Okay, and what are your criteria for labeling someone an SJW? Is there anyone in this thread (or on this board) who’d qualify? Are you selective in your application? Do you think more so, less so, or about the same as the OP?
I think this is a great question, because I’d like to know who on this board qualifies as well. If there’s anywhere you’d expect to find a liberal SJW, it would be here, right? That’s what I’m led to believe, anyway.
There’s a few criteria and it’s late here, but here’s a few of my criteria to get started with:
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Vocal about leftist issues and causes, particularly “trendy” or “approved” ones
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Thinks anyone who disagrees with them on said issues is a bigot/horrible person
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The issues they get worked up about don’t actually affect them personally (or if they do, it’s not nearly as much as they say it does)
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Often seem to be going out of their way to be offended by something or offended on someone else’s behalf
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Often appear to be pushing for “extra” privileges for whatever group they’re championing
Another criteria is the belief that mere indifference to the thing they care about is unacceptable - you’re either 100% on the Woke Express or you’re part of the problem/an oppressor/etc.
There’s more, but like I said, it’s late here.
Based on his recent posts in the Pit I’d say BigT would qualify.
That’s not meant as an insult, by the way, IIRC he self-identifies as SJW.
For the sake of argument, lets accept the above criterion to be true without reservation. So what if it is? Why is it problematic to care passionately for something - anything that doesn’t affect you personally? If you only care about stuff that affects you personally - how does that not make you a self-centred douchebag at best and a sociopath at worst?
That’s an interesting list. Am I right in thinking that you’d consider many 1850s abolitionists to be Social Justice Warriors, as well as 1950s and 1960s civil rights activists?
Missed the edit window.
Just to clarify: I’m using the generic “you” in my above post. I’m not in any way saying or implying that **Martini Enfield ** is a “self-centred douchebag” or “sociopath”.
I once read somewhere that Joseph McCarthy was done in by this sort of technique. According to this version, anyway, he was initially reluctant to name any names of Communists in government. He felt that identifying individuals was the job of the executive branch, and his job as senator was just to raise the alarm about the big picture - which he turned out to have been correct about.
But he was challenged “if you think there are all these Communists, let’s see some names, huh?” and he finally took the bait. And that’s where he went over the top and what led to his downfall.
Poor McCarthy. Martini, do you feel like McCarthy here?
Well he wouldn’t feel it yet. But you’re on much more solid grounds discussing whether some phenomenon has validity on a societal level than in discussing whether it applies to any specific individual. So if you’ve allowed deniers to push the discussion from the former to the latter, you’ve shifted onto much weaker ground.
Similarly it’s much easier to discuss things on some sort of theoretical level than it is to discuss facts. If you can’t actually come up with any examples of the phenomenon you’re proposing, that might mean the theory, not hte ground you’re on, is weak.
It might. But generally it won’t be any sort of indicator at all.
People are very complex, and understanding their entire psychological makeup can be difficult, especially if you don’t know them all that well. So it’s hard to pin down an individual person as to what extent they’re motivated by one thing or another.
But when trying to understand societal forces, it’s easier to look at things that tend to motivate people and assess whether they might be at play in aggregate.
This is true of many many phenomena.
I agree 100% with what mmsmith wrote up thread. I would emphasize more the intimidation factor and public scorn. At the very least it’s bullying. At it’s worst it’s a concentrated effort to suppress free speech and freedom of ideas. I find it so hard to believe that people have a hard time finding this phenomenon to exist. Maybe it’s because I see it along college campuses and I have younger relatives now entering college that makes me more sensitive to it…
**Martini Enfield **can answer for himself, but the boilerplate response is that abolitionists, suffragettes etc fought for a just cause, but today’s so-called “SJWs” simply go “too far”.
As you probably figured out, “too far” is in the eye of the beholder.
(I’m not advocating this line of reasoning, just pointing it out.)
This being the flip side: the exact same argument about going too far was made about every single movement for equality in history, for essentially the same reasons. The suggestion that this time is different makes me :dubious:.
Lionel Shriver called it “weaponised sensitivity”, which I think is a pretty apt description.
Why leftist issues specifically? Are there social justice issues with a rightist bent? Is defending the rights of the unborn leftist, rightist, neither? How about calls for the restoration or expanded use of the death penalty in the names of victims of violent crime? Is drug legalization a leftist issue in that it’s based on individual freedom, or a rightist issue in that it’s based on keeping the government’s nose out of a citizen’s business?
I’m okay with that, if the labeling is clearly unfair or unreasonable and used as the basis for further opposition, i.e. “That person disagrees with me on Issue A and is therefore bigoted/horrible, thus I can dismiss any arguments he makes on Issue A or anything else.” Sometimes you have to cut your losses, though, and if you realize that someone is indeed bigoted or horrible, further debate with them is likely a waste of time.
Is that really a problem? So you express outrage about an issue that has little or no impact on your personally. That could just be empathy for the person who is affected.
Well, that might also be empathy, but if someone’s waxing wroth with overly purple prose, I suppose they deserve mockery for it.
Such as? Is gay marriage an “extra” privilege, for example? A lot of people seemed to think it was for no reason I could discern, so I’d like some specific cases.
“You’re with us or against us” strikes me as something that would apply pretty broadly. By that standard, George W. Bush was a social justice warrior.
I gather the important criterion is the first one - does the SJW label specifically apply to proponents of leftist causes? I suppose it’s fine if it does - you’ve picked a derisive label for those you perceive as vocal leftists, is all.
Sure, as long it can apply equally to the person who gets upset (or at least pretends to get upset) if a cashier says “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.”
…or people who get mad when someone doesn’t stand for the National Anthem, or people who get mad when a professor rants during a lecture, or people who get angry at the name of the Black Lives Matter movement, or people who are upset over ads featuring same-sex couples.
Absolutely there’s people on both sides who allow themselves to get hurt over little things. But when someone is in the majority and is getting hurt over things that recognize that their view isn’t the only one allowed, I have a little less sympathy for them than when they’re in the minority and they’re getting upset over things that the majority is doing to them constantly.
It’s not problematic to care, it’s problematic to expect others to care and to scold or punish them for not having opinions you don’t like.
And keep in mind things which affect someone personally can still be a fairly wide net - issues which genuinely affect friends and family count.
I like the term “weaponised sensitivity” which someone mentioned earlier too.
And I figured someone would bring up the abolitionists and the civil rights folks. For what it’s worth, I think there’s a huge difference between fighting against people being kept as property and transported across the planet against their will and made to work on cotton plantations - and being upset that a white person asked an Asian person where they were from, because the Asian person was actually born in the white person’s country so racism or something.
As I’ve always said, I’m all about a fair go for everyone, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation etc.
What that doesn’t extend to is dealing with the euphemism treadmill and hurt feelings - or deliberately sought out offence - where no offence was intended and the lack of offence would be clear to a reasonable person.
And partly for the reasons Fotheringay-Phipps notes, I’m not getting into “Poster X is a [del]Communist![/del] SJW!” I’d also note that as a general policy I don’t go around singling out a specific poster(s) on the boards for disparagement.
I also don’t pay a huge amount of attention to people’s posting histories - I tend to take each post on its own merits; although obviously there are posters here I “know” (for want of a better term). Point is, nothing constructive is going to come of me denouncing specific people as SJWs.
They will say “No I’m not”, then someone will say “Youre a crazy SJW”, the alleged SJW will say “That’s a sexist term”, someone else will say say “you’re a crazy SJW”, the recipient will say “Can you stop saying that?” and another person will say “They’re so broken inside”, to which the accused will insist the reality is a lot more nuanced than that. 
And personally, I only define SJW as someone on the leftist spectrum. The “Happy Holidays” or “Not standing for the national anthem”-type things aren’t an issue in Australia - it’s only the lefties banging on about things IME.