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[Loud Whispers]

SJW is about as useful in describing a group of people as capital A Anonymous is; it describes a heterogeneous group of unidentifiable people who undoubtedly exist and undoubtedly cause mayhem, but are by nature a formless group that can only be broadly categorized in a style or attitude. Thus it is difficult to use the term effectively beyond pointing out outrageous moments where one can note "this is retarded", yet this runs the risk of having forum discussion inevitably waste more time trying to figure out whether the criticism is an attack from an outgroup, self-reflection or heresy, instead of considering the merits or worthlessness of any criticisms at hand. Probably more useful to talk about patterns of behaviour, schools of thought, trends or specific groups than something that is so gargantuanly broad like "SJWs" or "the left"

[Cthulhu]

That's what I was saying.  Taboo the term.  Describe the people instead, so we can see if we're talking about the same thing. 

Thought:  Yale, Evergreen, Mizzou, UC Berkeley, the universities with the most egregious anti-firsamemmun behavior are all high ranked privileged universities with wealthy students.

Do the protestors need to check their privilege?  Or maybe we need to consider that they're all much better than us and do what they say.

[Avarice]

We should hurry up and interbreed.
reason? Oh no reason its just fun

[ChairmanPoo]

We should hurry up and inbreed.
reason? Oh no reason its just fun

[Loud Whispers]

Habsperger syndrome

That's what I was saying.  Taboo the term.  Describe the people instead, so we can see if we're talking about the same thing. 
Thought:  Yale, Evergreen, Mizzou, UC Berkeley, the universities with the most egregious anti-firsamemmun behavior are all high ranked privileged universities with wealthy students.
Do the protestors need to check their privilege?  Or maybe we need to consider that they're all much better than us and do what they say.

Starting with the West's intellectual bastions and their unusual hostility to foreign ideas that reside outside of a liberal (to be more specific, pertaining to the judgements of scholars dealing principally in analytical fields of Marxism, Feminism, Psychoanalysis, Post-colonialism and of course other schools of thought in their own respective niches) sounds like a good idea. Conflicts between University and their surroundings is not entirely unusual, what with Universities at their largest serving as near self-sustaining colonies of students with all the potential for mayhem and miscommunication that could ensue from that, but what is perhaps unusual is how within these remarkable colonies, academic rigour is gone in favour of political consolidation. While one can argue that a University faculty is not at fault for being political, or even that it would be difficult to be apolitical akin to a civil or military service, the echo chamber phenomena is a disturbing one. Your description of such a thing acting like a religious creed, hehe, one must at this point also bring up how actual religious creed is also involved. In the UK the whole phenomenon of University faculty looking for heretics in their midst can often be literal and ignored owing to the oppression hierarchy, producing future fighters.

Yo can we trade uni extremists pls

[Reelya]

One issue with acceding to demands is that there is a bunch of research on how the things we called "microaggressions" actually work. (which I'd argue are closely related to the concept of blasphemy in religions). It's a good starting point to understand the concept:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-rise-of-victimhood-culture/404794/

Jonothan Haidt also summarized the academic research on his blog:
http://righteousmind.com/where-microaggressions-really-come-from/

Basically, boiling that down, the more that equality is enforced, the more objectionable even the slightest deviation from complete 100% equality becomes. But it requires a couple of other environmental factors to really take off - things like diversity committees with the ability to punish others for perceived slights. I don't think it would matter whether those mechanisms were "official" or not, it's the ability to accuse someone of some abstract transgression, and have them punished in some way for that trangression. Social media might now be filling the role of a punishment system, which has allowed this sort of framework to spread in recent years outside of the few colleges where this stuff mattered until recently.

Perhaps ability to become outraged is the constant, and as serious outrages become less common or more remote, that outrage focuses on tinier and tinier things. e.g. the recent thing about how complimenting a woman's shoes is a microaggression, as is asking an asian student "where are you from?". What this would suggest is that pandering to "offense trolls" by damping down on behavior that they're over-reacting to, only ends up making things worse.

[TempAcc]

The microaggressions thing is probably the one thing I'd unironically tag as a first world problem.

[redwallzyl]

One issue with the acceding to demands is that there's a bunch of research about how thing we called "microaggressions" actually work. (which I'd argue are closely related to the concept of blasphemy in religions). It's a good starting point to understand the concept:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-rise-of-victimhood-culture/404794/

Jonothan Haidt also summarized the academic research on his blog:
http://righteousmind.com/where-microaggressions-really-come-from/

Basically, boiling that down, the more that equality is enforced, the more objectionable even the slightest deviation from complete 100% equality becomes. But it requires a couple of other environmental factors to really take off - which are things like diversity committees with the ability to punish other for perceived slights. I don't think it would matter whether those mechanisms were "official" or not, it's the ability to accuse someone of some abstract transgression, and have them punished in some way for that trangression. Social media might be now filling the role of a punishment system, which has allowed this sort of framework to spread in recent years outside of the few colleges where things stuff mattered.

Perhaps ability to become outraged is the constant, and as serious outrages become less common or more remote, that outrage focuses on tinier and tinier things. e.g. the recent thing about how complimenting a woman's shoes is a microaggression, as it asking an asian student "where are you from?" What this would suggest is that pandering to "offense trolls" by damping down on behavior that they're over-reacting to, only ends up making things worse.

Wouldn't the solution to this supposed problem be to simply have people be just equal without even being aware of their being a need to stand up for equality because people don't see their as being anything to stand up for as it is ingrained already. for example not having even the concept of feminist because women are just treated equally. no extremists can exist becasue in real equality no concept of inequality can exist due to their being no point.

[smjjames]

At which point the free speech crowd starts crying "This is not equality! We are being oppressed!".

I remember a cartoon that pretty much sums up the whole problem with the microaggression and safe space stuff: It shows a graduation stand with graduates getting diplomas, a sign is near them saying 'safe spaces' (or something like that) and above the stairs leading off the platform is a sign saying 'welcome to the real world'.

Also, the ability to punish each other for percieved slights, no matter how tiny, ALMOST sounds like some sort of oppressive/repressive regieme, plus a recipe for total paralysis.

edit: I see that you see the same downward spiral to the bottom that I'm seeing Reelya.

[Reelya]

Extremists would still exist, that's the point.

Look at the well known recently feminist crusades.

- sexist air conditioning
- manspreading

etc.

The airconditioning is the same fucking temperature for everyone, yet it's still a major outrage that women don't like it. Treating women the same wouldn't change that. 22 degrees celcius is the standard office temperature. It's not a fucking blizzard. Many offices still enforce guys to wear suits, if they made it hotter you have sweaty manstink. Women say they want to come to the office in a breezy summer dress, which is comfy both indoors and outdoors. Men have to wear suits in the same environment. The aircon temperature must be a compromise.

There are other examples where women being treated the same is seen as sexist. e.g. sorala chemaly wrote that it's sexist against women to have 1 male bathroom and 1 female bathroom.

[redwallzyl]

At which point the free speech crowd starts crying "This is not equality! We are being oppressed!".

I remember a cartoon that pretty much sums up the whole problem with the microaggression and safe space stuff: It shows a graduation stand with graduates getting diplomas, a sign is near them saying 'safe spaces' (or something like that) and above the stairs leading off the platform is a sign saying 'welcome to the real world'.

Also, the ability to punish each other for percieved slights, no matter how tiny, ALMOST sounds like some sort of oppressive/repressive regieme, plus a recipe for total paralysis.

edit: I see that you see the same downward spiral to the bottom that I'm seeing Reelya.

Its just extremists doing what they do. the fundamental logical application of the concepts remains useful.

[smjjames]

I suppose they could make each persons office with the ability to personalize their atmosphere, but then, wouldn't people complain anyway when they go outside their 'comfort zone'?

See what I did there, heh....

Not sure how it's sexist to have one male bathroom and one female bathroom. Sure, waiting times could be an issue, but are you really going to find that in an average office?

[Reelya]

fundamental logical application of the concepts remains useful.

Sorry I'm not really clear what you mean by "the concepts" specifically here, so I don't want to counter that. Can you be more explicit as to what you're refering to?

"Treating people the same" and "acceding to demands of microaggression advocates" are different things in my mind.

Many of the example of microaggressions do not revolve around people being treated the same, they are saying that some people should be treated differently, because we need to be super-sensitive about different identities. Now that's a bigger minefield by far.

[smjjames]

fundamental logical application of the concepts remains useful.

Sorry I'm not clear what you mean by "the concepts" specifically here, so I don't want to counter that. Can you be more explicit as to what you're refering to?

"Treating people the same" and "acceding to demands of microaggression advocates" are different things in my mind.

Many of the example of microaggressions do not revolve around people being treated the same, they are saying that some people should be treated differently, because we need to be super-sensitive about different identities. Now that's a bigger minefield by far.

Thats..... a heck of a cognitive dissonance, they want 100% equality and yet they want to treat others differently.

Also, that's the 'cultural appropriation' you're talking about, I think, which is kind of BS. If people from said culture complain about it, okay, that's fair, but for an outsider to do it seems kind of silly.

[redwallzyl]

fundamental logical application of the concepts remains useful.

Sorry I'm not clear what you mean by "the concepts" specifically here, so I don't want to counter that. Can you be more explicit as to what you're refering to?

"Treating people the same" and "acceding to demands of microaggression advocates" are different things in my mind.

Many of the example of microaggressions do not revolve around people being treated the same, they are saying that some people should be treated differently, because we need to be super-sensitive about different identities. Now that's a bigger minefield by far.

I'm talking mainly about the concept of the so called and much memed safe space. Its very important people have things like that when experiencing things like trama. you wouldn't throw a victim of domestic abuse back with their abuser. they need somewhere they feel is safe and people they can trust to both get help and support. many people don't get help for problems because they don't feel they have a safe place where they can get help and support for their issues.