I am assuming direct control of this line of discussion.
This sounds like an interesting discussion to have, however I'll have to ask you a question first: what is your definition of SJWs? It's a very vague term, and I don't want the discussion to die because we built up on different bases.
As another defender of the term SJW, I figure I should chime in. First thing: Politically charged terms are universally going to be maliciously misused by others, and so hopefully we can agree off the bat that it isn't a reason to stop using a political term. Some people assert that feminism is the belief that women should be able to tell men how to live their lives, and others assert that political religiosity means you think women deserve to be raped. Practically everything can and is given this treatment. Though there are not objective meanings to words and terms, there are functional ones, and I at least am coming into this with the idea that functionally determined definitions are more legitimate than purely rhetorical ones.
Thus, we come to SJW. Social Justice Warrior. It's not just one thing, but a set of behaviors. I would classify as an SJW those who advance the concept of (small letters) social justice and human rights through such manners as: 1. Conflation of personal and political vitriol. 2. Divisive advocacy; i.e. "oppression olympics". 3. Any of the typical gamut of extremist behaviors including but not limited to cultish behavior, enforcement of ideological purity, advancement of self-serving etymologies or definitions, and committing or fantasizing about violence against others. 4. Gatekeeping and/or hierarchizing other people.
The issue I take is not typically with any perceived radicalism of the ideal being advocated, but rather the behavior and surrounding advocacy of the person acting in this way. It is one thing to engage the political sphere, engage in even disruptive activism, and try to enact utter turn-arounds of society. It is quite another to, say, smash someone's face in with a baseball bat for asking the hard questions and then post on the internet about how your perception of the whole thing means they were the aggressor for asking instead of obeying your advocacy. Or more commonly, seeing someone else do something similar and then justifying it, armchair internet people being what they are.
You have to understand where I come from. Almost all my life I've lived in ultra-conservative places surrounded by people who can afford to use facebook all day. US culture has a nasty tendency to spread, and most people around here act like whatever's happening over there is happening to them. This is amplified by the tendency of news sites, facebook, and extremely religious people in general to exaggerate stuff. So they get all riled up over the 'straight-hating pedophile gays' and those 'extreme feminists' and the 'war on religion' and 'trans bathroom predators' and shit, and act like they're personally getting attacked because a group of people four countries away is getting rights and double-down on their hatred.
In the United States, civil rights movements and stuff can take these hits, because they've been established for a while. Over here, though, a lot of this stuff is still being born, so this "anti-SJW" backlash causes these movements to get curb-stomped mercilessly due to imaginary threats. It's the worst fucking kind of echo-chamber, because it's a nationwide echo chamber. It's an echo chamber you can't get away from, physically or otherwise.
You hear stories about people getting the crap beaten out of them, or being activists being assassinated, or kids being horribly abused, and then later you see a teacher get lauded by being so brave and speaking about how it's those gays who're the intolerant ones for not letting her preach gospel in physics class. So I've sort of come to immediately associate phrases like "SJW" or "regressive left" or "extremist liberals" with that sort of attitudes, wherein people use an imaginary strawman as an excuse to kick someone when they're down (to say the least) and get praised for it.
You're being tempted by the dark side. Any movement needs to police itself for bad behavior or those behaviors will start to spiral out of control. Humans aren't built to do things the hard way, even when the hard way is more effective and all-around better. The mob instinct is born in our very blood, and it'll tend to win out unless noted and checked back for.
Not only that, but it might be literally addictive to shun criticism in favor of sanctimoniousness. It feels
good to say "fuck you and yours, we're doing it like this from now on because it's the right thing to do and you can talk to the fist otherwise", but this is deception. Establishing meaningful changes can only be done either one person at a time or through utilizing societal structures to clear incongruity like "rights for me but not for thee" in a society that is based on the idea of being fair. This is the
exact mistake the religious right in the United States made. They trusted in their own communities of conservative believers and God's prominence to advance their cause, and now they're fucked even amongst the right.
I don't want to see that happen to the idea of social justice because of people assuming they can do no wrong. The world doesn't owe us anything for believing in good things. To bring people over the aisle you've got to reach out in the first place. It isn't weakness to deny the impulse of rage over bad circumstances, but strength, because absent the wisdom to know better people will mostly always give into it. It has to be transformed into something good through effort.
Bigotry doesn't go away by being angry about it. Hell, that's willingly playing the same game as bigoted beliefs. A methodology of unity, of the
and to demonstrate our common cause as human beings and thus the obligation to do something about bigotry and division, is the different way.
Same thing happens with the arguments that dismissing people as racist/sexist/xenophobic is bad. Part of me is aware that often people who say that are arguing is that the left should try not to alienate anyone and are making a really good point, but still every time I read something like that I get flashbacks to "I'm not racist/homophobic/sexist, but [extremely racist/homphobic/sexist assertion]" and people beating someone up because "he called me xenophobic and that insulted my sensibilities, even though I had been only harassing and shouting slurs at him".
This is where I believe the newest incarnation of this whole tendency started. People on the right use the fig leaf of "just asking questions", and people on the left eventually get so frustrated that we tear ourselves apart lashing out at people who are actually just asking questions. Stir and let simmer for ten years to get the Orange President.
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Topic: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O (Read 14489212 times)