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[Reelya]

Many topics, e.g. gender issues in video games, campus sjw culture and other issues when brought up are often challenged as being off-topic in many other threads. however, there is a lot of interesting stuff going on in the moment relating to social justice, the alt right and other related movements. I've created this thread to see if we can have a space to direct these sorts of discussions to.

Basic rules.

1. Generally forum rules apply

2. Be Civil. Avoid personal attacks, taking things out of context, or reading things into statements that aren't actually there.

3. Avoid epithets and generalization. Try not to say "men" or "women" or "feminists" are doing something. Be more specific about which subgroup you think is doing something. e.g. "black people" probably don't all agree on any one thing but "black lives matter activists" could reasonably be said to adhere to certain beliefs.

4. Argue with citations wherever possible, provide links to supporting evidence for your position rather than hunches or gut feelings. Sure, you might think that some contrary opinion is true, but if you're not basing it on anything, just accept that it's probably wrong.

[Reelya]

One really interesting area at the moment is the campus "sjw" phenomena that really starting in earnest in 2013-2014. NOTE: I say "(campus) sjw" deliberately as a shorthand to describe this particular demographic in general and not to imply that all people who believe in social justice goals are the same. When I write SJW be aware I'm using it only to mean political sjwism centered on university campuses (though it has a web presence that spans beyond that).

One of the most interesting commentators on the current trends is Jonothan Haidt, he has a few videos in which he describes some of the recent developments:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K92rOsjyLBs

tl;dr - in about 2013/2014, a new phenomena exploded in which campus sjw's driven by social media began to become extremely vocal (and disruptive) about safe spaces, trigger warnings, microaggressions and similar. Looking at the way it's developed, the sjw belief system has strong resemblences to a religion, and the epidemic of outburts has many characteristics of a moral panic. So the campus sjw crisis could in fact be something akin to the satanic panic from the 1980s, but coming from students steeped in extremist social justice dogma (e.g. conspiracy theories about the patriarchy, rape culture etc).

Another Jonothan Haidt video which looks into the effects of hardcore sjw culture on universities:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqUtgFBWezE
there is a lot covered here, but one thing he talks about in this video especially is "victimhood culture" and how the sjw's have a set of token "oppressed groups" / heirarchy of oppression. The ways to rise in that heirarchy are either to be a victim, or to attack others "in the name" of victims. This is why you see so many middle-class cis white sjw's attacking others. In a victimhood culture it's the only way for them to raise their social status. An African American student already has acknowledged status as a victim, so they don't need to vocally attack others to rise their own status. This is the reason the least oppressed are actually the loudest.

Here's an interesting debate on the concept of trigger warnings:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTU3hxgr2Kc

This, and the other videos point out that due to the trigger-warning / complaint culture that sprang up around 2013, lecturers have been aggressively self-censoring what course material exists, because they fear students tangling them up in diversity committee hearings, over what are basically imaginary complaints. e.g. in one law school, sjw students wanted the word "violated" scrubbed from the syllabus (in the context of violating the laws) because "violated" could also mean "sexually assaulted", so the word "violated" needs to go.

In that last video there's a very salient point. In the debate are several professors, and a female student representing the sjws. One professor made the quite valid point that trigger warnings should be applied consistently to anything that could trigger PTSD. e.g. if you might have war veterans or car accident survivors in your lecture you should have trigger warnings if there is that sort of content.

However the SJW girl was adamantly opposed to allowing content warnings for this. She said it was "co-opting" the warnings, since the "purpose" of the warnings was to protect the "oppressed groups". And note that often, the sjw students protesting language usage in a lecture are doing it "on behalf" of a group they aren't even part of (see Haidt's first video).

So the safe space/trigger warning system protects only one thing - sjw's political beliefs, and can be used as a blunt weapon to bash anyone with an opposing view. And they've said on camera they couldn't give a shit about actual trauma sufferers being in the room and seeing distressing material, if they don't fit into the right "oppression" label.

[NRDL]

PTW

[Cthulhu]

I had a post on /r/latestagecapitalism removed because I referred to the Earth as "dumb"

[Reelya]

Is that because of "ableist" language?

Here's a Washington Post Op piece saying "lame" and "stand" should be banned because ableism:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/05/13/lame-stand-up-and-other-words-we-use-to-insult-the-disabled-without-even-knowing-it/?utm_term=.0edc368b267a

Lame is clear but:

We undoubtedly prefer the company of the upstanding citizen who stands for something. An upright person who stands proud, standing up to the crooked politicians and their twisted plans, leaving them without a leg to stand on. Our friend should be as straight as an arrow, and never just sit there or take it lying down.

How about "running for office" or "my computer is running fine". Because "not running" is therefore bad. And some people can't run. Let's clean up ableist language.

I guess almost all usages of "weak" or "strong" should be outlawed too, as they devalue those who are not strong.

[redwallzyl]

I have actually never meet any one of the supposed crazy campus "liberals", only regular people. maybe its because i spend time almost exclusively in the anthropology department.

We just have intelligent discussions based on the actual scientific theory and research of various cultural phenomena.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

I have actually never meet any one of the supposed crazy campus "liberals", only regular people. maybe its because i spend time almost exclusively in the anthropology department.

We just have intelligent discussions based on the actual scientific theory and research of various cultural phenomena.

As a student, I've met a number of "Crazy campus liberals". People who broke down and cried thinking Trump was going to revoke Woman's right to vote, people who held a BLM rally on one of the most ethnically diverse campuses in the nation, and people who use their sexuality to defend their actions. I mean, these types of peeps make themselves known maybe 4-5 a school year?

[Reelya]

Jonothan Haidt makes the point that the "going off the deep end" thing only started in recent years, then spread via social media. So it's only really in a few campuses in a big way. The commonality seems to be they're all places with "diversity tribunals" set up where you can complain about students or lecturers then they have complex disciplinary process that can take months out of your life.

e.g. complaints are cheap for the accuser, but very expensive for the accused. And meanwhile, they launch a social media campaign defaming the accused, which puts pressure on the administrators to punish the accused. Colleges which don't have these sort of tribunals that are willing to investigate "micro-aggression" level complaints didn't see the same explosion of hysteria. Or it fizzles out.

Jonothan Haidt dealt with one of these complaints personally (see the first video).

Laura Kipnis is another scholar who dealt with this. She wrote an article about a draconian Title IX inquisition against another professor, and about the paranoid sex rules / campus culture. Then, two students took out Title IX complaints against her. She was able to choose one support person in her interrogations, then that person also got a Title IX complaint to deal with. Then, during her investigation, the inquisitors suggested that Kipnis take out Title IX complaints against the complainer. She declined to do so (naturally).

[redwallzyl]

I have actually never meet any one of the supposed crazy campus "liberals", only regular people. maybe its because i spend time almost exclusively in the anthropology department.

We just have intelligent discussions based on the actual scientific theory and research of various cultural phenomena.

As a student, I've met a number of "Crazy campus liberals". People who broke down and cried thinking Trump was going to revoke Woman's right to vote, people who held a BLM rally on one of the most ethnically diverse campuses in the nation, and people who use their sexuality to defend their actions. I mean, these types of peeps make themselves known maybe 4-5 a school year?

The only incidents i have seen are actually the opposite. mostly right wingers painting anti Hillary stuff on the sidewalks and passing out constitutions when they are not supposed to without permission. i should mention that Hillary literally came to my campus right before the election.

[Reelya]

Totally depends where you go to school. e.g. let's look at what's happening at Evergreen

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-evergreen-state-college-implosion-are-there-lessons_us_5959507ee4b0f078efd98b0e

In recent months, The Evergreen State College has been promoted as the archetypal example of the problems associated with political correctness run amok. Videos of students and faculty members using foul language and abusing fellow community members have gone viral. Stills of students wielding baseball bats and acting as a vigilante police force can be found on all corners of the internet. Images of scores of armed members of the Washington State Patrol, clad in riot gear, patrolling campus offer a frightening look at what happens when campus administrators lose control of a college

Going good, guys. So who are they angry against:

So why was Professor Weinstein the epicenter of the student protest and why did it occur when it did, so long after he offered his critique of the Day of Absence?

The answer to the first question revolves around the unique role that Professor Weinstein has played on campus during his time on the faculty. As much as it might like to think of itself as an open and tolerant environment, Evergreen isn’t very accepting of voices that question the Evergreen orthodoxy. While this might be seen as a terribly ironic situation for a liberal arts college to find itself in, this has been the Evergreen reality for quite some time and the result is that a large number of faculty members, perhaps the majority of them, simply absent themselves from most discussions. Professor Weinstein is not one of those who have opted for self-censorship. He has always been willing to ask questions, to point out what he sees as flaws in ideas, and to offer suggestions for improvement.

He has played that role to a great extent and to the frustration of many this academic year, a year almost completely focused on the twin concepts of equity and inclusion on campus. Indeed, George Bridges, Evergreen’s relatively new president, reformulated a college-wide Equity Council and provided them with a very wide charge. The group consisted of 28 members, six of whom were current faculty members and they set to work to outline a strategic equity plan.

Which is the shit Jonothan Haidt talks about as being the common precursor to this sort of explosion. And how did he "foil" the language of "inclusivity"? The college has a "day of absence" for people of color in which they traditionally protest racism by leaving the campus for a whole day. But this year they wanted to ban white people instead, implying that if you tried to go to college on that day, you were racist. He responded with a private email to the faculty member organizing the event. That email was then vindictively leaked:

There is a huge difference between a group of coalition deciding to voluntarily absent themselves from a shared space in order to highlight their vital and under-appreciated roles (the theme of the Douglas Turner Ward play, Day of Absence, as well as the recent Women’s Day walkout), and a group or coalition encouraging another group to go away. The first is a forceful call to consciousness which is, of course, crippling to the logic of oppression. The second is a show of force, and an act of oppression in and of itself.

Now, they're rioting at this "racist" language which says excluding a group in the name of being "inclusive" is bullshit.

[alway]

3. Avoid epithets and generalization. Try not to say "men" or "women" or "feminists" are doing something.
...
sjws this sjws that

Good luck with that.

[Reelya]

How else can you refer to them? "liberals" "feminists" "the left" are some of the other options, and they're all FAR too wide, and they don't map very well onto this phenomena.

"sjw" does in fact map very well.

While "social justice" could be taken to have a broad definition, it's used by the core believers to mean a very orthodox set of beliefs with a uniform set of concepts / vocabulary. There's very little deviation in what social justice is about. e.g. you know that an sjw is going to believe in the patriarchy, rape culture, hetero white cis male privilege, micro-aggressions, safe spaces, trigger warnings, wrapped up in a form of postmodern cultural marxism. And the movement comes down like a ton of bricks on anyone who questions any of the core tenets, so the movement doesn't in fact have a very wide range of discourse.

Someone could in fact be liberal, "left" or a feminist and think the above is a complete load of shit.

For those reasons, i think sjw is in fact a highly targeted label, and doesn't have a large amount of overstep.

[alway]

How about literally anyone not involved in any of the incidents which you are somehow attributing to some nebulous social media hivemind? The whole point of the term sjw is to allow you to take a bunch of disconnected entities with varying goals and means to accomplishing those goals and pretend they are all the same organized group, so long as you can make it sound vaguely liberal/left and can make an outrage party over it. All these examples are hyperlocal politics and entirely disconnected.

If we're being honest here, this sort of thing isn't something that magically appeared in 2013 with social media. It's gone on as far back as you care to look. Pretend it's some special thing all you want, but it would be much more accurate to say you've merely not been around long enough to pay attention to it happening before.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_activism

And the same could be said of rhetoric against such.

We've seen here at the city of Kent especially, probably the most vicious form of campus-oriented violence yet perpetrated by dissident groups. They make definite plans of burning, destroying, and throwing rocks at police and at the National Guard and the Highway Patrol. This is when we're going to use every part of the law enforcement agency of Ohio to drive them out of Kent. We are going to eradicate the problem. We're not going to treat the symptoms. And these people just move from one campus to the other and terrorize the community. They're worse than the brown shirts and the communist element and also the night riders and the vigilantes. They're the worst type of people that we harbor in America. Now I want to say this. They are not going to take over [the] campus. I think that we're up against the strongest, well-trained, militant, revolutionary group that has ever assembled in America.

It's less that they weren't around, and more that conservatives can only now make careers on reactionary youtube outrage videos about it.

[Reelya]

Did you actually watch the videos I provided or are you just denouncing Jonothan Haidt as a reactionary conservative because you believe he said something you won't like?

Haidt is in fact Professor of Ethical Leadership at NYU. He doesn't have a "career" of making youtube videos. He's also a lifelong liberal / Democrat, he's being interviewed by another liberal Democrat in the first video, and mentions Greg Lukianoff (another liberal Democrat) as bringing some of the issues to his attention (and with whom he collaborated on some of this research). There are no conservative sources included in anything I linked, they're all from the left or center.

Also "kent state shootings" is wildly off tangent. That's not even the kind of thing what Haidt & co are even talking about. it's about policing of language, censorship, and hypersensitivity.

The reason I say 2013 is because the college professors in the USA say the specific phenomena of "safe space" accusations, complaints exloded in 2013. It's not about riots, it's about an academic version of "witch hunts" which erupted across campuses in 2013-2014. One of the results of this is that many lecturers to severely censor the material they provide to students on the fear that someone or other will object to something minor and drag them in front of a disciplinary committee which could take months out of their lives. This includes many classic texts.

You clearly haven't tried to look into it. I suggest actually listening to what Haidt has to say. He's not some conservative blowing hot air, he's relating his personal experiences and those of university colleagues.

[alway]

What Haidt has or hasn't to say is entirely irrelevant if you're going to misrepresent him as much as I am when I merely respond based on what you have said.
"Postmodern Cultural Marxism"
"rioting at "racist language""
If he isn't going on about such things, then perhaps you shouldn't either if you're using him as your support?
If you're falling back on tired old right wing tropes mixed with hyperbole, you should start by looking at yourself if you're worried about hypersensitivity.