mindset.

One supremely harmful dogma of wokeism that went mostly unnoticed involved the primacy of “boundaries,” the virtue of “cutting toxic people out of your life,” and the act of going “no-contact” with people who were forcing you to do “emotional labor,” or something.

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