# Social Justice Warriors **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 2, 2017, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/social-justice-warriors/781207 "2017-03-02T15:59:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2017, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/social-justice-warriors/781207/1 "2017-03-02T15:59:10Z")
I’ve commented on SJWs on this board before, and the essence of what I said is below. > [@The lance strongarm transgender bathroom and poly marriage extravaganza thread!](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-lance-strongarm-transgender-bathroom-and-poly-marriage-extravaganza-thread/751244/166): > > I once saw where a certain historical religious figure, who was known as a religious zealot and heresy fighter, commented on the difference between himself and another contemporary religious figure who was known as an even bigger zealot and heresy fighter. He said the difference wasn’t just in degree, but was more fundamental, as in the following illustration. > > There was a baker who had a persistent problem with a mouse running around in his shop. He couldn’t catch it, and he finally went out and got a cat, which caught it and ate it. At that point the baker was happy and the cat was happy. But there was a difference. The baker was hoping that was the last mouse and there wouldn’t be any more. The cat was hoping there would be all the more mice, so that he could catch and eat all the more. > > So too there’s a fundamental difference between a person who sees injustice (or heresy, as the case may be) and feels the need to fight it and so goes out and fights it, and someone who has a need to be an injustice (or heresy) fighter, someone who needs to feel that he is nobly battling the Forces of Evil. The second type would be what’s meant by the term SJW, a guy who is always looking for an injustice to fight, so he can get that righteous glow. > > And one crucial difference is in how one assesses a given injustice (or heresy). The guy who is dragged into fighting injustice has no incentive to exaggerate or otherwise incorrectly assess the level of injustice he’s contemplating. Not so the person with the psychological need to be an injustice fighter - he has every incentive to exaggerate to himself the scale and scope of the evil that he’s fighting, so as to make himself all the bigger hero in fighting it. > > And this has practical relevance in assessing the issues and public policy. As noted earlier in this thread, many times there are competing interests at stake. Moving too much in one direction risks harm in the other. Protecting the interests of one class of people risks harming the interests of another. Something has to give. And here is where you need a rational and unbiased assessment of the benefits and harm to the various interested parties. And if you have a situation where SJWs have seized on one issue as the primary area of their focus, with the attendant need to exaggerate the scope and scale of this particular injustice, then the scale gets improperly tilted in the direction of preventing that injustice, at the expense of other competing interests whose needs are not the focus of a social justice campaign. As it happens there’s apparently a new study out which lends some support to this view. From the [abstract](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11031-017-9601-2): > [@](#): > > A cleansing fire: Moral outrage alleviates guilt and buffers threats to one’s moral identity > > Why do people express moral outrage? While this sentiment often stems from a perceived violation of some moral principle, we test the counter-intuitive possibility that moral outrage at third-party transgressions is sometimes a means of reducing guilt over one’s own moral failings and restoring a moral identity. We tested this guilt-driven account of outrage in five studies examining outrage at corporate labor exploitation and environmental destruction. Study 1 showed that personal guilt uniquely predicted moral outrage at corporate harm-doing and support for retributive punishment. Ingroup (vs. outgroup) wrongdoing elicited outrage at corporations through increased guilt, while the opportunity to express outrage reduced guilt (Study 2) and restored perceived personal morality (Study 3). Study 4 tested whether effects were due merely to downward social comparison and Study 5 showed that guilt-driven outrage was attenuated by an affirmation of moral identity in an unrelated context. The study is behind a paywall, but there’s some more detail at [Reason.com](http://reason.com/blog/2017/03/01/moral-outrage-is-self-serving) > [@](#): > > Here’s the gist of Rothschild and Keefer’s findings: > > 1. Triggering feelings of personal culpability for a problem increases moral outrage at a third-party target. […] > > 2. The more guilt over one’s own potential complicity, the more desire “to punish a third-party through increased moral outrage at that target.” […] > > 3. Having the opportunity to express outrage at a third-party decreased guilt in people threatened through “ingroup immorality.” […] > > 4. “The opportunity to express moral outrage at corporate harm-doers” inflated participants perception of personal morality. […] > > 5. Guilt-induced moral outrage was lessened when people could assert their goodness through alternative means, “even in an unrelated context.” […] > > These findings held true even accounting for things such as respondents political ideology, general affect, and background feelings about the issues. The bracketed ellipses represent the details of the studies which established those conclusions. I left them out for copyright concerns, but worth reading the article. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2017, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/social-justice-warriors/781207/2 "2017-03-02T16:13:53Z")
I would add (from my own observations, no formal study data offered in support here) that there are those who will make an adversarial stand against injustice when the situation requires it, but whose default attitude is one of being at peace with all people; and then there are those who really really need a designated Enemy, someone to hate and blame for all social ills. Both the left and the right do the “designated Enemy” routine; the right identifies and blames some marginal social element and demonizes them and demands more law and order and more authoritarian power to protect the rest of us from them; the left identifies one or more clusters of oppressed people and, through defining other people in terms of who they are _not_, targets the folks who are not subject to those categorical oppressions and blames them. The latter is, at least, targeting people who aren’t exactly lacking in resources and social currency, but it’s still scapegoating and it still offers up a culprit for the rest of us to hate. And as long as people can bond together to hate someone else they don’t have to examine their own interactions and behaviors. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2017, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/social-justice-warriors/781207/3 "2017-03-02T16:15:53Z")
That this may exist isn’t controversial – any disagreement is probably about how prevalent it is. It’s entirely possible that there is, in fact, close to as much injustice in the form of various bigotries in society as liberal-ish folks like me suspect, and it’s also entirely possible that we’re mostly motivated by the phenomenon you bring up and mostly deluded about these claims of injustice. Or somewhere in between. But that some folks look for battles to fight shouldn’t be surprising or controversial to anyone, and isn’t for me. The same phenomenon presumably applies to all ideologies in various forms, with different issue/philosophical battles that some might go looking for (even, for example, in perhaps looking to “battle” against those who make assertions about injustice). People probably wouldn’t recognize the phenomenon in themselves – if I’m guilty of it, I probably wouldn’t know it. I hope I’m not, and I wouldn’t describe myself as fitting those criteria in your snippets… but I wouldn’t know if I did. Same goes for folks on any other ideological side. ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2017, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/social-justice-warriors/781207/4 "2017-03-02T16:22:03Z")
I certainly agree with that. The original example I cited was a religious one. But the point is that while it may sometimes be difficult to apply it to any specific person, the notion that it exists as a societal phenomenon is reasonable. ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2017, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/social-justice-warriors/781207/5 "2017-03-02T16:23:48Z")
Does that same term apply for people who look for “War on Christmas” battles to fight? Those who look for things to falsely label as Sharia Law Coming to the US? Those that look for other supposed affronts to Christianity in the US? Or, is that a different term? That is, is someone who gets outraged when Walmart greeters say Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas – is the outraged person also an SJW? ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2017, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/social-justice-warriors/781207/6 "2017-03-02T16:25:50Z")
I recall a book written by a University of Texas professor in which he discussed how some people who feel guilt over something (the example was some women who have had abortions) may compensate or “atone” for those feelings by becoming a moral zealot in another area - an example in the book being, becoming fanatical about not wearing fur clothing (which is ‘animal cruelty.’) ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2017, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/social-justice-warriors/781207/7 "2017-03-02T16:27:33Z")
> [@RitterSport](#): > > Does that same term apply for people who look for “War on Christmas” battles to fight? Those who look for things to falsely label as Sharia Law Coming to the US? Those that look for other supposed affronts to Christianity in the US? > > Or, is that a different term? That is, is someone who gets outraged when Walmart greeters say Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas – is the outraged person also an SJW? A fake religious version of SJW needing its own term, quite possibly. There \*\*\*are \*\*\*some affronts to Christianity in the US, yeah, but the Christmas wars usually aren’t one of them. ---
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2017, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/social-justice-warriors/781207/8 "2017-03-02T16:28:19Z")
> [@](#): > > So too there’s a fundamental difference between a person who sees injustice (or heresy, as the case may be) and feels the need to fight it and so goes out and fights it, and someone who has a need to be an injustice (or heresy) fighter, someone who needs to feel that he is nobly battling the Forces of Evil. The second type would be what’s meant by the term SJW, a guy who is always looking for an injustice to fight, so he can get that righteous glow. > > And one crucial difference is in how one assesses a given injustice (or heresy). The guy who is dragged into fighting injustice has no incentive to exaggerate or otherwise incorrectly assess the level of injustice he’s contemplating. Not so the person with the psychological need to be an injustice fighter - he has every incentive to exaggerate to himself the scale and scope of the evil that he’s fighting, so as to make himself all the bigger hero in fighting it. I guess my quibble is with the term. The second guy is basically an asshole, and you want to label him (ironically?) with a name that implies he’s doing something good (fighting for social justice). It’s like ranting against tailgaters and calling them “really good drivers.” Damn I hate those RGDs, always riding my ass on the interstate. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2017, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/social-justice-warriors/781207/9 "2017-03-02T16:30:45Z")
> [@Procrustus](#): > > I guess my quibble is with the term. The second guy is basically an asshole, and you want to label him (ironically?) with a name that implies he’s doing something good (fighting for social justice). It’s like ranting against tailgaters and calling them “really good drivers.” Damn I hate those RGDs, always riding my ass on the interstate. “Men’s Rights Activist” is a technically good-sounding name, too. Many good-sounding things have developed negative connotations. ---
**Author:** ![Beren\_Erchamion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/90ced4/32.png) [@Beren\_Erchamion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beren_Erchamion)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2017, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/social-justice-warriors/781207/10 "2017-03-02T16:34:00Z")
Cyril, the problem with your analysis is that it ignores the fact that social injustices very often are latent, hidden beneath the surface, etc. This is what micro-aggressions are, for example. They’re very often not immediately apparent to the people committing them _or_ to the people suffering from them. And this isn’t because the people suffering from them are too stupid to notice them, but because they’re so ingrained in society that no one thinks twice about them. Consider a poisoned water supply. Let’s say there’s some chemical in the ground produced by a given community’s staple foodstuff, that’s leaching into the groundwater that has supplied a community farther down the hill with drinking water for hundreds of years, a mineral resource that (on broad average) shortens lifespans in that area by five years (obviously individual cases will be different, we’re talking about averages here). For a long time nobody notices any real difference with their neighbors, because the information necessary for a big-picture perspective on this hasn’t been collected yet. After several centuries, with the advent of modern intellectual and methodological practices, someone collects this data and notices that hey, people in this area aren’t living as long as everyone else. But no one knows why yet, and people come up with a lot of different hypotheses, from genetics to cultural factors (diet, for example) to just pure chance. But these are assumed to either be beyond anyone’s control or something that can’t be changed by anyone except those who suffer from it, so not a whole lot of people are inclined to spend a lot of time worrying about it. Finally, our understanding of plants and ecology advances further, and someone notices that the plant that these people up the hill are growing as their major food crop, is one that has recently been discovered to produce a herbicidal chemical that gets in the soil–a chemical that, from other research, is known to also negatively impact human life spans. The person who figures this out goes to the community that’s being impacted and tells them about this, and they’re understandably upset and want the community uphill to start using different crops. The same person then goes to the community uphill and says, “Hey, I know you didn’t mean to do this, and I know you didn’t realize you were doing this, but you are doing this and so you need to stop.” They completely lose it, demand to know why they’re being “punished” (they’re not, they’re just being told they need to stop doing something that harms others) and why they should have to go out of their way and change what they’re doing. They then start spewing those old, now-discredited explanations that were put out speculatively before anyone knew for sure, insisting that the real reason for the difference is things like “genetics” or “culture” or pure chance, etc. They’re wrong, of course, but that doesn’t matter because not changing is easier than admitting that they’re the source of the problem and so they’re the ones who need to change. Then they realize that the person who made these discoveries and is communicating them, isn’t from the community that’s being impacted–in fact, he’s from the uphill community–and so they ask him why he’s inserting himself into something that doesn’t concern him, why he doesn’t let those people down the hill figure out their own problems, etc. Some even go so far as to call him a traitor. Cyril, your argument against “social justice warriors” (a term I refuse to consider an insult when applied to me) is what those people at the top of the hill are doing. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2017, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/social-justice-warriors/781207/11 "2017-03-02T16:36:14Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > A fake religious version of SJW needing its own term, quite possibly. > > \*\*There \*\*\*are \ ***some affronts to Christianity in the US** , yeah, but the Christmas wars usually aren’t one of them. Cite? Remember two things before you answer. The Constitution and the country is roughly 85% Christian. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2017, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/social-justice-warriors/781207/12 "2017-03-02T16:38:49Z")
> [@running\_coach](#): > > Cite? > Remember two things before you answer. The Constitution and the country is roughly 85% Christian. Only 85%? To some, that _is_ the affront. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2017, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/social-justice-warriors/781207/13 "2017-03-02T16:41:32Z")
The baker is happy the mouse is gone. The cat is hoping there will be more mice. This fable is almost certainly from pre-industrial times. Know what that means? THE CAT IS RIGHT. In a society where there are a shit-ton of mice, I’m not sure it matters whether the cat is happy or sad, as long as the cat keeps killing those mice. Bringing it home, this whole thing seems like a way to smear and dismiss folks who are working against social injustice: “But they LIKE their work!” you complain. “HOw can we take them seriously?” Whether they like or dislike their work is immaterial. All that matters is whether the injustices they see are real or imagined. Efforts to determine that are impaired, not facilitated, by trying to dig into their motives. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2017, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/social-justice-warriors/781207/14 "2017-03-02T16:42:41Z")
> [@running\_coach](#): > > Cite? > Remember two things before you answer. The Constitution and the country is roughly 85% Christian. A large number of people will self-identify as “Christian” on census forms, etc., but in reality are not adherents of the Christian doctrine, so, “Christian” in name only, not in actuality. And given that the Constitution says that the government shall not promote religion (1st Amendment,) I’m not sure where you get a Christian Constitution out of it. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2017, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/social-justice-warriors/781207/15 "2017-03-02T16:49:07Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > A large number of people will self-identify as “Christian” on census forms, etc., but in reality are not adherents of the Christian doctrine, so, “Christian” in name only, not in actuality. Unless you’ve got an official definition of “Christian” to present to us, there is no practical difference between the two. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2017, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/social-justice-warriors/781207/16 "2017-03-02T16:52:01Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > A large number of people will self-identify as “Christian” on census forms, etc., but in reality are not adherents of the Christian doctrine, so, “Christian” in name only, not in actuality. Ah, no true Christian then? What tests do you propose to determine whether someone is in reality an adherent of Christian doctrine? If you are arguing that being a christian is to be christ-like, then I would agree, but in that case, then that brings the percentage down to pretty much 0%. > [@](#): > > And given that the Constitution says that the government shall not promote religion (1st Amendment,) I’m not sure where you get a Christian Constitution out of it. I don’t think that that was his point. More that many christians consider it an affront that other religions get the same sorts of protections under the constitution as Christianity does. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2017, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/social-justice-warriors/781207/17 "2017-03-02T16:52:06Z")
Hmmm…no, I don’t think so. Your definition of “social justice warrior” seems to be assumed to be inherently disparaging based on some arbitrary criteria you created for whether the conflict is “any of their business”. And I find these arguments dubious at best. As it is usually the person or group on the receiving end of the SJW’s outrage, it come across like a bunch of frat guys arguing for their right to wear blackface at their annual “Ghetto Theme Party”. What makes the Social Justice Warrior (as I understand how you define the term) insufferable has nothing to do with being a guilt-ridden busybody. It is the use of “political correctness” as a weapon to label people or groups as “racist”, “homophobic” or other terms in order to derive power through intimidation and public scorn. There’s nothing wrong with seeking out and fighting injustice for it’s own sake. What is wrong creating witch hunts to attack and shut down rational discussion with those who don’t agree with you. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2017, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/social-justice-warriors/781207/18 "2017-03-02T16:55:16Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > What makes the Social Justice Warrior (as I understand how you define the term) insufferable has nothing to do with being a guilt-ridden busybody. It is the use of “political correctness” as a weapon to label people or groups as “racist”, “homophobic” or other terms in order to derive power through intimidation and public scorn. > > There’s nothing wrong with seeking out and fighting injustice for it’s own sake. What is wrong creating witch hunts to attack and shut down rational discussion with those who don’t agree with you. Also, there are many times when it is the SJWs, who, in their desire to fight bigotry, end up promoting ignorance. For instance, Cracked ran an article criticizing an Australian TV ad for depicting black people eating fried chicken, calling it racist, not realizing that in Australia, fried chicken doesn’t have the same racist connotations it does in the USA. So the American SJWs were displaying the same “America is the center of the world, and the world thinks like us” attitude that they often criticized others for. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2017, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/social-justice-warriors/781207/19 "2017-03-02T16:56:29Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > A large number of people will self-identify as “Christian” on census forms, etc., but in reality are not adherents of the Christian doctrine, so, “Christian” in name only, not in actuality. > > And given that the Constitution says that the government shall not promote religion (1st Amendment,) **I’m not sure where you get a Christian Constitution out of it.** I sadi nothing about a Christian Constitution. It was to remind you that some Christians want things that have been declared unconstitutional. So what are these affronts you claimed? ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2017, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/social-justice-warriors/781207/20 "2017-03-02T17:00:04Z")
What a strong example-an old _Cracked_ tossoff. :rolleyes: [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/social-justice-warriors/781207.md?page=2)